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The Science of the Benefits of Religion

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Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#81

Post by zdragnar »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #73
thaumasiotes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. This is not at all accurate; the faith people express in science is generally identical to the faith other people express in religion, with no difference in the reasons, motivations, or justifications offered. It is true that science is often self-correcting. The same is true of religion - you don…

> This is not at all accurate; the faith people express in science is generally identical to the faith other people express in religion, with no difference in the reasons, motivations, or justifications offered. I think this is fundamentally incorrect. People believe in science because it produces results in the form of correct predictions and devices.

Just look at nutrition science as an example for why this isn't so.

Salt, fat, cholesterol, fructose, etc have each gone through several wild swings in good for you / bad for you. The science is entirely unsettled, yet forms the backbone of many doctors' recommendations.

Then, when the science gets taken in by mainline cultural space, it gets blown up into all sorts of utterly nonsensical, mystical woo-woo. Somehow moderation turns into paleo, vegan, fruitarian, or alkaline based diets.

People shoot wheatgrass or fast on lemon juice. All sorts of vaguely scientific sounding bullshit that isn't backed up by actual data.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#83

Post by thaumasiotes »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #78
thaumasiotes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, so do religions. But people make no distinction between believing in science in the same area where it makes correct predictions, and believing in "science" in an area where it has nothing valid to say, because it makes correct predictions somewhere else. To most people, science is just a word, and they support it because they know that that is the right thing to do.

What correct predictions and functional devices do religions create?

Here's an example from The Secret of Our Success:

> In Indonesia, the Kantus of Kalimantan use bird augury to select locations for their agricultural plots. The anthropologist Michael Dove argues that two factors will cause farmers to make plot placements that are too risky. First, Kantu ecological models contain the Gambler's Fallacy and lead them to expect that floods will be less likely to occur in a specific location after a big flood in that location (which is not true). Second [...], Kantus pay attention to others' success and copy the choices of successful households, meaning that if one of their neighbors has a good yield in an area one year, many other people will want to plant there in the next year.

> Reducing the risks posed by these cognitive and decision-making biases, the Kantu rely on a system of bird augury that effectively randomizes their choices for locating garden plots, which helps them avoid catastrophic crop failures.

> The patterning of bird augury supports the view that this is a cultural adaptation. The system seems to have evolved and spread throughout this region since the seventeenth century when rice cultivation was introduced. This makes sense, since it is rice cultivation that is most positively influenced by randomizing garden locations.

> Whatever the process, within 400 years, the bird augury system had spread throughout the agricultural populations of this Borneo region. Yet it remains conspicuously missing or underdeveloped among local foraging groups and recent adopters of rice agriculture, as well as among populations in northern Borneo who rely on irrigation.

> This example makes a key point: not only do people often not understand what their cultural practices are doing, but sometimes it may even be important that they don't understand what their practices are doing or how they work.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#84

Post by hota_mazi »

truetraveller wrote: post #68
estaseuropano wrote: post #6

There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith, spirituality or rite can have benefits. The question is how to get the good side of all these (community, meaning, satisfaction and fulfilment) without the nasty side (exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one's own preferences and wants). Religion has been a major source of soothing and a m…

The nasty side applies just as well to non-religious, non-spiritual communities. Even worse, perhaps. There are many examples. Look at the intolerance and hypocrisy in France, one of the most secular states. A girl is not allowed to go to school with the Muslim head scarf. This is worse than the Taliban. France allows insulting the Prophet (pbuh), but you'll get to jail for insulting the president. France has killed/…

Insulting the president stopped being an offense a while ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/25/insulting-fren...

I still don't see the hypocrisy you speak of, though. France is a reasonably religious country overall but extremely secular when it comes to school and politics. The edicts you describe simply enforce these principles (e.g. "No religious symbols allowed in school, be it a cross, a star of David, a hijab, etc...").

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#85

Post by paulryanrogers »

lisper wrote: post #66
smackeyacky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.

How do you know? Maybe if you studied the Bible you'd end up believing in it. :-) It turns out that you actually can induce subjective experiences in yourself that I believe are similar to what religious people describe as "feeling the presence of God". It's an interesting and worthwhile exercise (though not what we do in my study group, that's a more academic format). But it's worth doing at least once in your life.…

After 20y of trying I'm done with mass hysteria, "you're holding it wrong", survivorship bias, and magical thinking. Give me consistently repeatable, experimental evidence.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#86

Post by smackeyacky »

mionhe wrote: post #72
smackeyacky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.

Erm, the only way to know that is to put every effort you can into becoming a deist. "Every effort" is a lifetime of work, so you haven't done that, which makes your statement a statement of faith. It sounds like you've already decided that you will never be a deist, and so you never will. How is that different from religious belief?

It's different because there is one less thing I have to invent. You might as well ask somebody to believe in a giant hamburger that circumnavigates the earth that only the truly faithful can see. I know you don't see the giant hamburger because you just haven't tried hard enough.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#87

Post by paulryanrogers »

zdragnar wrote: post #81
lalaland1125 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not at all accurate; the faith people express in science is generally identical to the faith other people express in religion, with no difference in the reasons, motivations, or justifications offered. I think this is fundamentally incorrect. People believe in science because it produces results in the form of correct predictions and devices.

Just look at nutrition science as an example for why this isn't so. Salt, fat, cholesterol, fructose, etc have each gone through several wild swings in good for you / bad for you. The science is entirely unsettled, yet forms the backbone of many doctors' recommendations. Then, when the science gets taken in by mainline cultural space, it gets blown up into all sorts of utterly nonsensical, mystical woo-woo. Somehow m…

The word 'science' has been co-opted by con men. Yet it's basic tenants like the critical method and repeatable experiments have provided me with far more value than half a life filled with religious 'teaching'.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#88

Post by truetraveller »

hota_mazi wrote: post #84
truetraveller wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nasty side applies just as well to non-religious, non-spiritual communities. Even worse, perhaps. There are many examples. Look at the intolerance and hypocrisy in France, one of the most secular states. A girl is not allowed to go to school with the Muslim head scarf. This is worse than the Taliban. France allows insulting the Prophet (pbuh), but you'll get to jail for insulting the president. France has killed/…

Insulting the president stopped being an offense a while ago: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/25/insulting-fren... I still don't see the hypocrisy you speak of, though. France is a reasonably religious country overall but extremely secular when it comes to school and politics. The edicts you describe simply enforce these principles (e.g. "No religious symbols allowed in school, be it a cross, a star of Dav…

No, insulting the President is an offense. Typical hypocrisy + lying by the French government. https://www.timesofisrael.com/frenchman-fined-for-billboard-...

About the hijab. You say "Simply enforce these principles". Yes, and these principles are intolerant, which is my point.

And this pick-and-choosing secularism when convenient, is a type of opression.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#89

Post by tapas73 »

smackeyacky wrote: post #54
ceilingcorner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disappointed that this is downvoted. You are absolutely right: most people don’t actually investigate the origins of their beliefs and just adopt whatever their social tribe believes. The average urbanite atheist knows as much about evolution as the average rural creationist. It is almost entirely a social phenomenon, not an epistemological one.

There is no basis for this assertion. Furthermore, your "average urbanite atheist" probably knows more than you think: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/09/28/130191248...

Linked article conveniently forgot to mention the relevant footnote from original article:

> This may seem paradoxical, since atheists and agnostics have very low levels of religious commitment and yet score very well on the survey questions. However, atheists and agnostics account for a relatively small share of the total number of people with low levels of religious commitment; 4% of Americans describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, while fully 35% have low religious commitment. Atheists and agnostics answer an average of 20.9 questions correctly, compared with an average of 15.4 correct answers among people with low religious commitment who do not describe themselves as atheists or agnostics.

Btw survey questions them selfs are a bit nitpicky.. (who cares if jesus realy changed water into wine or if that was just symbolic)

Original article: https://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-...

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#90

Post by smackeyacky »

lisper wrote: post #66
smackeyacky wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.

How do you know? Maybe if you studied the Bible you'd end up believing in it. :-) It turns out that you actually can induce subjective experiences in yourself that I believe are similar to what religious people describe as "feeling the presence of God". It's an interesting and worthwhile exercise (though not what we do in my study group, that's a more academic format). But it's worth doing at least once in your life.…

Like a lot of atheists, I have studied the bible. My parents had me confirmed as an Anglican in my teens (ironically one of the first steps that took me from "I don't know if this is true" to "this particular religion is patently false").

It's impossible to understand western literature without a decent working knowledge of the bible (although choosing which one is problematic in itself), it's useful for that alone.

However, studying the bible made me less religious, not more.

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