The Science of the Benefits of Religion • Hacker News Board

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#191

Post by hota_mazi » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

api wrote: post #55

One of the more profound statements I once heard on the problem with modern secular philosophy was this throwaway comment I read online years ago: "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." (I'm guessing the poster was from the rural Midwestern US.) I'm not saying I agree with that statement, but I can see where they are coming from. I found it to be one of the more profoundly honest and deep statem…

> One can find examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting irrational thinking

This is whataboutism to an absurd degree.

"Yeah, religion is not perfect, but atheism is not perfect either, so they're both on par".

No, they're not.

> and I don't see any evidence that people who abandon religion automatically become more rational.

They just abandoned an irrational belief, so by definition, they are immediately more rational.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#192

Post by hota_mazi » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #180

joe_the_user wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives embedded in the ordinary matrix of threats and opportunities presented by every day life. I don't there's much, if any, evidence for this claim. Religion is in a steep decline in Europe but there's little evidence for more anti-social behavior. The American mid-west, where your quote comes from, in contrast is especially r…

What is the horrific midwest social problem?

We can start by the fact that their political leanings have led most of these states to have the highest COVID 19 death ratios because they don't believe in vaccines, nor science.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#193

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

ggggtez wrote: post #164

xyzzyz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are hunter gatherer bands roaming around the Amazon right now. They seem to exhibit at least as much "upstanding behavior" as the evangelicals sloshing around the US. Considering how violent are cultures of hunter-gatherers, I’d say that they are much less morally upstanding. But, they provide a good data point here: the hunter gatherers are typically highly religious. It’s just their religions are pretty bad…

> how violent are cultures of hunter-gatherer WW2 killed 75 million people. Tell me again, who has the more violent culture?

Context matters. The proper tool to use is to compare what percentage of lives met a violent end annually.

Normally in the US it's about 1 in 17,000 according to the CDC

https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nvdrs/ind...

In Sweden its more like 1 in 83,000

Ancient stats are a little hard to come by and different groups were more or less warlike losing between an estimated 1 in 100 to 1 in 3000

Big events like WW2 are very noticeable but ancient people were in fact very violent because not shockingly people are violent.

As importantly is the context in which violence appears in ancient society driven not my large scale political movements but by resource scarcity. A continually expanding human population in the absence of modern civilization would not have achieved present population size but they would certainly have continued to grow leading to greater scarcity and increasing conflict. That is to say that they were more violent on average already and they would be more so in the modern context.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#194

Post by smackeyacky » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #170

smackeyacky wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No-fault divorce and legally sanctioned child support were put in place to give women more choices. I don't think we need to return to a time where women and children are effectively chattel. The overall effect of these policies has been positive. There is an untested assertion here that Bangladesh has better outcomes for marriages because the practise of religion is higher. Yet you should also see lower levels of vi…

> I don't think we need to return to a time where women and children are effectively chattel. This is very much factually wrong description of the position of women in America before no-fault divorce. In fact, I consider the suggestion that women in America completely lacked agency before 70s to be rather reprehensible. > Yet you should also see lower levels of violence against women in Bangladesh from all these happ…

I don't quite understand this argument. Are you saying this is all women's fault for wanting to participate in the workforce and leave bad relationships?

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#195

Post by 4512124672456 » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #171

analog31 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> "Creationism is true if it will keep my kids off oxycontin." The thing is, it won't.

It would be a second or third order effect. It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network. All of these things reduce the likelihood of getting addicted to hard drugs. You could also take it a step further and say that having such things makes breaking an addiction/rehab more likely to be successful, too.

> It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network.

Remove "religious" from this sentence and it is still true. Now the question remains whether a religious community is better than other communities. I doubt it, because religion usually comes with a lot of extra baggage and can become outright dangerous.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#196

Post by hota_mazi » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

temp8964 wrote: post #173

ggggtez wrote: post #155

> Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives Consider the situation: you want to get an abortion. Or you know someone who does. I don't think I need to spell out the debate. But the secular world view is producing value for people who don't want to be afraid that they will spend literally INFINITY TIME being tortured. (And arguably it produces value for the religio…

I am totally atheist, but I am against most abortion. You don’t have to be religious to be against abortion. Be secular doesn’t make anybody free from judgement.

I am pro choice and against abortion.

I don't like abortion. Nobody likes abortions. Women who feel that they need to get an abortion don't like it either. It's a horrible, traumatic procedure.

But it's a reality that it needs to be legal, regulated, and safe.

It's absolutely critical to civilization that women have a choice to undergo an abortion if they choose to. It's their body, their life, their future. Nobody else's business, especially not the government's.

The government should never require them to carry a pregnancy to term in much the same way that it shouldn't force you to give an organ (and it doesn't).

I am not pro abortion, I am pro choice.

People opposed to abortions are not pro life, they are anti choice.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#197

Post by analog31 » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

smackeyacky wrote: post #178

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a second or third order effect. It stands to reason that someone who is a part of a strong religious community would have a much better social life, support structure, and network. All of these things reduce the likelihood of getting addicted to hard drugs. You could also take it a step further and say that having such things makes breaking an addiction/rehab more likely to be successful, too.

Drug use and abuse levels do differ between religious and irreligious folk, but one explanation for that might be regional availability rather than religion. https://drugabuse.com/featured/drugs-and-devotion/

Indeed, and to make it even more of a mess, regional issues also correlated with economic issues. My unorthodox opinion is that the opioid crisis started with an actual pain crisis due to the kinds of jobs that people were working, coupled with a lack of strong labor law enforcement and safety net. People were turning to pills because they were in pain.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#198

Post by bmicraft » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

stevofolife wrote: post #187

ggggtez wrote: post #155

> Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives Consider the situation: you want to get an abortion. Or you know someone who does. I don't think I need to spell out the debate. But the secular world view is producing value for people who don't want to be afraid that they will spend literally INFINITY TIME being tortured. (And arguably it produces value for the religio…

Once you study Christianity, you will realize it actually offers you true freedom from the crap happening in the secular world.

Can you produce any data to support that?

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#199

Post by bmicraft » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: post #140

So much of the US population cruises along unconsciously on an implicit set of Judeo-Christian values and morals. Increasingly many citizens claim to have left religion behind and subscribe to an exclusively scientific worldview, but the majority of their upstanding behavior still stems from religious beliefs. Pressed to reveal its true character, a purely scientific worldview produces no inherent sense of meaning, m…

Judeo-Christian values are just that, values. Many of those values have existed before that kind of religion and many will long after those religions have seized to exist in thair current form. One could even argue that some form of values is genetically ingrained in us as a social species, as they are in many other species

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#200

Post by France_is_bacon » Sun, Sep 26, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

Everything that is listed in this article can be done non-religiously.

Personally, I've led groups and I understand about ritual, repetition, moving in unison and other techniques to create cohesiveness within the groups.

I don't think all of this started in religion. We see apes moving in tandem, their ritual of grooming each other, etc.

But, for some reason, people want to use these basic everyday knowledge and ascribe it to religion. I'm not saying religion doesn't use them, but they are hardly the first.

Think of sports teams. They all have their chants, wear the same colors, go to the same bars, commiserate on wins and losses. Any organization is like this. Humans naturally move towards this type of way of reacting. There is nothing special about religion.