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The Science of the Benefits of Religion

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Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#271

Post by asdff »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #9

It's interesting to think of religion as a societal tool that has co-evolved along with humanity. Societies with more beneficial religions would prosper and societies with less beneficial religious would die out. It's thus no surprise that the religions that survived until the present day promote human survival. For example, it's no accident that most major religions heavily encourage their followers to have a lot of…

The way I see it, the rise of the chieftan and shaman go hand and hand. Listen to my orders, bring me resources, make war with who I please, for I am your leader and your living god, and they are the unknown other who aren't like us and don't believe what we believe about the universe. For all of our available history, this was the case. Tribalism.

In my view, early bands of humans who weren't following a charismatic leader, who weren't following a strong religious practice, were killed off by those bands of humans who did follow the word of a charismatic leader who assured their followers that the divine itself were guiding their decision making. Fast forward though millions of years of evolution, and of course we are predisposed to religion, to xenophobia, to answering some call of duty and dying in someone else war. Our cultist ancestors killed off anyone they came across who didn't follow with this program. This behavior of humans hasn't even gone away today, its so entrenched.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#272

Post by klipt »

smackeyacky wrote: post #194
xyzzyz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The incentives aren't specific to women though.

Suppose you were a stay at home dad married to a high earning wife. You then meet a new woman you find more attractive. Under most Western countries' laws you can divorce your wife for no reason other than you no longer find her attractive, and she has to pay you alimony and child support to maintain your lifestyle while you're dating your new, hotter partner.

What's the downside to you? Seems there isn't any.

It seems obvious that a system setup like that will increase divorces initiated by stay at home parents, and hence increase single parent households.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#273

Post by asdff »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #145
Animats wrote: post #48

But if we remove the theology—views about the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like—from the day-to-day practice of religious faith, the animosity in the debate evaporates. Of course, then it's no longer a religion. It's a social organization. It seems to be quite possible to overdose on religion. Some religions do that as policy, as a form of brainwashing. The religions with mandatory prayer seve…

My experience with Buddhism was that theology was very much not the point, but most people still consider it a religion.

Buddhism can in practice be very religious. The life of your typical buddhist monk really doesn't look that different from the life of your typical christian monk, they just utter different prayers while lighting their candles. The Pali Cannon reads a lot like the new testament too

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#274

Post by PartiallyTyped »

klipt wrote: post #260
mbfg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist if i can perfectly predict what you are going to do before you realize what you are going to do, that would be at the least an indicator. Can we do that? not at present. Is there research results that pushes that idea somewhat? Yes. Is it conclusive enough, no way. But i don't think you can rule it out either.

If free will doesn't exist, what's the point in arguing with someone predetermined to believe in free will? They have no free will to change their mind!

That assumption lies in ignorance of how our brains work.

The gist is that we have some world model that arises out of the structure of the brain and the chemical state of it.

Your mind doesn’t change because you have free will. Your mind changes because you have collected a sufficient amount of experiences that alter the state and structure of the brain.

You don’t learn stuff because you “decided” I will learn this and that and I will store it in my brain somewhere. All your learning is actually involuntary because as you accumulate experiences, your synapses get positively or negatively reinforced and that causes the learning. You may choose to study something but you don’t choose which exact information gets stored and where. Instead, when trying to recall something your brain probes its world model and tries to find the circuit that triggers the correct response.

So why would anyone argue that free will doesn’t exist? Because it gives people the opportunity to prove their world model, see the inconsistencies, experience new trains of thought and rewrite their brain.

But no person who is not open to the idea will ever get to accept despite mountains of evidence because for most people, the idea of free will is so integral to their world model, that any challenge feels like a threat to their very foundation, which causes cognitive dissonance, and the shut down of executive functions that process information logically.

Our brains have two competing circuits, one that tries to break the mould and challenges everything, and one that tries to be grounded and conservative. Cognitive dissonance occurs when the former is pushing the latter around but the latter has trouble coming to terms with reality and falls in denial.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#275

Post by smackeyacky »

klipt wrote: post #272
smackeyacky wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The incentives aren't specific to women though. Suppose you were a stay at home dad married to a high earning wife. You then meet a new woman you find more attractive. Under most Western countries' laws you can divorce your wife for no reason other than you no longer find her attractive, and she has to pay you alimony and child support to maintain your lifestyle while you're dating your new, hotter partner. What's th…

So, the no fault divorce system has to be absolutely perfect to be acceptable?

To be honest, I don't see anything wrong in your scenario. People fall out of love for lots of reasons, making them miserable by making it harder to split up doesn't seem like a particularly good solution to me. The scenario you've raised would have to involve a very emotionally shallow individual whom the other partner would be better off without anyway.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#276

Post by eitland »

Jensson wrote: post #270
eitland wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at staunch atheists such as Stalin and you'll find that it has been not only balanced out but far in favour of many religions.

That was in the name of communism though, not in the name of atheism. They viewed religion as just another corporation used to oppress workers. If the argument is that communism is just as bad as religions then sure I'll buy it.

Ok, fine but then I ask you to do the same for for example Christianity:

Do see the difference between Catholicism as abused by various Spanish and English kings and Christianity.

Do see the difference between abusive cults that do things that the rest of us disapprove of and the rest of us.

Otherwise be prepared to defend Stalin, because he was an atheist just as much as the mad guys during the dark ages were Christians.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#277

Post by PartiallyTyped »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #151
PartiallyTyped wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected a-la > God's ways are mysterious fashion. Any differing positions appear as attacks against the person's religion, which - when it carries sufficient argumentative power - can shake the foundations of the person's world model. This, in turn, prevents them from acce…

“ society needs to accept that free-will is an illusion “ The funny thing about pushing the ‘free will is an illusion’ argument is that it sounds exactly like a faith argument. How is one going to ever prove that free will does not exist when most of us are running real time experiments during most of our waking hours. For some reason, the universe gained consciousness even though it could have outputted zombies that…

I don’t see how running real-time experiments invalidates absence of free will and I’d like to discuss this further.

However, I would like to point out that a non deterministic system does not imply a system where the agents have free will. The scales at which QM apply are many orders of magnitude smaller than those of individual neurons and I don’t believe Penrose has reached a meaningful conclusion with his work. And any deterministic system can be simulated as far as we would like and at any point we want, even if it is chaotic, if the initial parameter are the same the outcome is always the same.

I would also like to argue that consciousness, being aware of one’s own actions or probing some world model does not imply free will. This occurs simply because your brain was in such a state to perform such actions. The act of self referencing can be achieved with things even more dumb, like natural numbers, and I can recommend Hofstadter’s work here, like Gödel Escher Bach.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#278

Post by klipt »

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #274
klipt wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If free will doesn't exist, what's the point in arguing with someone predetermined to believe in free will? They have no free will to change their mind!

That assumption lies in ignorance of how our brains work. The gist is that we have some world model that arises out of the structure of the brain and the chemical state of it. Your mind doesn’t change because you have free will. Your mind changes because you have collected a sufficient amount of experiences that alter the state and structure of the brain. You don’t learn stuff because you “decided” I will learn this…

Let's try another question. How does not believing in free will give you an advantage in life? Studies seem to show that a "growth mindset" is superior to a "fixed mindset", and I would guess a belief in free will tends to correlate more with a "growth mindset".

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#279

Post by dartharva »

At a personal level, one very visible difference I have seen religion make in people is that it makes them more disciplined. Pious people who regularly and "religiously" perform their rituals every day tend to have a nice bonus effect of being easily able to start and adhere to good habits and exercise self-control over superficial cravings.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#280

Post by klipt »

smackeyacky wrote: post #275
klipt wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives aren't specific to women though. Suppose you were a stay at home dad married to a high earning wife. You then meet a new woman you find more attractive. Under most Western countries' laws you can divorce your wife for no reason other than you no longer find her attractive, and she has to pay you alimony and child support to maintain your lifestyle while you're dating your new, hotter partner. What's th…

So, the no fault divorce system has to be absolutely perfect to be acceptable? To be honest, I don't see anything wrong in your scenario. People fall out of love for lots of reasons, making them miserable by making it harder to split up doesn't seem like a particularly good solution to me. The scenario you've raised would have to involve a very emotionally shallow individual whom the other partner would be better off…

> whom the other partner would be better off without anyway

So you think half your future earnings is a reasonable price to pay to rid yourself of a shallow partner?

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