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The Science of the Benefits of Religion

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Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#201

Post by dang »

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…

Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. We don't want that here, and the last thing we need is abortion on top of it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28656583.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#202

Post by dang »

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.

Please don't do this here.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#203

Post by dang »

bmicraft wrote: post #198
stevofolife wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Please don't do this here.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#204

Post by 4512124672456 »

afpx wrote: post #184
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…

Well, there are a couple billion people who didn't grow up in a Judeo-Christian societies. And, yet, they seem to have morality and life meaning. So, I think you mean, religion in general. Also, I'm not aware of record of hunter gatherer societies that didn't have religion. Religion is probably something baked in. At least I know that it's baked into me, so I run with it and enjoy it. It's possible to be both rationa…

> It's possible to be both rational and religious.

Except the person who is religious will always have a limit to their rationality, because they choose "believe in magic" instead of "knowing and not knowing".

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#205

Post by Thorrez »

hota_mazi wrote: post #192
Thorrez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

None of the top 11 states by COVID 19 death rate are in the Midwest.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States

The top Midwest state is South Dakota, in 12th place.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#206

Post by ggggtez »

michaelmrose wrote: post #193
ggggtez wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's a lot of facts and figures, but it kind of misses the mark. Wars today are also from resource scarcity.

Leibingsraum was explicitly part of the reasoning for invading France.

I know it's a natural instinct to defend modern living as more peaceful, and to some extent that may be true. But modern society has also created atrocities that ancient people could never dream of.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#207

Post by nostrebored »

afpx wrote: post #184
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…

Well, there are a couple billion people who didn't grow up in a Judeo-Christian societies. And, yet, they seem to have morality and life meaning. So, I think you mean, religion in general. Also, I'm not aware of record of hunter gatherer societies that didn't have religion. Religion is probably something baked in. At least I know that it's baked into me, so I run with it and enjoy it. It's possible to be both rationa…

Comparatively these cultures have substantially different values. The question is how much of this difference is caused by religion

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#208

Post by spoonjim »

I feel like my life would be better if I believed in some supernatural being who loved me and cared for me and was going to bring me into his paradise of eternal ecstasy after I die. I don’t see how that couldn’t make a person happier and more able to cope with the deaths of loved ones, their own death, etc. It seems like being on a very powerful narcotic that still lets you function day to day.

But I don’t see any way I can make myself believe that stuff.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#209

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #177
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my own experience having debates and discussions in this day and age, there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point. This isn’t necessarily bad, per se, but it does mean people are offloading reasoning about a problem to letting some citation’s abstract make the point for them. There is a massive replicability crisis in academia and we know that the…

How is your example specific to secular values? I'm sure there are many doctors who are religious. > there’s this pervasive notion that you can’t assert anything without some citation or study to prove your point Yes. That's to prevent people from making false assertions. I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.

>” I can't believe you're arguing that people shouldn't need facts to back up their statements.”

I never said people shouldn’t need facts to back up their statements. I am trying to say that there are other ways to make assertions without having to cite peer reviewed studies.

And, that when people get stuck in a mindset of dismissing any idea that doesn’t have a citation to justify it, when subjects come up that aren’t easily studied empirically you end up with a blind spot. In my example the blind spot was infant pain. In my mind, any rational person would look at a crying baby and come to the conclusion that the little baby feels pain. But, if you demanded I bring a fact to back that assertion up, for the longest time I couldn’t provide you with one.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#210

Post by robbedpeter »

hota_mazi wrote: post #192
Thorrez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is overhyped ragebait masquerading as news. The reality is more nuanced - not everyone is on board with the idea that the government gets to mandate medical practice, and those people get framed as stupid or stubborn or antisocial.

There are deep and rigorously rational and ethical reasons to be against the current vaccine narratives promulgated by this administration. It's ignorant and disingenuous to dismiss the arguments as equivalent to the "vaccines are made of mercury, cause autism, the lord is my vaccine,etc" single digit iq cretins.

It got politicized because apparently both parties decided it was OK to fuck with America's pandemic response, because it justifies expansion of power and control. Never let a crisis go to waste.

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