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The Science of the Benefits of Religion

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Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#71

Post by dqv »

ecpottinger wrote: post #21

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution wor…

> too often people are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put any efforts in.

Sure but nonbelievers experience the same thing with believers. I was asking a Christian about his interpretation of the two creation stories in Genesis. He didn't even know there were two. Most Christians don't.

And they always shut down when I want to discuss in detail the possibility of mistranslation changing their understanding of God. They seem to not understand that it's possible to lose meaning or change meaning when translating from one language to another. Even if you try hard not to.

I am totally respectful in these interactions. I'm not ambushing them with questions... I just genuinely want to learn something from someone who apparently should have deep and intimate knowledge of Christianity... and it's always disappointing.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#72

Post by mionhe »

smackeyacky wrote: post #59
lisper wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no effort we can put in. Well, that's not quite true. I'm an atheist, and I run a weekly Bible study (which has lately morphed into more of a general theological/philosophical study and discussion group) [1]. Religious traditions are worth studying even if you don't believe in them, if for no other reason, than as a way of better understanding the thought processes of people who do believe in them. [1] htt…

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?

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#73

Post by lalaland1125 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #64
smackeyacky wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% no. Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. Religious faith is, by definition, the surrendering of any and every impulse to question the faith to a higher earthly authority. Those earthly authorities are notoriously unreliable (c.f. history of the Jehovah's Witness "end of the world" scenarios). I know this is hard for religious peop…

> 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.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#75

Post by thaumasiotes »

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.

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.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#76

Post by dqv »

lisper wrote: post #57
smackeyacky wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% no. Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. Religious faith is, by definition, the surrendering of any and every impulse to question the faith to a higher earthly authority. Those earthly authorities are notoriously unreliable (c.f. history of the Jehovah's Witness "end of the world" scenarios). I know this is hard for religious peop…

> There is no effort we can put in. Well, that's not quite true. I'm an atheist, and I run a weekly Bible study (which has lately morphed into more of a general theological/philosophical study and discussion group) [1]. Religious traditions are worth studying even if you don't believe in them, if for no other reason, than as a way of better understanding the thought processes of people who do believe in them. [1] htt…

Is this going to eventually be meeting in person or will it be online from here on out?

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#77

Post by xabotage »

ecpottinger wrote: post #21

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution wor…

If the people who believed in evolution more out of faith than true understanding actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on the subject, they would come to find that evolution is real. And if Jehovah's Witnesses actually did the legwork to remove their biases and objectively study/experiment on their religion, most of them would run as far away as they could.

Some things just have to be taken on faith because life is too short to get a PhD in every subject, but I sure hope the world continues to move towards evidence-based rather than magic-based foundations of default belief.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#78

Post by lalaland1125 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #75
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.

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?

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#79

Post by woodpanel »

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…

> Religion has been a major source of soothing and a major source of suffering for all of humanity's past

The idea that religion is such a big source of suffering throughout all of our history is one I stopped believing once I took a closer look at the actual nature of war, particulary how a country's elite is moving closer to war and how "religious" said elite actually is.

IMO the amounts of blood shed over millenia would have been the same under atheists.

And because today most of us are Atheists/Agnostics, and because most of these millenias' rulers weren't, it is our "agnostic hindsight" which follies us into believing that this suffering was all just caused by religion.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#80

Post by hota_mazi »

ecpottinger wrote: post #21

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution wor…

Just because you met a few people with a fragile grasp of complex scientific topics doesn't mean the science is wrong.

Evolution is a fact. It has been demonstrated over and over again, is observable, and has predicative powers.

Religion has none of these things, and your particular religion is well known for being absolutely traumatic for people who follow it and even more so for people who leave it.

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