[HN Gopher] The Science of the Benefits of Religion
___________________________________________________________________
The Science of the Benefits of Religion
Author : rathertrue
Score : 59 points
Date : 2021-09-25 00:49 UTC (22 hours ago)
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| tus89 wrote:
| Mass rape of little kids?
| robg wrote:
| Consider the calming power of slow rhythmic breathing; meditative
| practices are found in every religion.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The title of the book is "How God Works" yet the the author
| explicitly states he is ignoring theology and instead is focusing
| on spiritual practices can have beneficial effects on a
| practitioner's mental state (happiness, kindness, acceptance,
| etc). The subtitle of the book, which is the title of the HN
| submission, seems to better convey the research presented in the
| book.
| xorfish wrote:
| Religion isn't that easily defined.
|
| Are Confucianism and American Civil Religion religions?
|
| God, Gods or even believe in the supernatural are not necessary
| parts of religion, some religions place much higher importance
| on rituals than on their believe systems.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Religion clearly has mental health benefits, especially in terms
| of robustness.
|
| The interesting question is whether it is a transcendent 'supra-
| rational' belief system, e.g. a cheat code at life, because even
| assuming nothing matters, it makes sense to believe if you want
| to 'be statistically more joyful' (of course, some don't want joy
| in their lives, so maybe it wouldn't make sense for them?).
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I believe humans need rituals and for that religion mainly fills
| that gap for now (weddings etc..)
|
| I also believe we need stories and religion used to fill that gap
| well, but with the advent of the modern era religion is losing
| out
|
| personally as a mainly athiest and with a slight agnostic streak
| (btw I'm from the uk with a CoE upbringing) , I feel that most/
| if not all religious people - from my personal experience - pick
| and mixes their relgion which kinda feels that it makes the whole
| thing hypocritical
|
| I also see that almost all people really really really want to do
| the right thing and 'generally' believe in the golden rule of do
| not do upon to others, things/ stuff, that you do want to be done
| to yourself.
|
| My grandma was deeply relgious and it it brought her extreme
| happiness towards the end of her life, so I understand it's
| significance, but still, she picked and mixed her believe to make
| her happy
| estaseuropano wrote:
| 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 major source
| of suffering for all of humanity's past. I think we need to
| overcome religion and move to a world where each can have their
| own spirituality - but as long as people follow religions that
| preach their own unique truthfulness (believe the pope, the
| Bible, the Quran, the priests, the sutras, ...) we will never get
| there.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| This is the classical liberal take: ultra-individualism.
| Everyone can have their own god(s) (even metaphorically) and
| things will just work out if everyone got along.
|
| Historical trends seem to be going in the exact opposite
| direction. Individualism is sustainable to a certain point, but
| not when it becomes the default position of a society. All of
| the countries, belief systems, and ideologies that are
| succeeding today are running away from individualism. Whether
| that's good or bad, is up to you.
| rayiner wrote:
| I think it's time to recognize that many of the things you list
| as bad have a purpose as well and benefits. Remember, organized
| religion developed in harsh societies were people were always
| struggling to survive. If you think about a village in
| Bangladesh, where there is no government with unlimited
| resources to come save you, imposition of strict rules,
| suppression of individual preferences, etc., makes sense.
|
| What's soured me on secular humanism is how the liberal
| revolution hasn't made a big chunk of the population better
| off: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-
| bir.... I don't think that's just economic, I think it's social
| as well.
|
| > According to the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam,
| 60 years ago just 20 percent of children born to parents with a
| high-school education or less lived in a single-parent
| household; now that figure is nearly 70 percent. Among college-
| educated households, by contrast, the single-parent rate
| remains less than 10 percent. Since the 1970s, the divorce rate
| has declined significantly among college-educated couples,
| while it has risen dramatically among couples with only a high-
| school education--even as marriage itself has become less
| common.
|
| If you think about the marshmallow test of impulse control, a
| lot of us are those kids at the far right of the bell curve who
| could wait forever for future rewards. But what about everyone
| else? What if a lot of people need the threat of exclusion or
| intolerance to, for example, to not walk away from their
| parental obligations.
|
| My in laws live in rural Oregon, and what's striking to me is
| how dysfunctional their communities are. People might
| putatively religious, but liberalism has won insofar as
| organized religion has no power to police public morals. And
| what's been the result? Not a social libertarian utopia, but
| dysfunction. My mother in law has teenagers just flocking to
| her house because it's an island of stability in a world of
| mom's boyfriends coming and going, divorces over trifles, etc.
|
| My dad in the other hand comes from a village in Bangladesh,
| and they don't have a fraction of the material comfort of folks
| in rural America. But what they have is Islam, and tight
| regulation of social behaviors, intact families, etc. They have
| social structures that help them make the most of what little
| they have, which is why I think they thrive when they immigrate
| to America.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| > tight regulation of social behaviors
|
| Yeah, I'll pass on societies so backwards that coming out as
| gay is a death sentence.
|
| Note that I'm not saying your father's village does this, or
| that everywhere Islamic/religious/whatever does this, etc.
| But those strict social mores often come at a heavy cost. The
| cost is also often competely unnecessary, but nobody is
| willing to change, because they don't actually understand the
| reason for the social more. They were just told it was bad as
| a child and mindlessly propagated it to their children.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| What exactly about secular humanism has caused this social
| problem? Do you have some research that indicates that
| walking away from "parental obligations" is in any way
| influenced by religious belief?
|
| I could make the equal assertion that religion turns men into
| sexual abusers of children (reference: the Catholic church).
| Are you comfortable with that?
| golemiprague wrote:
| It's interesting that you are not including in your list one of
| the most prominent contribution of religion which is morals. A
| lot of moral codes that we take as given were introduced and
| hammered into people minds by the religions. Religion is not
| mostly about "spiritually", it is about living life according
| to some code of rules which is in some religions much more
| important than spirituality per se.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > imposition of impossible standards
|
| This is one of the pluses, not the minuses. There's nobody out
| there saying you can _achieve_ the standards. But there are
| lots of people out there saying you should push yourself _in
| the direction_ of the standards.
| xabotage wrote:
| "Impossible standards," for some religions, include things
| like being happy and fulfilled in a mixed orientation
| marriage with a large number of children.
|
| Not all directions are worth pushing in, and religion is
| actually really bad at identifying the good directions.
| truetraveller wrote:
| 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/raped/maimed tens of thousands for the sake
| of Imperialism.
|
| Just today, France allowed wild bird poaching:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pvbdbh/french_pr...
| hota_mazi wrote:
| 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...").
| smohare wrote:
| I don't think spirituality has anything to do with it. It's
| about community first and foremost. We are social creatures
| after all.
|
| That is, unless we are going to conflate spirituality with
| anything even remotely related to existential ruminations.
|
| In the crowds I run in people are primarily satisfied by a good
| think.
| nprateem wrote:
| Think for yourself?
| rajin444 wrote:
| The issues you describe apply to any grouping of people. Tribes
| have their own truths. Look at how popular those "we believe
| science is real" signs are.
|
| You could remove religion and we'd still have the same issues.
| I don't think it's possible to solve them. The best solution is
| going to be a world where a long, happy life is guaranteed by
| forces outside man's control. This will likely alleviate a lot
| of the tribal issues we face as well.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| 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 works?".
|
| What is clear to me is that to these people evolution is a
| BELIEF and not something they thought of, it is as much a
| religion to them as mine is to me. Worse, I can study and
| agree or disagree with things I was taught, too often people
| are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put
| any efforts in.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| A belief does not constitute a religion, people have all
| sorts of irrational beliefs, but that doesn't make them
| religion.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| That seems like a trivial "gotcha" question. I'm not sure
| exactly what you mean by "which" theory.
|
| Do you mean Lamarckism vs Darwinism? The correct answer is
| that Lamarckism is wrong.
|
| Do you mean gradual change vs punctuated equilibrium or
| similar? That's not a "which theory of evolution", which is
| why people are confused by your question.
|
| It really comes across as a classic "confuse people with
| trick questions and then try to inject religion into them
| while they're distracted" tactic. I'm glad I'm done with
| that sort of thing.
|
| Also, belief in evolution is great, faith in evolution is
| not. Belief != faith, and religious people need to stop
| conflating them. If someone came up with an alternate
| theory for how we got here that explained all of the
| evidence better, I'd have no trouble believing it, because
| I don't have "faith in evolution" or any such thing.
| rayiner wrote:
| You see this with COVID too. Many people are only
| accidentally on the right side with respect to "the
| science."
| BrightGlow wrote:
| I share your frustration, the people who you were talking
| to likely also had a misconception of what evolution and
| scientific theories in general are, or were stating it
| poorly. It's not accurate to describe it as a "belief" it's
| more like "best current guess that we have but we'll change
| our mind if a new guess comes up that is better able to
| explain things".
| [deleted]
| chrischen wrote:
| People believe in quantum mechanics not because they
| personally understand it, but because they believe/trust in
| the experts. How do the experts demonstrate their
| authority? ...by making electronics that do magic.
|
| The difference between a belief of religious person and say
| a scientist is that the former asks you to trust them on
| blind faith while the latter asks you to trust them by
| proving they have more control over something than you do.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| 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.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| 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...
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Is this an American thing? I remember being taught the
| basics of evolution in year 8 or 9 science class in a way
| that was impossible to misunderstand ("children resemble
| their parents" + "some parents more likely to survive" =>
| small changes in distribution of traits among each child
| generation => specialisation to local environment over
| many generations).
|
| I do have a Christian friend who believes that it was God
| who set the wheels of evolution in motion, but there
| seems to be little misunderstanding where I am
| (Melbourne, AU) about what Darwinism is or denial that
| it's a strong force at play.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Yes, evolution is taught in schools. But that doesn't
| mean the average person can explain how evolutionary
| theory works beyond a few sentences, in the same way that
| the average person cannot tell you more than 2 or 3 of
| the amendments to the Constitution.
| dqv wrote:
| > 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.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| The main difference is that for evolution most people can
| point to (or try to point to) a legitimate source of
| authority for why they believe evolution is true.
|
| Whereas for religion, there is nothing to point to other
| than blind faith.
| gruez wrote:
| So blindly believing in something is fine unless you're
| right in the end?
| smohare wrote:
| There's a big difference between trust in a process that
| has so consistently yielded results vs something like
| faith or political adherence. It's about the foundations
| upon which those results lie more so than the belief
| themselves, and also an amenability to update beliefs. If
| humanity really gets something wrong about how the
| natural world operates it will usually be revealed. The
| trust ergo is largely warranted, even if the human
| execution of said process is flawed.
|
| The canard that every individual has to maximally
| recapitulate the entirety of hundreds of years of human
| discovery is just absurd. Trust exists at all levels of
| human intellectual discourse.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Who decides legitimacy and why is a university a more
| legitimate source of knowledge than a church?
| raspasov wrote:
| Perhaps because at a university you can learn skills that
| you can utilize to create things and outcomes with
| relatively more predictable results.
|
| If you need a complex surgery, would you like to go to a
| doctor or a priest?
| smackeyacky wrote:
| 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 people to understand, but
| if you have no belief in religious deities you can't just
| magic it up out of nowhere. There are people like me who
| simply can't believe in gods. We just aren't wired that
| way. I've had well meaning religious folk explain to me
| that I have apparently "hardened my heart" against (their)
| god and I need to stop doing that and he will sort it out
| but it simply isn't true
|
| This certainly hasn't stopped people like me being involved
| in religions but it makes it a bit...difficult. This
| attitude that somehow the atheists in the community "do not
| want to put any efforts in" is wrong, plain and simple.
| There is no effort we can put in.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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't hear much about the
| Xhosa cattle-killing cult anymore.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| What correct predictions and functional devices do
| religions create?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| zdragnar wrote:
| 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.
| lisper wrote:
| > 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] https://www.meetup.com/Bible-Study-for-Skeptics-
| Agnostics-an...
| dqv wrote:
| Is this going to eventually be meeting in person or will
| it be online from here on out?
| smackeyacky wrote:
| 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.
| lisper wrote:
| 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. It actually feels pretty good, not unlike
| taking certain psychoactive drugs.
| mionhe wrote:
| 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?
| xabotage wrote:
| 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.
| hota_mazi wrote:
| 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.
| raspasov wrote:
| I ask a simple question: why do blood transfusions work?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| 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
| accepting the differing position because such events induce
| fear and shut down mental faculties, effectively putting a
| person in a fight or flight mode.
|
| Furthermore, it prevents people from maturing and accepting
| integral parts of the human condition, such as the permanence
| of death, it provides a false sense of security that renders
| people incapacitated from taking meaningful action (God will
| find a way if God wills it), and finally gives a false sense
| importance and grandiose to puny humans who live in utter
| ignorance of their own insignificance in the medium (NB
| humanity scale) and grand scheme of things.
|
| To reach the solution that you point to, society needs to
| accept that free-will is an illusion, and that is inherently
| incompatible with Abrahamic religions.
| rayiner wrote:
| > 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
|
| Yeah, other groups have this as well. I once had the
| temerity to observe that Bush did a lot to quell anti-
| Islamic sentiment by appealing to other people of faith in
| post-9/11 speeches. I recounted my own experience as a
| brown guy with a Muslim name living in the south in
| 2002-2003.
|
| An acquaintance, a young white atheist lady, told me that I
| needed to "educate myself" about the "damage" that
| "Islamaphobia does to brown people in America."
|
| I didn't even engage further because it was clear I was
| dealing with someone's quasi-religious belief.
|
| Everyone has belief systems and everyone's belief systems
| necessarily include things taken as axiomatic.
| snuser wrote:
| The real problem with religion is that there's more than one
| [deleted]
| varjag wrote:
| That's what the GP says. It's too few of them for too many
| people.
| BrightGlow wrote:
| >resistance to or denial of reality
|
| It's not just this but it's also the lying and attempting to
| pass off various myths, mysticism, dogma, theology and fairy
| tales as being true with no evidence, and the promotion of
| "faith" and "belief" as justifications for doing so. And before
| someone says it, yes, there are other groups besides religious
| groups that fall into these same self-reinforcing traps. For
| example a significant number of people still believe in witches
| and ghosts: https://news.gallup.com/poll/2380/One-Third-
| Americans-Believ...
| hota_mazi wrote:
| Right on.
|
| I challenge anyone who disagrees to come up with a benefit that
| religion offers that cannot be offered by a secular
| organization.
| tus89 wrote:
| > There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith,
| spirituality or rite can have benefits.
|
| Doubt among who? Religious congregations?
| woodpanel wrote:
| > _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.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _(exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of
| reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one
| 's own preferences and wants)._
|
| This is true of group affiliation in general, and may be innate
| to human beings:
|
| > _"The human mind," Klein observes, "is exquisitely tuned to
| group affiliation and group difference"--so much so that, as
| soon as an affiliation has formed, the people who have
| affiliated with one another proceed to define themselves
| against an out-group. To make matters worse, Klein goes on,
| human groups compete less for resources than they do for social
| esteem, and esteem is zero-sum: more for you means less for me.
| We would rather "win" against the out-group and be worse off
| than be better off and lose._
|
| * https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/ezra-kleins-
| why...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized
|
| > _but as long as people follow religions that preach their own
| unique truthfulness (believe the pope, the Bible, the Quran,
| the priests, the sutras, ...) we will never get there._
|
| Except that some world views do hew closer to reality than
| others:
|
| > _Occasionalism is a philosophical doctrine about causation
| which says that created substances cannot be efficient causes
| of events. Instead, all events are taken to be caused directly
| by God._
|
| [...]
|
| > _The doctrine first reached prominence in the Islamic
| theological schools of Iraq, especially in Basra. The ninth
| century theologian Abu al-Hasan al-Ash 'ari argued that there
| is no Secondary Causation in the created order. The world is
| sustained and governed through direct intervention of a divine
| primary causation. As such the world is in a constant state of
| recreation by God._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occasionalism
|
| > _Secondary causation[1][2][3] is the philosophical
| proposition that all material and corporeal objects, having
| been created by God with their own intrinsic potentialities,
| are subsequently empowered to evolve independently in
| accordance with natural law.[citation needed]_ [...] _That the
| physical universe is consequentially well-ordered, consistent,
| and knowable subject to human observation and reason, was a
| primary theme of Scholasticism and further molded into the
| philosophy of the western tradition by Augustine of Hippo and
| later by Thomas Aquinas._
|
| > _Secondary causation has been suggested as a necessary
| precursor for scientific inquiry into an established order of
| natural laws which are not entirely predicated on the
| changeable whims of a supernatural being.[4] Nor does this
| create a conflict between science and religion for, given a
| creator deity, it is not inconsistent with the paradigm of a
| clockwork universe._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_causation
| jlpom wrote:
| Basing anything on false or inexact beliefs won't leads to
| lasting desirable outcomes IMO*. Some argues to read religious
| texts as metaphors but I think it's just a way to circumvent the
| reality. *except for charities but benevolence is obviously not
| (only) tied to religions
| Animats wrote:
| _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 several times a day work like
| that. It's really hard to break people free of that brainwashing
| if they grew up with it. It's not the theology, it's the
| repetition. Both haredi Judaism and Islam use that approach to
| induce some degree of fanaticism. The Catholic Church, in
| previous centuries, was into that sort of thing, but has
| lightened up a bit.
| cletus wrote:
| This is something I've thought about a lot, and I say this as a
| diehard atheist. Historically (and even now), religion has served
| two useful purposes:
|
| 1. As a provider of community. There are of course other ways to
| socialize with wider groups. Sports clubs, going to the pub,
| classes, that sort of thing. But it's a lot more interest-driven
| and haphazard.
|
| 2. As a provider of and enforcer for a moral code.
|
| Here are some things I believe to be true:
|
| 1. A lot of people like being told what to do. This isn't
| necessarily unhealthy or bad. I also believe in decision fatigue.
| We defer decisions to others all the time;
|
| 2. Fear is an easier tool for keeping people in line than any
| alternative. There's a carrot and a stick with religion. The
| carrot is paradise in the afterlife (depending on your flavour of
| religion). The stick is partly eternal damnation but much more
| important than that, it's the fear of losing that community.
|
| 3. The majority of people only act in an ethical manner out of
| fear of the consequences.
|
| Now looking at the political situation in the US, we have the
| rise of Christian conservatives. Just the name "conservative" is
| worth examining. It is of course derived from "conserve". The
| intent is obvious: it is to resist change, to maintain traditions
| and generally to keep doing things the way we "always" have. It
| almost seems like to be a conservative requires you to believe
| things were better in the past and changes are just making
| everything worse. At least that's how it seems.
|
| It shouldn't really surprise anyone that religion and
| conservatism tend to be correlated but does one cause the other?
| I honestly don't know.
|
| But what I find fascinating is that the desire to be told what to
| do combined with the mistrust in government fomented by religions
| (as in, the person is to put their faith in [deity] and the
| church rather than government) means these people are so easily
| manipulated.
|
| Take the Covid vaccine (and masks). Every current and former
| president (including Trump), every governor, every Senator and
| all but a handful of Congressmen are vaccinated. I'm also sure
| every Fox News host is too. Yet these same vaccinated people are
| quite happy and willing to pander to whack job conspiracies as a
| means of control.
|
| I find it ironic that the people who I'm sure genuinely think
| they're standing up for "freedom" by fighting against mask
| mandates are in fact least free because they're so easily
| manipulated.
|
| So I guess my point is, I'm not sure these problems go away if,
| say, religion goes away.
| jhgb wrote:
| What benefits could possibly outweigh abuse of children by
| forcing them to not commit imaginary thoughtcrimes?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Those are social norms. We inflict such things on them in
| secular society as well.
|
| At the risk of citing an undesirable author, Kaczynski had a
| real good schpiel about it in Industrial society.
| jhgb wrote:
| What exactly are the "social norms" you're talking about?
| Fezzik wrote:
| So to be clear, if you ignore all the awful stuff that (almost
| all) religions have promoted for centuries: racism, sexism,
| genocide, slavery, child abuse, extreme hostility to science and
| free thought... meditation and some religious swaying may make
| you a little nicer. Sure. Okay. Moving on.
|
| Edit, to add: and hostility and persecution of any and all non-
| heterosexual relationships.
| nprateem wrote:
| "I'll admit that we're unlikely to learn much about the nature of
| the universe or the biology of disease from religion" just
| moments after admitting to hubris. I thought some physicists had
| noticed parallels between physics and Buddhist thought
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| 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 kids.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| I would warmly recommend the last chapter(s) of 'The Selfish
| Gene'. Now an aged book but still largely up to date. In those
| last chapter(s) Dawkins invented the word meme as analogy to
| gene: a meme is a self-replicating piece of information. Like
| genes that are successful (in the environment they are in)
| propagate so do memes that are successful. Religion is the
| ultimate meme complex, it is a set of ideas that lives 'on top
| of' us and as long as it doesn't kill its host it may spread
| further.
|
| In that sense, while I would guess at minimum religion can't
| kill its host, it does from this logic not necessarily benefit
| the host. An aggressively missionising or crusading religion
| might outcompete one that is peaceful and better for its host.
| And even a peaceful variant (see original Buddhism or zen
| Buddhism) might evolve into an aggressive, exclusive and
| murderous ones (see Buddhist monks in Myanmar firing up and
| demanding the genocide of the mostly muslim rohingya ethnic
| group).
| asimpletune wrote:
| I feel like I've started writing something like this on HN so
| many times, only to think "literally, no one cares" and delete
| it. But...this is all there is to it:
|
| Life is the process of making decisions. We should make as many
| decisions as we can based on things that we know. However, we
| don't get to know everything, so with what decisions remain (most
| of them), we have to decide based on what we belief.
|
| I think that if people could just come to see religion, as a
| concept, in these terms I described above, I.e. "An institution
| of belief", then many of the concerns people share in the
| comments wouldn't be so warranted.
|
| To me it's a shame that religion, as a concept, is monopolized by
| Existing Religions(tm), in the mind's eye, even by educated
| people. I guess it's really no different than being disappointed
| that members of Existing Religions(tm) see science as some kind
| of competitor to religion, as if there were different truths and
| the truth somehow is swayed by more or less people believing it.
|
| In fact, I would go so far as to say it's impossible to be an
| atheist, because we all have to make decisions and therefore all
| have to believe things. Now, you may not be a christian or
| muslim, but we are all religious about something because we
| depend on belief. You may think I'm taking this way too far, but
| try thinking this way a little bit and you'll suddenly become
| much more aware of what you think because you know and what you
| think because it's part of your own personal religion. A lot of
| the barriers have to do resisting better definitions for the
| word, or having instinctual repulsion towards it.
|
| Many of the well known religious have shaped people's concepts of
| religion so much, that they don't understand religion doesn't
| have to work that way, even established ones. Judaism, for
| example "works" very different than christianity, and many
| Christians don't seem to understand the concept of being an
| atheist _and_ jewish. To them, religion is like a franchise, and
| you either elect to be in it and perpetuate it, or you don 't.
| Shinto is very different too. Anyway, back to Religion as a
| concept.
|
| I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I am saying it's important,
| like, for our survival, to acknowledge its existence, even its
| necessity, and at the same time, to know when to leave it behind
| in place for a better model for the truth.
|
| I've left out art, which is like the institution of "taste",
| because that's a topic for another date. Just calling that out
| here so as to not leave the impression that I think there's only
| Science and Religion. In fact, Science isn't the only institution
| of knowledge for that matter.
|
| Any way, my point is more conceptual: things we know, choices we
| have to make, so things we believe, and we just need to be aware
| when something is in one category vs. another. I really don't
| think, for example, that the Christian God's feelings would be
| hurt if the church decides to say the earth is not 5,000 years
| old, and it would really liberate a lot of mental contortion.
|
| Similarly, I don't think that an economist can measure and
| explain important concepts in numbers that it's a complete
| picture of what we want as a species out of living on this
| planet. There's a certain element of belief that's fundamental
| there. Something that I think is right, but I can't prove. Things
| like compassion, kindness, etc... we have all sorts of examples
| of pseudoscientific explanations, post facto, of why do things
| like take care of the old, sick, etc.. but I really think most of
| that stuff isn't very compelling in a scientific sense. We do it
| because we believe it's right, like it's a part of our religion
| (as I described it above).
|
| Please don't mistake what I've said as some kind of wishy washy
| "what is truth?" kind of thing, or not believing in objective
| truth. Quite the opposite. I think, at the end of the day, there
| is objective truth, but at the same time I don't think it's
| knowable, at least not within the time frame that we need it.
|
| Embracing, and separating, religion as a concept, in the way I
| described above (an institution of belief, which is something you
| think is true without being to prove), is very important for the
| truth. Because it's important to state sort of what is backing
| that decision, even if it's only to yourself. However, people
| have such an aversion to the "R" word that they try to be
| quantitative about everything, which at times can be a very
| inappropriate tool for some jobs.
|
| Also, the best part of beliefs, which now includes religion, is
| you get to change them. This is OK. Any way, I'll end this
| already super long comment with this:
|
| A Christian once asked me why I can talk this way, yet don't
| believe in their God (remember, franchise). I replied "If God
| existed, why would I ignore the world they created, preferring to
| believe what's in a book?". And that interaction summarizes how I
| think we can embrace the two institutions without being so
| dogmatic about either one.
| benrmatthews wrote:
| I was fortunate enough to be involved with a modern secular
| community that aimed to become a non-religious church: Sunday
| Assembly.
|
| Take the best bits of religion, including purpose, structure,
| community, and tradition, but make it available for non-
| believers.
|
| We even got so far as making the interview stage of Y Combinator:
|
| https://benrmatthews.com/meeting-heroes-y-combinator-intervi...
|
| During the interview, Sanderson (Sunday Assembly co-founder) had
| a brilliant back and forth with Sam Altman, but ultimately the
| idea didn't stand.
|
| I still think the ethos of Sunday Assembly has merit.
| technothrasher wrote:
| I've attended a few Unitarian Universalist services, and
| they're very open to "non-believers", as well as pretty much
| any type of personal belief. They seemed to be much more
| interested in community and rite than to forcing dogma. Still,
| while they were certainly a friendly and pleasant group of
| people, I found it all a bit too fuzzy with objective truth to
| be my cup if tea. I don't have anything like Sunday Assembly in
| my area, and occasionally thought of trying to start some kind
| of weekly humanist gathering. Rather than the UU message that
| "any belief is welcome", I wanted to convey more of a "everyone
| is welcome, personal religious beliefs aside" message. Where we
| could just work on humanistic goals together.
| antognini wrote:
| There's an old joke: Catholics believe in transubstantiation.
| Baptists believe in the Rapture. Unitarian Universalists
| believe in donuts on Sunday.
| zafka wrote:
| This is very interesting to me. I am just "Saturday browsing"
| but plan to try to read what I can about your community. My
| first impression is surprise that the group was trying to raise
| venture capital :) I will find out more as I read i guess.
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| 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 statements I've ever encountered.
|
| 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.
| Religion has done that for thousands of years. Sometimes it does
| that quite well and sometimes it does it very badly, but at least
| it tries.
|
| Yes sometimes religion is full of shit, but secular philosophy
| and ideology is sometimes full of shit as well. One can find
| examples of both religion and secular philosophy promoting
| irrational thinking. I think things like antivax and Qanon can be
| blamed as much on postmodernism as religion, and I don't see any
| evidence that people who abandon religion automatically become
| more rational. Many just glom onto other forms of superstition or
| secular but totally insane ideas.
|
| Go read some academic philosophy. The older stuff is deeply
| abstract, looking down at the world from orbit and drawing a lot
| of deep but distant conclusions. The newer stuff is completely
| impenetrable to someone who has not studied the subject in depth.
| Very little of it is relevant to someone working a regular job
| and trying to raise kids.
|
| Speaking of kids... much secular philosophy barely mentions
| children at all, or seems indifferent to them. The fact that the
| central generative process of all organic life gets barely a
| mention in secular philosophy is to me a profound indicator of
| something very deeply wrong. It's like physics avoiding the
| subjects of electromagnetism or gravity and trying to make sense
| of everything else.
|
| The marketplace of ideas is like any other marketplace. If your
| store does not stock what people need they will shop elsewhere.
| If you don't like where they are shopping, it's your problem for
| not producing the right products. The customer is always right.
| mu_sub_naught wrote:
| Sir Isaac Newton was a devout Christian theologist. Perhaps his
| adopted philosophy offers discipline features that aided in the
| production of fruit prized by the scientific community. Islamic
| discipline gave us fundamental mathematical systems. Nikola Tesla
| thought of his brain as an antennae for the universal core ("I
| don't know its secrets, but I know it exists"). George Carlin has
| a bit about how the aliens don't talk to us because of our own
| self-centered hubris.
|
| Religious thought is there for a reason. Science searches for
| explanations for observable phenomena. If you call yourself an
| "atheist" and announce your belief in "nothing", then you will
| shut yourself off from fellow citizens (complete with their own
| unique knowledge) who are inheriting rehearsed traditions. I've
| been taught to never tell someone they're wrong. Why would you
| want to become someone's ideological enemy? Perhaps there are
| fundamental, ancient gears turning if you embrace religion. When
| describing my complicated views about religion to my own
| "simple", hard working father - I was told "Well, I just go to
| church because everybody is there." You must speak their language
| so that they sing for you. Their willingness to profess their
| view of the world is a beautiful, valuable thing.
|
| An honorably discharged American marine with a missing leg told
| me that Islam preaches punishment, while Christianity preaches
| forgiveness. Both of these concepts are necessary to steer a
| population, and both can be issued excessively. Forgiveness can
| mean more intimate personal data released to the priest in a
| confessional booth, and punishment can mean less corrosive civil
| behavior overall.
|
| I've had hail strike my car seconds after sending the sarcastic
| chat message "the algorithms replaced the priesthood". I've had
| lightning strike dozens of feet away from where I slept in the
| middle of the night in a parking lot mere hours after watching
| the clip [0] of Christof demanding his team "DO IT!".
|
| If you want proof, you've incentivized your industry to make my
| car constantly connected to an LTE tower by default. In a Faraday
| cage protected HDD somewhere, I'm sure my file is residing along
| with billions of others, courtesy of Pegasus (et al). Unless you
| are going to say "lightning struck the same place 4 times in a
| row." [1]
|
| "The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will
| make more progress in one decade than in all the previous
| centuries of its existence."
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/wcMCS_6oung?t=248
|
| [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/212586-google-data-
| cen...
| srcreigh wrote:
| This excerpt is from a widely prayed Orthodox Christian akathist
| hymn. [0] Akathist means not sitting as it is usually prayed
| standing up. It was composed during the persecution in communist
| Russia by Metropolitan Tryphon [1]
|
| "The breath of Thine Holy Spirit inspires artists, poets and
| scientists. The power of Thy supreme knowledge makes them
| prophets and interpreters of Thy laws, who reveal the depths of
| Thy creative wisdom. Their works speak unwittingly of Thee. How
| great art Thou in Thy creation! How great art Thou in man!
|
| Glory to Thee, showing Thine unsurpassable power in the laws of
| the universe
|
| Glory to Thee, for all nature is filled with Thy laws
|
| Glory to Thee for what Thou hast revealed to us in Thy mercy
|
| Glory to Thee for what Thou hast hidden from us in Thy wisdom
|
| Glory to Thee for the inventiveness of the human mind
|
| Glory to Thee for the dignity of man's labour
|
| Glory to Thee for the tongues of fire that bring inspiration
|
| Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age"
|
| [0] http://www.saintjonah.org/services/thanksgiving.htm
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryphon_(Turkestanov)
| rpmisms wrote:
| I love this Akathist, and it should be noted that Metropolitan
| Tryphon wrote it in a literal gulag. The ability to see and be
| thankful for the beauty of our world, even under those
| conditions, is a testament to the power of religion, and some
| would say God.
| svat wrote:
| This is an interesting excerpt from what seems to be an
| interesting book about the author's psychology research, but
| there are almost two distinct meanings of the word "religion" in
| interplay here (and the article is more about one than the
| other):
|
| * "Religion A" is primarily about belief(s); claims and
| conjectures about the universe (and/or about a "God") that can be
| true or false; "faith"; theory; ontology (what exists); theology;
| certain books/scripture as sources of belief and as authority,
| etc.
|
| * "Religion B" is primarily about practice(s); communities; "a
| series of rituals, customs, and sentiments"; "spiritual
| technologies--tools and processes meant to sooth, move, convince,
| or otherwise tweak the mind"; meditation; saying thanks;
| "creating connection"; "ways to help people deal with issues
| surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and
| loss" (all quotes from the article).
|
| Though there isn't a clear separation between the two and all
| religions (however defined) include both aspects (and each
| reinforcing the other), roughly speaking, the monotheistic
| religions (the Big 3) tend to emphasize the former meaning more
| than other (e.g. "Eastern") religions/traditions (where rituals,
| traditions and attitudes are more important than "belief" per
| se). So the popular definition/perception of "religion" also
| tends to be influenced by one's culture.
|
| I remember a nice article about how Japan was simultaneously
| highly religious and highly atheist:
| https://blog.gaijinpot.com/japan-religious-atheist-country/ To
| repeat from comments there:
|
| > _it is not so much that "God" or "atheist" is a foreign idea in
| Japanese culture, but about how central the idea /category is in
| the conceptual map. For example, "animist" is a bonafide English
| word, but if you asked (say) Americans whether they were animist,
| both atheists and Christians may answer "no", and this data may
| be confusing to draw conclusions from -- because "animist or not"
| is not central to Western conception of religion._
|
| > _After all, 'natural forces' and 'certain animals' certainly
| exist, and the question in the Japanese context is not of one's
| belief in their existence, but about one's attitude and actions
| towards them (whether to pay respect, say)._
|
| > _In cultures with monotheistic religions, "belief" and "faith"
| are considered central to those aspects of human activity known
| as "religion" [...] it may be considered hypocritical for someone
| to go to Church every Sunday if they don't believe in God (or to
| not go if they do). In Japan, it may be considered arrogant and
| self-centred for someone to abandon the traditions and rituals of
| one's family /ancestors just for the flimsy reason of not
| "believing" in them._
|
| In the long run, researches like this, along with exposure to the
| "other" religions (Buddhism / Hinduism / the religions of Native
| Americans, of Japan, etc: if they survive the warping forces of
| modernity which tend to change them too), will hopefully shift
| the "centroid" of meaning of the word "religion" at least a bit
| closer to meaning B rather than A.
| fredgrott wrote:
| be careful mixing religion and philosophy up they are not the
| same.
|
| One has factual benefits the other we still have no clue about
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