How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God

[Revoltingest]

Actually, the article goes out of its way in order to mention what it calls "paranormal beliefs", explicitly mentioning ESP and ghosts among them, so it seems to me to be attempting to address beliefs in a more general sense, as opposed to theism-centered ones.

I found the article interesting and enlightening, albeit a bit too short for my tastes. It hints that refuge in belief (I would rather not call such a behavior "religion", which is a word that I value) is a primal, instinctive trait that most people will overcome if given sufficient incentive. Sounds just about right.

I'd say that most overcome it to an extent, but never entirely, even with compelling incentives.

 

[Valjean]

What I find interesting is that some critical thinkers don't take into account that what believers call the supernatural is just a part of life. The only think the critical thinker is doing to a believer is belittling the event while the believer us seeing the positive in it. How they attribute it and the terms to who and what shouldn't change the fact that their view of the world gives more meaning than they would think of someone who doesn't see the blessings of god.

Good points.
The believer is not interested in truth, but in comfort. They seek meaning and significance, not metaphysical reality.

I don't see critical thinkers as belittling anything, just ignoring the irrelevant.

It's the supernaturalists who feel threatened. It's they who take the offensive against the rational. They feel they're being attacked, but they're not. They're just being ignored.
The facts aren't designed to undermine faith and folklore. They just do.

It's an unnecessary attribution of events to god to make life less mundane and more with purpose as opposed to just making the cause god and pushing away all other non-supernatural causes.

Yes. A fantasy life is rich and meaningful. It's comfortable and rewarding.
The idea of insignificance and purposeless is very uncomfortable for many.

Critical thinkers lose their faith because after awhile, some of us find we do not need a cause. Life happens when it happens. If we want to attribute things we can't experience to a cause, that's on us. At least it's something we want to do not something we need to do. We can live without god/a cause. Maybe critical thinkers are spliting life between natural and supernatural so much as to thinking if there is a natural cause, it no longer has any supernatural application or meaning to it. In other words, if there is a natural cause, we know everything about it. We don't.

People have a deep seated antipathy to insignificance. Insignificance undermines ego-integrity and must be opposed by any means necessary.

 

[omega2xx]

A careful reading of the article challenges your statements.

Be specific.

 

[pearl]

How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God

Yet a critical, analytical thinking may also strengthen faith.

 

[Valjean]

Yet a critical, analytical thinking may also strengthen faith.

It may strengthen knowledge, but faith, by definition, is belief without evidential or reasonable foundation.

 

[Skwim]

Preferable to some applications -- engineering, literary analysis, science, construction, meteorology, philosophy, nuclear physics -- all disciplines useful today but useless during the period our brains were evolving.
It's the intuitive, magical, jumping-to-conclusions mode of thinking that got us through the Pleistocene. This mode is why we even exist as a species.

Ah yes, how time changes our needs. Because intuitive thinking no longer meets our needs analytical thinking has come to rein as the preferred approach to issues.

System 1 is a survival modality, and deeply ingrained in our psyche. System 2 is an artificial construct, and the reason we're no longer living in caves.

I wouldn't say "artificial," but simply more focused and methodological. One having come to the forefront while the other has receded. However, System 1 is still embraced because it requires less effort, is malleable, and comes with preset "rules of thumb"---credible or not.

.

 

[Nous]

I ask that everyone reading here would answer the following questions, which constitute Shane Frederick's Cognitive Reflection Test, which is the basis of the Shenhav et al. study. You must give your answers to all three questions within 90 seconds:

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long does it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?​

Don't look at the answers before answering.

My questions about the above set of questions are these:

(a) If a person were to give an incorrect answer on 1 but correct answers on 2 and 3, does that result provide measure a difference in general method of thinking than the general method of thinking of a person who answered all three questions correctly?

(b) If a person were to incorrectly answer questions 2 and 3 but correctly answer 1, does that result measure a difference in the person's general method of thinking than that of a person who answered 1 correctly but 2 and 3 incorrectly?

(c) Are there any other questions that can be added to or substituted for the above three for which the answers measure a difference in persons' general method of thinking? If so, what questions are these?

(d) If a person aswered only question 1 incorrectly, but, then, at 91 seconds realized what the correct answer to 1 would be, does that measure a difference in the general method of thinking compared to someone who answered all correctly within 90 seconds?

If you answer “Yes” to any of questions, can it be substantiated that the differing answers noted above measure those differences in general method of thinking? If so, how?

Doesn't "critical thinking" require "No" answers to my questions? And doesn't answering "No" to my questions call into question the methods and findings of Shenhav et al.?

 

[Kemosloby]

Sorry but lack of an engaging writing style caused me to lose interest in the drawn out anti-religious article.

 

[Dennis Kean]

It seems to apply to"conclusions jumped to," as opposed to those based on analysis of evidence.
Our psychology was forged in the Pleistocene, when we were living as small bands of hunter-gatherers. There was little actual data to analyze, and long term planning was not a possibility. What was really valuable were snap judgements (is that rustle in the grass a mouse, a rival tribesman, or a saber-tooth cat?) There was no time for evidence gathering and analysis. We erred on the side of caution -- and survived.
We are not good at type 2, analytic reasoning. It's a learned skill. Jumping to conclusions is easy and natural, and leads to beliefs founded on emotion, without regard for evidence.
It's not designed so much to exclude notions of God, as to exclude notions not based on evidence and analysis thereof.
I doubt many scientists are motivated by fame, and it's certainly not a discipline of self-reliance.
It strikes me that it's the religious/intuitives who are motivated by conformity and social acceptance.
"many will sell their mother and most certainly their God, since they never really met him." Quick - cover yourself! Your bias is showing.
Preferable to some applications -- engineering, literary analysis, science, construction, meteorology, philosophy, nuclear physics -- all disciplines useful today but useless during the period our brains were evolving.
It's the intuitive, magical, jumping-to-conclusions mode of thinking that got us through the Pleistocene. This mode is why we even exist as a species.

They have different applications.
System 1 is a survival modality, and deeply ingrained in our psyche. System 2 is an artificial construct, and the reason we're no longer living in caves.​

.

​

You said: "It's not designed so much to exclude notions of God, as to exclude notions not based on evidence and analysis thereof."

So, the first three words in the Bible discuss the Big Bang, a theory which is the apex of all human theories. Einstein the god of many cooked up the Steady State Universe, which warps in some imagined 4th dimension. Today we muse to think of it. And you are not getting the idea that the Apex of human skills, which has discovered that our universe had a beginning, is the very thing which you are clamoring for and the Bible had the solution from 4000+++ years ago?. Can you see now that all the labor done by man has done nothing new. God said: "In the Beginning... " a concept which tortured physicists of the last two centuries. They all asked "Was there a beginning or not???" The Bible said that there was a beginning. And Genesis was communicated to man in some form. So, not until 1973 did man realize that the Bible record was correct. 4000+++ years later?

So, you now clamor for inspection of evidence and much analysis or Empirical evidence. Right? Christians like me smile and resort to "Thus said God!" Were we wrong to rely on Him? Those were the very first words of God to man. Would it not behoove you to read what else God may have said? As an example: "Was the earth created before the universe?"

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Nope! The earth was created after the universe. Science has no issues with that.

Christian beliefs have more to offer, for those who delicately study the words of God. So, your comment "exclude notions not based on evidence and analysis thereof." offers human erring empirical evidence, which is morphing all the time. All this scientific evidence was arrived at with punishing difficulty. It would have been far more pleasant to just take the words of the One Who created the Universe. Would it not? Do you not see the advantage of the belief in this God who decided to give you the very beginning of how you and I came to be? Sounds like something a parent would say to his kids. It shows care. It elicits trust. And it did not disappoint man. It took man 4000+++ years to confirm this, all along screaming "God is just a myth!" The point is that it is not foolishness to trust in someone reliable like your parents. And when you go to school, and the professor tells you the moon is made of cheese... errr, I mean we live in a Steady State Universe... are you going to tell me that your information source is more reliable than that of the Christian? You cannot reproach the Biblical knowledge of the facts which are one by one coming to light as being veritable. Freud used to laugh at what the Bible had to say and he disparaged most of it as fiction and stories made up, claiming that the stories about Jericho, Sodom and Gomorrah are just fickle imagination. Today we know that they are all true. One by one every claim is coming out as true and correct. No fables!

Here is the reality. Your religious views in science is at present less reliable than that of the Biblical record. Can you see that?

 

[blü 2]

The article say that if you have to think analytically, and if you're then quizzed on your religious beliefs, you'll tend to be less believing.

It doesn't say what effect the analyzing might have if you answer the religious quiz 12 hours after analyzing; or one day; or one week. I infer it's only a temporary effect, but the answer's not clear.

On the substantial issue of analytical thinking at all, it will be found that ─ if we're talking about a god who's real ie exists outside of imagination ─ the idea of 'god' is incoherent. For a start, there's no definition of 'god' such that if we found one we could demonstrate to the impartial onlooker that it was a god.

So when you set out to analyze 'god', the question 'what real thing are we actually talking about here?' has no useful answer ─ analytical thinking finds there's nothing to analyze.

(If we're only talking about god as a being that exists in imagination, then of course there's no problem ─ it can be anything you want it to be, and something else tomorrow if you like.)

 

[omega2xx]

Yet a critical, analytical thinking may also strengthen faith.

Good point. IMO "may" should be changed to "will," for Christians.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Critical thinkers lose their faith in god only if they're good at it.

 

[Quintessence]

I'm never quite sure what to make of articles like this, because they strongly contradict my own personal experiences. The narratives cater to an understanding of religion that is strongly influenced by Western (Abrahamic monotheist) constructs of what "religion" and "religious" means. As someone outside of that sphere, the narrative doesn't make sense to me.

I reflect upon the path that led me to contemporary Paganism and then Druidry - and how analytical and critical thinking played a huge role in leading me here. How can they say these things lead people away from religion when these are among the very things that led me to it? It leaves me scratching my head in confusion.

 

[Nous]

I'm never quite sure what to make of articles like this, because they strongly contradict my own personal experiences. The narratives cater to an understanding of religion that is strongly influenced by Western (Abrahamic monotheist) constructs of what "religion" and "religious" means. As someone outside of that sphere, the narrative doesn't make sense to me.

Yes, indeed, the studies themselves are premised on this Abrahamic monotheistic construct, and set up a false dicohotomy between "belief in God" and "no belief in God". It's like a low-brow binary between Republican and Democratic--if you agree with one you disagree with the other.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Yes, indeed, the studies themselves are premised on this Abrahamic monotheistic construct, and set up a false dicohotomy between "belief in God" and "no belief in God". It's like a low-brow binary between Republican and Democratic--if you agree with one you disagree with the other.

The law of the excluded middle is "a low-brow binary"?

I'm never quite sure what to make of articles like this, because they strongly contradict my own personal experiences. The narratives cater to an understanding of religion that is strongly influenced by Western (Abrahamic monotheist) constructs of what "religion" and "religious" means. As someone outside of that sphere, the narrative doesn't make sense to me.

I reflect upon the path that led me to contemporary Paganism and then Druidry - and how analytical and critical thinking played a huge role in leading me here. How can they say these things lead people away from religion when these are among the very things that led me to it? It leaves me scratching my head in confusion.

They can do it exactly the same way that we can call acid rain "environmentally harmful" even though there are some species that benefit of it: it's true for the vast majority of cases and it's true overall when considering the net effect on the whole.

 

[Nous]

The law of the excluded middle is "a low-brow binary"?

Sometimes it is: Law of excluded middle - Wikipedia

But that isn't what I said is a "low brow binary".

Either p or ~p. Define p.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Doesn't "critical thinking" require "No" answers to my questions? And doesn't answering "No" to my questions call into question the methods and findings of Shenhav et al.?

I expect "critical thinking" would result in "not enough data to answer" your questions.

 

[Nous]

I expect "critical thinking" would result in "not enough data to answer" your questions.

That would be a good reason to reject the proposition that "Cognitive Reflection Test" has external validity.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

That would be a good reason to reject the proposition that "Cognitive Reflection Test" has external validity.

Or, good reason to not be able to accurately quantify a difference based on combinations of correct/incorrect answers. The whole effect may be able to be generally correlated based on a set of questions, without having enough information to specifically apply some type of gradient based on other criteria.

I don't know anything about this test, or whether it holds water, but one can always appropriately apply critical thinking using the variables and information they do have.

As a corollary, it took me about 5-10 seconds to figure out the trick for each question. I expect that people who regularly solve puzzles or engage in more analytical activities would probably do better on these types of questions. Of course, it can then become a chicken or egg situation.

 

[Nous]

Or, good reason to not be able to accurately quantify a difference based on combinations of correct/incorrect answers.

Yes, I agree.

As a corollary, it took me about 5-10 seconds to figure out the trick for each question. I expect that people who regularly solve puzzles or engage in more analytical activities would probably do better on these types of questions. Of course, it can then become a chicken or egg situation.

Also, I noticed that I was much more careful and thoughtful about the answers because I knew these were "trick" questions. I had no problem with the second 2 questions, but I initially answered the first question as "10 cents," but I pondered it further because I knew that was too simple for this tricky question. I probably went over 90 seconds before I realized the answer is 5 cents. So did I get only 2 right, or did I also think "analytically" on the first question but just not fast enough?

It's a dumb test. I don't think it reveals anything about a person's general "method" of thinking.