Is religion inferior to logic ?

[Valjean]

And it can do so when nothing else can. So why would we want or expect anyone not to engage it when they need what it can do for them?

Depends whether we're trying to achieve comfort and harmony, or truth.

 

[Valjean]

You just hide behind a materialist philosophy, and call it critical thinking.

Hiding?
What, in your opinion, would constitute real critical thinking?

That is because there is so much evidence for G-d, it's overwhelming.

So why isn't there a general, worldwide belief in some particular iteration of God?
I question the existence or validity of this evidence. I've been on RF nearly 20 years, and have yet to see any objective evidence posted that doesn't have problems.

I'd be interested to see some of this overwhelming evidence -- but I'm not getting my hopes up.

 

[Valjean]

Reason can and does override instinct. Not flawlessly and not all the time, but we can take command of our raging emotions. And we do incorporate our value systems into transactional conventions. Does that not describe the whole legal justice system? We set our rules and enforce our rules and we hold each other accountable (imperfectly) in both compliance and application of justice.
We did evolve to become truth seeking machines, to observe the world around us and use that information to anticipate future events and to imagine preferred outcomes and use our experience to make those outcomes happen. We are the latest expression of what Homo sapiens has evolved into and that process will continue.

Good points, but you sound rather more optimistic about our social evolution than I am. I see our civilized behavior as a pretty thin and easily breached veneer. As for truth seeking machines, I'm not holding my breath on this development.

Truth seeking, on an abstract or ontological level, was never of much use to hunter-gatherers. Logic and critical thinking are recent inventions, learned, not hard-wired -- and neither particularly useful or common, even today, IMHO.

 

[PureX]

Not to make a big deal about this, but yes, we can determine what is and is not a placebo with controlled studies.

There are no studies that can rule out the possibility of God's participation in the effect. We don't actually know that faith in God is a placebo. It could simply be a form of medicine or self-healing that science can't grasp.

Fair point, we have to start somewhere. How about we start with a placebo belief system that is dynamic, that can change and incorporate our ever expanding understanding of ourselves and the world we live in, and provides a tranquil and patient acceptance of the unknown and unknowable, that there will always be unanswered questions and that is ok. It can be a placebo belief system that focuses on the betterment of lives lived for all with no expectations of an after.

Theistic faith is already very dynamic, and adaptable. If people are choosing to hold tightly to tradition, we must assume they are doing so because that's what works for them. The whole point of the placebo is that it works. Not that it's adaptable, or to anyone's personal liking.

This is the perennial problem. We want to be individuals and free to express and be ourselves as we see fit, yet certain things require collective agreement and surrendering certain rights or freedoms to attain goals only achievable through collective action. Every society struggles with this. Hopefully in our new dynamic placebo belief system we can strike just the right balance.

Yes. And I personally think we have wandered way too far in the direction of individuality, to the point of becoming absurdly selfish and collectively destructive. And if we do not find a way of correcting this error, soon, it will be the end of us.

 

[PureX]

Depends whether we're trying to achieve comfort and harmony, or truth.

Humans can't know the truth. The best we can get is relative truthfulness. Pretending that we pursue truth is self-deception. Which is why what we should be pursuing is honesty, not some fantasy of the truth.

 

[ratiocinator]

Humans can't know the truth.

Possibly not, but we can certainly attempt to gain more and more understanding based on objective evidence. It works, otherwise you wouldn't have the internet to post nonsense on.

Which is why what we should be pursuing is honesty, not some fantasy of the truth.

If everybody had thought like that we'd still be huddled in caves.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Possibly not, but we can certainly attempt to gain more and more understanding based on objective evidence. It works, otherwise you wouldn't have the internet to post nonsense on.


If everybody had thought like that we'd still be huddled in caves.

Well, if you succeed and remove all subjectivity, then please start with your own brain when you do the test.

BTW nonsense is nonsense to you in this case and is not objective.

 

[ratiocinator]

Well, if you succeed and remove all subjectivity, then please start with your own brain when you do the test.

BTW nonsense is nonsense to you in this case and is not objective.

And for those of us working in English....?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And for those of us working in English....?

The problem is not if there is objective evidence. The problem is if it is universal or limited.

 

[ratiocinator]

The problem is not if there is objective evidence. The problem is if it is universal or limited.

What do you mean by 'universal'? Applying to everybody is kind of what 'objective' means. Clearly science and technology (the product of studying the world using objective evidence) works for everybody. Your phone and the internet won't stop working if you don't accept quantum mechanics (the basis for semiconductors).

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

What do you mean by 'universal'? Applying to everybody is kind of what 'objective' means. Clearly science and technology (the product of studying the world using objective evidence) works for everybody. Your phone and the internet won't stop working if you don't accept quantum mechanics (the basis for semiconductors).

Yeah, but that is not all of the universe.

 

[ratiocinator]

Yeah, but that is not all of the universe.

And....?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And....?

If something is objective, then everything is objective, right?

 

[ratiocinator]

If something is objective, then everything is objective, right?

As I said at the start, the (objective) evidence is that minds produce subjectivity and that minds arise from brains. That would mean (in principle, at least) that a full understanding of brains would give a full, objective explanation for subjectivity.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

As I said at the start, the (objective) evidence is that minds produce subjectivity and that minds arise from brains. That would mean (in principle, at least) that a full understanding of brains would give a full, objective explanation for subjectivity.

Yeah, we describe it objectively is not the same as doing it subjectively. The problem is not to describe it, it is to replace subjectivity with objectivity and do subjectivity objectively.

 

[Augustus]

And I disagree. Not that there were no horrendously illiberal non-religious belief systems. That there is no difference between religious and irreligious ones. One is indoctrinated as originating from us, the other from a fictional entity that cannot be challenged. That's an important difference.

I feel your characterisation of religion is not accurate, it seems like an argument against a narrow set of fundamentalist Protestant and Islamic beliefs (and even then it's stereotyped more than real). Religions obviously change, just as any other value system does. In fact, major religions have probably been better at evolving than any other belief system hence they have been so popular for so long.

Different belief systems are more or less flexible, but the ideal balance is likely somewhere in the middle of this continuum.

The most pithy explanation of why we won't be saved by reason is:

Bertie [Bertrand Russell] sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompatible. He held that human affairs are carried on in a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was carry them on rationally."

John Maynard Keynes

I would, sure. A religious extremist probably wouldn’t.

And that is precisely the point, neither of you is thinking transactionally but experiencing a different reality based on differing "truths", that, in reality, are somewhat arbitrary and subjective preferences.

What is the social contract of the American constitution but an experiment to wean away from religious belief systems holding sway in their change-resistant way, and create a belief system created by the people and for the people. We are in the midst of an evolving process that represents exactly what I am advocating.

Unless you believe in God, religions were created by the people for the people, as were Nazism, Marxism, Jacobinism, Secular Humanism and pretty much all major belief systems. Most people think their belief systems are for the greater good after all.

Now you see people give an almost divine reverence to the constitution or liberal American values, we all have "sacred values" that underpin our worldview whether these are religious or from some other source (hence I view it as misleading to separate secular and religious worldviews as there are no meaningful demarcation criteria)

The US was basically founded by Providential Deists and liberal Christians who basically secularised the liberal Christianity of their era, along with an English/Anglo-Saxon myth of liberty (American tropes about freedom, liberty, etc. were common English tropes in the time before Independence).

America wasn't founded as a Christian country, but its founding is inseparable from the evolutions in European religious thought that existed at that time (including a strong idea of providence).

Saying "We hold these truths to be self-evident.." or saying "these are our God given rights" makes little difference. They are just fictions used to underpin a preferred way of life.

Modern secular beliefs didn't emerge from a vacuum in opposition to religion, they were an offshoot of Christian thought. Just as the historical anti-colonial movement wasn't a rejection of Western thought, but the application of it to anew set of circumstances.

Reason can and does override instinct. Not flawlessly and not all the time, but we can take command of our raging emotions. And we do incorporate our value systems into transactional conventions. Does that not describe the whole legal justice system? We set our rules and enforce our rules and we hold each other accountable (imperfectly) in both compliance and application of justice.

Individual humans can be intermittently rational in limited situations yes, but no more than this. The sciences show this quite explicitly, and problems are magnified exponentially at the societal level.

Legal systems are underpinned by societal values, which are dependent on ideological fictions.

Any national system is a mix of fiction and transaction, you can't unite diverse groups of people in the long term with purely rational transctional thought because

We did evolve to become truth seeking machines, to observe the world around us and use that information to anticipate future events and to imagine preferred outcomes and use our experience to make those outcomes happen. We are the latest expression of what Homo sapiens has evolved into and that process will continue.

This is not truth seeking, it is utility seeking. Hence placebos work, or religious beliefs can work highly effectively in society despite being grounded in myth.

The idea that truth is more important than utility is a nonsense unless you think humans were created as something special and unique compared to other animals (and neither of us do believe this).

Which side of that dichotomy treats reality as fake news? The fervently religious side. The side that cannot adapt its belief system to keep pace with our ever growing understanding of the world, but also, and importantly, ourselves.

Regardless of which side is "worse", I wouldn't be putting either side on a pedestal of truth seeking, concern for factual accuracy or not getting suckered by fake news (I could give many examples for each side, but it's not worth going down that road).

Throughout history, neither conservative nor progressive groups worldwide have shown any consistent regard for truth and factual accuracy, seeing it as one sided would be to believe in the common myth that "my side" is more noble.

Again, you want to conflate useful abstract constructions like currency, business entities, sports and game rules as fictions equivalent to imaginary entities that are treated as objectively real and existent entities. Abstract conventions mutually agreed to are born from us, recognized as such, and accountable to us. That is an objectively real and a necessary part of an unvarnished ideology based in reality. Religious fictions are claimed to not be born from us but are eternal, make specific demands of us, and cannot be held to account. There is no appeal, no negotiation, no amendment. If you do not find those two cases starkly different, nor find one more preferable than the other, then so be it. But for me there is a clear choice and it is not the religious one.

I'm not talking about currencies and games though, I'm talking about ideologies and value systems which are essential in creating functional societies.

We do not hold these rationally and transactionally as you seem to be claiming where we all know they are arbitrary conventions and we revise them whenever new information appears.

They literally shape how we perceive reality and how our basic cognitive functions operate. We cannot transcend our worldview to "see things as they are", and even if we could this would be a terrible basis for a civilisation given we are animals living in a meaningless world who need fictions to give us purpose. Hence humanists rely on fictions like the Humanity or the Idea of Progress to connect them to something larger than the self. these are just borrowings from the monotheism they think they have left behind though (and there's nothing wrong with that).

A transactional existence where everything is weighed up rationally on a cost/benefit basis is neither possible.

What would you say a worldview based purely on reality would look like and why would people follow it at any point it went against their best interests transactionally defined?

 

[muhammad_isa]

So why isn't there a general, worldwide belief in some particular iteration of God?

There is .. there is more in common with beliefs of Christians and Muslims than differences.
i.e. G-d created the universe, and we return to Him upon death

 

[MikeF]

There are no studies that can rule out the possibility of God's participation in the effect. We don't actually know that faith in God is a placebo. It could simply be a form of medicine or self-healing that science can't grasp.

You seem to have used this label “God” in two different ways. In the first instance it seems you are using it as a concrete proper noun, the name of a particular existent entity. In the second instance, it seems you are using it as a label for a biological process. Using the same label in different ways does not aid in clear communication. In an effort to avoid talking past each other we could adopt the convention of referring to PureX’s proposed entity in the first instance and PureX’s speculated biological process or effect in the second.

In the first case regarding PureX’s proposed entity, you would first have to demonstrate the existence of the proposed entity before we could consider its role in the effect we are describing. Absent that, you would also have to show that the effect could not occur except for the existence of PureX’s proposed entity. In either case it would require your specific definition of PureX’s proposed entity before any evaluation of the matter could commence. Something specific has to be declared if we are to evaluate any arguments or provide counter arguments.

In the second case you still seem to be describing the placebo effect, which we have a label for, “placebo effect”. Belief in the efficacy of a modality that results in a healing effect is the placebo effect and the particular modality would be the placebo, in this case the belief in an imagined or assumed entity.

Theistic faith is already very dynamic, and adaptable. If people are choosing to hold tightly to tradition, we must assume they are doing so because that's what works for them. The whole point of the placebo is that it works. Not that it's adaptable, or to anyone's personal liking.

Ah, progress here. It seems we *are* in agreement that we are discussing the placebo effect of belief in imagined or assumed entities.

And here I agree that in many cases this type of placebo works in combating or preventing a variety of anxieties. But the beliefs that provide this placebo effect vary widely. It is not the same belief for all cases. I would even go as far as to say that each belief is actually unique to the individual. If most of these placebo beliefs form around different frameworks that are instilled or indoctrinated during development towards adulthood, isn’t it appropriate to evaluate what ancillary effects these placebo frameworks have beyond the individual, for society at large? Should we not compare and contrast these placebo frameworks to see which work best both on the individual level but also for society at large?

Yes. And I personally think we have wandered way too far in the direction of individuality, to the point of becoming absurdly selfish and collectively destructive. And if we do not find a way of correcting this error, soon, it will be the end of us.

Great topic and we can certainly talk about how best to find that balance in another thread.

 

[MikeF]

I'm undecided. You're something of a conundrum. You do seem to question all sides, and your questions are generally reasonable, but I haven't quite pigeonholed you yet.

Is it not appropriate for the "critical thinker" to questions all sides, especially one's own?

 

[F1fan]

Good points, but you sound rather more optimistic about our social evolution than I am. I see our civilized behavior as a pretty thin and easily breached veneer. As for truth seeking machines, I'm not holding my breath on this development.

Truth seeking, on an abstract or ontological level, was never of much use to hunter-gatherers. Logic and critical thinking are recent inventions, learned, not hard-wired -- and neither particularly useful or common, even today, IMHO.

It's off topic but with 8 billion people on the planet and growing fast I suspect there will be a huge crisis at some point with the climate and our ability to create enough food. Religions tend to be rather passive and "leave things in God's hands" rather than planning solutions. We see far right Christians in the USA quite indifferent to climate change and even proactive duties like getting vaccines to slow the spread of diseases.