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from the "number-of-the-beast"-is-natural,-whole,-rational,-real,-AND-imaginary dept.
Religious beliefs are not linked to intuition or rational thinking, according to new research by the universities of Coventry and Oxford. Previous studies have suggested people who hold strong religious beliefs are more intuitive and less analytical, and when they think more analytically their religious beliefs decrease.
But new research, by academics from Coventry University's Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science and neuroscientists and philosophers at Oxford University, suggests that is not the case, and that people are not 'born believers'. The study -- which included tests on pilgrims taking part in the famous Camino de Santiago and a brain stimulation experiment -- found no link between intuitive/analytical thinking, or cognitive inhibition (an ability to suppress unwanted thoughts and actions), and supernatural beliefs.
Instead, the academics conclude that other factors, such as upbringing and socio-cultural processes, are more likely to play a greater role in religious beliefs.
[Abstract]: Supernatural Belief Is Not Modulated by Intuitive Thinking Style or Cognitive Inhibition
Would you agree with this conclusion or do you believe that there is something else that influences people's religious beliefs ?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:38PM (14 children)
do you believe that there is something else that influences people's religious beliefs ?
My theory is that magical thinking (of which religion is a strand) is the human brain's innate ability to detect patterns gone into overdrive.
A very long time ago, humanity needed the ability to detect patterns from precious few clues to survive. As in "these strange noises repeating more than once may be a lion, I'd better get out of here". Trouble is, our brain is so good at detecting patterns that it also tends to make shit up very easily from zero actual facts, giving rise to cognitive biases and religious thinking.
I posit that religion is a natural disease of the human brain. Educated people have the tools to recognize the symptoms and are better able to fight the urge. But essentially, every human is prone to falling into the religious thinking trap - including educated humans who were exposed to irrational shit as children by their parents or their community, before being taught rational ways of thinking straight.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:10PM (4 children)
One thing that religion does provide better than Science is the "spiritual" experience.
It's much harder to achieve awe through intellectual investigation than it is through manipulation of the senses (incense, meditation, choral music, large imposing cathedrals, rituals, mantras, social engagement, etc.). It's become even harder since the War on Drugs: materialist society has decided to do its best to eradicate utterly any deviation in consciousness from the supposedly "good and proper" rational problem-solving state.
There is a good argument that Human civilization sprung forth from the consumption of psychedelic substances over the course of tens of thousands of years (if not hundreds of thousands of years), and yet now you can be thrown into a cage for even thinking about that facet of being alive!
There will arise a new religion: The Church of Conciousness.
The sole purpose of this new religion will be to give people a sense of meaning, and it will place psychedelic rituals at its foundation. The first attempt to do this was made by the Hippies, but their lifestyle was too unproductive to be sustainable; however, now, society's productive people have rediscovered psychedelics; the people of Silicon Valley and the tastemakers of social discourse have begun experimenting with LSD "microdosing" and with "breakthrough" DMT trips and with sensory deprivation chambers. They are having profound experiences and innovating the materialist world that keeps our civilization ticking. They are the beginning of the Second Coming; it is their combination of practicality and spiritual experience that will be our salvation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)
It's become even harder since the War on Drugs: materialist society has decided to do its best to eradicate utterly any deviation in consciousness from the supposedly "good and proper" rational problem-solving state.
Notice it's the religious leaders and people who are most strongly against drug use (including alcohol), and want laws passed to prohibit it. It isn't the rational materialists who want to ban this stuff. They don't always like it, but they're rational, and they saw what happened in the US under Prohibition, so they know that punishing laws don't work.
So why do the religious leaders really want this stuff prohibited? They don't want competition. They want to be the only ones to give you that "spiritual" experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @11:19PM
That's how you indicate that you're quoting someone else.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NewNic on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:17PM
There was an interesting piece on NPR last weekend which talked about this.
It talked about achieving "Flow", which involves a loss of reflective self-consciousness, perhaps due to overwhelming the brain's processing capability.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) [wikipedia.org]
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @04:23AM
Timothy Leary wrote a book called "Start Your Own Religion" back in 1966. The book is not long and some (all?) of it is reproduced here, http://www.luminist.org/archives/start_your_own.htm [luminist.org]
When I first found the book (randomly, in the stacks of a large library) I started paging through and was hooked, sat there on the floor and read it straight through. Many years later a friend invited me to lunch with Leary, one of the sharpest people I've ever been privileged to meet. I still cherish the memories of that afternoon.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Bot on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:03PM (6 children)
> My theory is that magical thinking
I pick your comment at random out of all the stuff here.
The fact that supernatural, by definition, cannot be reached any more than a character in a videogame can reach the computer running the game itself even if it completely depends on it, does not imply anything about the correctness of the thinking process itself. The catch is that somebody, long ago started using the term belief.
The following can happen.
Human rationally believes in [no] afterlife.
Human irrationally believes in [no] afterlife.
Personally, and rationally BTW, I consider ANY proposition on the supernatural as undefined in its truth value, like working with a variable in an environment that might or might not have that variable defined. So I have easy game discarding the mental masturbations of all atheists and of most theists/agnostics.
As it was already pointed out here in SN. If you knew all the features of every particle since the beginning of time, and you had a model which predicts all future interactions, and that model logically proved no god is necessary for all of it to happen, and that there is no other conceivable model that can result in the universe, you still have not "proven god as 'not existing'". Because, among other reasons, as a counterexample if I create an abstract system whose features do not contemplate my intervention, from the POV of the abstraction the abstraction is reality and in that reality and its most fundamental features I am absent.
As for the topic, it has some value neurobiologically or computationally speaking. Theologically speaking it's cringeworthy.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:27PM (1 child)
The vast majority of atheists simply lack a belief in a god or gods rather than claim that they know there are no gods. What are you even talking about? Why is it "all" for atheists but simply "most" for theists/agnostics?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:33PM
"The vast majority of atheists simply lack a belief in a god or gods rather than claim that they know there are no gods."
People who wear the "atheists" label seem to have redefined it to be more inclusive lately. An alternative definition is that an atheist is one who believes that no gods exist. I was always under the impression that that the word implies disbelief, rather than merely lack of belief. I prefer the title 'agnostic' for myself. For while I'm firmly in the camp that the god of the Abrahamic faiths is a man-made fiction, I have neither belief nor disbelief in the Deists' conception of a creator god.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:39PM (3 children)
As an atheist I don't feel the need to prove anything, as I am making no claims.
As far as I am concerned it's the religious who should be offering proof, and as some of their claims are pretty extraordinary, so should their proof be.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @11:06PM
There are different levels and kind of claims:
1. God(s) exists and has properties X, Y, and Z
2. God(s) exists
3. God(s) doesn't exist
4. Unknown
#1 is a much stronger claim than the others and the one most common. #2 and #3 still both require evidence and so far don't have it . I don't think #2 is a huge leap because we humans may someday create universes, rear or virtual, and thus be God(s) from the perspective of the inhabitants of such universes. It probably doesn't require new physics, just better control of matter/nature than we have now. But the default is #4, "unknown", and we don't have enough evidence to shift that. It's still the standing status.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday November 10 2017, @12:01AM
As an atheist (or apparently I pedantically become anti-theist the moment I open my mouth) I'm going to go out on a limb:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOD!
"Oh, but you can't prove absolutely, whaaa, bitch, bitch, whine whine!". Screw them, I'll stop saying that there absolutely is not one the moment all of these religious idiots stop saying there absolutely *is* one.
For a split second, almost laughed my ass off imagining them actually trying to do that.
Of course their "proof" always boils down to "my mommy said so", "it says so in that 2000 year old book of gibberish", "I'm crazy and hear voices", or "it has electrolytes, it's what plants crave".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @12:38PM
No proof can be verified from the inside. I turn the sun green, by interfering with your brain patterns in a novel way, am I god?
Entire sacerdotal orders have been based on the ability to predict astronomical events, which is the exact same thing you demand.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:44PM
Maybe a decade ago, but the schools now teach that these are tools of white supremacy and their users are white supremacists.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 10 2017, @04:08AM
Parents never took us to any church or other organized religion. Mom quit being a Catholic as a teen, when she saw the hypocrisy in the clergy and Dad's parents were New England Unitarian, didn't make any demands on him to attend if he wasn't interested.
I never understood when peers (grade school) asked if I was atheist or agnostic, I just had no interest in the topic. Many years later, an elderly relative turned me on to "post theological". If your background is like mine, this might be the term you are looking for.
https://thehumanist.com/magazine/january-february-2008/features/the-post-theological-umbrella [thehumanist.com]