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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: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:41PM (4 children)
When an analytical critical thinker starts from the conclusion that Yahweh exists solely to make him rich, he's likely to conclude early on that Lucifer is the reason why he is not rich. Perhaps he did or didn't do something that made Yahweh angry with him, which is why he is not rich. From there he may determine that the best way to win back Yahweh's favor is to declare jihad against some other religious or ethnic group, usually another group of Yahweh worshipers. The reasoning is that this other group of Yahweh worshipers are doing it wrong and actually worshiping Lucifer, which is making Yahweh angry, and that's why he's not rich.
And why one of his kids has a birth defect, and why his wife is getting older and fatter and less attractive, and of course the gays are in league with that group of people who claim to worship Yahweh but actually worship Lucifer, and why can't anybody see how obvious it is! Why can't anybody understand his pristine analysis and logical reasoning based on an obscure etymology of the 5th word in the 22nd verse of the 14th chapter of some part of the Bible that proves all of it?! Clearly, it must be a powerful conspiracy, and the only way to answer such a powerful conspiracy, that surely will cause the anti-Christ to be born, is with violence, just the way man Jesus did it when he overturned the money-changers' tables and preached about capitalism in the Parable of the Talents and how Yahweh rewards the faithful with material wealth and how the poor are only poor because they are sinful and reject Yahweh and man Jesus, and they'll all be thrown into a lake of fire for all eternity, and all he needs to do is get out his rifle and dispatch a few of them to Yahweh's terrible judgement himself, and then Yahweh will make him rich and make his wife more attractive and heal his child's birth defect!
And if that doesn't work, there's always the final solution. The seas will run red with infidel blood when they finally rise up and implement the final solution, allowing at last
a Silver MillenniumNew Jerusalem to be founded on the Earth!I don't know if Muslim thinking is exactly the same, but I have to imagine it's similar.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:38PM (3 children)
Indeed, the Parable of the Talents is more about making sure you don't squander life out of fear.
Anyway, Capitalism is supported by the desire to create a society with 2 characteristics:
Interaction between individuals should be voluntary; there must be agreement in advance about the rules of such interaction; there must be agreement about how resources should be allocated.
Society's form should constructed so as to tap into the Universe's great creative process, evolution by variation (supplier competition) and selection (consumer choice); this was first identified as the "Invisible Hand"; the process of evolution allows society to adjust its form to better fit the dynamic conditions of its environment, and this process can occur without anyone even realizing it—it requires no Intelligent Design from a Dear Leader.
That is to say, Capitalism is the exact opposite of a patriarchal, father-in-the-clouds, children-of-god philosophy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday November 09 2017, @09:45PM
http://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx [beliefnet.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 10 2017, @01:24AM (1 child)
Bold proclamations of fact offered without any proof.
Sounds like this other thing we were talking about recently....
(Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Friday November 10 2017, @03:07AM
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/ [theatlantic.com]
"A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar.
Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies. ..."
Book length version: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674659681 [harvard.edu]
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.