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Beliefs Conform To Cultural Identities
DallasMay writes "This article describes an experiment that demonstrates that people don't put as much weight on facts as they do their own belief about how the world is supposed to work. From the article: 'In one experiment, Braman queried subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products. "These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms," Braman says. The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information. "It doesn't matter whether you show them negative or positive information, they reject the information that is contrary to what they would like to believe, and they glom onto the positive information," Braman says.'"
Depends on who's picking the facts ...
Example (poll results below): More people feel that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the military than homosexuals. Same survey. The only difference between the two questions was the word "homosexual" vs the term "gays and lesbians."
Why do you think that opponents keep saying "homosexual rights" and "homosexual agenda"? It's because "homosexual" is a dirty word because of centuries of religious meddling.
And let's not forget stupidity. These poll results also show that more than 10% of the population (the ones who think it's okay to deny homosexuals rights but not gays and lesbians) depend on someone else to tell them how to think. (FauxNews, the Church, etc).
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/02/dadt_poll.html/print.html
That passage is of dubious authenticity and may be mistransliterated. It also includes other historical mistakes.
Personally, I think the arguments over transliterations (Chrestianos vs Christianos) are misguided since some of the PGM use "Chrestos" in clear place of "Christos" ("Christos" is Hebrew "Messiah" translated into Greek while "Chrestos" is Greek for "The Useful One" though Hans Dieter Betz translates as "The Most Excellent" in context).
However, the historical errors by Tacitus suggest he was not working from actual records, but perhaps simply entering a sidebar as to what the Christians said about the founding of their sect. Consequently I am not prepared to use it as evidence of Jesus's existance.
My own view is that Christianity began as a synthetic religion between somewhat Hellenized Jewish sects and Hellenistic mystery cults. I think the Gospels bear the same relationship to Christianity as the Asinus Aureus (as Augustine called it) bore to the Cult of Isis. That doesn't devalue the work as a mythological basis for religion and in fact may strengthen its pedigree. Such an interpretation however flies in the face of literalism.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Nobody reads Heisenberg anymore, I see....
One of the best books I have ever read on scientific epistemology was by him ("Physics and Philosophy" Great book.)
Over and over in that book he writes about how people tend to think that data implies theory, as if there is only one true interpretation of the information before a scientist, but how that is a false assumption. As he puts it (several times), "Data does not imply theory." Instead he suggests that theories can only emerge when scientists put the pieces together based on pre-existing philosophical assumptions.
"Physics and Philosophy" is really one of those books that anyone interested in the sciences really should read. It would help avoid the reactions to studies like this.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I am aware that the majority of scholars think Jesus existed. However, this strikes me as evidence of what this thread is about rather than a matter of solid evidence. I think this is for a couple of reasons:
1) Christians of course want to think that Jesus existed.
2) Atheistic approaches tend to assume that it is simpler to assume that Jesus was a great teacher than that everything written about him was pseudopigraphic or mythological in origins.
My reason for saying there is no real reliable evidence however comes from concluding (by studying Hellenistic religions) that basic outline of the story of Christ is probably mythological instead of factual, and that it combines pre-existing threads from a number of other Hellenistic religions. Secondly, there seems to have been a very lively tradition of writing what were essentially novels about religious subjects as a means of religious teaching (Apuleius's Metamorphosis/Asinus Aureus is a good example of that). This sort of thing has been called "pseudopigrapha" when the authorship is falsely attributed.
Furthermore, when you actually look at Paul's epistles, they are all over the place in which Hellenistic religions they incorporate pieces of. His general approach seems to be to incorporate the basic religious terminology and cosmology of whoever he is writing to.
So when we strip all of these things which seem to come from other sources away (the Trinity from Plato, the Archons of the Ages from various Hellenistic Gnostic cults, the Last Supper as possibly having Dionysian origins, the death and resurrection on Easter as the pagan sacrifice of world renewal), we are really left with nothing new under the sun.
I am not dismissing the possibility of Jesus's existence entirely. However, I am saying that it is more fruitful to look at Christianity as an outgrowth of the Hellenistic world in general than the outgrowth of one man's teachings, and that I have no immediate understanding of the exact circumstance of the formation of Christianity in the first place (our records until really near the end of the Hellenistic era are remarkably sparse).
BTW, I would also go further. I think that some of this Roman literature about other Hellenistic religions was formative on Christianity as well. The development of the Blood Libel really seems to have its origins in Roman literature such as that of Lucan, Apuleis, Horace, etc. If Christianity is seen as having its origins in a syncretic, Hellenistic branch of Judaism, then I think more problems are solved than created. The only problem created is a doubt as to whether Christ actually existed.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
When was the last time you changed your mind about a significant, foundational piece of data in your life?
I'm not talking about an uncertainty being made resolute on one side of the fence or the other.
I'm talking about a belief you once held to be true and around which you based your daily decision-making processes and then after review, realized that you were wrong and then took steps to alter your behavior accordingly.
Now, if you have experienced that, ask yourself the following. . .
Did you change your mind because of your own curiosity, reasoning and data collection OR because your tribe and its associated authority figures changed their minds and you felt compelled to follow suit?
Are you the sort of person who switches back and forth between beliefs easily?
Are you the sort of person who refuses to change belief systems out of fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded?
Do you lie to yourself in order to take the edge off uncomfortable truths?
Are you lying to yourself right now about any of the answers to these questions?
Just asking.
-FL
"Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus"
ABSTRACT:
People tend not to listen to your message if they view it as threatening to their livelihood, their community, or their ego.
--
Toro
More than that, Slashdot needs agree and disagree buttons. The rest can just be modded.
As a former citizen of a totalitarian state, let me be the first to ask:
Citation needed!
And even if you dig up some I still won't buy it because I was there, my parents and grandparents were there too. I know, you just talk....
Sure, there was a killing of intellectuals and some of them were priests, but most were not. Teachers, scholars, generals, aristocracy - they all suffered. BTW, in 10 years the allegedly killed people by Stalin rose from a few million to (don't laugh) 100 million! I have seen such ridiculous numbers from "respectable" sources and most people in the west are conditioned to believe any bullshit about the communist you care to concoct.
Killing and burning churches never works in the long run. If it did, Christianity would have never survived (remember, 2000 years ago the Christians were minority!). You might want to dig up my post about the Ottoman empire and see to what lenghts they went to extinguish christianity in our land. They had 482 years to do so and failed! Because action cause reaction. People started to identify their nationality via their faith. The church was poor and harassed and guess what - they produced great people and did a lot of good in those dark ages. After they got their power back all went to HELL.You can never keep people slaves forever - you always fail.
The trick that the communist applied was more clever than just killing - they simply discouraged people to go to church. You could go to church (yes, you really could - I have been to a church every Easter and every Christmas, mostly because my grandma was a bit religious. No one ever stopped us, no one came knocking on the door. In school people wore crosses below their shirts and no one said anything). 3 generations aftfer communism was established in my country almost everyone was an atheist. Which is exactly what this article is all about. Repeat after me - if I am not reminded DAILY even hourly that I am a believer I will cease to be one - this counts for the vast majority of people. Religion is a meme and you can diminish its influence in the same way you would do it with genes - you prevent the spreading.
I am forever grateful to the communist for one thing only (in general I despise them) - they showed empirically that a particular religion is NOT something natural, something that is inheritable human. Spirituality - yes! It comes from the realization of one's own mortality - nothing new, just read a bit of philosophy. Particular religion however - NO! Nobody is born christian , muslim or jew - you are MADE one and you have no choice. Which is abuse of human nature and damages your free will to an extent that is unrepairable. The communist tried to replace religion with faith in the Party and the system but that ideology had such a vast gap between intentions and reality that it was self defeating. It never did catch up with people. Everyone who tells you that the common people believed in the system is fucking liar!
So at the end, a generation emerged which had limited if none exposure to the most popular belief systems and the "substitute" did not work so we got the perfect secular, scientific, civil generation. I am one of those people - everyone (+/- 5 years my age) around me during all my life is being one - at school, at university, at work. The very new generations are already lost - 2 fucking days after the wall collapsed I saw Mormons on the streets! TWO fucking days, people! Then followed all the sects - there was an explosion of kids running from home, drug abuse, suicide...parents went crazy! One of our prime ministers (democrat and very strong anti-communist) refused permission to enter the country to a sect leader who was legally recognized and pampered in the whole western world and he wanted to sue us in den Hague! Man, if I could just have 5 minutes with this arrogant asshole alone!!!
So, I am sorry my friend but you are not in possessions of the facts, neither (I suspect) you want to be. Millions of nuns my ass - check how much the population of the country was at the time, if you claim to be intelligent (posting on \. is a statement after all), estimate how many priest there were and then talk crap! You just might end up with minus 1 000 000 figure there.....
No system of beliefs is just a convenient way of disguising one's biases, but all of them can be. It's entirely possible to use, say, science to excuse being an asshole; eugenics is a perfect example of that.
The problem is that people who don't share a particular system of beliefs tend to not understand how anyone could believe it, and jump to the conclusion that they don't really do, but are merely pretending to in order to excuse their inexcusable behavior. This isn't helped at all that all such systems have people who believe them but don't understand them, yet feel the need to defend them; rationalism and science are perhaps the worst off here, due to their complexity.
The end result is people dismissing all arguments against their beliefs because they are usually made by people who 1) think the people they talk to are evil demagogues to be defeat or gullible sheep to be rescued and nobody wants to be treated that way and 2) don't understand why anyone would believe the system and thus usually end up arguing against strawmen of their own making, which is amuzing to watch but won't convince anyone.
All this means that it's very difficult to discuss any given belief system rationally; either your audience agrees with you, in which case it becomes an intellectual circlejerk, or they don't, in which case it ends up with you talking down to them or outright attacking them for being idiots, or there are both amongst them, in which case it becomes a free-for-all strawmen vs. insults brawl. Just look at the post that began this thread: it calmly suggests "abolishing" religion, in other words, forcing everyone to conform to the poster's beliefs. Is it any wonder that his would-be victims look at him and all that share his views with suspicion, just like he looks at them?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Anyway, the point is, given how deeply intertwined religion is with those things which weigh most heavily on the human mind (or "soul", if you believe there is one), I don't think the cocaine analogy, nor the implied addiction model of religious belief, even come close to explaining why people adhere so steadfastly to religion.
You're going to have to do a better job of explaining why. I get your "unanswerable questions" argument, but - no offence - it's shit. Theism doesn't answer any of those questions. It barely even tries. It simply asserts commandments based on an Ultimate Authority - an immortal Mafia Don who promises to break our legs if we don't don't pay homage and follow his orders.
The actual meaning of life, the question of morality ... those questions remain unanswered on any broad level. That's because we as individual human beings get to define what those things are, and no external orders can ever solve those dilemmas for us. Nobody can tell you what the purpose of your life is, and nobody can dictate a moral code to you. I find religion particularly offensive because it pretends to do both. I get one life to live to the best of my ability - a mere 80-ish years on this Earth, if I'm lucky - and some jackass in a funny hat thinks he has the right to dictate how I live it based on orders from his magical sky daddy. Well fuck that. Even if there were a "god" to tell me how to live my life, I'd tell him to get fucked too - I don't give a damn how he intended me to live it because it's purpose is mine to determine. He could have some input on it (if he'd speak the fuck up) but the final decisions would still be mine to make. As long as you allow for free will, no religion can ever give you an answer to what the purpose of life is.
Religion answers the question "What is the meaning of life" to the same extent that cocaine does - it's all about the next fix. We can come up with much better answers than that. Even Douglas Adams' tongue-in-cheek answer was more meaningful and less harmful than the ones provided by most religions.