There is also the matter of scientific consensus, which is a check on human error and quackery. I'm so tired of seeing the media cherry-pick studies they agree with, not caring whether or not there is even so much as overwhelming scientific consensus about the matter, or whether the study has been replicated.
Many of the soft 'sciences' are useful for those who look to control others, though that is irrelevant to their validity. Do video games make kids more aggressive? This study says yes, so it's time for government restrictions, regardless of other soft science studies that reach other conclusions, and regardless of the level of consensus within the soft science community.
It is one thing to say that social sciences aren't rigorous, but you are actually saying that no studies can be used here whatsoever so we can do no better than opinion.
Studies can be used, but you must be careful about what conclusion you draw from them. Due to the nature of the social 'sciences', you can't really say that something is true just because a study said so. You could say that more religious people claimed to be happy, but not conclude that they are happy just because of self-reports.
It just means that it has some sort of effect that can improve health and/or happiness.
Now you're talking about something different. First you were talking about how religion generally makes people happier, and now it's about how it *can* make people happier. Just about anything "can" make people happier.
I would agree that it's a possible it could make certain people happier, but I see no reason to believe it's true in general, and nor do I see a reliable way to measure the amount of happiness that someone has.
At this point it seems as though you are just determined to maintain your belief that following a religion is always irrational.
It seems you're quite determined to hang onto your preferred soft science studies. I'm more consistent in that I reject even ones that would seem to be favorable to me (like the one that concluded atheists were somehow more intelligent than theists).
What "truth" are you talking about? Because there's only one discipline where it can be proven, and that is in formal mathematics.
I'm talking about reality, not mindlessly speculating about how we might actually live in the matrix, or some other such nonsense that will never be proven. I have no reason not to accept what we observe as reality, just like I have no reason not to believe in god. Religion (particularly ones with magical sky daddies) doesn't care about truth, so if you do care about reality, being part of a religion is just foolish.
One of us here is committed to an ideal regardless of what the evidence might say
No. Pay attention. I've been saying all along that your so-called "evidence" is faulty, and could easily be countered with other cherry-picked studies.
The fact is, social 'science' is almost never rigorous. That's just a fact. If your evidence isn't good enough, I'm going to reject it. Maybe there's no alternative at the moment to social 'science', but that's no reason to accept it. I'll accept it when they somehow clean up their act. Until then, no. I have no interest in playing the "Link to studies I think are true!" game with you.
The studies are about as rigorous as it is possible to be with questions like this - that is, not very rigorous by the standards of the "hard sciences", but as good as it gets by medical and social science standards:
Which isn't good at all, so linking to them won't help you.
And the great thing about the social 'sciences' is that you can almost always find a study that reaches a conclusion you agree with, and ignore ones you don't like. You want a study that says atheists are generally more intelligent (nevermind that we don't have an actual way of measuring overall intelligence) than theists? There's a study for you. Religious people are happier? According to these cherry-picked studies that somehow measure such a subjective thing, they certainly are.
That in and of itself should make us question the impulse to dismiss it unilaterally.
No, it shouldn't, at least not if you care about the truth. At the very least, reject the magical sky daddies.
It's good that you admit there are problems, but I would be hesitant to state something like that (that religious people are happier and other such things) as a fact unless it could be validated by rigorous scientific studies.
Health can be measured, relatively objectively, in lots of ways.
It depends on the kind of health. Physical health? Definitely. Mental "health" is much more difficult to measure in a truly scientific way, given how subjective it can be. We can sometimes see chemical imbalances in the brain, but what those do, exactly, is difficult to determine.
Also, "relatively objectively" doesn't sound very scientific at all.
if religious people consistently claim to be happier and healthier, that certainly says something about the impact it has on average.
Great, so you rely on self-reported surveys. How very scientific!
And this is why the "social sciences" are mocked; they don't often produce very scientific results, make subjective claims, rarely succeed in being even close to as rigorous as hard science generally is, are more subject to bias, and often result in the ones doing the study reaching arbitrary conclusions from the data (which may also have been improperly collected, as is often the case). "Here's the data; now I'm going to put forth my conclusion and pretend that there's no other possible explanation for this." sadly seems to be common.
But smoking weed in your home, cancer patient or not, is not civil disobedience. That's just having contempt for the law. That's corrosive to society.
Oh, bullshit. Not everyone has time to be part of some huge social movement. Law != morality, and breaking certain laws is not corrosive to society. For it to be corrosive to society, you'd have to believe that we're all mindless robots who either follow all laws or follow no laws, which is a nonsensical false dichotomy, or the action itself would have to be overall harmful.
Just breaking the law is not necessarily corrosive at all, and nor does it mean that you have contempt for laws in general. Grow a brain and stop repeating authoritarian nonsense.
Oh, so because you didn't get the answer that you wanted God no longer exists?
Why don't you read the text you're responding to, moron? "So far, none of these have passed the test, thus demonstrating that whether God is real or not, the theologies that try to make us believe that he is, are not true."
Hint: He doesn't say, "Prayer doesn't work; therefore, god doesn't exist." Try again, fool.
People involved with religion are generally healthier, happier, and have "better lives" according to most of the metrics you could attach to that.
Most of the metrics you could attach to that are pseudoscientific because those things are subjective. Happy? "better lives"? "Healthy" in what sense? How can they rigorously and objectively measure *any* of that? It's utter nonsense.
Of course, even those conclusions depend entirely on which source you use.
Now if you're talking about illegal shit, well...then yeah, don't commit crimes. And if you're upset people would get doxed over drugs, that's a problem with the drug laws themselves.
Don't commit crimes? That's your solution to unjust laws?
And no, it isn't just a fucking problem with the drug laws themselves; it's a problem with the people who individually decide to release others' information, because they're the ones who chose to do so. Just because you did something illegal doesn't mean you deserve to have your privacy violated.
It's not okay to commit crimes as long as nobody knows about it.
Thats not how science works. What you do is find something you can measure, an aspect of intelligence rather than a perfect definition.
And then you make it clear *exactly* what is being measured. The problem is that ignorant people (mostly the general public) then get the idea that the tests are somehow measuring "intelligence," even if that's not what was being claimed. That is a misunderstanding that needs to be fixed.
Job (especially this) and school success mean little to me, personally. I would think actual innovation would be more interesting, but whatever.
No, but it may tell if they are smart enough to RTF Summary.
Well, maybe people shouldn't be writing inaccurate headlines. Are people not allowed to criticize those?
Ignorant fool; IQ != intelligence. That's just a conclusion that people arbitrarily came to. IQ was originally designed to measure things like success in school, not to measure intelligence. To conflate the two is very unscientific and arbitrary.
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There is also the matter of scientific consensus, which is a check on human error and quackery. I'm so tired of seeing the media cherry-pick studies they agree with, not caring whether or not there is even so much as overwhelming scientific consensus about the matter, or whether the study has been replicated.
Many of the soft 'sciences' are useful for those who look to control others, though that is irrelevant to their validity. Do video games make kids more aggressive? This study says yes, so it's time for government restrictions, regardless of other soft science studies that reach other conclusions, and regardless of the level of consensus within the soft science community.
It is one thing to say that social sciences aren't rigorous, but you are actually saying that no studies can be used here whatsoever so we can do no better than opinion.
Studies can be used, but you must be careful about what conclusion you draw from them. Due to the nature of the social 'sciences', you can't really say that something is true just because a study said so. You could say that more religious people claimed to be happy, but not conclude that they are happy just because of self-reports.
It just means that it has some sort of effect that can improve health and/or happiness.
Now you're talking about something different. First you were talking about how religion generally makes people happier, and now it's about how it *can* make people happier. Just about anything "can" make people happier.
I would agree that it's a possible it could make certain people happier, but I see no reason to believe it's true in general, and nor do I see a reliable way to measure the amount of happiness that someone has.
At this point it seems as though you are just determined to maintain your belief that following a religion is always irrational.
It seems you're quite determined to hang onto your preferred soft science studies. I'm more consistent in that I reject even ones that would seem to be favorable to me (like the one that concluded atheists were somehow more intelligent than theists).
and feel guilty for doing things that probably aren't wrong in any objective sense
Morality is subjective, so how could that be?
What "truth" are you talking about? Because there's only one discipline where it can be proven, and that is in formal mathematics.
I'm talking about reality, not mindlessly speculating about how we might actually live in the matrix, or some other such nonsense that will never be proven. I have no reason not to accept what we observe as reality, just like I have no reason not to believe in god. Religion (particularly ones with magical sky daddies) doesn't care about truth, so if you do care about reality, being part of a religion is just foolish.
One of us here is committed to an ideal regardless of what the evidence might say
No. Pay attention. I've been saying all along that your so-called "evidence" is faulty, and could easily be countered with other cherry-picked studies.
The fact is, social 'science' is almost never rigorous. That's just a fact. If your evidence isn't good enough, I'm going to reject it. Maybe there's no alternative at the moment to social 'science', but that's no reason to accept it. I'll accept it when they somehow clean up their act. Until then, no. I have no interest in playing the "Link to studies I think are true!" game with you.
The studies are about as rigorous as it is possible to be with questions like this - that is, not very rigorous by the standards of the "hard sciences", but as good as it gets by medical and social science standards:
Which isn't good at all, so linking to them won't help you.
And the great thing about the social 'sciences' is that you can almost always find a study that reaches a conclusion you agree with, and ignore ones you don't like. You want a study that says atheists are generally more intelligent (nevermind that we don't have an actual way of measuring overall intelligence) than theists? There's a study for you. Religious people are happier? According to these cherry-picked studies that somehow measure such a subjective thing, they certainly are.
That in and of itself should make us question the impulse to dismiss it unilaterally.
No, it shouldn't, at least not if you care about the truth. At the very least, reject the magical sky daddies.
It's good that you admit there are problems, but I would be hesitant to state something like that (that religious people are happier and other such things) as a fact unless it could be validated by rigorous scientific studies.
Health can be measured, relatively objectively, in lots of ways.
It depends on the kind of health. Physical health? Definitely. Mental "health" is much more difficult to measure in a truly scientific way, given how subjective it can be. We can sometimes see chemical imbalances in the brain, but what those do, exactly, is difficult to determine.
Also, "relatively objectively" doesn't sound very scientific at all.
if religious people consistently claim to be happier and healthier, that certainly says something about the impact it has on average.
Great, so you rely on self-reported surveys. How very scientific!
And this is why the "social sciences" are mocked; they don't often produce very scientific results, make subjective claims, rarely succeed in being even close to as rigorous as hard science generally is, are more subject to bias, and often result in the ones doing the study reaching arbitrary conclusions from the data (which may also have been improperly collected, as is often the case). "Here's the data; now I'm going to put forth my conclusion and pretend that there's no other possible explanation for this." sadly seems to be common.
That's basic contempt for the law.
That's basic contempt for *specific laws*.
But smoking weed in your home, cancer patient or not, is not civil disobedience. That's just having contempt for the law. That's corrosive to society.
Oh, bullshit. Not everyone has time to be part of some huge social movement. Law != morality, and breaking certain laws is not corrosive to society. For it to be corrosive to society, you'd have to believe that we're all mindless robots who either follow all laws or follow no laws, which is a nonsensical false dichotomy, or the action itself would have to be overall harmful.
Just breaking the law is not necessarily corrosive at all, and nor does it mean that you have contempt for laws in general. Grow a brain and stop repeating authoritarian nonsense.
Oh, so because you didn't get the answer that you wanted God no longer exists?
Why don't you read the text you're responding to, moron? "So far, none of these have passed the test, thus demonstrating that whether God is real or not, the theologies that try to make us believe that he is, are not true."
Hint: He doesn't say, "Prayer doesn't work; therefore, god doesn't exist." Try again, fool.
People involved with religion are generally healthier, happier, and have "better lives" according to most of the metrics you could attach to that.
Most of the metrics you could attach to that are pseudoscientific because those things are subjective. Happy? "better lives"? "Healthy" in what sense? How can they rigorously and objectively measure *any* of that? It's utter nonsense.
Of course, even those conclusions depend entirely on which source you use.
Now if you're talking about illegal shit, well...then yeah, don't commit crimes. And if you're upset people would get doxed over drugs, that's a problem with the drug laws themselves.
Don't commit crimes? That's your solution to unjust laws?
And no, it isn't just a fucking problem with the drug laws themselves; it's a problem with the people who individually decide to release others' information, because they're the ones who chose to do so. Just because you did something illegal doesn't mean you deserve to have your privacy violated.
It's not okay to commit crimes as long as nobody knows about it.
Illegal != immoral. Legal != moral.
Through very transparent threats, that is.
Yes. The fact that no such legislation exists. This is a voluntary ISP scheme
David Cameron pushed the market into providing such a service.
Right. He "pushed the market," and yet it's all 100% voluntary. More like coerced them with threats.
Censorship is evil, and so is "voluntary" default on censorship.
But they're mandated by the government.
Thats not how science works. What you do is find something you can measure, an aspect of intelligence rather than a perfect definition.
And then you make it clear *exactly* what is being measured. The problem is that ignorant people (mostly the general public) then get the idea that the tests are somehow measuring "intelligence," even if that's not what was being claimed. That is a misunderstanding that needs to be fixed.
Job (especially this) and school success mean little to me, personally. I would think actual innovation would be more interesting, but whatever.
No, but it may tell if they are smart enough to RTF Summary.
Well, maybe people shouldn't be writing inaccurate headlines. Are people not allowed to criticize those?
Ignorant fool; IQ != intelligence. That's just a conclusion that people arbitrarily came to. IQ was originally designed to measure things like success in school, not to measure intelligence. To conflate the two is very unscientific and arbitrary.