Hypothesis: the more educated you are the less likely you are to be religious

faetal on 1/2/2012 at 11:00

The most amazing thing about science is how it has partially overcome the problem of a processing entity being necessarily limited in understanding the information which it is emergent from.

Take one super genius human being and give it the world and it will probably wonder, explore and discover a fair amount, but will by default be limited to finding out a certain amount before it expires. The limit of what it can even comprehend will only go so far before it can not think in increasing complexity.

Fortunately, we have one informational super-weapon: language. Over centuries, we have made discoveries and encoded them into a format which can be decoded and improved upon by others. We have taken the problem of an organism needing to be more complex than the system it lives in to understand it (think about a computer trying to simulate a more powerful computer - not possible due to lack of spare computational bits, assuming that the computer is using all of its resources already), and beaten it with mathematics. Because of language allowing the capture of ideas and progress, all of humanity has become a de facto brain, where the complexity of what we can investigate is a function of how many different people can attack a problem and disseminate the progress.

It's mind-blowing what we've achieved. And yet, because it's not yet (and likely will never be) 100% conclusive, we have to make room for some supernatural entity from some old books (the entity depends on who you talk to mind, but they're all definitely right - regardless)? It's a little exasperating at times. Religion has a place inside the minds and closed communities of those who require something extra which science doesn't provide. Other than that, it's pretty redundant.

Nicker on 1/2/2012 at 11:01

Quote Posted by heywood

Conflict between religion and science is not innate and the two can coexist because they serve different human needs.

Begging to differ.

Religion used to do the job of science, describing nature and making predictions about its behaviour, usually by anthropomorphising it and projecting human values on the universe.

Community, redemption, meditation, healing, charity and all the other practical expressions of religions, are those behaviours which have assured our survival as a species or might deepen our appreciation of being alive. They don't require an external divinity to exist.

These days science is much better at describing nature and is far more accurate at predicting it than religion. Faith is consigned to explaining those things for which an explanation has yet to be found or by explaining things that have no measurable qualities. Intangibles.

The most important intangible is, what happens after we die? It always comes down to that, no matter how we slice it, no matter the vestment or sacrament. Death is The Elephant on the Altar. Religion is all about predicting a future we cannot know. All the "personal relationship" and "experiencing god's love" rhetoric is just code for "I can get us in to this club. I know the doorman".

It is a powerful and attractive fantasy but it's still wishful thinking and what healthful need does that serve? I'd rather savour the mysteries of this life than miss it while preening for the promise of a members only after party.

faetal on 1/2/2012 at 11:10

"Eat all of your greens or there's no dessert"

Personally, I know (to the philosophical extent that's possible) that I am alive now and also that I could die from any number of causes at any moment. I plan to use this life as well as possible and don't care about an afterlife. There is yet to be anything which suggest such a thing may exist, or even why there needs to be any reason to believe in an afterlife, other than because people fear death and need to believe that the "souls" of loved ones persist somehow in a place they can one day reach.

I don't believe in an afterlife, or divine judgement, yet I live my life by a strong moral code, just because I value other people and I want to have a positive impact as much as I can. Simply because doing things which are "good" result in my brain secreting reward pathway hormones and the thought, and occasional action of doing something "bad" does the opposite. This is the result of millennia of honing of positive outcomes in social caste organisms which find themselves tending to act in a manner beneficial to the group over the individual. I have always thought that the idea of not stealing, killing, raping, lying, cheating, hurting because of fear of judgement and a poor result in the afterlife is an obscene and worryingly sociopathic set of reasons to act in a moral fashion.

Independent Thief on 2/2/2012 at 01:47

Quote Posted by Azaran

Just to add to this: this is one of the reasons that religion is dying in the West. Secular ethics and morality have rendered their religious counterparts obsolete, and so most people who apostatize either become atheists, or they go looking for a religion that can actually provide philosophical meaning, spiritual solace and mystical practices (e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age, &c).

I disagree, I think the people in the West nowadays are overfed pigs who are more interested in being entertained and new gizmos "bread and circuses" etc than in anything spiritual.:p "Take up your cross and follow Me" isn't going to be popular in that kind of environment.

Azaran on 2/2/2012 at 02:06

Quote Posted by Independent Thief

Yeah, that's true. The ones that do look for something deeper are the minority. Extreme materialism is the norm nowadays. It's been a problem for centuries though. The Corpus Hermeticum put it best:

But those who missed the point of the proclamation are people of reason because they did not receive the gift of mind as well and do not know the purpose or the agents of their coming to be. These people have sensations much like those of unreasoning animals, and, since their temperament is willful and angry, they feel no awe of things that deserve to be admired; they divert their attention to the pleasures and appetites of their bodies; and they believe that mankind came to be for such purposes....just as processions passing by in public cannot achieve anything of themselves, though they can be a hindrance to others, in the same way these people are only parading through the cosmos, led astray by pleasures of the body....."People, earthborn men, you who have surrendered yourselved to drunkenness and sleep and ignorance of god, make yourselves sober and end your drunken sickness, for you are bewitched in unreasoning sleep.".

Azaran on 2/2/2012 at 02:23

And the problem is not that people are dragged away from religion, it's that materialism drags people away from literature, culture, academic pursuits (unless they need to study them because they need a diploma). It seems most people nowadays don't give a shit about philosophy, science, classical art, etc. The only time they even look at these things is if they have to study them (because they need a degree so they can get a well paying job). People are too busy watching American Idol, sports, and buying new gadgets to pursue anything more meaningful.

Angel Dust on 2/2/2012 at 03:02

Quote Posted by Muzman

(there's a few people throwing around sting theory in this thread. Yeah, it's surprisingly famous, but it seems it's basically a punch line in cosmological circles now because it produced nothing in 30 years)

Cosmologists have no love for Synchronicity?

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist. Please, do carry on people; it's been very interesting reading so far.

heywood on 2/2/2012 at 08:10

I can't keep up with you guys, but I'll try to respond to the religion bits first and the cosmology bits after.

Quote Posted by jay pettitt

What you're talking about is questions like 'To what higher purpose are we here for?'

Yes, you're right. Why are we here, where did the universe come from, is there a grand design or did we just get really lucky, what is the source of natural law, are humans special, what's a good philosophy of life, why do good or bad things happen to me, etc. etc.

Quote:

- but you've not done the legwork to establish that we might be here for a super natural reason. You might as well ask why the moon is made of cheese. If that's the sort of question you need religion for, you can keep it. Personally I'd not bother unless they found cheese on the moon. Horse before cart.

Humans are pre-programmed to seek answers for these questions and most people just can't let them go even if they'll never know the real answers. It's not just theists, people seek answers through non-theistic religions, astrology, fate, philosophy, etc. I was raised a Christian but am now firmly in the agnostic camp mainly because I can't intellectually justify beliefs of any sort (theism, atheism, whatever). What I know or can know is what really matters. So I tend to agree with the "Personally I'd not bother". I try not not bother. However, I'm still not 100% comfortable with humankind's biggest questions being unanswerable.

Quote:

But lets play fair. If religion is good at why questions - why is there a god?

Well, you're asking the wrong guy. But I'll try. For me, it's difficult to accept that the universe could spontaneously come into existence out of nothing, at a finite point in time, without a cause. There had to be a reason or cause, but I will never know what it is. God is one hypothesis. A collision of m-dimensional branes is another hypothesis. In my view, these two hypotheses have equivalent scientific value (zero) because they are untestable and unprovable. The fact that one came from ancient mysticism and the other came from guys masturbating with equations doesn't really matter. However, the God hypothesis has appealing features: an explanation for why the initial conditions were just right, why the random chances went a certain way to give rise to us, etc. So even though I can't accept either hypothesis (or any other currently on the table) I can see why the God hypothesis has wider appeal.

Quote Posted by faetal

Yes, humans do seem to have need to fill in the unknown with something we can identify with. However, my problem comes from when people start proclaiming absolute truths that their god/religion is the correct one. Or using it as a platform to attempt to undermine other people's way of life or to impinge on people's education.

When it comes to imposing religion on others, I agree. But I expect people to believe their religion is correct and I'm OK with that as long as they don't demand that everybody else agrees. As long as our government, institutions, and key elements of our culture remain secular, I'm not concerned about religious advocacy, only coercion. There are also some benefits to society from religion, so I'm not sure it would be good if it all went away.

Quote:

I hate repeating myself, but why do most e.g Christians take for granted that older pantheons are consigned to the rubbish heap while being totally sure that theirs is, and has always been the truth? It's like ignoring an elephant in the room. No one suspects that there is something off about The Truth (tm) being conveyed to some desert scribes some time during the bronze age and that this time, it's definitely the truth, not like all of those other divinely inspired truths which came earlier, or the other contemporary ones used by people from different cultures. Just on a purely philosophical basis, this idea that there are various absolute truths about the origin and fabric of the universe being circulated depending on where you were born, is very, very suspect.

Or why for most of history God limited his contacts and influence to the middle east?

Quote:

I see religion as being science's cousin in a weird way. Centuries ago, a large amount of scientific investigation was carried out by religious people - Gregor Mendel is a great example. Because in pre-enlightenment times, it was religious interest in "God's work" which drove a lot of questions about how nature operated. It is only when the knowledge surpassed a point where god made much sense where the two diverged so much. Religion became the domain of supernatural belief and science became the domain of "how does this stuff work"? It's a strange thing.

We're getting a bit Eurocentric, but I think it's rooted in the unique position of the church at the fall of the Roman empire. At that point, the role and authority of the church transcended religion and it became the central government of Europe. And like any other big bureaucratic monarchy, it resisted ceding power. Eventually the Protestant Reformation happened, followed by the Enlightenment, and the church fought back hard with inquisitions trying to suppress anything and anybody it perceived as a eroding its power. Science got caught up in the middle of it because of the interest in science among the leaders of the enlightenment.

Consider the most well-known inquisition from that period, Galileo's. The debate was really science vs. science: Copernican science vs. Aristotelian science, not religion vs. science. There are a couple of passing lines in the Bible that could be interpreted as vaguely implying geocentrism, e.g. giving foundations to the Earth so that it not be removed, but nothing you can really hang your hat on. The church stepped into science as part of a wider effort to put down the enlightenment, because the movement was a threat to the church's power and authority.

Note the same Catholic church took a completely different approach with evolution. The church sat on the sidelines of the evolution debate for a while, with Pope Pius in 1950 saying the hypothesis was compatible with Christianity but yet unproven, and later the church practically embraced evolution under John Paul (albeit still insisting on ensoulment).

These days, it's the fundamentalists carrying the anti-science banner. I can be sympathetic to a lot religious views, but I draw the line at fundamentalists (from a sympathy view that is, they're still free to think what they want).

Quote Posted by Nicker

The most important intangible is, what happens after we die? It always comes down to that, no matter how we slice it, no matter the vestment or sacrament. Death is The Elephant on the Altar. Religion is all about predicting a future we cannot know. All the "personal relationship" and "experiencing god's love" rhetoric is just code for "I can get us in to this club. I know the doorman".

I can't agree that this is universal. It's a personal thing, and maybe an age thing. What happens after death might be the most important thing to many people, but it isn't for everybody. Definitely not for me. Definitely not for Buddhists.

faetal on 2/2/2012 at 08:56

Quote Posted by heywood

For me, it's difficult to accept that the universe could spontaneously come into existence out of nothing, at a finite point in time, without a cause.

Logical fallacy - argument from incredulity. Lack of acceptance of a is not grounds for b.

Quote:

There had to be a reason or cause, but I will never know what it is.

Logical fallacy - begs the question. No basis for there having to be a reason. Causality too is based on humanity's perception of the flow of entropy, and it is likely that these relationships break down at whatever beginning there was.

Quote:

God is one hypothesis.

One of millions based on ancient literature as opposed to anything which exists. The only reason god gets promoted is because he's currently popular, not because he's left more evidence. The most popular idea isn't the truest. Also, not really a hypothesis as it is just assumed to be true by those who believe. A hypothesis sets itself up for falsification. This is why these debates occur, because people take religious concepts and dress them up in scientific terminology in order to promote their tangibility. God is not a hypothesis.

Quote:

A collision of m-dimensional branes is another hypothesis.

Made de novo by observing the universe.

Quote:

In my view, these two hypotheses have equivalent scientific value (zero) because they are untestable and unprovable. The fact that one came from ancient mysticism and the other came from guys masturbating with equations doesn't really matter.

It would be more realistic to compare christianity and scientology - an old religion and a new one. Brane hypothesis does not seek to inject meaning into anything, or anthropomorphise the universe, just offers a mathematically plausible mechanism for the universe which we may never be able to verify. Putting it on a par with religion is reaching. Just because they are equally falsifiable, does not make them equally plausible.

Quote:

However, the God hypothesis has appealing features: an explanation for why the initial conditions were just right, why the random chances went a certain way to give rise to us, etc. So even though I can't accept either hypothesis (or any other currently on the table) I can see why the God hypothesis has wider appeal.

Logical fallacy - appeal to majority.

Quote:

I also agree. Which is why it is disturbing that in order to have even the remotest chance of being elected President of the most powerful nation on earth, one must have scripture embroidered in one's pyjamas. I think it is safe to say that religion is a troublesome issue for the wider world still.

faetal on 2/2/2012 at 09:07

Quote Posted by Azaran

This.

There is nothing wrong with people abandoning spirituality, since it is not solely responsible for any positive personality traits. Morality, creativity, altruism, open-mindedness are all inherent human traits which do not require any prompting from the supernatural. However, materialism drags people away from any kind of interaction with the real world by giving people greater escapism.

Slightly OT, but I rather enjoy this cartoon: (http://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Huxley-Orwell-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.jpg)