Well, regardless of how those beliefs “seeped” into your brain initially, now you have the option of paying attention to them and making some informed decisions about what beliefs you endorse, what beliefs you reject, what beliefs you intend to research further, etc.
It might be helpful to start by simply articulating the various beliefs that are relevant here, and your reasons for believing and not believing them (by which I mean both the evidence in favor of or against them, and your motives for endorsing or rejecting them independent of evidence).
now you have the option of paying attention to them and making some informed decisions about what beliefs you endorse, what beliefs you reject, what beliefs you intend to research further, etc.
Just noticing that my beliefs and their associated emotions had changed was enough for me to start listing them to myself...which has done a lot to cut off the emotions associated, too. Here are some beliefs which I think are relevant here:
I believe that it is a good thing to try and hold only beliefs that are true relative to the outside world, and to update on evidence from that world. I believe this, well, because it’s useful, and maybe partly because it’s a high-status LW idea. To a degree, I did not always believe this...I went through a ‘the truth is relative’ phase.
I believe that the current evidence says that reductionism is true, that the universe is made up of interactions between smaller parts which are not in themselves intelligent, that cause-and-effect holds. I believe this because it’s what I’ve read in textbooks and books I read for fun, and because it feels elegant and satisfying to believe it. I already believed this before LW and I don’t think LW has influenced it much. Nor has going to church.
I believe that there are people who believe in spirits. I expect that they believe in them because someone told them about it, or they read about it, and thought it was neat.
I believe that many people do not think about whether their beliefs are true relative to the outside world, or what evidence of their truth/falsehood would look like, or why evidence matters. I believe this because it seems obvious to me that the laws of science as we know them do not imply supernatural beings, that the only ‘evidence’ for their existence is the fact that people talk and write about them, and that their are other, simpler explanations for people talking and writing about supernatural beings than their actual existence (i.e. people misconstruing actual experiences, or wishful thinking.)
I do not actually believe that the existence of people believing in the supernatural is that much a bad thing for the world, as long as they don’t go around doing destructive things because of those beliefs. I believe this because most people I know have a firm moral compass regardless of what they think about religion or the supernatural.
I believe that there are people on LW who do think that religion, and people who believe in the supernatural, is a very bad thing for the world. I think that their reasons for believing this are that humans act more ineffectively and waste energy on irrational pursuits like religion. I agree with this, but I disagree on the final outcome because I think many people on LW overestimate the effectiveness of people who aren’t religious or obviously irrational. Most of the people my age who I know to be involved in charity, curious, thoughtful, wanting to be better people, and generally passionate about life, are religious. Many of the ‘atheists’ I know are apathetic or don’t reflect much on their lives.
OK. And if I’m understanding you correctly, you believe that the existence on LW of the belief you describe in #5/#6, that religion and supernatural beliefs are harmful, is causing you to be less able to coordinate usefully with people who hold religious and supernatural beliefs, despite the fact that you endorse such coordination, entirely because you want to fit in here and the way to fit in is to treat such people in ways that are mutually exclusive with such coordination.
I think that’s the underlying motivation, yeah. Putting it explicitly makes it a lot easier to say to myself “well, that’s stupid… It’s my brain and I can do with it what I want.”
I think that their reasons for believing this are that humans act more ineffectively and waste energy on irrational pursuits like religion.
That’s one of the reasons, but not the only one. IMO religion is also harmful because it closes off legitimate avenues of inquiry: once you’ve decided that the answer to some question is “god did it’, or “it’s a mystery of mysteries”, you tend to not spend much time looking for the answer. Historically, though, the answer usually turned out to be something like “this question makes no sense because it rests on incorrect assumptions”, or something like “GMm / r^2” (which is an informative and useful answer).
Religion is also harmful (and again, this is just my own opinion) because it discourages critical thought, replacing it with faith. This not only reduces the overall effectiveness of our decision-making processes, but also contributes to legitimizing religious practices that directly harm people, such as faith healing.
Religion is also harmful (and again, this is just my own opinion) because it discourages critical thought, replacing it with faith.
I’m actually not sure to what degree this is true for religion in general. The emphasis on faith-in-itself seems to be mainly a Christian thing to me, although it’s contaminated a lot of later (i.e. New Age) thought in the Christian cultural sphere; what I’ve read of Islam, for example, puts a pretty heavy emphasis on scholarship, and doesn’t seem to isolate religious observations from empirical confirmation nearly to the same degree that Christianity does. The same goes for Buddhism, for several branches of occultism, and even for some minor Christian traditions, especially prior to the Enlightenment.
I think a fully general objection to religious thought would have to be a bit more subtle: even when a religion contains a tradition of inquiry, even when clerical roles look a lot like research positions, usually only confirming evidence is accepted. This doesn’t have quite the same structure as faith in the modern Christian sense: tautological belief isn’t thought of as virtuous. But the bottom line is already written, and arguments are only respected insofar as they provide support for it. Critical thought isn’t discouraged, but it’s only thought of as beneficial insofar as it serves preexisting goals. (Eliezer gets into this a bit in “Avoiding Your Belief’s Real Weak Points”, although I don’t think it’s limited to orthodox Judaism by any means.) Actually, I don’t even think this is specific to religion: lots of identity groups behave in similar ways.
I think a fully general objection to religious thought would have to be a bit more subtle: even when a religion contains a tradition of inquiry, even when clerical roles look a lot like research positions, usually only confirming evidence is accepted. … But the bottom line is already written, and arguments are only respected insofar as they provide support for it.
That’s a very good point; I have nothing to add but my agreement.
But the bottom line is already written, and arguments are only respected insofar as they provide support for it.
This seems to describe a lot of what I’ve heard about Jewish ‘scholarship’, mostly according to Eliezer. Also, their definition of what constitutes strong versus weak evidence, and what it’s evidence of, is very different from scientific evidence. I don’t deny that the Old Testament exists, or even that its content is evidence of something (it shows what the culture and thought was like back in the ancient Middle East), but I wouldn’t think of proving a scientific hypothesis by pulling out a Torah quote that supported it.
Religion is also harmful (and again, this is just my own opinion) because it discourages critical thought, replacing it with faith.
I agree with you 100% on this. If we’re ever going to move towards a world where significantly more people have good critical thinking skills, religion will have to either be abolished or slowly fade. However, I don’t think removing all churches and religions right now would change much in terms of critical thinking. My opinion is that most people are religious because they are poor critical thinkers...not poor critical thinkers because of their religion., although to a degree the two might interact in a kind of loop or vicious cycle.
Agreed that most of the poor critical thinking in the world has causes other than religion. But I also agree with Bugmaster that a lot of religious institutions discourage critical thinking.
The situation seems to me analogous to thieves in a poor neighborhood. No, eliminating the thieves will not suddenly make the neighborhood wealthier. On the other hand, if the thieves are allowed to operate unimpeded, nothing else will make the neighborhood wealthier either. On the other other hand, perhaps other techniques for making the neighborhood wealthier will cause the thieves to leave the neighborhood on their own.
Personally, I suspect that if all religious institutions suddenly vanished tomorrow, it would be easier to propagate certain forms of critical thinking, but that nobody would actually take significant advantage of the opportunity thus created.
My opinion is that most people are religious because they are poor critical thinkers...not poor critical thinkers because of their religion., although to a degree the two might interact in a kind of loop or vicious cycle.
The “vicious cycle” hypothesis sounds right to me. Most people tend to simply follow the religion of their parents, simply accepting it as a given, because that’s what they were raised with from childhood. And, since most religions encourage faith and discourage doubt, this has an overall chilling effect on the prevalence of critical thinking skills across the entire population… which, in turn, makes it easier to raise one’s children in the religion, as well, thus completing the cycle.
I also know an awful lot of totally non-religious people who don’t seem to have the best critical thinking skills either. Maybe it’s a thing of youth...maybe most middle 20-year-olds are sheltered and complacent and it’s a bias of juvenile brains in particular to care more about status and having fun than about being right or being curious about the world. I certainly hope it gets better as I get older. In general, though, I don’t see a big difference between the actual day-to-day, real-life behavior of religious 20-year-olds and non-religious 20-year-olds...except that many of the religious young people tend to spend more time volunteering or otherwise trying to change things for the better, and spend more time thinking about how they can be better people. (Or at least talk more about these things.)
In general, though, I don’t see a big difference between the actual day-to-day, real-life behavior of religious 20-year-olds and non-religious 20-year-olds...
I think this depends on the population. I have some Catholic acquaintances, for example, who are committed to a child-bearing schedule set by their pastors; this behavior is certainly different from that of non-Catholics. But that’s just a single data point, not a statistically significant trend.
except that many of the religious young people tend to spend more time volunteering or otherwise trying to change things for the better, and spend more time thinking about how they can be better people. (Or at least talk more about these things.)
Is there some data to back this up, adjusted for various meanings of “better” ?
No rigorously collected data, unfortunately (although someone may have studied it.) It’s more a weighted average in my head of people I know personally.
I have a somewhat similar experience. As a teen, I prefered to spend holidays with christian groups, although the religion never made sense to me. The reasons ? No or moderate alcohol drinking, extremely rare smoking with no peer pressure to try it, possibility to sing and not embarass myself, possibility to discuss what is right and wrong and not embarass myself. Mild and more merciful manifestations of the pecking order compared to the world outside of the community. (Christian groups do have their alpha individuals, no mistake in that, but they are nicer about it). More volunteering inside this group than outside. This is obviously a comparison based on people I knew personaly, no statistical survey with standard deviatons etc. I certainly could find atheists and agnostics which would have such qualities, but that was sort of hand-picking of isolated individuals. The Christians were a ready-to-go group I could just join, if I wanted to have some fun with more people around me.
Well, regardless of how those beliefs “seeped” into your brain initially, now you have the option of paying attention to them and making some informed decisions about what beliefs you endorse, what beliefs you reject, what beliefs you intend to research further, etc.
It might be helpful to start by simply articulating the various beliefs that are relevant here, and your reasons for believing and not believing them (by which I mean both the evidence in favor of or against them, and your motives for endorsing or rejecting them independent of evidence).
Just noticing that my beliefs and their associated emotions had changed was enough for me to start listing them to myself...which has done a lot to cut off the emotions associated, too. Here are some beliefs which I think are relevant here:
I believe that it is a good thing to try and hold only beliefs that are true relative to the outside world, and to update on evidence from that world. I believe this, well, because it’s useful, and maybe partly because it’s a high-status LW idea. To a degree, I did not always believe this...I went through a ‘the truth is relative’ phase.
I believe that the current evidence says that reductionism is true, that the universe is made up of interactions between smaller parts which are not in themselves intelligent, that cause-and-effect holds. I believe this because it’s what I’ve read in textbooks and books I read for fun, and because it feels elegant and satisfying to believe it. I already believed this before LW and I don’t think LW has influenced it much. Nor has going to church.
I believe that there are people who believe in spirits. I expect that they believe in them because someone told them about it, or they read about it, and thought it was neat.
I believe that many people do not think about whether their beliefs are true relative to the outside world, or what evidence of their truth/falsehood would look like, or why evidence matters. I believe this because it seems obvious to me that the laws of science as we know them do not imply supernatural beings, that the only ‘evidence’ for their existence is the fact that people talk and write about them, and that their are other, simpler explanations for people talking and writing about supernatural beings than their actual existence (i.e. people misconstruing actual experiences, or wishful thinking.)
I do not actually believe that the existence of people believing in the supernatural is that much a bad thing for the world, as long as they don’t go around doing destructive things because of those beliefs. I believe this because most people I know have a firm moral compass regardless of what they think about religion or the supernatural.
I believe that there are people on LW who do think that religion, and people who believe in the supernatural, is a very bad thing for the world. I think that their reasons for believing this are that humans act more ineffectively and waste energy on irrational pursuits like religion. I agree with this, but I disagree on the final outcome because I think many people on LW overestimate the effectiveness of people who aren’t religious or obviously irrational. Most of the people my age who I know to be involved in charity, curious, thoughtful, wanting to be better people, and generally passionate about life, are religious. Many of the ‘atheists’ I know are apathetic or don’t reflect much on their lives.
OK. And if I’m understanding you correctly, you believe that the existence on LW of the belief you describe in #5/#6, that religion and supernatural beliefs are harmful, is causing you to be less able to coordinate usefully with people who hold religious and supernatural beliefs, despite the fact that you endorse such coordination, entirely because you want to fit in here and the way to fit in is to treat such people in ways that are mutually exclusive with such coordination.
Is that correct?
I think that’s the underlying motivation, yeah. Putting it explicitly makes it a lot easier to say to myself “well, that’s stupid… It’s my brain and I can do with it what I want.”
Yeah, that’s been my experience as well.
That’s one of the reasons, but not the only one. IMO religion is also harmful because it closes off legitimate avenues of inquiry: once you’ve decided that the answer to some question is “god did it’, or “it’s a mystery of mysteries”, you tend to not spend much time looking for the answer. Historically, though, the answer usually turned out to be something like “this question makes no sense because it rests on incorrect assumptions”, or something like “GMm / r^2” (which is an informative and useful answer).
Religion is also harmful (and again, this is just my own opinion) because it discourages critical thought, replacing it with faith. This not only reduces the overall effectiveness of our decision-making processes, but also contributes to legitimizing religious practices that directly harm people, such as faith healing.
I’m actually not sure to what degree this is true for religion in general. The emphasis on faith-in-itself seems to be mainly a Christian thing to me, although it’s contaminated a lot of later (i.e. New Age) thought in the Christian cultural sphere; what I’ve read of Islam, for example, puts a pretty heavy emphasis on scholarship, and doesn’t seem to isolate religious observations from empirical confirmation nearly to the same degree that Christianity does. The same goes for Buddhism, for several branches of occultism, and even for some minor Christian traditions, especially prior to the Enlightenment.
I think a fully general objection to religious thought would have to be a bit more subtle: even when a religion contains a tradition of inquiry, even when clerical roles look a lot like research positions, usually only confirming evidence is accepted. This doesn’t have quite the same structure as faith in the modern Christian sense: tautological belief isn’t thought of as virtuous. But the bottom line is already written, and arguments are only respected insofar as they provide support for it. Critical thought isn’t discouraged, but it’s only thought of as beneficial insofar as it serves preexisting goals. (Eliezer gets into this a bit in “Avoiding Your Belief’s Real Weak Points”, although I don’t think it’s limited to orthodox Judaism by any means.) Actually, I don’t even think this is specific to religion: lots of identity groups behave in similar ways.
That’s a very good point; I have nothing to add but my agreement.
This seems to describe a lot of what I’ve heard about Jewish ‘scholarship’, mostly according to Eliezer. Also, their definition of what constitutes strong versus weak evidence, and what it’s evidence of, is very different from scientific evidence. I don’t deny that the Old Testament exists, or even that its content is evidence of something (it shows what the culture and thought was like back in the ancient Middle East), but I wouldn’t think of proving a scientific hypothesis by pulling out a Torah quote that supported it.
I agree with you 100% on this. If we’re ever going to move towards a world where significantly more people have good critical thinking skills, religion will have to either be abolished or slowly fade. However, I don’t think removing all churches and religions right now would change much in terms of critical thinking. My opinion is that most people are religious because they are poor critical thinkers...not poor critical thinkers because of their religion., although to a degree the two might interact in a kind of loop or vicious cycle.
Agreed that most of the poor critical thinking in the world has causes other than religion.
But I also agree with Bugmaster that a lot of religious institutions discourage critical thinking.
The situation seems to me analogous to thieves in a poor neighborhood. No, eliminating the thieves will not suddenly make the neighborhood wealthier. On the other hand, if the thieves are allowed to operate unimpeded, nothing else will make the neighborhood wealthier either. On the other other hand, perhaps other techniques for making the neighborhood wealthier will cause the thieves to leave the neighborhood on their own.
Personally, I suspect that if all religious institutions suddenly vanished tomorrow, it would be easier to propagate certain forms of critical thinking, but that nobody would actually take significant advantage of the opportunity thus created.
Good analogy. Maybe I’ll find an opportunity to bring it up next time I’m discussing this with friends… I’ll make sure to cite it as coming from you.
Heh. I sense an Abbott and Costello routine coming on.
“TheOtherDave says—”
“Which other Dave?”
”The Less Wrong one.”
“What makes him less wrong than the first Dave?”
”Which first Dave?”
I hereby declare that analogy public domain. Use it in good health.
The “vicious cycle” hypothesis sounds right to me. Most people tend to simply follow the religion of their parents, simply accepting it as a given, because that’s what they were raised with from childhood. And, since most religions encourage faith and discourage doubt, this has an overall chilling effect on the prevalence of critical thinking skills across the entire population… which, in turn, makes it easier to raise one’s children in the religion, as well, thus completing the cycle.
I think all of that is true.
I also know an awful lot of totally non-religious people who don’t seem to have the best critical thinking skills either. Maybe it’s a thing of youth...maybe most middle 20-year-olds are sheltered and complacent and it’s a bias of juvenile brains in particular to care more about status and having fun than about being right or being curious about the world. I certainly hope it gets better as I get older. In general, though, I don’t see a big difference between the actual day-to-day, real-life behavior of religious 20-year-olds and non-religious 20-year-olds...except that many of the religious young people tend to spend more time volunteering or otherwise trying to change things for the better, and spend more time thinking about how they can be better people. (Or at least talk more about these things.)
I think this depends on the population. I have some Catholic acquaintances, for example, who are committed to a child-bearing schedule set by their pastors; this behavior is certainly different from that of non-Catholics. But that’s just a single data point, not a statistically significant trend.
Is there some data to back this up, adjusted for various meanings of “better” ?
No rigorously collected data, unfortunately (although someone may have studied it.) It’s more a weighted average in my head of people I know personally.
I have a somewhat similar experience. As a teen, I prefered to spend holidays with christian groups, although the religion never made sense to me. The reasons ? No or moderate alcohol drinking, extremely rare smoking with no peer pressure to try it, possibility to sing and not embarass myself, possibility to discuss what is right and wrong and not embarass myself. Mild and more merciful manifestations of the pecking order compared to the world outside of the community. (Christian groups do have their alpha individuals, no mistake in that, but they are nicer about it). More volunteering inside this group than outside. This is obviously a comparison based on people I knew personaly, no statistical survey with standard deviatons etc. I certainly could find atheists and agnostics which would have such qualities, but that was sort of hand-picking of isolated individuals. The Christians were a ready-to-go group I could just join, if I wanted to have some fun with more people around me.