Irrational beliefs

[thatdamnwoman]

I just caught a programme on Radio 4, Hashtag Pray, about the fact that while more than 50% of the population say they don't have a religion, belief in things like angels is becoming more and more popular.

The lack of critical thinking and the complete and utter belief and investment in something completely unprovable and anti-science reminded me very much of the transgender movement.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000n94

I checked out one of the websites mentioned,

www.daddyswithangels.org/

Haven't been through many of the pages but is that as creepy as it seemed to me?

I thought exactly the same.

And we’ve just had Joe Lycett and Sara Cox wittering on about gender(s) on Chain Reaction. And with a complete lack of appreciation of the irony he then took the piss out of those annoying ‘uplifting’ memes that not-very-bright people share on SM.

I was hopeful that science and rationality were winning but it does seem like we’re madly dashing back to superstition.

Urgh that Joe Lycett interview! Just idiotic

He’s quite funny but I think he’s in danger of walking the Izzard path.

Yes! It's tremendously disheartening to see such an eager embrace of anything and everything that makes no sense whatsoever.

I've been trying to work out why, in an age of such freely available knowledge, astonishing scientific advances, and despite relative freedom, so many people are eager to subsume all this for pure fancy.

I well understand the religious impulse in human nature. I don't have an issue with people finding comfort in anything that helps them to be better people. But it's like the pendulum swings away from organized religion and does not rest in sensible rationality with an allowance for individual freedom, it goes so far to the other extreme that the language of rational science is itself co-opted as part of a strange religious impulse that also incorporates sheer superstition.

Its very easy to mock religious feeling, however it manifests - but we should probably be asking why science and rational thinking have so little sway when science at least is still held in such high regard in our society.

I was horrified that after a century or more of psychology and psychoanalysis and psychotherapy the medieval mind is still going strong.

But there's a significant section of society that doesn't really hold science in high regard. Humanities teaching is often subtly or not so subtly anti-science and technology, for example.

I came across this earlier this morning: Jane Clare Jones tweeted regarding the belief of some humanities academics in “discourse” and its power:

It's like they've all got these insane God-complexes. Like they think they actually speak the whole world into existence, and they can just speak it out again.

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1061710838208303105

For some reason, those words really resonated with me. I’m trying to think it through: how does this link to other social, historical, psychological phenomena? I’m thinking magicians, shamans, Faust, priestly caste, curses….is there actually a link here? Some underlying psychological tendency in the human mind expressing itself in a novel “modern” way via the notion of “discourse”?

I always had this theory that it’s human nature to belief in a god of some sort, it’s like a need that faith/ religion fulfils, a human need that cannot be met by science. Rational thinking and logic cannot simply talk us out of having this need. Even when you take away religion/faith and pretend it doesn’t matter, the need does not go away.

Yes, I think what I mean is that it is widely accepted in our society that if something ostensibly has the backing of science, it is more respected.

Science is great for physical things and natural world, rubbish at human nature though.

I don't agree that science is rubbish at human nature. It's just that we are very, very early in the application of genuine scientific methods to exploring human psychology (e.g. psychoanalysis, which dominated psychology for decades was about as unscientific as you can get).

It's science that discovered that people with autistic spectrum disorder aren't just odd, lazy and rude, which is how the humanities always interpreted them. Ditto for people with specific learning difficulties, mental illnesses etc - all our genuine understanding of those has come from science.

I don't disagree. I guess that's why I'm suggesting looking at why modern secularism has failed to make any inroads about the strength of superstition.

I see good attempts by people like Brian Cox to harness the sense of wonder that is part of the religious impulse, but mostly secularists just scorn that religious impulse and it leaves most people in a strange place where they adopt a Trumpian post-truth superstition, and maybe coat it with a few cod-science facts to help with the cognitive dissonance.

Floral I agree that superstitious thinking is deeply rooted, enough to suspect it's a natural part of human psychology. There's been quite a lot written about this and why it might be the case. Probably a mixture of innate cognitive biases, combined with the emotional rewards that come from it.

Scientific thinking and methods, on the other hand, tend to be highly counter-intuitive, and thus require effort and overcoming of more natural cognitive biases and predispositions. That's why it took us so long to invent it and elaborate it. It takes continual effort and practice to sustain, particularly for subjects where an individual's emotions are involved - so-called emotional "hot buttons".

We don't actually teach it, either, for the most part.

Yup, I think genuine education is nearly always going to be the answer for most things. What seems to happen now, for various reasons, is a combination of randomly collected ideologies and bits and bobs of whatever political posturing has deemed is affirdable in schools, usually by a postcode lottery.

Sheesh, if I didn't have a faith, I could get quite despondent!

• I guess that's why I'm suggesting looking at why modern secularism has failed to make any inroads about the strength of superstition.

Maybe some of it's because the scientific method can answer questions: 'how', 'what', 'when' - and increasingly 'who'. But many humans want a why. A plan or purpose to existence. Well, sorry folks, but 'we're here because we're here', humans evolved by natural selection on this rock, tiny in the vast expanses of the universe. It's up to us to make our own purpose.

Added to that ... understanding science takes both a certain level of mental ability and effort, even with good science education available.

The massive existential question isn't going to go away just because we have a better understanding of all questions except 'Why?'

For some of us it's a powerful baseline, as well as an organising principle. This is precisely what I don't really get - you'd have to be spectacularly insular to not see how strong the religious impulse in humans, broadly speaking. So how come so many secularists just stop at scorn and mockery and contribute to this strange adversarial relationship that means that so many feel they have to choose between science and some form of metaphysical belief, even if they do dress the metaphysical belief up in scienceish language?

I studies social psychology but I got interested in neuroscience when I had my Asperger’s assessment.

One theory of religion that appeals to me is that it’s the opposite of my condition: an overactive ‘theory of mind’.

Whereas some of us have difficulty reading other people’s intentions, many others read intent into inanimate objects or phenomena such as the weather.

It makes sense in evolutionary terms. If the grass is rustling it’s sensible to have the instinctive feeling that there’s something sentient (such as a tiger) lurking there rather than just the wind blowing it.

Gods are just an extension of the feeling that something is watching.

I find some hope in those Buddhists who get their brains looked at in MRI machines etc. They seem happy to accept that it literally is 'all in the mind' and want to understand it better. Of course, Buddhism is unusual in being non-theistic, 'enlightenment' is not due to an external agency.

We don't actually teach it, either, for the most part.

Quite.

It’s about time scientific thought and method got more space, and some philosophy and ethics wouldn’t go amiss.

you'd have to be spectacularly insular to not see how strong the religious impulse in humans, broadly speaking. So how come so many secularists just stop at scorn and mockery

Firstly, lots of people make asumptions about "human nature" based mainly on introspection. They don't realise that not everyone thinks and feels like them. It takes serious education (and effort) to overcome this, and a lot of people haven't had this.

Secondly, many people who are against religion (I prefer to not use secularists for this meaning) have suffered from it personally, in one way or another. This makes them resentful, and hyper-aware of the damage religion can cause. So they feel it's important to campaign against it. This can also be true even of those who haven't suffered personally. Because it does tend to be true that religion is often beneficial to the people who believe in it, but seriously damaging, even sometimes life-threatening, to those who don't. So people don't see the religious impulse as harmless, and rightly or wrongly they don't want to compromise over it.

Third, a lot of people believe human nature is much more malleable than I personally believe it is. Fifty years ago the idea that humans were essentially "blank slates" psychologically was almost universally accepted among academics and most people on the left. So there are still a lot of people who think that socialisation could rid us of the religious impulse. And ridicule and condemnation can operate to shift social perceptions of what is acceptable, over time. So they may genuinely believe in those tactics.

Good analysis, yes. I'm the last person to deny the harm the religious impulse can do.

I would so like to believe, I really would. I just can't.

Yes, I used to believe when I was young (brought up to it) but stopped at around 16. That's one reason I can see the appeal of it. So I can sort of see both sides.

I just posted this: this would be a good thing I think. We need critical abs scientific thinkers in government.

Brian Cox considers becoming an mp www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3421695-brian-cox-considers-becoming-an-mp

Yes agree. Critical thinking, action oriented philosophers and jurisprudence people needed I think - if there is such a thing.

Less of the PC woke Stasi career activists please.