Why are people fooled by religion

What is my soul? Do I live after death? The answers that I favour are just a matter of letting science speak for itself. As part of his attempt to take science down a peg or two, Reville refers to the canard that some scientific studies are not reproducible. People beware — science is unreliable. But the correction of mistakes is science in action, a process in which scientists use the scientific method to show that other scientists are wrong or right.

Scientists face a problem in explaining the facts — political and indeed religious organisations and leaders often fail to deal well with scientific arguments. But the scientific method has a way of winning out in the end.

Scientists collected the evidence that humans are destroying our planet, they have proposed how to avoid total catastrophe, and I am hopeful they will be listened to. Reville writes that science flowered in Europe because of the Christian concept of a universe created by a rational creator. Apparently, Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler , Galileo, Newton and the others, who founded modern science, were guided by a rational Creator!

Some no doubt did believe in a Creator — or at least in some kind of deity — that was hard to avoid in those times. It is true that modern science flowered in Christian Europe but that was a coincidence.

Science, including the work of Euclid , had disappeared from Europe for a 1, years. Then it re-emerged in the 16th century as a side-effect of the Renaissance. Greek, Roman and Arabic literature and science were discovered.

The main route was from the Arab world where Greek and Oriental science had prospered while Christian Europe had been languishing in the Dark Ages. Our ancestors were still using Roman numerals when the Arabs were carrying out brilliant work in arithmetic with Indian numerals , geometry following Euclid , trigonometry and algebra which they invented.

Science was not invented or promoted by Christian leaders — in fact when it reappeared it was bitterly opposed — they just could not stop it.

The Church had indeed preserved a literate culture relying on Latin — ancient Greek had been lost — and it did found the early universities. But the new science was not readily embraced.

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Evidence indicates that the more intelligent you are, the more biased you are in favor of a wrong answer if the right answer offends beliefs you are emotionally committed to. There really is no better way to create atheists than to tell people to read the bible.

It is chock-full of extraordinary claims and baseless assertions that a rational mind will feel compelled to reject. Then the rest of the bible is a very good psychology book showing people especially your personality types dismissive and egotistical behaviror down to a Tee.. So techincally the bible could be a metaphor for science.

I even see some videos with quran having scientific metaphor init. Yeah science is late to the game but it puts a clearer picture on thing. Numeric systems are over 40, years old, and the oldest evidence we have demonstrates an ability to count — and conceptualize — past Numerical systems with base 10 and 60 had been in use for thousands of years before the Bible was written…. Genesis is not similar to evolution plants did not appear before the sun, marine life did not appear after plant life, water absolutely did not appear before light.

For starters. Ashkenazi Jews are the most intelligent people. They win hands down in IQ tests against any other group of people. The eargument is seriously flawed that atheists are more intelligent.

On another note a Catholic Priest who attended Cambridge was the first person to propose the Big Bang which is now generaly accepted, it is also the position held by the Catholic Church. Believing something with no proof is not possible, your very own brain and human mind will NEVER allow you to believe anything without the proof! How could I know what your own mind is saying to you?

And that applies to every human being apart from those with mental issues. Oh yes, why have you all been lying? Religion Itself is responsible for more murder, more torture, more inhumane, heinous atrocities than can ever be seen as acceptable. Seems it is. So tell me, how many need to die before religion becomes unacceptable? Mankind has fought many wars, killed many millions of people in the name of religion. There have been more human lives lost to religious beliefs and causes than can ever be seen as acceptable in the eyes of any sane man, whatever they believe.

Believing In one religion creates animosity from another religion. Religion bickers and argues with Itself, that process creates hate from one religion toward the other, that hate becomes the war, that war becomes brutal unnecessary human death in the millions. It always has since it began, and what is it? What is religion? I believe both in God and in Communism.

And having to explain this, is only because this is what religion uses to portray the atheist. Ridiculous, and really does show the religious mindset and how ther trickery with deception works. Atheists, are no more or less capable of evil than anyone else, but it seems that murder, particularly mass murder and war, is a sin of commission. Many fight for patriotism, for country, tribe or race. Atheism, simply lack of belief in a God, has not yet proved compelling enough to motivate murder.

It will come one day, when the people will have had enough of the killing, the Wars, the brutality and the excuses. And do you know what else? The undeniable truth really is, we have no evidence of a single thing the religious claim, Not one thing at all can be proven or ever has been proven. Common sense dictates to us that religion is not real, and therefore should be banned around the world. How could any good decent logical thinking person possibly disagree with that??

By its very nature then, belief or faith in the supernatural is the antithesis of science and the scientific method. The facts speak for themselves. If you believe in the alternative supernatural realities presented by any one of the 10, recognised religions practised on the planet today, then you are effectively not operating in the scientific reality of The biggest threat the world faces today is not climate change or unsustainable living or global warfare.

It is the god delusion. The god delusion divorces us from reality, divides us, allowing us the luxury of procrastination that prevents us from acting responsibly in a timely manner as one species. Finding atheism being allowed to disbelieve was the most liberating event of my life.

That is what real christianity, as proposed by its founder is about, not prancing about performing sanctimonious rituals in the hope you might get into the afterlife. But why is it even considered good to help the poor? The strong survive, and the weak are taken out of the gene pool. Not only that, but the world would be decidedly more boring if everyone became atheist.

I see all the problems you mention within organised religion. Do the means justify the ends? I would argue no, as the problem of religion only spreads. Setting that point aside, do religious people volunteer their time or money more than atheists? Second, whose contributions to society are greater, believers or atheists? Considering the science and technology community are highly-predisposed to atheism and that as this study shows, they tend to be more intelligent, and as other studies have shown, they tend to care more for civil rights, I would argue that whatever modest, minor good works the religious contribute, atheists have contributed far more.

His assertion is not irrational, on the contrary, it makes perfect sense. If being Christian or Muslim or Hindu, is about being morally virtuous, then do virtuous things that benefit the whole earth. Do not, waste your life in prayer, the effectiveness of which is disproven every year, but do something real.

If every religious person who goes to a Church or Mosque, went out and picked up litter for just 1 day per week, the Muslim and Christian areas of cities, would be pristine havens, amazingly clean and well kept places.

If anything would tempt me to become religious, it is that areas in which these people live, are evidentially better and more pleasant in which to live. That makes perfect sense to me. Preach good, do good. A real atheist would understand how natural selection works. I doubt that you were really an atheist, except in the weakest sense.

As usual, poor grasp of what they are countering. In this case, he argues the strong survive. In this case, social groups are made the strongest, or best adapted to the particular demands of their environment. Hence, he is right, the social cooperation is what makes the social group strong. In chimps, cooperating to surround, corral and then kill small monkeys is an example of superior behaviour, which provides food, survival and subsequent transmission of successful DNA.

Evolutionary pressure is multi-variate. You might increase your chances of survival as an individual, in the short-term, by cooperation. Hence, only the strong survive, in action. I have a theory that this is how homosexuality might have continued, if, it is significantly genetic, as suspected. I theorise that the principle of proximity often leads to gay men forming sexual relationships with heterosexual women. Spending time together often overrides other tendencies.

Hence they get to pass their genes on, but without needing to be, or fight, the Alpha male pack leader. Homosexuality, might be a clever natural side step of physical superiority.

Maybe reducing the number of alpha male fights, in conjunction with female guardianship and possibly acting to culturally define masculinity something to compare against and what a women should prioritise in her mates for the best chance of a successful breeding cycle. Interesting stuff.

Is it possible that a bunch of agnostics or atheists are just, ya know, not real Scotsmen, so to speak, and thus are the ones engaging in hypocrisy? The terrible fact of the 20th century is that the greatest mass killer of all time is the modern atheist state. Mao and Stalin killed more people than all religious wars combined. I urge you to form opinions that are informed by facts. There is also no such thing as language outside of the human brain either, but it is very real and important. Then we have the Crusades…oh were sticking with the 20th century?

Do you want to discuss the incessant war over Isreal, the planes flown into the twin towers, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by fundamental muslims over the years or do you want me to stick with just christianity?

Stalin and Mao and all the others, were ego infected mentally ill people. They had paranoic delusions and absolute power to implement their sociopathic urges.

You blame a movement or philosophy, when it specifically dictates something. Such as the prohibition of Homosexuality or disparate rights between the sexes, as with some Abrahamic religions. The no true Scotsman fallacy applies to religious extremists, because people say, if they did this horrible thing, then they were not true Muslim or Christians.

That is wrong because they gained clear and traceable instruction from scripture. Where is the instruction to kill for atheists? Your argument is entirely wrong. Are we allowed to believe in God at the same time that we volunteer at a homeless shelter as we all know, religious people NEVER do stuff like that , or do you forbid combinng belief with action?

Todd you say you are smart but it is crystal clear you fall on stereotype for your so called facts… religionous people host homeless shelter soup kitchens, parenthood help for singe mothers, community services. I loved this! Technological advancement would be expedited tenfold if the world worked as one. Religion is getting in the way of that! I think a lot more disturbing is the trend with many, where there is such an obsession and dependence on social media that it has basically become a replacement for religion, many turn to it for all their answers needs and comforts as they would a church, and cant leave their devices for more than 10 minutes, yes I am an atheist but I believe this trend has just as much if not more impact on overall IQ levels.

A fundamental principle required for deciding the truth is to establish the kind of evidence which is required. Unfortunately the existence of God cannot be known through science. Ironically, while causality is at the heart of science, it rebuffs the claim originating with the Greeks that there must be a first cause which contains the potential for all that exists. That logical argument has never been shown to be false.

Which is more intelligent; to accept that there must be a first cause or to refuse the logic of the argument? This platform is not to debate the existence of god. Even if it was, it is impossible to argue with the self-deluded. Because these beliefs are not reinforced socially, they are held to be incorrect by the majority, the beliefs being unique to the individual.

A dose of anti- psychotic meds and the beliefs and psychotic symptoms go away. A belief system does not have to involve a god at all. There are plenty abounding in psychology for instance! Have you ever tried to argue with a person suffering anorexia that their belief about the normality of their body shape, size and food intake is not correct or argue that an individual is not a reincarnation of a famous pop star who committed suicide and who is doomed to repeat that act in fulfilment of their self- fulfilling prophesy?

Well, religious belief is constructed and maintained in an identical way to any other belief. I really hoped that being right, would be enough to convince someone of the vegan position years ago, but I soon learned that people choose or are given their position and only then do they shoe horn the evidence to fit their position.

Maybe psychology, as the amphitheatre of thinking, should set out instead to formalise a rigid set of objective rules for binary argument. You made an emperically testable assertion.

If belief in God is a delusion akin to psychosis, then taking antipsychotics should markedly decrease or even eliiminate belief in God. Does this happen? Maybe you should test it. All physical things which impinge on our senses must be physical, rule No1 of causation. The same rule that necessitates a dismissal of free will and in fact consciousness itself, as nothing but user illusion.

First cause is a supposition, not based on any real evidence. Causality is eternal and infinite, it must be so, as all things have antecedents and are composed of reducible parts.

You now have to consider what potential infinite causality has to have in order to produce what we experience. You may have a little problem to overcome, however. You have dismissed freewill. From which it follows that your conclusions can have no truth value since you are claiming that they are inevitably a result of a chain of causalities which you cannot analyse. And, by the way, you have abandoned the concept of morality because you hold that we have no free choice to choose the good rather than the bad.

You are, so to speak, hoist with your own petard. Fortunately for you, your grasp of causality is weak at best. You fall at the first fence, assuming that concsciousness is a thing at all. Evolution just required that the human animal produce a set of outputs, as if consciousness were a thing. These outputs include reflexive descriptions of the human model of self, reacting to and describing their own outputs.

There is no-one doing the experiencing, just outputs, or thoughts, that simulate that fictional self. To say that free will could ever be a thing, you have to say, something exists that is not caused. Nothing does exist of that nature, other wise it would not be physical and hence not knowable by human or machine senses. Non-Sequitur chap, sorry. You have zero evidence for a god and even less reason to make huge leaps in inference, as you do.

Morality and such matters are easy enough to live by, due to the practical demands of life. Dear Nick, thank you for your splendid answer. I see where you are coming from. It would be great to debate this face to face but I doubt if anything would be solved.

Of course none of my questions were answered. All I can do is to hope we will meet in Heaven where we will have a jolly good laugh over our mugs of nectar. I am confident that you will feel sufficiently conscious to enjoy that. Kind response Quentin, that is what is most important.

The difference between most on my side and me, is that I have no point to make on if heaven or God exists. So it is a slim chance that I could end up in heaven or hell and be one of maybe 20 former embodied creatures, who know that consciousness is not a thing. Yes it appears to be a mountain when assessed through limited senses and perspectives, but on closer inspection, after a perspective change, the mountain is merely suggested or implied in 3d, by a 2d arrangement of pigments.

Break down what it is you take as obvious evidence that you exist. I feel, I remember, I remember how I felt about perceiving myself perceiving. Every single response in an example used by you to show to yourself that you are conscious, is just a cognitive output, every one. Everything is physical, nothing can be known without being physical, otherwise it could not interact with the senses.

God is said to to be known, hence he must interact with our senses. If God is said to exist, via our senses, then he must be physical. If he is physical he is constrained and created by causal antecedents. Hence, God, even if he did exist, would be as much an illusion to himself, as we are. This reasoning puts the idea of God, to bed, forever.

Quantum does nothing to shake causal necessity, our current understanding is the thing which limits the workings of our postulated system. Our bodies are rigidly determined.. On what do you base this statement. If consciousness is an illusion, then who is being deluded? To answer these questions in the affirmative is too hasty.

Indeed, Christian belief can act as an effective buffer against the harmful spread of conspiracy theories. The most dangerous lies are often those that are mostly true See Genesis —4. It is important, therefore, to carefully distinguish Christian belief proper from its mutated forms. Paul knew that even the philosophers and poets of his age could discern theological truth Acts —34, see 1 Corinthians ; Titus It is with hopeful anticipation and epistemic humility that we await the dawning of his light on our darkness Isaiah This is but an initial gesture towards the kind of Christian belief proper that might remedy the epistemic skeletons in the Christian closet.

This is not to say that a dose of sound theology is all that is required, merely that it will be part of the solution. This form of balanced teaching — saturated with nuance and subtlety, delineating falsity from truth, distinguishing historical Christian beliefs from conspiratorial thinking — is a necessary antidote.

It is now clear how right Williams was. The present cultural climate — dominated by confusion, disinformation, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories — is simply life downstream from this emerging epistemic milieu.

The exorcism of one intellectual demon from our culture — an overbearing monotheistic certainty — has simply left us hollowed-out, creating a void for a hoard of bad ideas to enter, leaving us even worse off than when we began see Luke — Christian belief can protect the believer from this intellectual erosion. Rowan Williams argues:. Christian faith tells us that, because God is to be trusted, we can be very bold indeed about the degree of scepticism we give to what is less than God.

This general principle applies in the specific case of conspiracy theories: the ultimate, trustworthy source of truth — God — buffers the Christian from vulnerability to conspiratorial forces. It does not lead me to rudely dismiss or abandon my neighbour because of their quirky beliefs. But perhaps this is the wrong note on which to conclude these remarks.

Real conspiracies do exist. Volkswagen conspired to cheat emissions tests for their diesel engines. The U. National Security Agency secretly spied on civilian internet users.

The tobacco industry deceived the public about the harmful health effects of smoking.