CFE Villa-Landa

I shall shortly be finishing an MA thesis critiquing the serious scientists in the UK and USA who claim that their science supports their religious beliefs. I have read a lot of material on the rationality of holding religious beliefs (not, I would stress, that religious belief itself is rational, but that there are good reasons for holding such beliefs.) I would be interested in following this up with some research on why, if it is so useful from an evolutionary perspective to hold religious beliefs, are there atheists?
Does anyone know whether this has been looked at in any detail and what direction I might go in?

mibby529

Well, I am basically a fideist. I believe in a god, but say that he/she/it would not be like anything we can imagine.

Atheism - or better yet agnosticism - makes sense, from a scientific perspective. If you assume a theory is true, then you will interpret all ambiguous data to the idea that it may be true. This is known as True Believer syndrome.

Scientists can also follow other religions, of course. But I've always noticed that no one ever discovers proof of creation and THEN converts to a particular religion. It tends to be the reverse.

As it is, only two theologies I know of can actually work with science, besides (of course) atheism: Deism and pantheism.

Mageth

I would be interested in following this up with some research on why, if it is so useful from an evolutionary perspective to hold religious beliefs, are there atheists?

Why, if it is so useful from an evolutionary perspective to have hair on the head, are there bald people?

Sorry, a bit of a joke there. But perhaps there's a point to it; all organisms in a species don't necessarily all have identical traits, whether physiological or behavioral. Uniformity is not necessary from "an evolutionary perspective"; in fact, it seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed, diversity in times of stress may aid species survival.

Also remember that religious belief is behavioral, and as such falls more under the field of memetics than under the field of genetics. Just because there may be good reasons to hold religious beliefs in one environment doesn't mean it is a "best" behavior for all environments. Further, an environment in which there are "good reasons" to hold particular religious beliefs tends to be a man-made religious environment (or memetic system) where one is punished for going against the "norm" and rewarded for holding the particular religious beliefs. Once this structure weakens or collapses (for example, if a memetic system arises that can compete with or out-compete the established system), other religious beliefs, including atheism, may become viable, or even preferable.

lcb

Communism evolved very successfully without religion.

Starboy

The practice of science and religion do not overlap in any way.

Science:

1. Science is restricted to only that which can be observed or inferred from observation. Anything that can be observed or inferred from observation IS natural.

2. All scientific theories must only allow natural explainations.

3. In order for a scientific theory to remain scientific it must agree with all previous scientific observations. It must predict the result of new observations that have never been performed before. The new observation must match with what has been predicted.

Religion:

1. There is a mystical component to existence that defies explanation and observation. It can only be explained as an emotional experience.

2. There are forces that exist that are beyond the realm of what man can observe and understand.

3. Things can happen in the universe that cannot be explained by invoking any natural phenomena that is known or unknown.

As you can see, religion is primarily a mystical experience and science is primarily a rational experience. They are like oil and water they do not mix. One can try to practice religion and science at the same time, but they are fundamentally incompatible. Trying to do both results in poor science and poor religion. Why Christians try to make their beliefs scientific is completely beyond me. Its as if an entire generation of Christians didn’t get their own religion.

Starboy

Heathen Dawn

Science is the empiric, observational way of finding the truth, without regard to tradition or revelation: just what the eyes see and the instruments measure.

Science and religion are necessarily in contradiction. Why so? Because reality and most religion are in contradiction. Science contradicts only those religion which happen to be untrue. Which is most of them, of course.

Reality is incompatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent god; therefore, as indeed mibby said, only atheism, deism and pantheism are compatible with science.

For a religion to be compatible with science, it must not resist the scientific Genesis story (abiogenesis and biological evolution), and it must not resist materialistic claims such as body/mind monism. Most religion fail those compatibility tests.

Splat

Starboy's response is good, but it's worth keeping in mind that both science and religion serve our deeply held need to provide an explanation for experience. That need is evolutionarily conditioned, and it has served us well in the sense that explanation fosters prediction and control (of resources, environemnts, people, etc.). It is also, I'd argue, total--we need a complete story, including what came before and what will come after. What we cannot know, we invent. We have always invented religions, but have only recently invented a purely naturalistic explanatory system.

A religion that includes a maize god (or whatever) can encode a lot of agricultural knowledge, which is adaptive, but it isn't likely to give you the ability to support six billion people. The scientific world-view has, and it's done so in an incredibly short time.

For many of us (scientists and others), secular/naturalistic explanations are sufficient, and we have no reason to believe in gods. Others seem to have needs that naturalistic explanations can't fill, and continue to believe (Martin Gardner, for example).

I also think that the need for "spirituality" (for lack of a better term) is stronger in some people than it is in others. Those for whom it is very strong, but who end up in science, may use science (the most potent explanatory system they have available) to try and justify or bolster their religion. But they're unlikly to convince the majority of the scientific community.

Interesting project you've got. Hope you'll update us as it progresses.

Starboy

Hi Splat,

It does come down to sufficiency. The question is sufficient for what. If you are after an understanding of how things work, science is the hands down winner. If you are looking for comfort, security and purpose, nothing can beat religion. I am a full grown human and no longer have the needs of a child. It may be some time before humanity as a whole grows up.

Starboy

Splat

Hi Starboy,

Yes, that's really the question.

I think that at some very deep level (below the level where the differences you described dwell), "comfort, security, and purpose" depends entirely on "understanding how things work."

We depend on having a complete model of how things work; we're uncomfortable and insecure when we don't have one, when things don't make sense.

At that level, maintaining the sense of having a complete model is more important than the real-world efficacy of the model itself. So I suppose the question of sufficiency has to be answered first at this level--what constitutes a sufficient degree of explanation to keep you on the sane side of your cognitive dissonance threshold?

If you absolutely need to know Why Aunt Mabel Died (i.e., beyond the autopsy report), science isn't going to make you happy. If on the other hand you don't need the capital-W Why, the autopsy report sums it up sufficiently.

And I think you hit the nail by casting it in term of cognitive maturity--in general, we probably need the illusion of completeness most when we're young. The question remains why some (most?) people can't get over the hump.

<Disclaimer--I'm a plants-and-rocks guy, so all of this is rank speculation on my part!>

Starboy

That could be true for you splat, but one of the many hats I wear is that of engineer. When I say I am looking for what works, that is exactly what I mean. I suppose you could take comfort in something working but for me it is purely a matter of getting the job done.

Starboy