Sunday, April 29, 2012

More thinking leads to less god

Here is an article from Scientific American that correlates critical thinking ability to religious belief.
While I do think (and other studies have shown) that a person's knowledge of science, and their ability to think critically is proportional to their belief in unproven claims, I don't think this study was particularly strong.  Still it's worth a read for no other reason that it conforms to my belief system. ;-)

Analytic thinking can undermine belief

I'll be back reading the damn book this week.  The Gospel of John should be interesting because it's based on hearsay, based on hearsay.  At least that's what I heard.


  1. Bruce,

    Where did you hear that the Gospel of John was written on hearsay?

  2. Hmm. As far as the article, it does not show how critically Religion played in the life prior to thinking critically on science. If someone spends 10 minutes of their life commited to God then 50 years commited to themselves, of course they won't believe God exists. Even though He is right in front of them.

  3. I find it interesting that atheism is not considered a religious belief by all of the articles. You assume things or take things by intuition also. Everyone does. They are called presuppositions. If you did not have these presuppositions (such as uniformity of nature without which science is impossible) you would not be able to reason. Most atheists claim that they used analytical thinking to arrive at the conclusion that uniformity exists but I have yet to see one that can actually back up their claim.

    The point is atheism is as much a religion as Christianity. You assume things and you have an ultimate authority (yourself).

  4. @Ronald, Atheism, by it's very definition is a lack of belief.
    How is "not believing" a belief?
    Secondly, we do all have presuppositions. That is a given. The difference between religion based thinking and science based thinking is that those who rely on science to find answers are open to new (possibly conflicting) information. The religious are not.
    You stated "If you did not have these presuppositions (such as uniformity of nature without which science is impossible) you would not be able to reason."
    Could you elaborate on this? Science is a process of asking questions, looking for answers and finding reasons for those answers. How is this impossible without a uniformity in nature? What is 'uniformity in nature'? Are you referring to the laws of gravity, evolution, motion, etc?

  5. @Bruce
    Atheists among other things believe man is ultimate. Also if you are being consistent to your presuppositions you would not change your mind based on conflicting information. For instance I assume that no matter how much evidence I give you, you will not believe in miracles because they do not make sense in a naturalistic universe. You will instead say that we must be missing some crucial evidence that will allow the "miracle" to be explained naturally. You are right that Christianity and other religions are closed to conflicting ideas but if you are completely honest you will realize atheists are also.

    Uniformity of nature is when we assume that, given similar enough conditions, the future will be like the past. Without this assumption we would not be able to do science. I am not saying that atheists don't believe and act like uniformity of nature exists I am saying that they can not account for their belief in it.

    Thanks for your reply. I am notoriously bad among my acquaintances at communicating so please tell me if any of this does not make sense.

  6. Ronald,

    What do you mean by "man is ultimate"? Ultimate what? I really don't understand your comment, can you clarify?

    I don't believe in miracles because the evidence for them is lacking. Should there be adequate evidence I would change my mind. But a miracle is an extrordinary claim and as such requires extraordinary evidence. If you came and prayed at my house and suddenly a KJV bible started growing out of the porch railing, that would be extraordinary and I'd consider that perhaps a miracle is the best explanation. But things like faith healing don't cut it as evidence because they are so easy to fake. Between the possible explanations of "it's a miracle" or "somebody is lying", I'll take lying as the more likely answer. However, I have a pass-phrase, and the odds of somebody guessing it by chance are really really small. So if your next comment contains my pass-phrase, then I think a miracle would be the more likely explanation.

    1. @Ubi Dubium

      Man is the ultimate standard by which everything is measured. The old saying that man is the measure of all things basically sums it up. It is man's senses, experience and/or reason that are appealed to.

      When you assume man's reason or senses is the standard by which we can figure anything out you have already declared the God revealed in the Bible to be a liar. You cannot reason your way to belief in God because belief in God means He is your ultimate standard.

      I also assume most so called miracles to be a lie. God does not work in miracles most of the time. He says in the scriptures that there is a certain amount of regularity that will continue in nature (Genesis 8:22).

      My challenge to you, however, is how can you account for any regularity in nature? How do you know that the scientific experiment that you conduct one day will produce the same results given similar enough conditions the next day? If man's reason, senses and/or memory are the ultimate standard how can you account for making any judgements about the future?

      Thank you for your question about man as ultimate. If it still does not make sense I will be glad to try again. I do not know for sure but I think you and I probably have a lot in common in that we would take a lot of convincing in order to acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary had happened. I thing most of the so called miracles of today are people who are trying to get attention or are just confused about what really happened.

    2. Well, I think the wellbeing of humans is the ultimate standard for measuring things pertaining to humans. The universe is a really big place, and we are just one unimportant species of ape living in a tiny corner of it. What is of benefit to our survival on this planet is really inconsequential as far as the rest of the universe is concerned.

      Nature shows regularity. Gravity works, and it works every time. The laws of nature are what they are. I'm not going to play any philosophical mind games about "what it if doesn't work tomorrow?" because humans can't function like that. We've gotten on very well for a long time with the premise that the universe is regular, and learned a heck of a lot about the way it works. Our engineers work on the premise that the rules that work today will still work tomorrow. As a result we have skyscrapers and cell phones and cars and the computer you are reading this on. (Unless the charge on an electron suddenly decides to be different in the next five minutes, in which case you won't be reading this at all!)

      I don't have to "account for" the regularity of nature. I observe that it behaves in a consistent fashion. If it didn't, we would not be here to make that observation.

    3. The point is, though, that you measure the wellbeing of humans by your standard of what wellbeing is. Someone else could have a completely different standard based on their reasoning. My standard is based on the Bible.

      I agree nature shows regularity and humans cannot function if they do not think the future will be like the past. I agree that engineers, scientists et cetera all do their work on this premise. However, you do have to account for it because it does not make any sense in a random chance universe that it would act like the past.

      The problem with your last paragraph is that you are assuming uniformity in order to prove it. You observed in the past that nature behaved regularly but that has no bearing on the future unless you assume uniformity in the first place. Again, I agree with you that people cannot function without assuming uniformity of nature but I do not believe they can account for that without a Christian worldview.

    4. Plenty of people of other religions also assume uniformity, and they account for it from their religion, not from a "christian worldview" at all. Hindus and Buddhists and Jains and Sikhs and all the other people who are not of an Abrahamic faith seem to cope just as well as you do with that kind of question.

      "You observed in the past that nature behaved regularly but that has no bearing on the future unless you assume uniformity in the first place." - That's the kind of mindgames I was talking about, and that I always heard from people taking Philosophy 101. That's not useful in the real world, and I never heard any actual Philosophy professors use it either.

      You may say you base your ideas about human wellbeing on the bible, but it's too full of justifications for slavery, genocide, and other sorts of indifference to human suffering for me to be willing to do that. I don't think you actually do either, unless you have been out stoning disrespectful children right after giving all your possessions to the poor. If you want to pick out just the good parts to base your morality on, that's fine, but then you are back to relying on your own judgment to pick out which parts to follow. Nobody follows ALL of what it says in the bible. Except maybe Westboro Baptist. I think they come the closest.

  7. just wondering lately what's happening with this blog. is it on hiatus because of personal problems or work conflicts? are you going to continue it? or should we just continue and finish the new testament on our own?

  8. Hi @Dorothy - I was wondering that too! I went through John, then poked around Acts, then did some lighter poking around Paul's work. Should we wing it here?