Is there a demonstrable reason why one believes and the other doesn't? [Details inside].

Good book
http://www.amazon.com/Believing-Brain-Conspiracies-How-Construct-Reinforce/dp/0805091254

People are comforted by the idea of a supreme being. The idea that there is someone (even an invisible, unprovable someone) driving the bus is comforting.

Also. comforting are the set of absolute rules that religions lay down. Some concrete things that you can do that willl result in a guaranteed ticket to the E ticket ride after death.

Anybody can be a believer. I don’t think that there’s any biological predisposition for it. You see the entire spectrum of socioeconomic, ethnic, and genetic background in church, if you visit enough of them.

Have you considered that there may be more to faith than psychology or genetic predisposition?

@Nullo Yes, I have, but I can’t seem to find answers, hence my questioning.

Most people initially go along with whatever religion they were born into and most of those people just stick with it, because most of the people in their familial or social circle go along with it too. It’s easier to go with what you already know. They want it to make sense and they take the stuff that works and reject/disregard the stuff that doesn’t.

It’s not like most people who are Jews or Christians or Muslims or whatever religion they might be, wake up one day and say that they suddenly know that they have some type of personal connection with a different religion say Buddhism or Shintoism or Native American Shamanism. Those changes usually only come along once they’ve had some type of dramatic introduction to the other possibilities, like meeting new people in a college setting, who have a different religion or developing a crush on someone of a different religion or hearing that some rock star has discovered a new religious path (like when the Beatles started experimenting with Mysticiscm and Hare Krishna beliefs).

I don’t think anyone would ever wake up and think that they believed in some other type of religion that they’d never heard of before (for instance, I think it would be rare for a Christian in the U.S. to wake up one morning and think that they are part of the religion of an isolated South American tribe, because they wouldn’t know anything about it, unless someone told them or they had read about it). Unless they were, indeed, being truly enraptured by a different God, or maybe if they’d had a break with reality. The movie/book Agnes of God is a good example of this situation. Did she or did she not become pregnant with God’s child? She certainly believed that she did.

Usually, people don’t change their religion or question their religion until it becomes a topic that needs questioning. Examples of needing to question: If a new friend challenges your belief, or if something traumatic happens to you and your current belief no longer makes sense to you, or if someone that you admire let’s it be known that they have a different religion.

I do think that some people are more prone to needing to believe in some type of religion, but I don’t think it’s a pre-determined idea of who those folks might be. It’s the nature/nurture thing. If the same person was born into a non-believing family it’s more likely that they’d be a non believer/skeptic too. If that same person was born into a religious family, it’s more likely that they would, at least initially, believe what their family believes and until they felt the need to question their beliefs, they would just keep believing.

And then there are some people that think that faith in their own particular religion is so important, that no amount of “evidence” or discussions of “other beliefs” will make them change their minds, because to betray their faith is to betray their God and therefore, their place in the universe where they think they need to be, which is kind of like betraying themselves.

Take a look at How We Believe by renowned skeptic Michael Shermer. He speaks of what he calls the belief engine in our brains that drives much delusional thinking:

“Humans evolved to be skilled pattern seeking creatures. Those who were best at finding patterns (standing upwind of game animals is bad for the hunt, cow manure is good for the crops) left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants.

Finding patterns, however, often leads to erroneous conclusions…

I’m not sure where the various dispositions would come from, but I think maybe you’re on to something…

Because
I know a steadfast atheist, who explained to me once that it wasn’t like they chose “oh, I don’t want to believe in that;” they’ve just never been able to fathom why people do, or can. They need things tangible (in one sense or another,) and always has.
I know another person who is very spiritual (not a specific religion or belief) but finds the spirituality to be tangible, sees ‘it’ everywhere all the time.
I know another person who will just believe things, (but this has nothing to do with religion or lack of, just belief in a different sense of the word.) They tell me so many wild things, my mind starts to actually hurt, because I know most of them are not true [everyone had a twin in the womb that they ate before they were born.]

I don’t know where the differences come from, though, and I don’t think they’re absolute. It’s probably something that evolves with how you react to the world (and what world you’re given to react to)?

I’m not sure about the “demonstrable” part of this, but here’s my take on it:

There is a particular worldview that emerges from a strict application of reason. As in all such constructs, it begins with certain basic assumptions that seem to be so obviously true that they can just be accepted on face value, and then builds on those in methodical fashion. The resulting worldview is marvelously functional, but it tends to feel like a vast assemblage of discrete, interacting entities, and one’s self appears to be just another of those entities. The beautiful functionality of this worldview is extremely compelling, and this is enough to inspire some to embrace it fully and to the exclusion of any other possible worldview.

But I would submit that we have an inherent sense that this purely rational worldview doesn’t fully account for our experience of reality. I think that there is a subtle consciousness that the “assemblage of parts” world, while it is certainly an aspect of reality, is not sufficient. There is an inchoate intuition that reality also has a “wholeness” aspect, and that this wholeness can’t be reduced to a bunch of parts.

My sense is that it’s this intuition of “wholeness” around which various religious beliefs crystallize. Trying to scratch this itch leads to various theologies in which the “whole” gets personified as God. In other cases, it doesn’t get personified at all, but meditative practices are used to access consciousness of reality in its wholeness.

Mystics say that wholeness can’t be grasped through reason, because reason begins with core assumptions of divisibility, and so will never be able to get beyond that to wholeness. If someone thinks that all truth must be accessible to reason, then they are likely to discount such talk and, I suppose, dismiss or re-channel any intuitive urgings to explore wholeness.

Personally, I see no conflict whatsoever. They are two aspects of a single reality, and neither is dispensable. Taking either as the whole truth is bound to be unsatisfactory in the end, because it would deny our consciousness itself.

A lot of people will probably think that my answer is highly insensitive, but science has shown that a great many people who believe in religion are not as well educated as they should be & this also goes for racist bigots as well. The better your education is, the less likely you are to believe in any of the religions & the more likely you are to NOT be a racist bigot.

Geneticist Dean Hamer wrote about a God gene in his book. He proposes that humans are hardwired to believe in a supreme being.

He has been criticized for it, and I’m not sure I believe it myself. Still, it’s an interesting idea and may go a long way to answering your question.

This is a GQ, by the way.

lol, I think you wrote that pretty harshly, @Linda_Owl. But I somewhat agree. I’ll explain:

Personally, I don’t feel very confused about how beliefs work. I fully appreciate how easy it is to be deceived by attractive evidence which simply may not be sufficient evidence. Jumping to conclusions is easy. Fallacies are deceptive and alluring. Good evidence is sometimes hard to find and the brain has no choice but to form conclusions based on whatever it did get a chance to learn.

Your question, @rebbel, seems to come down to why do some people believe some things that aren’t believable to others. And the reason I’ve come to appreciate is that different conclusions a person might reach at point X in their life will be based strictly on What they’ve known so far and how that stuff rationally mingles with the latest thoughts and information that come across their brain.

It’s not a matter that going to University will stop you from believing in a God. It’s that a certain education might stop you from believing in a God IF it’s sufficient. If you don’t get one of those specific types of educations that lead down an effective path of reason and onto the disbelief of that God.. then you’re literally stuck believing in that God until you learn otherwise.

Conversely, if you don’t get one of those specific types of education that leads down a path of belief in specific God, then you’re literally stuck NOT believing in that God again, until you learn otherwise.

The reason some people believe some things that others don’t is because they were educated differently. And going to the same class doesn’t mean that two people received the same education. Your whole life you’ve learned so many different ideas and concepts that attending one class together with someone who’s had even a very subtly different life education than yours, can produce two people who disagree about the professor’s conclusions.

Maybe it’s how you’re brought up, and what you’re taught. A lot of people will hold dearly to what they were conditioned with, whatever it is, but there are most certainly exceptions to the rules. Say like born again Christians, and people who become believers, or become atheists, later in life.
However in so many cultures from all time periods, beliefs have always been prominent, and have often served to shape a culture. There must be something natural about it, wanting guidance and a feel for security in the face of adversity. Death is, of course, a scary thing, as are many things in life.

I also think that even non believers often take an approach to life and death that is similar to believing. I know this one guy who believes for sure that he’ll live up to 200 years old, due to implants and nanotechnology. Thing is, he has no basis of evidence that this is ever going to happen in our lifetime. And he despises Christianity, yet his approach to science is, ironically, very similar to what he says Christians do. So I don’t know, I’d love to know myself what makes a believer and a non believer. Conditioning and environment is the closest thing I can think of, although it’s probably a lot more deeply rooted than that.

I think this is a “nature vs nurture” debate. There is no real reason to believe that this is based on genetics, so I will have to go with the nurture side of the argument. What a person believes is a result of the social environment a person lives in / grew up in.

As a neat, although slightly inhumane, thought experiment, image what would happen if a person born into a family with one set of beliefs was taken at birth and put with a family with completely different beliefs. There is no mechanism by which that person would somehow know what his actual parent’s beliefs were in order to adopt/be influenced by them.

Free will.

@Linda_Owl If you really believe that that is true, I’d say you just disproved the aforementioned scientific theory. The claim that somewhere around 12% of the population are the “educated” ones and that the majority of the remainder are “uneducated” is laughable at best.

@rebbel There are so many different ways to approach this question that I’m not sure where to begin. It’s a great question.

There are certainly very bright and intelligent scientists on both sides of the fence.. some are even perched precariously upon the fence itself. Because of the fact that there are scientists all around the fence, it seems to me that no demonstrable reason can currently be claimed with any validity.

@DancingMind The thing about belief is that you don’t decide to believe something. Not like when you decide whether or not to wear a hat today. It’s more a matter of being convinced of the truthfulness or reality of what you believe, and accepting it. It’s like knowing that the Earth is round even though you’ve never been in space to see it spin.
These kinds of beliefs are grokked. What you believe is, and what Johnny Opposite believes is not.
Atheists don’t seem to get that part.

digitalimpression’s avatar

@Linda_Owl What do you make of all of the educated Christians out there? Two of my churches have been practically top-heavy with doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Doesn’t that disrupt your outlook?
Christianity is not an exclusive faith (though there are exclusive people in it, because it’s not exclusive). The goal is to save souls, not be the next Mensa Society.
As an aside, that kind of elitism is really off-putting.

@rebbel There’s a field called “Neuroethology” that tries to address these very issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotheology#Scientific_criticism

So far the one area that seems to tick the boxes you’re interested in, might be temporal lobe epilepsy.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18171635

As a related note, one of the more interesting studies I’ve come across is linked to below. In it the researchers provide among other things, evidence that people’s views of what god thinks, shifts with what they think. In other words, the evidence is more supportive of god’s morality being a projection of their own moral values (for instance), rather than the other way around. It also includes neuroimaging studies.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/01/0908374106.full.pdf+html

“As a related note, one of the more interesting studies I’ve come across is linked to below. In it the researchers provide among other things, evidence that people’s views of what god thinks, shifts with what they think. In other words, the evidence is more supportive of god’s morality being a projection of their own moral values (for instance), rather than the other way around.”

People change. Its clear that people are going to change, interpret the bible differently, utilize their own experiences and upbringing to form different opinions about what God intends, etc. I’m not sure how this fluid and flexible mindset is a problem. If anything, not being able to change is a problem.

Thank you all for your contributions (with links to interesting reads and all!), and for keeping it civilized!

@digitalimpression I absolutely agree that people should challenge and develop their own moral views throughout their life. The paper doesn’t negate that. All it does is review the different lines of evidence for theists projecting their own moral values onto god. To put it mildly, this is problematic.

Here’s the abstract.

“People often reason egocentrically about others’ beliefs, using
their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental,
and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even
more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent’s beliefs
(e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples,
people’s own beliefs on important social and ethical issues
were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God’s
beliefs than with estimates of other people’s beliefs (Studies 1–4).
Manipulating people’s beliefs similarly influenced estimates of
God’s beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of
other people’s beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study
demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning
about one’s own beliefs and God’s beliefs, but clear divergences
when reasoning about another person’s beliefs (Study 7).
In particular, reasoning about God’s beliefs activated areas associated
with self-referential thinking more so than did reasoning
about another person’s beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences
about God’s beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears
especially dependent on one’s own existing beliefs.”

I recommend you read the paper. I believe it is open access.

@AdamF I had already read the paper (which seemed a bit contrived if you ask me), but as I mentioned above, there are similar studies that say the opposite. How do we determine which “study” is accurate? Being that scientists can’t seem to agree, where do we draw the line, cross it, or remove it?

As evidenced in the following quote, everything about the subject seems ambiguous:
“In Rorschach ink-blot studies, for instance, believers tended to see images that weren’t there and non-believers tended to miss images that were present.”

It seems to me that ambiguous things are excused if in any way labeled religious, but similarly ambiguous things are blindly accepted if even the mention of science is involved.

In a way, I think quite a few people will readily accept anything that begins with “Scientists discover that…” or “Scientists conclude that..” without asking questions.

Science in this regard then becomes a “god” of its own… one that is seen as infallible.

Clearly I won’t get a lot of support on this idea (especially on fluther which is saturated with non-believers) , but I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

@digitalimpression That’s a lot to cover….

“How do we determine which “study” is accurate? Being that scientists can’t seem to agree, where do we draw the line, cross it, or remove it?”

This isn’t my area of research, but from what I know neurotheology is a relatively recent discipline. What this means is that although it is built on established sciences, there are still multiple coarse level studies (ie they are not dealing with relatively fine scale issues, but fundamentals) which are the first of their kind. As such, although many of these studies have ticked one box (ie they’ve published in a peer-reviewed publication), they haven’t got past the hardest hurdle (ie independent and repeated confirmation of results by others). So I fully expect claims to be made that make the headlines, and then subsequent studies discrediting, reinterpreting, or refinined from their original position. That’s science.

Nevertheless, if two studies come to different conclusions on the same topic, and I wanted to know which one is more likely to approximate the truth, then I’d have to go back and assess what else is published in the area to get a feeling for the background evidence for and against, and then assess indicators of the quality of studies in question. This includes consdiering issues of appropriate study design, sample sizes, alignment of interpretation with the nature of the evidence, quality and relevance of the journal where published, and any questionable conflicts of interest of the authors….and I’d never ever trust the media to do this.

The media is a bullshit enhancer, whereas science is a bullshit filter. One should not be blamed for the mistakes of the other.

“It seems to me that ambiguous things are excused if in any way labeled religious, but similarly ambiguous things are blindly accepted if even the mention of science is involved.”

Feynman got it perfect when he said “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

We’re talking about people, so regardless of whether it’s religion or science, people may accept or dispute something for rational or irrational reasons, regardless of what the evidence is.

The important point as far as I am concerned is consistency. If an anecdotal claim is unreliable in science, it’s unreliable in religion as well.

So I don’t dismiss a religious claim because it’s religious, I just hold religious claims to the same standard that I try to hold any other claims to.

“In a way, I think quite a few people will readily accept anything that begins with “Scientists discover that…” or “Scientists conclude that..” without asking questions.”

They shouldn’t. People should always ask questions.

“Science in this regard then becomes a “god” of its own… one that is seen as infallible.”

Let’s see this in terms of two groups, scientists and non-scientists.

Well, the scientific process is a dynamic methodological process that’s cosntantly being challenged from within. I for one have been involved in the push for increasing the use of meta-analysis/quantitative systematic reivews in ecology. There is currently a fight against the corrupting influence of journal profits on access to scientific results. The medical sciences are always plagued with keeping pharmaceutical profits at bay. Many journals do not as yet have a blind review process. So I think the people who “do science”, are very aware of the flaws in the day to day workings of science. Frankly, the idea that scientists might see science as infalliable would be bizarre. Our whole careers are built disputing the findings of other scientists using science…hardly makes sense that we would therefore see the process as infallible.

With respect to the general populace, I also don’t get any impression that science or scientists are held on much of an alter. In my experience a significant percentage of the populace don’t understand how science works, nor respects its findings…even when they are justified. I regularly encounter irrationally anti-science views, whereas I don’t experience meeting people with irrationally inflated views of the “perfection” of science.

So I can’t say I agree with the idea that science is seen as infallible, neither by it’s practitioners, nor by most of the public.