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Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that p

by madengr 10y ago

Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that places faith over reason.

taurath 10y ago
And yet people are more likely to change their religion to match their politics than vice versa.
- sabertoothed 10y ago
  Politics and religious beliefs are intertwined. Especially in the US (in the Western world).
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    This seems sensible to me. If a person truly believes his religion, it has major implications for his/her notion of what it means for humans to thrive, what activities are moral/ethical, and the goals of human society. It would be very strange indeed if those beliefs had no bearing on one's politics.
    - tchock23 10y ago
      Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this?
      - sigzero 10y ago
        No, because once you give the government the ability to tax something you give the government the ability to control whatever that something is. The Supreme Court has ruled on this in the "Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York" ruling.
      - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
        > Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this? I don't know. I see good arguments for and against.
- willvarfar 10y ago
  Interesting, can you elaborate on what you mean and is there any studies behind it?
  - punk_coder 10y ago
    My sister and her husband did this. He was Episcopalian, and she became pretty religious after marrying him. No one in my family was raised religiously. My parents always said we can figure that out for ourselves when we get older. Anyway, once the Episcopalian Church welcomed gay pastors, and her church got one, they fled and became Southern Baptists.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      In entire fairness, the Protestant strains in general can be organized along a single dimension with Calvinism at one end and Unitarianism at the other. Episcopalianism is relatively close to the latter, and Southern Baptism to the former; I don't really know that I'd describe it as a change of faith entire when someone moves along that dimension toward a more satisfactory interpretation of the scripture which all these strains share.
    - ddebernardy 10y ago
      That's rather specific to the US and I'm not sure I'd rate that as changing religion TBH. In Europe, your usual choices when you disagree with the dominant church are to get over it, become atheist, or - more rarely - change faith altogether (as in to Islam, Buddhism, etc.) because, more often than not, you exhaust Christian picks after going through Catholicism and the local Protestant flavor or two. In contrast, the US offers a very wide variety of Christian flavors (and Christian-based sects). So when, like your sister and her husband, you disagree you can just pick another church flavor down the block that is mostly the same with a few twists. You're still nominally Christian though. The difference between the two is sometimes put forward to explain the contrast between the high number of atheists in Europe and the high number of religious people in the US.
    - fsloth 10y ago
      I don't think that qualifies as changing religions.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
Religion is only incidental. Human beings are illogical and take a lot of things on faith. People often don't have good reasons to believe things or have simplistic views of other (see religion or not-religion). They believe because that's all they know. You eliminate all religion and you'll end up with non-religious faiths and ignorance. Haven't you noticed most tech is religion? Religion might play a factor, but only as much as class, nationality, race, culture, education, background, genetic factors, etc.
- davrosthedalek 10y ago
  There is a natural drive to faith: We can't know everything, so we think we have to take some things on faith. The point being that most religions try to foster faith. It's often a central mantra that faith is good. This unfortunately trains people to stop asking questions. On the other hand, the scientific approach tries to manage how we deal with things we don't know for certain. We believe in things more because we have more evidence for it. Without trusting them 100%.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Of course, but many things try and foster faith - companies do it, nations do it, people do it. Most people whether they are religious or not aren't applying the scientific method to their daily lives. You can't blame that - biases are easy and trying to be objective is a pain in the ass.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      I think most people are smarter than this discussion is saying they are - it's just they don't optimize for the things we implicitly assume here. They don't optimize for the truth value of their beliefs, but for their direct usefulness in life. Most of the scientific facts don't have a direct impact on your life, so you don't get rewarded for getting things right, nor you get punished for getting them wrong. Different criteria thus become more relevant. How a belief fits your image of yourself? How does it help you strengthen your ties to the groups you're in? How it positions you against the groups you dislike? Note that in situations when getting things right has direct impact on one's life - like, when it comes to money or job - people suddenly become very rational.
DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
FWIW, most evangelicals I know reject the notion that faith and reason ought to be in contradiction. I think you'll find that few well-respected Christian theologians or pastors would embrace such a contradiction either. AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your eggs in one basket". And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  You are arguing against an ideological worldview. It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious. Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer. Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.
  - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
    > It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history with faith or non-faith. I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say. The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a monster. Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  I think pretty much all humans hold self-inconsistent internal beliefs. We're not rational agents.
- 10y ago
lr4444lr 10y ago
He could have, but that still doesn't dig satisfying deeply into the analysis: why would Americans be prone to evangelical / fundamentalist religion, and a general disdain for knowledge? It isn't a direct line from the Puritans, whose descendants anyway hardly account for the result of successive waves of immigration seen today. There are deeper issues at play such as: The country's birth from a remote colonial revolution with a deep distrust of monarchy, tradition, and authority. Being a destination for various people disenfranchised in their home cultures, who need a new metric of success, coalesce around money as the arbiter of success and indirectly "correctness". Geographic isolationism from other and significantly diverse first world nations. A lingering sense of superiority for our heroic role in WWII. I don't know how much each of these contributes, but I think the answer to the questions Asimov raises is sooner found in, say, de Tocqueville than in Susan Jacoby.

by madengr 10y ago

Too bad Asimov does not call out religion as a culprit, as he alludes to that in his books. The US has a huge evangelical (or fundamentalist) population that places faith over reason.

taurath 10y ago

And yet people are more likely to change their religion to match their politics than vice versa.

sabertoothed 10y ago
Politics and religious beliefs are intertwined. Especially in the US (in the Western world).
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  This seems sensible to me. If a person truly believes his religion, it has major implications for his/her notion of what it means for humans to thrive, what activities are moral/ethical, and the goals of human society. It would be very strange indeed if those beliefs had no bearing on one's politics.
  - tchock23 10y ago
    Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this?
    - sigzero 10y ago
      No, because once you give the government the ability to tax something you give the government the ability to control whatever that something is. The Supreme Court has ruled on this in the "Walz vs. Tax Commission of the City of New York" ruling.
    - DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
      > Do you support removing non-profit status from churches to formalize this? I don't know. I see good arguments for and against.
willvarfar 10y ago
Interesting, can you elaborate on what you mean and is there any studies behind it?
- punk_coder 10y ago
  My sister and her husband did this. He was Episcopalian, and she became pretty religious after marrying him. No one in my family was raised religiously. My parents always said we can figure that out for ourselves when we get older. Anyway, once the Episcopalian Church welcomed gay pastors, and her church got one, they fled and became Southern Baptists.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    In entire fairness, the Protestant strains in general can be organized along a single dimension with Calvinism at one end and Unitarianism at the other. Episcopalianism is relatively close to the latter, and Southern Baptism to the former; I don't really know that I'd describe it as a change of faith entire when someone moves along that dimension toward a more satisfactory interpretation of the scripture which all these strains share.
  - ddebernardy 10y ago
    That's rather specific to the US and I'm not sure I'd rate that as changing religion TBH. In Europe, your usual choices when you disagree with the dominant church are to get over it, become atheist, or - more rarely - change faith altogether (as in to Islam, Buddhism, etc.) because, more often than not, you exhaust Christian picks after going through Catholicism and the local Protestant flavor or two. In contrast, the US offers a very wide variety of Christian flavors (and Christian-based sects). So when, like your sister and her husband, you disagree you can just pick another church flavor down the block that is mostly the same with a few twists. You're still nominally Christian though. The difference between the two is sometimes put forward to explain the contrast between the high number of atheists in Europe and the high number of religious people in the US.
  - fsloth 10y ago
    I don't think that qualifies as changing religions.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

Religion is only incidental. Human beings are illogical and take a lot of things on faith. People often don't have good reasons to believe things or have simplistic views of other (see religion or not-religion). They believe because that's all they know. You eliminate all religion and you'll end up with non-religious faiths and ignorance. Haven't you noticed most tech is religion? Religion might play a factor, but only as much as class, nationality, race, culture, education, background, genetic factors, etc.

davrosthedalek 10y ago
There is a natural drive to faith: We can't know everything, so we think we have to take some things on faith. The point being that most religions try to foster faith. It's often a central mantra that faith is good. This unfortunately trains people to stop asking questions. On the other hand, the scientific approach tries to manage how we deal with things we don't know for certain. We believe in things more because we have more evidence for it. Without trusting them 100%.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Of course, but many things try and foster faith - companies do it, nations do it, people do it. Most people whether they are religious or not aren't applying the scientific method to their daily lives. You can't blame that - biases are easy and trying to be objective is a pain in the ass.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I think most people are smarter than this discussion is saying they are - it's just they don't optimize for the things we implicitly assume here. They don't optimize for the truth value of their beliefs, but for their direct usefulness in life. Most of the scientific facts don't have a direct impact on your life, so you don't get rewarded for getting things right, nor you get punished for getting them wrong. Different criteria thus become more relevant. How a belief fits your image of yourself? How does it help you strengthen your ties to the groups you're in? How it positions you against the groups you dislike? Note that in situations when getting things right has direct impact on one's life - like, when it comes to money or job - people suddenly become very rational.

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago

FWIW, most evangelicals I know reject the notion that faith and reason ought to be in contradiction. I think you'll find that few well-respected Christian theologians or pastors would embrace such a contradiction either. AFAIK, a more orthodox understanding of faith this: It's a willingness to take the risk that a proposition is true, or that a person can be trusted, even in the absence of iron-clad proof. As one guy phrased it, it's "putting all your eggs in one basket". And FWIW, I've encountered numerous liberals, conservatives, athiests, and theists who hold self-inconsistent sets of beliefs.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
You are arguing against an ideological worldview. It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history that are (edit) religious or non-religious. Speaking of contradictory beliefs, how about Lenin? He was an atheist but also thought he was a man of destiny...and murdered a bunch of people through fanaticism. Of course nobody wants to claim him today - not a true believer. Everybody knows true believers wouldn't do that.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  > It should go without saying that religious belief (as varied as it is) has very little to do either way with sound reasoning. You can find monsters throughout history with faith or non-faith. I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say. The first sentence seems to be an assertion about the relationship between reason and religious belief. But the second sentence seems to be about the non-relationship between holding a [non-]religious world-view and being a monster. Are those two sentences were meant to work together to make a larger point? If so, would you mind restating it so I can understand?
beaconstudios 10y ago
I think pretty much all humans hold self-inconsistent internal beliefs. We're not rational agents.
10y ago

lr4444lr 10y ago

He could have, but that still doesn't dig satisfying deeply into the analysis: why would Americans be prone to evangelical / fundamentalist religion, and a general disdain for knowledge? It isn't a direct line from the Puritans, whose descendants anyway hardly account for the result of successive waves of immigration seen today. There are deeper issues at play such as: The country's birth from a remote colonial revolution with a deep distrust of monarchy, tradition, and authority. Being a destination for various people disenfranchised in their home cultures, who need a new metric of success, coalesce around money as the arbiter of success and indirectly "correctness". Geographic isolationism from other and significantly diverse first world nations. A lingering sense of superiority for our heroic role in WWII. I don't know how much each of these contributes, but I think the answer to the questions Asimov raises is sooner found in, say, de Tocqueville than in Susan Jacoby.