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For people remaining religious: People often double down on their own arguments when they feel their beliefs are attacked. For people remaining or becoming rel

For people remaining religious: People often double down on their own arguments when they feel their beliefs are attacked. For people remaining or becoming religious: there are obvious benefits to being part of a community (assuming that the community isn't harmfully dysfunctional in any apparent way, from the perspective of the person considering it), and giving that up or turning that down can be very undesirable even if someone has considerable doubts. Religious traditions can also provide narratives that make various parts of living seem more meaningful and satisfying to people who buy into them. And again, even if someone has considerable doubts, they may choose to ignore them simply because they find a religious story more pleasant to consider.

skissane 4y ago
I think the bigger reason is that "explanation" plays a far smaller role than many people think it does: in terms of the actual psychological drivers of religious belief, "explanation" is way down the list. And the conflict between "scientific explanations" and "religious explanations" is greatly overstated. A lot of this idea of a science-vs-religion conflict is fed by the "creationism" controversy. But many religions are relatively disinterested in the question of how the world came to be (much of Hinduism and Buddhism), and even among Christians, "creationism" was only ever a really big deal among a certain subsection of Protestants–the idea that Genesis should not be taken literally is ancient, St Augustine of Hippo was advocating it in the 5th century. Most of that conflict has largely been localised to the United States, with many non-Americans left wondering what all the fuss is about. Also, just as we don't need to take religious texts literally – we don't need to take science literally either. A person can take a realist approach to scientific theories (the Standard Model, Big Bang cosmology, evolution, whatever) and believe that their theoretical constructs literally exist "out there". Or, a person can simply view them as "useful myths", which may not be literally true, but it is useful for us to pretend that they are for certain purposes. The ultimate justification for the natural sciences is their productivity in advancing technology, but you can attain that productivity irrespective of whether you believe science to be "literally true" or "literally false but nonetheless a set of useful myths".

skissane 4y ago

I think the bigger reason is that "explanation" plays a far smaller role than many people think it does: in terms of the actual psychological drivers of religious belief, "explanation" is way down the list. And the conflict between "scientific explanations" and "religious explanations" is greatly overstated. A lot of this idea of a science-vs-religion conflict is fed by the "creationism" controversy. But many religions are relatively disinterested in the question of how the world came to be (much of Hinduism and Buddhism), and even among Christians, "creationism" was only ever a really big deal among a certain subsection of Protestants–the idea that Genesis should not be taken literally is ancient, St Augustine of Hippo was advocating it in the 5th century. Most of that conflict has largely been localised to the United States, with many non-Americans left wondering what all the fuss is about. Also, just as we don't need to take religious texts literally – we don't need to take science literally either. A person can take a realist approach to scientific theories (the Standard Model, Big Bang cosmology, evolution, whatever) and believe that their theoretical constructs literally exist "out there". Or, a person can simply view them as "useful myths", which may not be literally true, but it is useful for us to pretend that they are for certain purposes. The ultimate justification for the natural sciences is their productivity in advancing technology, but you can attain that productivity irrespective of whether you believe science to be "literally true" or "literally false but nonetheless a set of useful myths".