5 ms·

Neuroscientists must not be afraid to study religion

22 points by pseudolus 2y ago

squircle 2y ago
However, you may want to pour yourself a stiff drink.
Animats 2y ago
But what if they find a cure?
- senectus1 2y ago
  Funny comment of the week.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    Oh, it'd be great if they did. Seriously. :)
    - senectus1 2y ago
      more seriously though, why isolate religion. it should be a study of "belief". I dont think anyone would honestly argue that religion isn't a belief, and if it is then it sits in the same area as flat earthers and 9/11 truthers and Andrew Tate devotees etc etc. Belief is the nurological architecture that people are building on.
      - angrygoat 2y ago
        There's a tendency for Westerners to view every religion through the lens of protestant Christianity. Religion is a notoriously hard to define concept (this was the running joke of a sociology of religion unit I took at university; each week we'd look to another attempt to define it.) The idea that it's all about 'belief', some confession of fact-statements, is very much from that protestant Christian understanding, a post-Enlightenment focus on words. The boundaries between religion, culture, language, myth and storytelling, reflection.. these are all extremely porous and vary widely. It looks to me that the researchers in the article are aware of this. Brent Nongbri's book "Before Religion" is excellent on all of this. (Full disclosure, I'm an Anglican [Episcopalian in the US] priest)
      - Animats 2y ago
        There's a neurological argument that overgeneralizing cause from effect has survival benefits. There will be a high false alarm rate for tigers in moving grass, but that's a win if, sometimes, there really is a tiger. This leads to a tendency to assign causes for random events. That in turn leads to various belief systems not justified by the evidence. Wikipedia has some notes in this area.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion
        Timwi 2y ago
        It has always struck me as odd that when this example is recited, the animal of choice is always a tiger. The situation is supposed to play out in very early prehistory during the evolution of humanity. That evolution occurred in the savannahs of Africa, where there are no tigers.
- lynx23 2y ago
  [flagged]
throwawaysleep 2y ago
There is also the inevitable anger, rage, and death threats that will follow when people who regularly claim to commune with God are determined to merely be schizophrenic or using the same brain pathways as LSD users. Religions haven't stopped being resistant to investigation and their members remain zealous. Even the claim about meditation in the article will upset people, as then it isn't God delivering peace to your mind. Doing research in this area could easily lead to something you wouldn’t want to publish out of fear.
jrm4 2y ago
As I get older, this seems obvious to me; the idea of a scientist who's also to some extent religious makes just as much sense, maybe more, than a strongly atheist one -- especially given, that historically, religion and science weren't strongly mutually exclusive?
- kitkat_new 2y ago
  if it seems that obvious, you surely can explain why it would make semse?
  - jrm4 2y ago
    Sure, it's the appreciation that there are unknowns and how to treat them. As you know, the best SCIENTISTS aren't 100% sure about very much. Reverence and wonder can cut across it all.
    - Timwi 2y ago
      Religion tends to make people more sure about things that they don't really know for sure. In my mind that has always struck me as an obstacle to being a good scientist. Appreciating that there are unknowns is exactly what gets a lot of people into science, and the correct way to treat those unknowns in science is to say that you're not sure about something until you've run the experiment.
- the_af 2y ago
  Hm, whether a scientist is religious should bear little relation to studying religion or anything adjacent to it. For historians it'd be more obvious I think: it would be foolish to ignore religion since it's an artifact of human history. A historian who is an atheist can still study and compare religions. But what about science? While the object of religion itself, i.e. the supernatural, is outside the scope of the scientific method, the existence of religion and religious practices themselves is not. What if there's a biological cause of religious belief? What if religious belief is a side effect of the same brain structures that make humans social animals, or that makes capable of language, or conscious, or something like that? As long as you're not making a religious argument, religion as a human artifact should be fair game for science. The risk could be to offend religious people, of course.
seydor 2y ago
I don't think religion is different from so many other biases, illusions, delusions etc. There's no need to define it as a separate field of study just because there are so many people participating in it. Plus there is the personal attacks, death threats and occasional murders associated with many of them.
- zzo38computer 2y ago
  Religion is not only (and perhaps also not mainly) about belief, but also involves philosophy, community, etc. (And, there are many different kind of religion; they are different in many ways.) (There are also differences within one religion, although it can also depend how you divide "one religion", because there is denominations, etc. However, what I mean is there are differences even within one denomination and within one community, and whatever else you may wish to divide, etc.) People do bad things with religion, although people can do bad things with any things. People can also do good things with religion and with others.
guywithahat 2y ago
I know this is unpopular but we need to stop being so afraid of studying IQ. If you look at research like the NYLS there are very clear differences, and they seem to be heavily influenced by genetics. Your IQ is incredibly important for everything from earning potential to lifespan, and we could make meaningful societal advancements from that kind of research. Also as an aside from my time doing research, I don’t think anyone is afraid to conduct research that’s critical of religion.
- Timwi 2y ago
  > I don’t think anyone is afraid to conduct research that’s critical of religion. Anyone? Anyone at all? Or did you mean anyone in your social circles and you forgot that people outside of it exist? Such as people in countries with Sharia law?
westurner 2y ago
- /? religion out of body experiences and epilepsy neuroimaging: https://www.google.com/search?q=religion+out+of+body+experiences+and+epilepsy+neuroimaging https://www.google.com/search?q=religion+out+of+body+experie... - /? auditory cortex verbal hallucinations: https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20verbal%20hallucinations https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20verbal%2... - /? auditory cortex for schizophrenia treatment: https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20for%20schizophrenia%20treatment%20 https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20for%20sc... - Humanism > Varieties of humanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism#Varieties_of_humanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism#Varieties_of_humanism re: the many ways bootstrapping a sufficient morality because the Golden Rule and the 3 Laws of Robotics are insufficient in comparison to e.g. statutes printed out every year; and because LLMs lack reasoning, inference, and critical thinking and thus also ethics.
smarm52 2y ago
You have to get grants to do research. Grants don't come from scientists (usually), and are subject to the forces of politics. Thus, it's hard to find money to study religion, as it's not politically tenable.
miffy900 2y ago
> Meanwhile, more people around the globe classed as Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) seem to be embracing highly traditional religious affiliations, such as traditional Catholicism or Judaism. There isn't a reference provided for that sentence in the article, but it's something that seems true to me, from my own experience. I'd really love to see some hard research confirming or denying this.
- goalieca 2y ago
  Religious people seem to be having more children.
ginvok 2y ago
I don't understand why scientists don't study dragon fossils.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Presumably there are plenty who would, if any were available to study. ;)

22 points by pseudolus 2y ago

squircle 2y ago

However, you may want to pour yourself a stiff drink.

Animats 2y ago

But what if they find a cure?

senectus1 2y ago
Funny comment of the week.
- justinclift 2y ago
  Oh, it'd be great if they did. Seriously. :)
  - senectus1 2y ago
    more seriously though, why isolate religion. it should be a study of "belief". I dont think anyone would honestly argue that religion isn't a belief, and if it is then it sits in the same area as flat earthers and 9/11 truthers and Andrew Tate devotees etc etc. Belief is the nurological architecture that people are building on.
    - angrygoat 2y ago
      There's a tendency for Westerners to view every religion through the lens of protestant Christianity. Religion is a notoriously hard to define concept (this was the running joke of a sociology of religion unit I took at university; each week we'd look to another attempt to define it.) The idea that it's all about 'belief', some confession of fact-statements, is very much from that protestant Christian understanding, a post-Enlightenment focus on words. The boundaries between religion, culture, language, myth and storytelling, reflection.. these are all extremely porous and vary widely. It looks to me that the researchers in the article are aware of this. Brent Nongbri's book "Before Religion" is excellent on all of this. (Full disclosure, I'm an Anglican [Episcopalian in the US] priest)
    - Animats 2y ago
      There's a neurological argument that overgeneralizing cause from effect has survival benefits. There will be a high false alarm rate for tigers in moving grass, but that's a win if, sometimes, there really is a tiger. This leads to a tendency to assign causes for random events. That in turn leads to various belief systems not justified by the evidence. Wikipedia has some notes in this area.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion
      - Timwi 2y ago
        It has always struck me as odd that when this example is recited, the animal of choice is always a tiger. The situation is supposed to play out in very early prehistory during the evolution of humanity. That evolution occurred in the savannahs of Africa, where there are no tigers.
lynx23 2y ago
[flagged]

throwawaysleep 2y ago

There is also the inevitable anger, rage, and death threats that will follow when people who regularly claim to commune with God are determined to merely be schizophrenic or using the same brain pathways as LSD users. Religions haven't stopped being resistant to investigation and their members remain zealous. Even the claim about meditation in the article will upset people, as then it isn't God delivering peace to your mind. Doing research in this area could easily lead to something you wouldn’t want to publish out of fear.

jrm4 2y ago

As I get older, this seems obvious to me; the idea of a scientist who's also to some extent religious makes just as much sense, maybe more, than a strongly atheist one -- especially given, that historically, religion and science weren't strongly mutually exclusive?

kitkat_new 2y ago
if it seems that obvious, you surely can explain why it would make semse?
- jrm4 2y ago
  Sure, it's the appreciation that there are unknowns and how to treat them. As you know, the best SCIENTISTS aren't 100% sure about very much. Reverence and wonder can cut across it all.
  - Timwi 2y ago
    Religion tends to make people more sure about things that they don't really know for sure. In my mind that has always struck me as an obstacle to being a good scientist. Appreciating that there are unknowns is exactly what gets a lot of people into science, and the correct way to treat those unknowns in science is to say that you're not sure about something until you've run the experiment.
the_af 2y ago
Hm, whether a scientist is religious should bear little relation to studying religion or anything adjacent to it. For historians it'd be more obvious I think: it would be foolish to ignore religion since it's an artifact of human history. A historian who is an atheist can still study and compare religions. But what about science? While the object of religion itself, i.e. the supernatural, is outside the scope of the scientific method, the existence of religion and religious practices themselves is not. What if there's a biological cause of religious belief? What if religious belief is a side effect of the same brain structures that make humans social animals, or that makes capable of language, or conscious, or something like that? As long as you're not making a religious argument, religion as a human artifact should be fair game for science. The risk could be to offend religious people, of course.

seydor 2y ago

I don't think religion is different from so many other biases, illusions, delusions etc. There's no need to define it as a separate field of study just because there are so many people participating in it. Plus there is the personal attacks, death threats and occasional murders associated with many of them.

zzo38computer 2y ago
Religion is not only (and perhaps also not mainly) about belief, but also involves philosophy, community, etc. (And, there are many different kind of religion; they are different in many ways.) (There are also differences within one religion, although it can also depend how you divide "one religion", because there is denominations, etc. However, what I mean is there are differences even within one denomination and within one community, and whatever else you may wish to divide, etc.) People do bad things with religion, although people can do bad things with any things. People can also do good things with religion and with others.

guywithahat 2y ago

I know this is unpopular but we need to stop being so afraid of studying IQ. If you look at research like the NYLS there are very clear differences, and they seem to be heavily influenced by genetics. Your IQ is incredibly important for everything from earning potential to lifespan, and we could make meaningful societal advancements from that kind of research. Also as an aside from my time doing research, I don’t think anyone is afraid to conduct research that’s critical of religion.

Timwi 2y ago
> I don’t think anyone is afraid to conduct research that’s critical of religion. Anyone? Anyone at all? Or did you mean anyone in your social circles and you forgot that people outside of it exist? Such as people in countries with Sharia law?

westurner 2y ago

- /? religion out of body experiences and epilepsy neuroimaging: https://www.google.com/search?q=religion+out+of+body+experiences+and+epilepsy+neuroimaging https://www.google.com/search?q=religion+out+of+body+experie... - /? auditory cortex verbal hallucinations: https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20verbal%20hallucinations https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20verbal%2... - /? auditory cortex for schizophrenia treatment: https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20for%20schizophrenia%20treatment%20 https://www.google.com/search?q=auditory%20cortex%20for%20sc... - Humanism > Varieties of humanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism#Varieties_of_humanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism#Varieties_of_humanism re: the many ways bootstrapping a sufficient morality because the Golden Rule and the 3 Laws of Robotics are insufficient in comparison to e.g. statutes printed out every year; and because LLMs lack reasoning, inference, and critical thinking and thus also ethics.

smarm52 2y ago

You have to get grants to do research. Grants don't come from scientists (usually), and are subject to the forces of politics. Thus, it's hard to find money to study religion, as it's not politically tenable.

miffy900 2y ago

> Meanwhile, more people around the globe classed as Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) seem to be embracing highly traditional religious affiliations, such as traditional Catholicism or Judaism. There isn't a reference provided for that sentence in the article, but it's something that seems true to me, from my own experience. I'd really love to see some hard research confirming or denying this.

goalieca 2y ago
Religious people seem to be having more children.

ginvok 2y ago

I don't understand why scientists don't study dragon fossils.

justinclift 2y ago
Presumably there are plenty who would, if any were available to study. ;)