Has Superstition Evolved To Help Mankind Survive? 621
Pickens writes "The tendency to falsely link cause to effect — a superstition — is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University. For example, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but 'if a group of lions is coming there's a huge benefit to not being around.' Foster worked with mathematical language and a simple definition for superstition to determine exactly when such potentially false connections pay off and found as long as the cost of believing a superstition is less than the cost of missing a real association, superstitious beliefs will be favored. In modern times, superstitions turn up as a belief in alternative and homeopathic remedies. 'The chances are that most of them don't do anything, but some of them do,' Foster says. Wolfgang Forstmeier argues that by linking cause and effect — often falsely — science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition. 'You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,' Forstmeier says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, 'quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often.'"
not the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Superstition is not as easily verifiable as scientific statements. I am not talking about money, science is more expensive that Mythbusters. I am talking about the design of scientific statements.
The director of the scientific institution I grew up in said once that good scientific paper should answer to one yes-or-no question.
Science is about analysis, superstition does not care. Science about cleaning up cause-effect relationship in nature to make a repeatable experiment in the lab, superstition just takes cause-effect pairs as they are - in a raw form mudded with all kind of unique circumstances.
Placebo effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Belief in Homeopathic medicine would also be beneficial because of the placebo effect.
Superstition can also cause great harm. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of examples of flawed superstitious beliefs leading to an equally large disadvantage or equally great damage. For examples see what happens to people who join cults. For a really good extreme example much more elloquently stated than I possibly could take a look at Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" and look for a persuasive argument why Nancy and Ronald Reagan consulting fortune tellers and horoscopes might not be a good thing when Ron's got his finger on the nuclear button. Wiping out most species on the planet has to qualify as an evolutionary step backwards.
Re:not the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Homeopathy != alternative remedies (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignorance pleaded - would have worked too (Score:1, Insightful)
"The tendency to falsely link cause to effect a superstition is occasionally beneficial"
What a piece of unfortunate crap, but probably true. Anyhow. Ignorance pleaded - would have worked too and wouldn't have had all side effects.
But, people probably began telling the inquisitive children and adults made up stories.
"Don't swim in the deep water or the water monster/god/goblin will eat you. He and his family came from far away. Not all of them are bad, you see. One rules over the forest, etc."
Why not tell them right away: You may drown.
The sad thing is that these chain of innocent little lies got hold over people's mind and life, and became more elaborate, like religions.
Frankly, I have never seen anything good done by that part of reality.
If you don't know. Say so or keep shut! Avoid lies.
You have got to be kidding me. (Score:3, Insightful)
This might be a fascinating bit of research, but the story posting isn't even particularly thinly-veiled cannon-fodder flaimbait. It's practically guaranteed to bring out religion apologists and armchair scientists alike in droves.
[Scientist argues that] science is simply a dogmatic form of superstition.
WTF!?
Science only works because it isn't superstitious ! The very fact that we can use the methods we call "science" to discover the nature of reality refutes this assertion in its entirety. That was the statement of a hack.
By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, "quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often."
(Emphasis mine.)
Again: WTF!?
The practitioners of science are the strongest bastion against this sort of dogmatic, superstitious thinking. It is disingenuous to say that "quite a lot of scientists [are superstitious and therefore inept at science]" because that fraction, and certainly that absolute number pale utterly in comparison to the number of people who live every moment of their daily lives, years on-end, in an opaque fog of superstitious belief that some particular list of claims about reality is inerrant while all similar ones are fallacious, and reality can just get bent because "huh, scientists sure are stoo-pid!".
Now we have to endure a flame war between religious zealots, crank science adherents, scientists, and rational non-scientists all seizing this story as a chance to advance their righteousness and deride their opponents, and perform damage control when they suffer affronts in kind.
My predictions (which might admittedly be partially self-fulfilling):
1)at least 850 comments before this story leaves the main page. (Page views galore! Screw enriching the readership; flamefests are more profitable.)
2) A dozen or so comments by the religious regulars who feel they are making the world a better place by spamming the same thoughtless garbage several times a thread, no matter how many times it's refuted. How some of these people have good karma is beyond me. (Please help fix this problem if you have mod points and don't feel like playing whack-a-religious-nutjob-a-mole.)
Murhpy's law? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a programmer I constantly refer to Murhy's law. It helps me through the day by expecting the worst and being positively surprised when my code does what it's supposed to. ;)
Superstition? Why the hell not? It's not very rational is it... But it seems to work for me.
But those elaborate see-a-black-cat-throw-salt-and-spit-over-your-shoulder superstitions? Naah...
Sometimes yes, sometimes no (Score:5, Insightful)
Superstitions, culture, religion has had its place in ensuring the safety of the believers. Take a look at the dietary restrictions of various religions. Often, they concocted supernatural explanations for diseases or parasites that we understand today. Like prohibitions against eating pork or shellfish. The cost of continuing to avoid such foods, even when we understand the science and can prepare them safely is minimal.
However, there are times when the refusal to understand explanations behind superstitions cost our ancestors dearly. Take cats. Cats coexisted with ancient man as efficient means to keeping rodents out of grain stores. After a time, some civilizations came to hold cats in high regard, even worship them. Ancient Egypt is one example. Enter Christianity. Rather than examine the basis of other religions and cultures reverence for the cat (understanding their practical utility shouldn't have been that hard, even in the middle ages), they associated cats with pagan religions and eventually witchcraft. Cats were feared, driven out of human habitations and killed en mass. Now, the bubonic plague arrives. Societies that didn't buy into the cat loathing of Christianity fared far better then those that did.
Re:Placebo effect (Score:4, Insightful)
I was saying that homeopathic medicine of the sort that doesn't actually have medicinal effects is a superstition, and that said superstition would be beneficial to individuals thus increasing their evolutionary fitness.
It never takes an indirect route to a goal.
Correct, there is no goal to which evolution could take an indirect route.
I'm just saying you didn't explain anything by saying something evolved to help cause people to take advantage of the placebo effect, that doesn't make sense.
Why not? If I said that thumbs evolved because they allowed us to make better use of our hands it would explain something. Things evolve in the context of the whole organism and are beneficial or deleterious in that context, among others.
Just a different term?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Aside from labeling mis-generalization as superstition (where superstition is really only one possible category of mis-generalization), what has this guy really done? Shown that a mis-generalizaion that is based on some observation might occasionally pay off when that observation does occasionally represent itself? Big Suprise!
If we use our brains a little, this is a bit of a sad excuse for an article is it not?
Re:Placebo effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, as far as evolution is concerned, "beneficial" means that you survive to have kids, "deletrious" means you don't. Or at least not as many as the rest of the population. A lot of changes are basically null signals evolutionarily speaking. Red hair? Who cares? (Well, Moslems tend to think it is unlucky, but other than them...) That gene that makes you pretty much immune to AIDS? Didn't matter a hill of beans through most of history, since there was no AIDS. And so on.
Re:Placebo effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Our brains are pattern processing engines (Score:3, Insightful)
Kid drops lollipop and learns about gravity and slowly builds up an idea that if you drop something it falls. Hand the kid a hydrogen balloon and you'll see that "WTF!" look when it goes up when you let it go.
Kid learns that rocks sink when you throw them in water. I still remember that "WTF!" look on my 4 year old son's face when handed him a chunk of pumice to throw in the water and it floated!
When a pattern is beyond our ability to comprehend then it becomes a superstition: 6 is my lucky number and green is an unlucky color for me; if I dream about snakes then bad stuff is going to happen.
Perhaps these days pseudo-science has largely replaced straight-out superstition. People believe crap like cellphones can pop popcorn.
Re:Superstition prevents congitive failures (Score:2, Insightful)
I would have thought it was a product of our society being unable to adequately explain (either through their ignorance or just a lack of language) why things were dangerous. Where does evolution come into it? Is the article saying that knocking on wood is hard wired into our brains? Being worried about rustling grass isn't a hard wired phenomena, it isn't even a superstition. It's the result of being told about bloody lions eating people. Fear is an evolutionary advantage. Superstition isn't.
I don't have a link, but at one point I heard of a study that tried to link dietary restrictions present in various religions with geography. For some reason (and again, I don't recall the details) not eating beef, in, say, India, actually turned out to be a more efficient way to produce calories for the entire society. (Something to do with fertilization from the dung, fats in the milk, and the use of otherwise un-arable land) And pigs were inefficient in the Middle East. Dietary restrictions have been enforced by superstitions (e.g., cows are sacred, pigs are unclean) rather than fear or anything else, and have proved to be useful in maintaining a population.
Re:Laughable (Score:3, Insightful)
Science, is thus something that can disprove something is is thought to be true. An example would be horoscopes. Science killed them long ago, yet some people (quite irrationally) still swear by them. Quantum Mechanics is strange and counter-intuitive, but none-the-less has mountains of experimental evidence to show its veracity.
Well, science has tried very hard to kill astrology, but after my years of studying the patterns of behavior in people with respect to their times of birth, I believe it is more accurate to say that many would simply really, really LIKE it if science would kill astrology, (for reasons I've never fully understood). --Especially these days. After all, the latter part of your statement above does much to throw into question the former.
There was another Slashdot article a few days ago wherein researchers were baffled to discover that certain radioactive particles decay at different rates depending on the time of year, (or as they assumed, the Earth's distance from the Sun). I wonder what force between the Earth and the Sun could affect the behavior of particles and if that force might not be related to the manner in which people's brains develop as they grow up? It would help to explain things.
Conventional wisdom is always growing for a reason; we don't know everything, and as such we should never be hasty to dismiss observable phenomenon just because we happen to find them objectionable for one reason or another.
-FL
Scientists ARE often ignorant. That's their job. (Score:0, Insightful)
To study a concept, follow it no matter where it goes. That's the job of a scientist. Keep our eyes open and prove every concept.
Well, unless it goes into the Bible; then we pretend there's no proven validity to it, call it quaint and decide our line of thinking no longer has value. The Bible is such a show-stopper.
Yeah, this is why I have such bad 'karma' on this site. Almost no one reads me, my input is disturbing.
Equally disturbing:
1. "Let there be light" identified the start of this reality.
2. "The Earth is suspended from nothing" tells us that unlike the other ancients, the Earth sits on nothing.
3, It talks about the "land being split" in the continental divides. (Is that Plate tectonics? I'm not a specialist.)
4. It was right about the lost Hittite capital.
5. It was right about the last Babylonian administration.
6. While it doesn't list all 5,000,000+ species of animal, it does call out the stages of plant development, and that matches the fossil record.
So why is it so absurd to believe that the rest of it's true? More than 100 civilizations have a 'great flood' mentioned in their history. Think that was just a really, really good rumor? YouTube viral video?
Meanwhile, the "Tree of Life" talks about all animals slowly evolving over time, starting at, let's say, amoebas and ending with man. Except the fossil record shows all life 'sprung' into existance (cosmologically speaking) in the Pre-Cambrian era: all the phylum, vertebrates and invertebrates.
The "Tree of Life" was simply a sketch in "Origin of Species". Flawed though it is, is it better to cling to that, and ignore the proven truths of the Bible? That's no longer ignorant, it's hiding from the truth.
Re:Sometimes yes, sometimes no (Score:3, Insightful)
Cats carry fleas and the bubonic plague as well as rats. What makes you think having lots of cats around would have helped?
Also, I can't really find any evidence for your claim about Christianity causing cats to be driven away ...
Re:not the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not the same (Score:4, Insightful)
qso science is an improved version of superstition in terms of its value to humankind
Indeed, the example of the lions and rustling grass isn't incorrectly correlating cause and effect, it's just a weak cause/effect relationship with a lot of noise in the data... still beneficial to act on depending on the risk analysis.
Religion (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Placebo effect (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know. If I could explain the placebo effect I'd be a millionaire.
Your statement explains Scientology pretty well.
Re:Superstition prevents congitive failures (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally speaking though, grain production produces more food than cattle production.
I see his point, though (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I see his point, though. The mammalian brain didn't evolve to make scientific reproductible experiments and calculate the error bar. Any given creature wouldn't have enough data or the chance to perform some meaningful experiment. So learning some cause-effect pairs, no matter how flawed, is all that was available and better than nothing.
E.g., if you're a goat and trying to eat one kind of bush gives you some nasty thorn wounds, you just remember that and move on. From now on, you avoid that bush if you can. You don't have the luxury to sample enough such bushes and enough such goats, divided neatly into two groups for a proper double-blind test, to see if you have a good sample. (And probably wouldn't live long if you did.) In practice, maybe that bush was growing through a barbed wire fence, but you wouldn't know that.
The same would apply to the early humans too. If cousing Urgh and aunt Graah ate the funny spotted mushrooms and died, you avoid those mushrooms. You don't divide the tribe in two halves and do a double blind experiment to see if it was really the mushrooms.
So they're not the same, but one of them was all that was available. And we're built to jump to conclusions, basically.
Re:Placebo effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider the difference here (practically, it's the same - philosophically, it's not):
- Evolution happens so that life can continue to exist.
- Life continues to exist because of evolution (genetic mutations + natural selection).
Right now the wikipedia article on teleology [wikipedia.org] sums it up as function following form rather than vice versa. The point being that, not is only evolution not conscious, it has no goals. Not even the preservation of life.
That said, it does seem like life tries pretty damn hard to perpetuate itself, doesn't it? But there is no scientific basis for assigning a goal to evolution. We do ourselves a disservice by seeing something and declaring that it has to be that way.
Re:Superstition can also cause great harm. (Score:5, Insightful)
look for a persuasive argument why Nancy and Ronald Reagan consulting fortune tellers and horoscopes might not be a good thing when Ron's got his finger on the nuclear button.
Did Reagan launch any nukes during the 80's? No? Then your argument is completely flawed. In fact, since he didn't launch after consulting fortune tellers, it would appear that using fortune tellers actually helps prevent nuclear annihilation. Or maybe I'm just being superstitious in seeing that cause and effect.
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc"
You are committing a logical fallacy. By the same logic:
Reagan ate breakfast each morning. Therefore breakfast prevents nuclear war.
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Science doesn't help, that's for sure, but you can't shake a true believer with science.
You can. Put a lightning rod on your roof and none of the roof of the church.
Actually the reverse (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine the first gene. Floating in primordial soup. What did it do?
It found a way of replicating itself.
Then it found a way of protecting itself from the environment.
Then it found a way of protecting itself from other genes.
Then it found a way of taking advantage of other genes. --- (this is us)
They aren't our genes... We are their replication machines.
Re:Laughable (Score:3, Insightful)
studying the patterns of behavior in people with respect to their times of birth
Don't forget it can be a completely circular effect. For example Aries are supposed to be self confident and stubborn. By having people tell an Aries that he is supposed to have those traits, and expecting him to behave that way, it can in fact encourage and reinforce those traits in that person. Even if in fact that person was adopted and the paperwork was botched and we was never an Aries in the first place. It's the expectation that produces the result.
Take me for example. My sign is Neon. Neons tend to be arrogant and mock irrational bullshit.
See? It's a self fulfilling prophesy. It even worked on me.
-
Re:Placebo effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, you're good (Score:3, Insightful)
Programmer: The kind of person that looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
I always assume that my code is the only working non-OS process and everything it has to interface has crashed and burnt without having the common decency to inform anyone or even try to restart, the log drive is full and my every memory allocation fails. Then again, I make none of these assumptions when I'm doing 'doze programming
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
The current administration is about as anti-Christian as anyone can get, but all Bush has to do is tell people what a great Christian he is, and they believe it, while he murders innocent people, takes from the poor and gives to the rich, and pins medals on people for NOT helping tragedy victims nearby that are dying from lack of a drink of clean water. What Would Jesus Do? indeed.
Yet if you ask most people which party is more religious, most would say Republican. And one the arguments I hear a lot from Republicans about why the Democrats are so bad is that they spend too much money helping the poor.
I'm not saying Democrats are much better. Just that the Republicans have the religious thing figured out.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
That's some pretty grand claims when you say that you don't even understand how some humans can have different worldviews from others. Of course perhaps you have stumbled upon the meaning of life, who am I to say when I haven't even heard it :p Personally I wouldn't put it in a book where not many people are likely to read it, I'd put it online and have a link in my sig so that as many people as possible could see it! I wouldn't use it as an attempt to make money. It's very easy to prey on people's insecurities to do that. Perhaps you're not just out to make money, but you're being very secretive about your opinions.
I've seen plenty of people who think they have explained everything, but there are often gaps or just poor logic in their reasoning. I myself will very likely have inconsistencies in my beliefs, because they have changed pretty rapidly over the last couple of years. I may not be able to see the inconsistencies but if I tried to explain my views to others then they would likely spot some flaws. There is no such thing as 'a perfect theory of moral philosophy' - it may be perfect for your own culture, but other cultures often hold very different ideas on morality. The whole "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" kind of works, but not really - how exactly does it work when applied to a masochist?
BTW, you probably should only call your opinions hypothesis until other people have had a go at refuting it. Calling your own opinions a theory is bad enough, but 'perfect theory'? It just makes me think you are being arrogant and short-sighted rather than insightful. Sorry if that is harsh, but it's the way you come across to me.
Re:Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Religion, Superstition, Science and belief systems are not US centric, the Democrats and the Republicans are. No American president could be elected who would proclaim himself/herself to be an atheist.
Also, whether your theories are perfect or not (if they ever will be awarded the status of theory instead of simply being your opinion) is not for you to say.
Re:Religion (Score:2, Insightful)
...before we scientifically understood everything...
XD
ROTFLMAO
So quoth TFA;
"quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often."
So quoth Shakespeare;
" What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world - the paragon of animals! "
Re:Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
" From their point of view they have 'evidence' of their beliefs (mostly based on feelings or circular/incomplete reasoning) and can make up even more stuff to discount the rest."
This is a pretty good description of people in general, not just the religious ones.
Re:Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. The only thing absolutely necessary for someone to change their beliefs without being brainwashed is a willingness to change. You point out why change can be hard, and certainly people who proselytize science to counter religious arguments seem anti-religious enough to cause many to simple shirk back to their faith instead of listening and thinking. In many ways, it's like the Matrix; many people are so unwilling to listen to anything that risks their world view, that it's basically futile to bother discussing certain issues with them; at least, it's futile unless and until they want to talk about them.
Oh, and please realize when I say all of the above, I hold the same view for atheists. They too are bigoted to their beliefs. And while certainly in living it is necessary to have at least some bigoted belief (even if it's as simple as the belief to drink more and think less), it's very difficult, if not impossible, to know which belief is the right one to be bigoted to. That's the paradox of religion in general: if it's the case that anyone can lie as much as they want and make up whatever religious belief they care to, how at all is it possible for a sane person to reasonably know the right one from the false ones? It seems the answer is, it's impossible to know. That's why I have the bigoted view of agnosticism. Thankfully, not having a definitive answer about religion isn't necessary to live.
Re:Placebo effect (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny, but I've often thought of the best Christians as having "humanist" morals. Perspective is a funny thing.
Somersault, as someone who spent a big part of my life as an academic, I've seen more than one "spiritual awakening" of a very religious person who learns to set aside childish superstitions.
It's not an easy road, but when you can start to see that your morals come from the person you are instead of the fear of punishment, you are truly "putting aside childish things" as a wise man said.
Re:not the same - phobias (Score:5, Insightful)
There are other ways superstition can be very harmful.
Let's say your superstition is that when your children get sick, you're going to pray instead of take them to the doctor.
Your genes may not get very far.
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAHistorian, but I've been given to understand that faith wasn't diminished by the Black Death, and you'd be hard pressed in the centuries that followed to find anyone in Britain who professed anything other than Christian faith. If anything people became more devout during and after the event - as tends to happen during any crisis. Consider that those who survived probably considered their survival a miracle in the first place...
My understanding is that the economic impact of massive devastation to the working population was the real cause of change. Church and State were almost one and the same during that time, and so the church wielded an incredible amount of power over the daily material lives of the commoners. All land was owned either by the church or by nobles who were closely tied to it, and all workers were essentially beholden to the land-owners to earn a living, grow food etc - and the land-owners pretty much dictated the law and punishment too.
When the population suddenly declined (about a third was lost), there were not enough workers to work the land and such. The balance of power shifted - not massively, but perceptibly - towards the workers. The iron grip was relaxed slightly, and this is what caused the increase in rebellion and unrest. Faith had not diminished, but the power to enforce arbitrary rule had.
It wasn't that the events had shaken people's faith and made them dissatisfied - no doubt they always felt that way. It was that the church/state was somewhat less able to repress their will.
Re:Religion (Score:5, Insightful)
Science and Religion cover different aspects of human endeavors. Science didn't make religion obsolete.
Heck, I'm mostly an atheist and I'm not sure why you'd think that. I know someone with a BSc, two MSc's, and a PhD -- he's still a practicing catholic. He just doesn't rely on the bible to explain the structure of the universe (he's a computational astrophysicist). He also doesn't use science to inform his morality and understanding of how we find meaning in all of it.
They really are different disciplines, and they're not as fundamentally incompatible as people around here seem to think.
Cheers
Re:Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nope, you're good (Score:3, Insightful)
Programmer: The kind of person that looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
Damn right I look both ways before crossing a one-way street! I've been nearly mown down by enough cyclists and even motor vehicles going the wrong way not to!
Re:Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so god created the universe - who created God? You say a watch can't appear fully formed, someone just created it - but a god who is even more complex than us can appear fully formed, or is more likely to have 'always existed' than the universe?
Mu, the question is retarded. Have you ever heard a physicist explain that there wasn't any time before the Big Bang? It works like that. God doesn't exist in linear time as we see it, He just sticks his toe in occasionally. Thus, from our perspective He appears to have "always" existed when, in actual fact, time is really a much smaller place than we thought it.
Re:Religion (Score:2, Insightful)
From their point of view they have 'evidence' of their beliefs (mostly based on feelings or circular/incomplete reasoning) and can make up even more stuff to discount the rest.
WAIT are you talking about Atheists?
Re:Religion (Score:3, Insightful)
And one the arguments I hear a lot from Republicans about why the Democrats are so bad is that they spend too much money helping the poor
This might be what you thought you heard, but no Republican actually said it. The argument is that Democrats make too many simple transfer payments to the poor from the wealthy. If we can accept the general truism that giving a man a fish feeds him today but teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime, then Republicans view transfer payments as part 1 and would prefer a system that encourages part 2 and makes part 1 a voluntary only system. There are a LOT of Republicans who donate both time and money to private institutions that help the poor (usually church/faith based organizations) so they are not at all against the idea of giving a fish today, just against using the tax man to involuntarily collect donations and another bloated beauracratic system to dole it.
Re:Religion (Score:1, Insightful)
The causes leading to the enlightenment are a little more complex than that serfs collectively felt let down by God for not saving their friends and family from the ravages of the plague, and therefore adopted democracy and blew up all the credit card companies to reset the debt record, creating a perfect utopian society.
Re-writing history with the same story arc as Fight Club = fail.
Re:Scientists ARE often ignorant. That's their job (Score:2, Insightful)
""IF"? Much of the Bible IS historical fact. "
No, much of it is a mix of legend, allegory and myth. The actual historical facts in there are few and far between, especially when compared to the number of baseless assertions and statements that could be interpreted in such a great number of ways that they are meaningless.
"A materialist has decided that those sorts of things just can't happen at all:"
Strawman. What materialists demand is evidence. Let's try it again -
"How do you know the miracles are fake?"
"I don't, but that stuff is far fetched enough that I'm going to need proof"
"But here's an eyewitness account..."
"It's unreliable."
"How do you know it's unreliable?"
"It's thousands of years old, it's been translated and spun for political gain, and it's from an age in which we know most humans attributed a lot of things to deities that we now know are natural phenomena"
Sure, after a while people grow dismissive of miracles and the like. But that's because there are hundreds of examples of people claiming all sorts of things, most of which turn out to be either hoaxes or idiocy.
"I may have an *opinion* about it based on what I believe, but what do I know? Only God is omniscient. (that's what *I* believe, anyway.)"
That's up to you, but please recognise that there is not a shred of evidence for your belief, before trying to browbeat others with your "truths".
Re:Religion (Score:1, Insightful)
Just a quick nit-pick.
The term "priest" is usually reserved for Catholic church leaders. Catholics tend to be more liberal in matters relating to religion these days. For example, the last pope made a statement that evolution and the Bible are not in conflict. The recent Catholic church has been much more willing to accept that parts of the Bible are allegorical and/or fictional stories meant for teaching than some protestant religions.
Science isn't "dogmatic superstition". (Score:3, Insightful)
Science is a mechanism for filtering superstition out from reality. In fact that's pretty close to a one-sentence summary of what science is for, and what the difference between science and other approaches to understanding the universe are.
What Wolfgang Forstmeier seems to be doing is noticing a tendency for scientists to fail to use the scientific method in situations where they should, and generalizing it to a general case. He's concluding that, since individual scientists may be superstitious, it follows that science is superstition.
This is of course a common superstition about science.
Re:Fist (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Atheism is still a "belief" (Score:3, Insightful)
Religious belief is dogma .. unquestionable, unalterable, ineffable. Actions are set in stone until some random religious leader decides that too many people are leaving the church and changes it. Questioning by the masses is forbidden, and if someone presses it they can be kicked out of the church.
Reasoning is continuous examination of evidence as it comes in and adjusting one's actions because of it. There is no grand almighty scientist telling us what we have to do or think. The many scientists that are encouraged to argue with each other and refine their theories. The average person can even contribute to the furthering of scientific theory, there is no 'chosen one'. Unlike religion, discussion and refuting a theory is expected. Very few religions tolerate such discussions.
It is not conceivable to me that a deity exist. It is not necessary to prove one does not exist, lots of things 'don't exist' like the aforementioned Santa Claus, I don't belief there is no Santa Claus ... there is no Santa Claus. There are other things that fall into the 'might exist' category like Sasquatch and scientific principles are brought to bear against any evidence that arises.
Until evidence is brought forth to prove a deity exists, as far as I'm concerned there are none. I don't 'believe' there isn't a god, I don't have to because there is no reason to believe there is one.
Re:Atheism is still a "belief" (Score:3, Insightful)
What a crock of bullshit. An atheists doesn't hypothesis about the non-existence of something, that is just an ignorant statement offered up by religious people trying to elevate their non-scientific methods of establishing religion to a credible level instead of the dogma and circular logic it really is.
There is no need to believe something exists if there is no evidence that it exists. The only reason religion exists at all is because people are unwilling to admit they are ignorant and don't know everything, such as where did we come from, how did that tree get there, how is it possible something like the human body could come about by random changes. True, science does the same thing, but science at attempts to truly explain something rather than just offer 'Oh .. I don't know. It must be because god wanted it that way. Now stopping asking such question.'
Religion provides fairy tale answers to those insecurities. Nothing more. They provide no true moral compass, since it appears all religious tomes are vague and subject to interpretation by whatever person needs to twist it to their current purpose, including the pope. Those all mighty deities have a terrible communication plan. Even the 10 commandments are vague and have been twisted and changed throughout history to suit whoever has an agenda.
Religion also provides a means for a central group to force a larger group to behave according to what they think is right. 'Don't have sex with your sister because you will go to hell' is easier to explain than 'Don't have sex with your sister because the risk of genetic mutation is greater'. 'Don't have butt sex because it's evil' is easier to explain than 'Ummm...that's an outie. Bad things will happen to it if you use it that way too many times and it increases the chance for transmitting diseases'. 'Don't steal because you will rot in hell' rather than 'If we all steal we fall into a state of anarchy and progress is forever halted'.
It's time for atheists to stop being polite and to start denouncing religion for what it is .. delusional behavior and petty superstition. It's time to let everyone know that they don't have to accept the dogma of the church, they can live their own lives perfectly well, with purpose and morals of their own choosing rather than from some reclusive group in Italy who never has sex or kids (talk about out of touch...), and without all the BS and tithing and wasted Sundays. Or Saturday. Or all that bending and praying all day.