veritassium did a video replicating a FASCINATING study that proves that logical people get dramatically less logical when they encounter facts that contradicts their deeply held beliefs; they get even less logical that “non-logical” people
so they don’t consolidate the 2 sides of themselves; instead they apply their logic to the things that they don’t care much about and get less logical on the subjects/topic that they care more about it.
Man brains are so weird. Thank you for that video!
‘Man brains’ is different to ‘Man, brains’.
the part that’s weird to me is that “non-logical” people are always equally non-logical and they’re always the same whether it’s something they care deeply about or not.
they never have to wonder about consolidating. lol
Ignorance is bliss right?
Wait, there’s more: Some people are skeptical even of religion, yet still practice a religion.
We reconcile that by:
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admitting that we can’t make sense of everything
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recognizing that many of the ways our religion interacts with reality are aspirational rather than descriptive
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rejecting dogma
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choosing to persevere in doubt rather than cling to false certainty
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I’m Christian, Episcopalian. What drives me to continue practicing? There’s a lot of things:
Socially, I enjoy the sense of community that comes with being an active member of a congregation, and it provides both a reminder to and a venue for giving back in the form of volunteering and charity.
Personally, I appreciate the rhythm it gives to my weeks and years, with specific times set aside for joy and grief, reflection and action, uncomfortable growth and quiet recovery.
Spiritually, I draw both comfort and strength from my relationship with God; whether or not this is a spiritual sort of “rubber ducking” doesn’t change how it affects me.
Morally, I think the example of Christ is a good one to follow, and again, that doesn’t really depend on Him being a real historical figure.
Very nicely put. This describes my own faith almost to a T.
Sounds like a hobby
Not the commenter, but Christian as well. Consider myself non-denominational, but attend/worship at an Episcopalian Church. The hobby comment isn’t entirely untrue, but there’s more meaning to it than that for me at least.
Most hobbies don’t have such an outsized influence on my life. The hobbies that could would cost a lot of money.
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I consider myself a very logical person. I consider myself “religish”. Mainly, the idea of death being the end makes me very anxious, so I choose to believe it’s not, which inherently brings one to religion of some sort.
Doublethink, bro. Doublethink.
You’re saying I could be thinking twice as fast 👀
What if I were to propose to you that there’s no way to prove that matter comes before consciousness? For all you know, everything exists inside consciousness but most people believe matter is the prior condition. This is pure logic. But when it’s brought up to science minded people, they tend to get very uppity about it.
Beliefs be like that.
I see where you’re drawing the correlation because we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of higher powers the same as I can’t tell you whether you are brain floating in amniotic fluid running through a simulation or not. People approaching philosophical questions usually reach an impasse because that is the nature of philosophy.
But a religious person would be more akin to someone telling you that they know we are in fact floating brains powering an AI civilization. They can’t provide you with solid proof but you are incorrect if you think otherwise.
No but the latter is what science-minded people do. They insist that matter comes before consciousness without being able to prove it, though what’s extremely obvious in everyone’s direct experience is that consciousness is needed before anything else is said about the world. It’s a false status quo.
There is a prevelant theory but it’s still an unanswered philosophical question that noone truly intelligent would tell you they knew definitively. Anyone asserting that matter 100% comes before conciousness is on the same wavelength as someone telling you there is 100% a god controlling everything.
So we can at least agree that people who are confident in something unproveable are objectively unintelligent.
You’re wiggling a bit but let’s go with that and get to your original question.
Based on your responses, you probably hold a core belief that matter comes before consciousness. You’re smart enough to admit it’s not a certainty but you’ve probably lived your whole life fairly assured it’s the case. You speak English well so you have at least been exposed to western culture - which is very materialistic (religious or no, Christianity is also functionally materialistic), and so the core belief both serves you well, and is positively reinforced.
Any new information you get is subconsciously aligned to this core belief. Any decision you make is informed by it. You have a network of data in your head and it all connects to this and some other core beliefs. The same way a religious person can be highly logical but they hold a different core belief and so subtly, everything they know aligns to that belief. The more irrational the core belief, the more convoluted the links are of course but it makes sense to them - they just may not be able to represent it to you with the symbols that is language. And sometimes you’ll just get them doing the loading screen face when they try to rationalize their views - then it just becomes a question of which core VALUE is deeper for them; rationality or their religious view.
If rationality is more valuable, it necessarily demolishes the religious view. It demolishes a core belief to which they have aligned all their knowledge about the world. Which is a hell of a trip, and can be very scary. Which is also why rationality often loses.
Born and raised in north america, went to a baptist church as a kid so I’m fairly familiar with the bible as well as different types of religious people you’ll meet.
As an agnostic now, my only core belief is I know that I don’t know. That’s something I apply to any philosophical question so it’s alien to me that some people can separate logic and religion.
For me, I get that logic too is just models that predict things. Backwards or forwards. But it doesn’t answer what anything is. You can only EXPERIENCE what something is, but you can never accurately represent it. Because the moment you try to represent an experience, it’s not the experience itself, just a representation. So logical conclusion is that the only way to know something for sure, is to experience it as it is before any representation.
People with religious experiences may get to the ineffable truth but then they get enamored by their own attempts to represent it. They focus on the representation, instead of the experience, and they start to insist that their representation is the bestest and most correctest - because everything in their head aligns to it. Then it just becomes a matter of who has the most charismatic foghorns and the most appealing representation. Which has a very reasonable logic of it’s own, as far as it goes.
Logic is reasoning based on proveable facts so no it’s not going to tell you what something is, just how probable something is.
That wouldn’t be the logical conclusion because we are limited as humans. We make mistakes, we don’t understand everything, we misremember, we can even gaslight ourselves such as the mandela effect. If 50 people told me they experienced an alien abduction, that doesn’t make it logically true, now if they were to show me proveable facts of the abduction then I would be more inclined to believe.
I’m not sure what you mean with the last paragraph, you are clearly describing illogical subjective experiences but calling them “very reasonable logic of it’s own”. What you are describing isn’t logic, what you’re describing is the opposite of logic. Someone claiming something they believe is true but can’t provide validity.
Unintelligent? Maybe. Maybe the rest have had the power of imagination constrained so long, it’s atrophied. But exercise may restore a degree of it.
Your intelligence is your ability to learn, It would be hard to argue that someone is very good at learning if they are confident in things they can’t prove. If Neil degrasse told me he knew exactly what happened after death then I would reconsider anything I’ve learned from him.
I’m not so sure about that. Anyway I can only speak for myself. I’m not ”100% confident” in my personal beliefs. I
believewhat I put out in thought, word and deed eventually comes back around, although perhaps not in the exact way or form, from the same venues, that I put it out there. Can I prove it? No and that’s why it’s “faith” and "belief.” I’m not trying to convince anyone, but am open to discussion, when I’ve time and inclination, and feel it’s in good faith.Are you otherwise a very logical person in other aspects of life? Because it sounds like you may not be the type of person I’m talking about.
But a religious person would be more akin to someone telling you that they know we are in fact floating brains powering an AI civilization. They can’t provide you with solid proof but you are incorrect if you think otherwise.
Some do. The loud/belligerent don’t necessarily make a majority. The rest know that faith is exactly that, and know the difference between faith and belief and proven facts.
