Topic: Health and Religion - page 130. (Read 211013 times)

I'm confused. How does one decide to suddenly believe in an all knowing all powerful invisible man in the sky without being dishonest with themselves?

Is striving towards a challenging ideal superior to ignoring that ideal or paying it lip service?

If you think it through the answer to your question coupled with the answer to mine provides a framework for understanding the outcome data presented upthread (the differing level of wellbeing reported by the very religious, the 'moderately' religious and the unaffiliated).

Do religious people repeatedly reject temptation in general? If not, would this not make religious people less trustworthy, since one cannot predict their future behaviour, and would make expecting moral behaviour from such people also another such bias.

I agree that religious groups are far from immune to the unjustified out of group discrimination that seems to characterize all human groups.

Most atheist have some form of code. Ethical hedonism seems a common choice but their are many options. There is every reason to believe that publicly following and promoting a moral code in the past is predictive of continuing to do so in the future.

In the refusal to adopt a public moral code the atheist make it much harder for others to accurately determine their trustworthiness or predict their behavior. If a religious person repeatedly rejects temptation and expediency when it conflicts with their publicly disclosed code one can have some confidence they will continue to do so in the future. This allows one to predict future behaviors and facilitates cooperation and trust. Similarly a nominally religious person seen not following their code helpfully flags themselves as untrustworthy. To achieve similar confidence regarding an atheist one must observe them over a much longer period examining their behavior across the entire relevant moral spectrum.

Bias 1: It's not reasonable to be generally suspicious of groups of people. Why would you assume they have no moral code? Just because they don't follow the exact rules you do doesn't mean they have no morals.

Bias 2: People are generally moral beings (for trustworthiness and  "do unto others" values of morality).

(snip)

The statement I am an atheist as opposed to the statement I am an atheist and (insert moral code here) means the following to a religious person.

1) I reject your moral and spiritual code and have replaced it with nothing
or
2) I reject your moral and spiritual code and replaced it with something I do not wish to share

It is reasonable to be suspicious of the values and morals of someone operating with no moral code. It is also reasonable to be suspicious of someone who knows and can anticipate your moral code but refuses to disclose his own. I fail to see the cognative bias.

That Scientific American article describes that as un unsupported cognitive bias. Just because people distrust atheists doesn't mean there's a reason for it.

And just because many religious people feel they need religious rules in order to act morally it doesn't mean that people who don't follow religious rules can't act morally. It's more likely that religious people need religion in order to be moral actors, just as BADecker wrote.

af_newbie I am not suggesting you suspend your reason. I am advising you fully engage it.

Upthread Moloch brought Pascals Renewed Wager to our attention.

In this paper we see that belief in God coupled with observance of belief is correlated with numerous health outcomes including:

1) Happiness
2) Physical health
3) Mental health
4) Longevity
5) Stable marital relations

The data in the OP allows us to add fertility to that list.

The only possible counter is to argue that it's all just illusion with some other ultimate cause. That is exactly what the atheist counter paper cited by Moloch tries to do. The 15 page paper is full to the brim with attempt after attempt to to explain away the data. If you are looking for tips on how to strongly argue a weak position its a great source.

The reality is I have yet to see a single study where atheist (of any stripe) outperform the very religious on health metrics. Furthermore there is not a single current or historic non-religious group that has maintained reproductive replacement levels on the communal level.

If someone came to your door marketing lab grown soylent green and meat-x plus you would probably ask a several pointed questions before abandoning fruits vegetables and fish.

Specifically:

A) Are those eating soylent green maintaining physical health?
B) Do they live as long as those eating traditional diets?
C) Could the artificial stuff contain poisons that do bad things like reduce your fertility?

If you would ask these hard questions about soylent green why wouldn't you ask them of atheism? Wishful thinking aside there is no evidence to suggest that modern contrivances like socialism, humanism, or nationalism function as a viable and sustainable replacements for religion.

Bitcoin is a great example. Two strangers can transact in bitcoin because they have confidence in the consensus it represents. The math behind bitcoin is simply a tool that helps keep that consensus strong. This is why the hard fork controversy is so bitter. It is an attack on consensus in one of the few areas where math is not protective.

This is probably a major reasons why religious people distrust atheist religion can be looked at as a moral consensus. It is a system of rules which it's adherents (sometimes nominally) agree to live by. By declaring themselves atheists individuals choose to publicly reject that consensus which leads to suspicion. The bitcoin equivalent would be a miner publicly supporting a closed source hardfork.

...
In the 21st century, we have other concepts that essentially function as religions.  Secular governments, science, data.  

Bitcoin is an example.  Two strangers trust bitcoin value because they trust Math behind it.  They are willing to co-operate (in this case exchange value) despite the fact that they don't know each other, might be actually enemies otherwise.  But they will co-operate the same way two Christian Kingdoms co-operated to kill and plunder pagan tribes.

You don't need to suspend your reason to believe some bronze age nonsense, today, you have other options.

Is the size of his brain important or the contributions that he made to science because if it?

Government and socialism is a religion too, but it also has failure modes:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/north_america/2016-u-s-presidential-election/the-socialist-lie-that-we-have-had-always-a-growth-economy-since-roosevelt/

Atheism seems to be an erroneous attempt to declare that the humanism of the individual and an absolute truth of logic exists in a vacuum.

Untrue. "Toxins" in coffee do not cause your immune system to activate, so that you fight off a host of other things as well.

And if you worship the wrong God? Like you're Christian, what's up if the Muslims are right? :-/

Is the size of his brain important or the contributions that he made to science because if it?

Here's something that the world should know about atheism. Don't let it poison your mind.
Atheism is dying from it's own failure to reason, to be honest and because of the bigotry that is embedded in its cultivation of new nonbelievers.
5 years now talking to atheists.
Not every atheist is this way but a majority of them (especially in groups) have this egotistical presuppositional concept that God isn't real (without substantiating it) and basing all arguments on that opinion alone. Yet they tell people that they just don't know to avoid saying God isn't real.
Atheism is a poison to the human intellect.
It promotes itself as rational thinking but
reasons fallaciously.
It declines morals because it loses accountability for its actions.
It tells you that you're smarter than religious people but it is intellectually dishonest when it generalizes.
It plays on the emotions and hope is soon lost.
It cons you into presumptuously believing you're right and encourages you to mock who you think is wrong.
It plays vicious games and promotes a mob mentality.
It strong arms religious people with ridicule and mockery.
It creates bullies.
It claims to be critical but only ensues deception.
It creates stereotypes, bigotry, and a delusion.
It gives you no reason to live. It takes for granted the rest of your life and in your death it leaves you in oblivion.
Atheism is a delusion of grandeur that promotes nothing and dumbs down God out of arrogance and ignorance.
It is a cult of arrogance, fallacious reasoning, intellectual dishonesty, and bigotry.
It whines about mentioning God in an oath to protect our freedom.
It whines about God being printed on its money that will pass briefly through its life.
It deceptively creates itself as powerful yet its cause of popularity is just proof of its inner corruption.
It even deceives its own kind and betrays them.
It tells you it has no faith yet it has no proof to substantiate its opinion.
It projects.
It tells you that you are sane but it controls your voice tricking you into believing you are a free thinker.
It runs from questioning and refuses to learn beyond the brainwashed propaganda it invokes.

What really ticks me off is when atheists keep saying that we have to prove God exists (yet only they can convince themselves), but we that have faith God exists, are not liable to provide anything for them. If we say "God exists", then and only then are we under scrutiny and the burden of proof is on us. Yet atheists consistently call the Bible a fairy tale, or compare God to invisible pink unicorns, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns, and the flying spaghetti monster without substantiating it. When they say they have no evidence for those things just the same as they have no evidence for God, then it becomes a straw man argument because it is a highly exaggerated misrepresentation in comparison used as an argument. It is also an illicit substitution of identities (masked man fallacy) because they see in one perspective that they don't have evidence for one thing and therefore believe the perspective is true in every other situation. This leads to an over all denying the antecedent fallacy. Just because they don't have evidence for something, they refuse to believe it. Which turns into their claim that they can't believe in anything without any evidence, which is a lie because everyone does it every day when we confide in inconsistencies. By making plans ahead of time or acting on a premeditated idea, it is by faith. Faith is a natural part of our thinking processes. We have faith on a daily basis in something that we do not have empirical evidence that it will happen the way we plan it to. Another example of faith is when we are traveling to a destination in hope by faith that we will reach that destination on time. So the whole anti-faith garbage is a cult of logophobic bigots that are too sophophobic and too arrogant to listen and learn how they are wrong but they have faith they are right. These people have some serious denial issues.

Atheism - to be blunt - is a stupid concept.  Here's why:
Free Thought:  Atheists pride themselves in claiming that Atheism is all about free thought.  However, I began to question this for the mere fact that Atheists do not give time to the God concept.  They are quick to dismiss it as a "sky fairy" superstition.  As a critical rational thinker, I am all about investigating, questioning and theorizing.  I could not
 simply state, "There is no God, it is superstition."  This would be intellectually dishonest and a cop out.  Atheism is NOT a haven for free thought.
By quickly dismissing God as a "Sky fairie" or comparing to a ficticious myth, is a hasty generalization. Just another fallacious concept in atheism.