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MarcoPolo
Guest
I wonder if “something came from nothing” is considered a logical or intuitive belief. And what happens if someone religious answers every question analytically? Is he still viewed as irrational by the testers?
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MarcoPolo
Guest
Will Gervais was the head of this study. Here’s an excerpt from his web page at UK:Why do people tend to hold unverifiable supernatural beliefs? What cognitive, evolutionary, and cultural forces facilitate belief in counterintuitive supernatural agents? How do beliefs about supernatural agents in turn affect cognition, evolution, and culture? Why do some people believe in gods? Why do other people not believe in gods? What are the psychological causes and consequences of religious (dis)belief? Why are atheists disliked?
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Orangebookbag
Guest
On the one hand, many believers come to know God through means other than tightly constructed syllogisms. This is fine, since most of our beliefs are formed this way (see Newman’s Grammar of Assent).
On the other hand, it seems to me that the (mostly) Catholic philosophers of the Thomist persuasion are more adept at logic and thinking in general than any atheists, secular humanists, etc. I’ve met.
On the other hand, it seems to me that the (mostly) Catholic philosophers of the Thomist persuasion are more adept at logic and thinking in general than any atheists, secular humanists, etc. I’ve met.
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Back2Church
Guest
I haven’t read the article yet, but already I find the title amusing. “Religious Faithful Lack Logic, Study Implies.” I can only guess I will find an article full of bias, rather than logic.
I’m a philosophy major. I’ve aced every logic class I’ve taken. I’ve even tutored others in logic. I love it. Critical, logical thinking is very important to me. It’s because one night, as an atheist, I began looking at things in my life critically. I took all the recent events at the time and tried to make sense of them. There was way too much coincidence in almost all of these recent events. I finally realized that the only logical conclusion was that God was revealing himself to me in the only way that I would actually accept. I would have questioned any overt revelation, but by using my own critical mind (which had lead me to atheism in the first place), God was not only able to reveal himself on his terms, but he was allowing me to discover him on my own terms at the same time. It was an incredibly humbling and comprimising act on His part. God reached out to me through logic.
So yeah, let these scientists keep thinking that logic and faith don’t go together. I know better. I can only hope that one day they realize that my praying for them is a completely logical thing to do.
I’m a philosophy major. I’ve aced every logic class I’ve taken. I’ve even tutored others in logic. I love it. Critical, logical thinking is very important to me. It’s because one night, as an atheist, I began looking at things in my life critically. I took all the recent events at the time and tried to make sense of them. There was way too much coincidence in almost all of these recent events. I finally realized that the only logical conclusion was that God was revealing himself to me in the only way that I would actually accept. I would have questioned any overt revelation, but by using my own critical mind (which had lead me to atheism in the first place), God was not only able to reveal himself on his terms, but he was allowing me to discover him on my own terms at the same time. It was an incredibly humbling and comprimising act on His part. God reached out to me through logic.
So yeah, let these scientists keep thinking that logic and faith don’t go together. I know better. I can only hope that one day they realize that my praying for them is a completely logical thing to do.
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Least
Guest
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Back2Church
Guest
Ok, finally read the article. It’s heartbreaking how logically minded scientists can fail to utilize critical thinking.
The study has subjects answer questions about faith, half having their analytical thinking stimulated in some way and the other half not. They documented the correlation between analytical thinking and religious beliefs as thus: those who had their analytical thinking stimulated reported weaker faith than those who did not have the analytical stimulation.
There were five different tests. They didn’t say how many people were part of the first four tests, but the article states the fifth test had 182 people. I imagine the other four tests had around the same number of subjects, so we’re not even talking about a thousand people here. Not a very confidence inducing sample size, if you ask me.
What the study fails to consider is that the quality and levels of the faith of the subjects going in to the tests. The article even quotes Gervais saying, “If you’re surrounded by a lot of other religious people publicly demonstrating their faith, you’re more likely to develop those beliefs.” He recognizes this, yet doesn’t recognize that there are also many people who broke away from public disbelief and turned to faith through critical thinking. If he really wanted a full picture, he would use a much larger sample size and sort the results into four categories (1: stimulated analytical thinking, weak faith. 2: unstimulated analytical thinking, strong faith. 3: stimulated analytical thinking, strong faith. 4: unstimulated analytical thinking, weak faith.), rather than implying his results could only be sorted into the first two categories. Are there more people who would fall into category 1 than category 3? But I think he would find enough people who fall into category 3 to break his conclusion that increasing analytical thinking reduces faith in religious beliefs. I think the number of people in category 4 would be rather telling, as well.
Also, the article’s title is completely misleading. The study’s conclusion is that manipulating people’s level of analytical thinking might temporarily alter their religious beliefs. That is a totally different statement from saying religious faithfuls lack logic. I guess the author of the article lacks logic, too. And that’s the real issue here. Most people just really blow when it comes to logic. Ask any logic teacher and you’ll likely get a sermon about it, lol.
One last point. The study claims that those who had their analytical thinking stimulated had weaker religious beliefs, but it never states how much weaker. If the faith questionnaire was something like 20 questions and the average difference between the analytically stimulated subjects and the unstimulated was only a few points, then this study is even less meaningful. I would assume if the difference was great, they would have mentioned the actual numbers on that, but they don’t, which leads me to think the variance was probably quite small, if not negligible.
I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the religious beliefs questionnaire, either. I would wager there are at least some analytically based questions on faith in there, which would effectively jimmy the results towards what Gervais was wanting anyways.
The study has subjects answer questions about faith, half having their analytical thinking stimulated in some way and the other half not. They documented the correlation between analytical thinking and religious beliefs as thus: those who had their analytical thinking stimulated reported weaker faith than those who did not have the analytical stimulation.
There were five different tests. They didn’t say how many people were part of the first four tests, but the article states the fifth test had 182 people. I imagine the other four tests had around the same number of subjects, so we’re not even talking about a thousand people here. Not a very confidence inducing sample size, if you ask me.
What the study fails to consider is that the quality and levels of the faith of the subjects going in to the tests. The article even quotes Gervais saying, “If you’re surrounded by a lot of other religious people publicly demonstrating their faith, you’re more likely to develop those beliefs.” He recognizes this, yet doesn’t recognize that there are also many people who broke away from public disbelief and turned to faith through critical thinking. If he really wanted a full picture, he would use a much larger sample size and sort the results into four categories (1: stimulated analytical thinking, weak faith. 2: unstimulated analytical thinking, strong faith. 3: stimulated analytical thinking, strong faith. 4: unstimulated analytical thinking, weak faith.), rather than implying his results could only be sorted into the first two categories. Are there more people who would fall into category 1 than category 3? But I think he would find enough people who fall into category 3 to break his conclusion that increasing analytical thinking reduces faith in religious beliefs. I think the number of people in category 4 would be rather telling, as well.
Also, the article’s title is completely misleading. The study’s conclusion is that manipulating people’s level of analytical thinking might temporarily alter their religious beliefs. That is a totally different statement from saying religious faithfuls lack logic. I guess the author of the article lacks logic, too. And that’s the real issue here. Most people just really blow when it comes to logic. Ask any logic teacher and you’ll likely get a sermon about it, lol.
One last point. The study claims that those who had their analytical thinking stimulated had weaker religious beliefs, but it never states how much weaker. If the faith questionnaire was something like 20 questions and the average difference between the analytically stimulated subjects and the unstimulated was only a few points, then this study is even less meaningful. I would assume if the difference was great, they would have mentioned the actual numbers on that, but they don’t, which leads me to think the variance was probably quite small, if not negligible.
I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the religious beliefs questionnaire, either. I would wager there are at least some analytically based questions on faith in there, which would effectively jimmy the results towards what Gervais was wanting anyways.
M
MarcoPolo
Guest
I wonder what defines “religious” beliefs. A lot of secularists I know hold to dogmatic positions that aren’t scientifically verifiable.
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ventura2323
Guest
Logical thinking comes from a close relationship with god, it does not have to be studied, truth comes without intellectual study when one is n a relationship with God. One tends to speak from what is given and sometimes can be misunderstood by those who disagree. It certainly has a relationship to grace. It is not our critical mind, but, god’s.I haven’t read the article yet, but already I find the title amusing. “Religious Faithful Lack Logic, Study Implies.” I can only guess I will find an article full of bias, rather than logic.
I’m a philosophy major. I’ve aced every logic class I’ve taken. I’ve even tutored others in logic. I love it. Critical, logical thinking is very important to me. It’s because one night, as an atheist, I began looking at things in my life critically. I took all the recent events at the time and tried to make sense of them. There was way too much coincidence in almost all of these recent events. I finally realized that the only logical conclusion was that God was revealing himself to me in the only way that I would actually accept. I would have questioned any overt revelation, but by using my own critical mind (which had lead me to atheism in the first place), God was not only able to reveal himself on his terms, but he was allowing me to discover him on my own terms at the same time. It was an incredibly humbling and comprimising act on His part. God reached out to me through logic.
So yeah, let these scientists keep thinking that logic and faith don’t go together. I know better. I can only hope that one day they realize that my praying for them is a completely logical thing to do.
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