When a person believes in a religion, they have trained their brains to ignore part of reality. Once you’ve trained your brain to do that, manipulative people can more easily abuse your brain into thinking other incorrect things.
And that’s how you get MAGA
So the purpose is less about evangelizing atheism, and more about fixing other people’s brains for the betterment of society.
No one uses the scientific method in their day to day lives. This includes all scientists, and atheists. The rationalists tried this, and their conclusion was
(1) Psychological research shows that using heuristics is what we do 90% of the time. This is an evolutionary preference that is more or less baked in, as rational though requires much more time and energy.
(2) Using rational thought for day to day tasks or important life decisions is indistinguishable from the control - ie, giving a shit and trying.
(3) Even people dedicated to seeking truth as fully as possible are highly susceptible to cognitive biases. Eg, the placebo effect still works even when you know about the placebo effect and know you are taking a placebo.
(4) When people don’t take a moral stance to seek truth at the expense of their deepest beliefs, they tend to use rationality to reinforce their existing beliefs.
(5) Research shows that you change people’s minds by being friendly and supportive and showing that your worldview and lifestyle lead to good outcomes. Logical refutation of people’s beliefs tends to just make them dig their heels in more. This is why missionaries dig wells in impoverished nations.
(6) Communal/tribal ties are far stronger than logic. If everyone you know and identify with believes something, you will almost certainly also believe that thing, even if presented with clear evidence to the contrary.
(7) Religious people are perfectly capable of being intelligent and rational. There are many highly successful religious people, including in engineering and hard sciences. In fact, being religious seems to have numerous practical benefits in multiple aspects of life, from having a community to being more successful in your career to having a general sense of well being.
(8) Trying to form an identity around feelings of persecution for your not-religion was pretty cringy and we all regret it.
That really depends on how they follow them. For example, eugenics is scientifically sound. It’s morally depraved in practice, but the scientific method doesn’t account for ethics.
Is it though? Time and again it’s been shown that having a very wide basic genetic options is the healthiest for a species. Evolution favors adaptability.
Now if you’re talking about weeding out and genetic issues, diseases, and known problems, yes. We do that today.
It works if you know the traits you’re trying to optimize for and don’t care about the mistakes. We don’t know that for humans, and we do care.
I think you’re mistaking science for psychopathy. Proper science would recognize that humans are social creatures and therefore our actions have impact across society, and we need to take that into account.
Also, try and breed two very smart people. You rarely get a stable smarter person.
When a person believes in a religion, they have trained their brains to ignore part of reality. Once you’ve trained your brain to do that, manipulative people can more easily abuse your brain into thinking other incorrect things.
And that’s how you get MAGA
So the purpose is less about evangelizing atheism, and more about fixing other people’s brains for the betterment of society.
Every religion thinks they’re “fixing” people by evangelizing
Maybe. But the scientific method and logic are provably functional. You see a thing, you replicate the thing, you can then do more things.
So it’s not a huge stretch to say that getting people to follow those methods is an improvement.
No one uses the scientific method in their day to day lives. This includes all scientists, and atheists. The rationalists tried this, and their conclusion was
(1) Psychological research shows that using heuristics is what we do 90% of the time. This is an evolutionary preference that is more or less baked in, as rational though requires much more time and energy.
(2) Using rational thought for day to day tasks or important life decisions is indistinguishable from the control - ie, giving a shit and trying.
(3) Even people dedicated to seeking truth as fully as possible are highly susceptible to cognitive biases. Eg, the placebo effect still works even when you know about the placebo effect and know you are taking a placebo.
(4) When people don’t take a moral stance to seek truth at the expense of their deepest beliefs, they tend to use rationality to reinforce their existing beliefs.
(5) Research shows that you change people’s minds by being friendly and supportive and showing that your worldview and lifestyle lead to good outcomes. Logical refutation of people’s beliefs tends to just make them dig their heels in more. This is why missionaries dig wells in impoverished nations.
(6) Communal/tribal ties are far stronger than logic. If everyone you know and identify with believes something, you will almost certainly also believe that thing, even if presented with clear evidence to the contrary.
(7) Religious people are perfectly capable of being intelligent and rational. There are many highly successful religious people, including in engineering and hard sciences. In fact, being religious seems to have numerous practical benefits in multiple aspects of life, from having a community to being more successful in your career to having a general sense of well being.
(8) Trying to form an identity around feelings of persecution for your not-religion was pretty cringy and we all regret it.
That really depends on how they follow them. For example, eugenics is scientifically sound. It’s morally depraved in practice, but the scientific method doesn’t account for ethics.
Is it though? Time and again it’s been shown that having a very wide basic genetic options is the healthiest for a species. Evolution favors adaptability.
Now if you’re talking about weeding out and genetic issues, diseases, and known problems, yes. We do that today.
Through gene therapy, yes. Eugenics implies selective breeding. It clearly works, look at any domestic animal. It’s an ethical nightmare though.
I’m looking at a pug right now. Uhhhhh…
It works if you know the traits you’re trying to optimize for and don’t care about the mistakes. We don’t know that for humans, and we do care.
I think you’re mistaking science for psychopathy. Proper science would recognize that humans are social creatures and therefore our actions have impact across society, and we need to take that into account.
Also, try and breed two very smart people. You rarely get a stable smarter person.
I mean, scientific materialism also denies a large part of reality. Or at least I knew that really, really well the last time I did mushrooms