[lern_too_spel]

> One can't help but have some kind of faith, you have to believe in something.

Dawkins's point is that you don't have to believe in something that is clearly wrong, like horoscopes and Christianity, and you can choose not to make major decisions (like punishing people) over beliefs you have no evidence for and have evidence against.

The problem with the author is that he points out people believing in stupid things like shamans and gods and assumes that they must have a smart reason for it. Horoscopes and Christianity are the modern day equivalent, and there is no smart reason for the people who believe in those to do so today, so there is no reason to suppose that there used to be for their equivalents in the past.

[beepbooptheory]

You pray to the alter of "smartness" and your God is no less vengeful and irrational as all the others!

[TomSwirly]

As I mentioned above, an insult is not actually a form of rational argument.

Science works. Religion doesn't. When I want someone to fix my broken arm or build a bridge, or pretty well anything else I would want to do, I'm going to go with the system that works.

You cannot just brush that part aside!

[beepbooptheory]

If the inner life of a human was simply pure intentionality, this would be a good story, but we are unfortunately concerned with things beyond "I want to do x" whether we like it or not. That is, you don't simply want to build a bridge in a vacuum, you want to build a bridge because you believe it will help you with crossing the river. You want to get to the other side of the river because you believe there will be treasure there, because indeed you found a treasure map and you believe it to be bona fide. You want treasure because you believe it will give you comfort and happiness.

Or whatever. I am just saying you can't help but believe, I am not saying there aren't necessarily good or bad beliefs, but I am saying that one belief or another doesn't make you "smarter."

Is not the idea of intelligence itself a kind of belief? Have we ever seen it in a microscope? How can you definitively answer, e.g. the Chalmer's zombie problem? The general issue of solipsism, of experience itself? Don't you believe that those who you love are full humans who hopefully love you back?

(Also I am sorry you keep feeling insulted, not sure what to do about that. Please know I fully implicate myself in all this as well.)

[dokem]

Religion worked for thousands of years to create society and a shared code of ethics and morals. To say otherwise is an uneducated understanding of human history. It may be outdated in many ways now but to say it doesn't work is not a take that gets you any closer to understanding how the world and people work, it just sounds edgy and spiteful.

[teawrecks]

You've got it backwards. Non-human species develop societies and naturally evolve arbitrary codes of ethics for how they should treat each other based on what keeps the society alive. Humans were no different, then we evolved language, and immediately began retrofitting religion to these arbitrary sets of ethics to justify them.

Brains are glorified pattern matchers, but we hadn't yet figured out how to judge the quality of a perceived pattern, so in a desperate fit of apophenia, religions naturally emerged. Eventually we stepped back and developed systematic ways of distinguishing good patterns from bad. We call this system science.

Edison said, "I didn't fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a lightbulb; I only needed to find one way to make it work." I see the thousands of religions that humans have come up with as those 2,000 non-light bulbs, and science as the one method that works. Now that we have a working light bulb, we can throw out those other attempts.

[dokem]

Religion helped us reach the next stage of societal evolution far beyond what existed before language. For instance, the catholic church forbidding cousins to marry is largely considered the cause of a large leap in both genetic diversity, health, intelligence, and a more expansive social network. This is just one example. Religion is just the word for the collection of knowledge about how the society should operate and I think you are getting too caught up on the metaphysical aspects. The comparison to animal societies and the idea that everything was figured out before we had written language.. hardly an idea worth engaging.

[teawrecks]

You're giving religion credit for things that other species consistently manage to do without religion (like actively avoiding inbreeding). To say religion was useful because it inadvertently generated beneficial selection pressures is like saying abusing a child is useful because it teaches a child how to defend themselves.

I'm also curious why you believe evolution to be a metaphysical concept. From my POV you're introducing unnecessary, loaded terms like "religion" to explain phenomena that are already explained without them.

"Religion" is much more than "just the word for the collection of knowledge about how the society should operate". Maybe "ethics" is a better term for that? Religion is a very loaded term. The history of religion represents an ecosystem of competing industries vying for power over each other. I agree that religion has been used as a tool to influence the behavior of human society for both good and bad, but so has advertising and marketing (bacon for breakfast, diamonds for wedding bands, KFC for Christmas, etc.). Does that make advertising religion? Is religion a form of advertising? Or are they both just superfluous terms for something more simple: evolution.

[anthk]

And now you don't need religion the same way kids don't needs fairy tale monsters so they behave well at home.

[lern_too_spel]

Tom didn't say otherwise. You're arguing against a straw man.

To say there are smarter options now is different from saying it didn't work then. Getting illiterate people to gather for a sermon where they could be told to avoid shellfish that could kill them and to avoid harming other people (because an invisible wrathful being would catch them even if the society they lived in did not) served a purpose then that we have developed better systems for since.

[lern_too_spel]

That cognitive dissonance you're feeling comes from justifying horoscopes and jihad in order to try to avoid feeling silly about your unjustified beliefs.

Being smart is the opposite of irrational. Vengefulness is orthogonal to correctness. If the punishment serves to increase the length of your life, it is rational (equivalently, smart). If not, it is stupid.

[beepbooptheory]

Nobody should feel silly! These are good conversations to have.

Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality? This is important because rationality is something I assume we agree is a characteristic of humans. Humans can't help but be rational, which is why irrational behavior can be the exception that proves the rule. To say "being smart" is the opposite suddenly creates a a somewhat unscientific rift among human animals, doesn't it? But I do get why you want to say that for your argument, but you should be a little more nuanced in order to get one over on me. Not that I am particularly smart or anything, but just because I am listening to what you are saying.

But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you? That is a somewhat novel argument in this context.

[lern_too_spel]

> Would it not be more correct to say that the opposite of irrationality is, well, rationality?

If you are smart, you must be rational. The contrapositive must also be true. If you are irrational, you cannot be smart. My comment points out that your argument that worshipping at the altar of smartness is irrational makes no sense.

> But otherwise, I think I see what you are saying, but why is living a long life the goal for you?

This is self-evident. If you die, all other rewards lose their utility.

[beepbooptheory]

I don't understand. Some people spend their whole lives in prison because of false convictions, others live beautiful and exciting lives and die before they're 30. I'd probably want the latter there, but I guess you'd want the former?

Edit to your edit: I have had the pleasure to know and study with some of the "smartest" people around in the hard and soft sciences, and let me tell you they can definitely act irrationally (we use the euphemism "eccentric" to gloss over this). Consider a genious mathematician who happens to have OCD. Does their sometimes irrational behavior mean they can't be smart?

Have you ever seen "smartness" in a microscope?

[lern_too_spel]

If you are offered a choice between prison and death, you should choose prison because you get to live and have the possibility of living an exciting life after prison (and maybe even in prison). The possibility increases as more people get smarter because those people can figure out how to extend your life.

Your scenario makes no sense because in both cases, you are dead, and dead people have no preferences.