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Who Is Right? Or Are They All Wrong? And Does It Matter?


jeremyb

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I grew up in a christian family. My family went to church, but not on a regular basis, but enough for me to get a good idea as a child what it was all about. I never bought into the ideas from the church, ever.

 

My question for you all today is:

 

There are many many religions out there, lots of them have similar beliefs, and some of them are not so close to the next. Most people are believers of what they grew up as, or in other words, force fed. Very few people change religions but it does happen. So what makes one religion any better than the next?

 

Sure they can't all be right on how we were brought to be or how we should live our lives, so therefor some or most (if not all) are wrong. This is where I have problems when it comes to religions or religious peoples. Most of them act as though their way is the right way and every other way is wrong.

 

I strongly believe that every individual should have the right to religious freedom, the right to choose what path they take when it comes to one belief or the other. I also like to exercise this right by giving myself the freedom of not following any religion other than science and what is tangible. For example, I am not against "God", I just do not believe he/it exists, if he/it came to light and was proven to exist as a tangible being/thing then I would then welcome that. At the same time, I really do not like other people telling me that my views are wrong, especially when nothing has been proven. I do not go about telling people from one religion or the next that their beliefs are wrong, after all, its just a belief. But at the same time, I also know there can only be one correct answer, maybe worded in many different ways, but there is only one correct answer, and we may never truly know what that answer is.

 

So where do we go from here? Can we as a whole allow people from all over the world to continue believing in different things that are not proven, ultimately causing rejection, isolation, and even war?

 

Originally I said I believe everyone should be given the right of religions freedom,...that is the politically correct way about this problem, but the more logical way around this problem is to take away that freedom, but that would most defiantly cause rejection, isolation, and even war. Is this a problem that only time itself can solve? A melting pot of cultures, slowly bonding together as one over a vast period of time.

 

Who is right? who is wrong? and does it even matter anymore?

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Welcome jeremyb, you are right, we do need religious freedom! That is the freedom to find a set of beliefs that each of us, as individuals, can be comfortable with. As each of us is different this results in great differences in religious beliefs. Also forcing religion on people is wrong - present them your beliefs and ask them to accept them sure, but don't force them! It takes strong men, brave men, to stand against the tide of accepted wisdom, to do what they believe is right. When it comes to standing-up against the deep-seated wisdom of organised, forced religion then few have the strength!

 

Here are a few examples:

 

http://en.wikipedia....Galileo_Galilei

 

http://en.wikipedia....i/Martin_Luther

 

http://en.wikipedia....Religious_views

 

http://en.wikipedia....religious_views

 

http://en.wikipedia....Religious_views

 

'Hawking contrasted religion and science in 2010, saying: "There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.' , which I think is pertinent to the point you were making!

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Freedom of belief is a necessity whether it be religion, scientific in basis, or not to believe in anything at all ...where it tends to fall flat is when one feels the need to force their beliefs on another...thus denying the other of their freedom to believe as they wish...sadly many forget that the very right they enjoy should not be denied to others :angry: lest someone decide none shall have it.

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funny thing is i tend to believe that spirit resides in the energy in space time, which transcends all concepts

 

see i am spiritual, not religios

 

 

 

personally i like the jedi idea

 

 

 

 

but i like lessons learned from alot of religions, just not the "this is the only way to go" idea

 

 

plus, i think it should advance like science, otherwise we are using a geo centric version of the universe

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Can we as a whole allow people from all over the world to continue believing in different things that are not proven, ultimately causing rejection, isolation, and even war?

As a practical matter (by which I mean something that can directly impact our individual well-beings), I think that “we as a whole” (what the US constitution terms “the People”) must follow the principle of liberalism, allowing any one to do anything that does not directly injure (in a legal sense, including to steal from, imprison, etc.) others.

 

Old and recent history shows clearly that when this principle is discarded, however well-intentioned by some at some time, anti-liberal systems (akin to what Lawrence Lessig termed permission culture in his excellent 2004 book Free Culture) can become corrupt and used to control the People in ways to which we do not consent, and that profoundly injure us. For example, the former USSR, within months of the success of its revolution against the monarchist Russian government changed from a system intended to derive its legitimacy from the consent and advice of the governed via a system of councils (in Russian, “soviet”) in which every person could participate to one in which a few ruthless people held absolute control, and eventually, most of the People opposed. Apropos freedom of religious belief, although the USSR’s written laws guaranteed People the right to believe and share ideas as they wished, the government agents actually forcefully closes and demolished churches and imprisoned organizers of private religious gatherings.

 

The freedom to believe religious dogma should not be abridged, because it does not in and of itself injure others. Commit on the basis of religious belief acts that injure others – for instance, burning witches and heretics –should not be allowed as an expression of religious freedom.

 

All I’ve written here has a very absolute, black and white tone. In practical reality, religious freedom casts many troubling gray areas.

 

For example, in the US and most other countries, people are not legally required to profess belief in any religion, but parents are legally permitted to coerce, within limits, their children accept their religious beliefs, and religious people are free to socially ostracize people outside of their religion, and refuse to do business with them. Some such exercises of religious freedom psychological and monetarily injure (in a general sense) others, yet unlike witch burning, seem to me outside of the legitimate power of government to prohibit.

 

It seems to me that the only “cure that is not worse than the disease” for religiously motivated harm is to instill in both religionists and non-religionists a deep belief in liberalism.

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It seems to me that the only “cure that is not worse than the disease” for religiously motivated harm is to instill in both religionists and non-religionists a deep belief in liberalism.
are you insinuating that additional beliefs aught be forced upon people that may or may not agree?:D Edited by DFINITLYDISTRUBD
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...

My question for you all today is:

...

So where do we go from here? Can we as a whole allow people from all over the world to continue believing in different things that are not proven, ultimately causing rejection, isolation, and even war?

 

... Is this a problem that only time itself can solve? A melting pot of cultures, slowly bonding together as one over a vast period of time.

 

Who is right? who is wrong? and does it even matter anymore?

 

we are right. they are wrong. yes it does matter...still. :D

 

by this study below we might go to education as what-we-do, though i'm not sure you can teach intelligence and at that i have been told by a reliable source that we don't even know exactly what intelligence is. how smart is that? :crazy: :lol: nonetheless, accepting the idea that having more "intelligent" people means more atheists and per se liberals as craig defined, then i say again, Education. reading, writing, 'arithmetic, music, health, civics. e d u c a t i o n. get sum or get dumb. :smart: :kick:

 

Intelligent People Have "Unnatural" Preferences and Values That Are Novel in Human Evolutionary History

More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history. Specifically, liberalism and atheism, and for men (but not women), preference for sexual exclusivity correlate with higher intelligence, a new study finds.

 

The study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.

...

Similarly, religion is a byproduct of humans' tendency to perceive agency and intention as causes of events, to see "the hands of God" at work behind otherwise natural phenomena. "Humans are evolutionarily designed to be paranoid, and they believe in God because they are paranoid," says Kanazawa. This innate bias toward paranoia served humans well when self-preservation and protection of their families and clans depended on extreme vigilance to all potential dangers. "So, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to go against their natural evolutionary tendency to believe in God, and they become atheists."

...

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Turtle,

 

Excellent read, thank you for that.

 

May I ask of anyone to define "liberalism" for me in a proper sense. If it is a political point of view, then that is defiantly not something I consider myself to be, nor do I consider myself to be at the other end of the spectrum......You will not even find me in the middle. I am the guy standing outside the boundaries looking back in thinking, how can I fix this mess.

 

But if it is not derived from a political point of view, then that is where I need help with on understanding the proper meaning of it.

 

I agree with most of the quote you listed, and it only seems logical that it would not happen any other way.

 

-----------------------

 

I would almost like to see a new silver fox project start up, but with humans. Wouldn't that be the talk of the town when it comes to morality.

 

I see our species as a whole collapsing in on itself. Is it best to think about our species on an individual scale, or as a whole. We are the most advanced creature on this planet, yet we fail to get along. We are indeed animals. I guess what I am getting at with this half of the posting is our future, long term. As it stands, religion is kinda in the way of certain scientific studies that may or may not be beneficial to humanity. I can truly understand why at the same time. I still have not be able to convince myself one way or the other on certain issues that arise from certain studies. (I am trying not to go there, so I hope you are following, I just did not want this to turn into a pro vs choice debate)

 

Our time is limited by many different factors, none of which derive from conspiracy theories, but if you want to count those in too, be my guest. Our long term goal would ultimately be to colonize other worlds, but before we can even consider thinking about such things, we first need to solve our more time-local problems, and I feel the original post in this thread would be a good place to start, even though I think that would take thousands if not tens of thousands of years to solve and complete in a humane manner.

 

I apologize for my ramblings, its late and if I don't get some of it out, it will be forgotten for another day.

 

Thank you for your time.

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More intelligent people are statistically significantly more likely to exhibit social values and religious and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history [...] a new study finds

This reminds me of a study by Japanese academics which "proved" that the Japanese were smarter than other people because of their complicated writing system.

 

Anyone can come up with "studies" to prove that their assumptions are right. It has nothing to do with the validity of the assumptions.

 

I define "intelligent" as the ability to influence the masses. The Pope is the smartest man around. QED. Blah...

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I define "intelligent" as the ability to influence the masses. The Pope is the smartest man around. QED. Blah...

 

Blah indeed. The press release of the study is trash, but not at all due to defining the problem. The press release of the study is trash because it identifies a correlation between IQ (NOT intelligence, though in the article the two are referred to as being equivalent) and particular behaviors. Any inference beyond the existence of that correlation is not supported by the press release. No attempt was made to show that differences in IQ scores were the cause of the behavioral differences. No attempt was made to rule out a causal factor that influences both IQ scores and behavior. There are no conclusions that can be reasonably drawn from this press release other than that there is a correlation between IQ scores and particular behaviors.

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May I ask of anyone to define "liberalism" for me in a proper sense.

 

You may notice in CraigD's post that "liberalism" is blue and underlined, indicating that it is a link to another location on the web. When done in a body of text like this, a lot of commenters generally use links as a shorthand for further clarification of an idea or word that the reader may find useful but would detract from the flow of the comment. In this context, liberalism refers to

Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. The early liberal thinker John Locke, who is often credited for the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition, employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed, and that private individuals had a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property.
Edited by JMJones0424
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A little googling has revealed that this is not the first time Satoshi Kanazawa has confused correlation with causation and a metric with a concept he claims that it measures. He seems to have caused a shitstorm most recently in his latest assertion, "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" (mirrored here because it was removed from Psychology Today and critically torn apart here and elsewhere.) Evolutionary psychology seems to me like a field with much promise, but it is currently filled with a lot of obvious cranks. A flawed study doesn't cease being flawed just because it agrees with your worldview. A crackpot pseudoscience psychologist does not become a trusted source because you like his conclusion.

Edited by JMJones0424
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"Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?"
LMAO! On what friggin planet!?!? Maybe he meant charred. Silly bigot :D

 

Back to the OP

 

Humans seem to have a "need" to control all that they see, so really it doesn't matter what the issue someone will pretty much always feel the "need" to be on the other side of it...religion could be many years abolished and people would simply replace the disputes it once caused with new disputes based on their own interpretation of what is morally philosophically or scientifically acceptable... For example the have nots view those that have as evil and unjust because they have more and deem that the only moral way to live is to have everybody on equal financial footing regardless of how lazy, inept, etc. and no matter how hard working, skilled, or educated etc. Human nature at work.

 

While liberalism sounds good to many, the odds of a government ever bieng run that way is slim, the odds of all the various special interest groups allowing it to be implemented are even slimmer.

 

Even the voters here send a clear message that they really don't want a liberalism type govt. elsewise we would surely have seen a libertarian president by now. http://en.wikipedia..../Libertarianism

 

Yes, I'm a libertarian and damn proud of it! Now if only we could get a candidate with half a chance!!

According to the U.S. Libertarian Party, libertarianism is the advocacy of a government that is funded voluntarily and limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence.[
Edited by DFINITLYDISTRUBD
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Blah indeed. The press release of the study is trash, but not at all due to defining the problem. The press release of the study is trash because it identifies a correlation between IQ (NOT intelligence, though in the article the two are referred to as being equivalent) and particular behaviors. Any inference beyond the existence of that correlation is not supported by the press release. No attempt was made to show that differences in IQ scores were the cause of the behavioral differences. No attempt was made to rule out a causal factor that influences both IQ scores and behavior. There are no conclusions that can be reasonably drawn from this press release other than that there is a correlation between IQ scores and particular behaviors.

 

yikes!! :lol: keeping in mind a press release is as a press release does, i had a look at the study it announces. while perhaps kanazawa kant-azawa, his study concerning "intelligence" is puplished in our sacred peer-reviewed fashion. how smart is that?

 

anyway, the full thing is available...for purchase, but the abstract is free. :read:

 

Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

Abstract

 

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioral and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values (for children, marriage, family, and friends). The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity.

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A little googling has revealed that this is not the first time Satoshi Kanazawa has confused correlation with causation and a metric with a concept he claims that it measures. He seems to have caused a shitstorm most recently in his latest assertion, "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" (mirrored here because it was removed from Psychology Today and critically torn apart here and elsewhere.) Evolutionary psychology seems to me like a field with much promise, but it is currently filled with a lot of obvious cranks. A flawed study doesn't cease being flawed just because it agrees with your worldview. A crackpot pseudoscience psychologist does not become a trusted source because you like his conclusion.

 

looking at Satoshi Kanazawa bio @wiki, i found this bit about him and per se "them" and/or "they". the they of course being the publishers, particulary them @ psychology today who (whom?) apparently don't even bother to read what they publish. :loser: one has to wonder if kanazawazaza's other publisher social psychology quarterly bothers to read what they publish. damed if we don't give a peer-reviewed source, damned if we do. :goodbad:

 

 

 

 

Satoshi Kanazawa bio @wiki

...In May 2011, he [kanazawa] published an article in Psychology Today that explored why black women had been rated less attractive than those of other races in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and hypothesized that the rater's preference for physical markers of estrogen levels, which he asserted were lower in blacks, was the culprit.[13] Subsequent critical independent analysis of the results showed that the difference in assessed attractiveness held for three of the four data sets in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and that there was only a statistically significant race difference in younger women and that it disappeared by early adulthood.[14] His explanation has generally been considered incorrect as there is no evidence that black women have lower levels of estrogen than other groups.[15]

 

The article caused outrage and was widely criticized. The first criticisms were published in the blogosphere leading to the creation of petitions on change.org and facebook to have Kanazawa sacked.[16] But also other scientists, including a group of evolutionary psychologists publishing a joint statement published criticisms, distancing the discipline of Evolutionary psychology from Kanazawa's research.[17] Psychology Today pulled the article and on May 27, 2011, issued an apology to anyone who had been offended and stated that they had not reviewed Kanazawa's article before its publication,[18] and stated that they would police more strictly for controversial content in the future.[5]...

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It seems to me that the only “cure that is not worse than the disease” for religiously motivated harm is to instill in both religionists and non-religionists a deep belief in liberalism.

are you insinuating that additional beliefs aught be forced upon people that may or may not agree?:D

No. I’m suggesting that the liberalism, as defined in this wikipedia link, “the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights”, is a very important political and moral philosophical idea that we should strive to understand well, and promote better understanding of by others. Further, I believe that this idea is responsible for great improvements in the quality of life of most people over the last roughly 750 years, and likely to continue to improve it.

 

Because the term has, in recent decades, become strongly associated with various political parties, such as, in the US, the Democratic party, I think it’s important to understand that it has this older, more fundamental meaning. This meaning, I think, is largely unrelated to the present day liberal-conservative dichotomy. Many self-identified US “liberal Democrats” have profoundly un-liberal ideas, while many self-identified “conservative Republicans” have profound liberal ones.

 

Judging from your reaction to my use of the word, DD, I think I should have used a term like political compass’s “libertarian”, or Lessig’s, “free culture”. An advantage of these terms is that they have clear complement/opposites: “authoritarian” in the first case, “permission culture” in the second. Liberalism lack such a clear antonym – arguable opposites include “authoritarianism”, “fascism”, and unwieldy constructs like “the divine right of kings-ism”.

 

I think that, when well-exposed to the “lib*” idea, most people agree with it. Some people will not. Some people honestly and committedly believe we are individually and/or collectively better off under the strong control of a few exceptional individuals: kings, religious authorities, great warriors, successful businessmen, people with the highest intelligence test scores, etc. This isn’t an unreasonable position, and one that goes back to 2500+ years to ancient Greek debates over the nature of good government. I think, though, that ancient through current history shows it to be a wrong one.

 

A little googling has revealed that this is not the first time Satoshi Kanazawa has confused correlation with causation and a metric with a concept he claims that it measures. He seems to have caused a shitstorm most recently in his latest assertion, "Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?" (mirrored here because it was removed from Psychology Today and critically torn apart here and elsewhere.) Evolutionary psychology seems to me like a field with much promise, but it is currently filled with a lot of obvious cranks. A flawed study doesn't cease being flawed just because it agrees with your worldview. A crackpot pseudoscience psychologist does not become a trusted source because you like his conclusion.

Turtle- what I have found concerning Kanazawa is sufficient for me to conclude that he isn't worth any more of my time. However, if you are interested, I've found a free source for the paper Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent

 

http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/SPQ2010.pdf

Though I’m not much studied in this field, my impression of Kanazawa is that he’s a smart, accomplished career academic secure enough in his reputation and position that he’s not afraid to make the most politically incorrect claims some set of data suggests, and perversely hungry for broader popular attention enough that he enjoys it.

 

The fault I find is more with the entire discipline of evolutionary psychology. For folk like me, it’s fun stuff to read, but more reminiscent of good school BS sessions than of even semi-firm science. It promulgates some useful ideas that I’m confident are essentially correct, such as the “Savanna Principle” and the idea that “evolutionary novel” pressures select for greater general intelligence, but without sound evolutionary genetic science support, is little more scientific than the art of psychology, a field famous IMHO for compelling, interesting, spectacularly wrong ideas. In short, I find Kanazawa’s ideas no more (well, OK a little more) scientifically sound than Sigmund Freud’s.

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