> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Richard Baker > Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 5:00 AM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged > > Dave said: > > > The point being that religion -- whether you consider it the core of > > your being or a mental illness, is beneficial to humankind. > > So is your position that religions are useful rather than true?
The question of the truth of religious views vs. the usefulness of them is a worthwhile one. In order to address this, I'd like to look at they way you (Rich) and I agree and disagree on various matters. Over the years, when it comes to the nature and the findings of science, we tend to either agree initially, or one of us can straightforwardly convince the other through the the liuse of data so that we can come to an agreement. (From my memory at least) both of us see science as being comprised of models of observation, not statements about reality. I know of no fundamental scientific disagreements between us. If we were to differ, say on the latest work in mesoscopic physics, we could straightforwardly reconcile those differences by reference to the literature. When it comes to our philosophical viewpoints, we have no such recourse. I'm a theist, and you are a non-theist.at least that's what I've gleamed. There is no experiment that either one of us can propose to falsify the belief of one of us and confirm the belief of the other. So, where does this place discussions of religion? Is there nothing empirically based that can be said about them? I know that testable empirical claims can be made about religion. Religion is an addiction, like one to cigarettes or crack, or heroin. It holds societies together. It is inherently dysfunctional. It aids the lives of the religious, it harms them. These are statements that can be tested. I see David's comment as referring to this. On the whole, it appears that the literature indicates that membership in a religious community has a positive effect on one's health. For example, there are studies that indicate that people who are prayed for tend to do better in recovering from surgery/illnesses. I am not claiming a miraculous nature for this, since the prayer support is known to the individual and there are clear possibilities for very mundane explanations for this. Again, there are indications of a anti-correlation between an active membership in a church and self-destructive behavior. It is not surprising that religious belief is also correlated with social behavior (defining it as the opposite of anti-social behavior). Our church has a larger number of volunteers helping others, as well as significant monetary contributions. Virtually every church I know of has youth groups, staffed with volunteers who work with, listen to, and counsel the youth. Community support for adolescents is extremely beneficial, and churches, in the US, are the main mechanism by which a true community supports its youth. Does this prove that religions are true and that God exists? Absolutely not. Truth is not subject to empirical verification. What it does is falsify the idea that religion is akin mental illness. To see this, lets look at how homosexuality moved away from a classification as a mental illness/abnormal behavior into simply a difference. If we look at DSM-4 classifications we find a commonality in the behaviors that are dysfunctional: they interfere with the person's normal life. Whether it is an addiction, OCD, or panic attacks, mental and behavioral health problems cause other problems. Homosexuality did not demonstrate this. It's true that there were anxieties correlated with homosexuality, but they can be attributed to the disapproval of parents, etc.and they did not spring from the direct interference with a normal life. Thus, there was no empirical base for this classification, and it was removed. So, when we look at the positive correlation between active involvement in a church (religious community) and both health and social behavior, we can say.on an empirical basis, that being religious is, in general, good for one's own health as well as beneficial to the local community. > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Julia Thompson > Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 7:25 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged > > (And some people are closer to being wired to respond only to facts than > others.) I know that there are folks who claim to respond just to facts, but I've noticed that they really don't just deal with facts. One problem that we have in this is that a lot of things that aren't facts are labeled as such in order to give them greater credibility in the minds of those who make the claims. Facts are repeatable empirical observations. Even gravity is not a fact, it is a theory that explains a lot of facts, but it is not a fact itself. The smearing of the boundary between theory and fact in the case of gravity isn't that problematic: things work out fairly well nonetheless. Even "past facts" which are not subject to empirical verification can be accepted in a loose understanding (although this problem proved to be fatal for logical positivism). Things get problematic when all sorts of things that are not fact based are generally assumed to be facts themselves. It's much easier to see this in hindsight than in the present, so I'll give historical examples. Communism, objectivism, strong nationalism (see Nietzsche), and social Darwinism are all examples of this. If we are to limit ourselves to the empirical (as some claim they do) then we need to eschew anything that is not a fact, was not a fact, or is not an essential element of an empirical theory. I have not met anyone who really does this or read anything by people who really do this. Instead, I see a lot of hand waving arguments, such as the ones supporting the "science" of the historical dielectic claiming that the arguer's cherished belief is, indeed, a fact. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
