Nov 16, 2023 04:35 PM
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...c-thinking
EXCERPTS: . . . The tricky thing is that many of our beliefs are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to falsify. In other words, there are many unknowns that religious beliefs try to satisfy with answers. Is there a God? What happens when we die?
Faith—that is, choosing to believe something in the absence of evidence—is a normal process for dealing with uncertainty around those kinds of questions...
[...] religious faith doesn't have to involve denialism. Several Catholic Popes have argued that faith and reason can be compatible ... But of course, that often isn’t the case, as with fundamentalists who insist on the literal meaning and truth of a religious text...
[...] confirmation bias—the tendency to ignore or reject evidence and opinion that contradicts what we believe, while gravitating towards evidence that supports it—is a universal trait that we all have (even scientists!) in various degrees...
[...] It’s sometimes claimed that science and religion are but two faith-based philosophical approaches to knowledge. I don’t agree with that characterization—science is the antithesis of faith-based knowledge and is inherently designed to be open to the reformulation of theories based on new data. But it is true that most of us hold scientific beliefs based not so much on faith as on the trust of experts...
[...] I cautioned against splitting styles of belief and people in general into black and white dichotomies. After all, many people have religious beliefs and still think scientifically. Many famous scientists, from Galileo to Francis Collins, were avowed theists.
Still, it may be that scientific and religious modes of thinking depend on some innate preferences (e.g. one might be genetically predisposed to prefer faith-based or evidence-based beliefs) that, in turn, influence what we believe...
[...] In my view however, a preference for how we develop beliefs is much better explained by how we’re taught as we grow up in the world, rather than there being any significant innate differences. “Scientific thinking”—that is, arriving at knowledge through experimentation and the scientific method—is not how we innately come to believe things. Rather, it’s a deliberate method that humans have devised to steer us away from the natural cognitive biases that often lead us to embrace false beliefs.
Science is grounded in a particular form of skepticism that holds that beliefs should be based on repeated observation and experimental controls—that is, evidence. As a result, when there’s no evidence, as with many religious questions, science tends to be either agnostic or nihilistic, which is not always appropriate (e.g., absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, especially when research to test a hypothesis hasn’t been conducted). Note, however, that this kind of skepticism isn't the same as denialism. Denialism involves the rejection of evidence, which rather than leading to nihilism, often results in a tenacious conviction of non-evidence-based beliefs.
Thinking scientifically requires learning this method throughout one’s life. [...] Ironically, when we come to believe that giving up our beliefs threatens our very identity, that’s often when those beliefs can be the most destructive... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (wikipedia): Methodological naturalism
EXCERPTS: . . . The tricky thing is that many of our beliefs are difficult, and sometimes impossible, to falsify. In other words, there are many unknowns that religious beliefs try to satisfy with answers. Is there a God? What happens when we die?
Faith—that is, choosing to believe something in the absence of evidence—is a normal process for dealing with uncertainty around those kinds of questions...
[...] religious faith doesn't have to involve denialism. Several Catholic Popes have argued that faith and reason can be compatible ... But of course, that often isn’t the case, as with fundamentalists who insist on the literal meaning and truth of a religious text...
[...] confirmation bias—the tendency to ignore or reject evidence and opinion that contradicts what we believe, while gravitating towards evidence that supports it—is a universal trait that we all have (even scientists!) in various degrees...
[...] It’s sometimes claimed that science and religion are but two faith-based philosophical approaches to knowledge. I don’t agree with that characterization—science is the antithesis of faith-based knowledge and is inherently designed to be open to the reformulation of theories based on new data. But it is true that most of us hold scientific beliefs based not so much on faith as on the trust of experts...
[...] I cautioned against splitting styles of belief and people in general into black and white dichotomies. After all, many people have religious beliefs and still think scientifically. Many famous scientists, from Galileo to Francis Collins, were avowed theists.
Still, it may be that scientific and religious modes of thinking depend on some innate preferences (e.g. one might be genetically predisposed to prefer faith-based or evidence-based beliefs) that, in turn, influence what we believe...
[...] In my view however, a preference for how we develop beliefs is much better explained by how we’re taught as we grow up in the world, rather than there being any significant innate differences. “Scientific thinking”—that is, arriving at knowledge through experimentation and the scientific method—is not how we innately come to believe things. Rather, it’s a deliberate method that humans have devised to steer us away from the natural cognitive biases that often lead us to embrace false beliefs.
Science is grounded in a particular form of skepticism that holds that beliefs should be based on repeated observation and experimental controls—that is, evidence. As a result, when there’s no evidence, as with many religious questions, science tends to be either agnostic or nihilistic, which is not always appropriate (e.g., absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, especially when research to test a hypothesis hasn’t been conducted). Note, however, that this kind of skepticism isn't the same as denialism. Denialism involves the rejection of evidence, which rather than leading to nihilism, often results in a tenacious conviction of non-evidence-based beliefs.
Thinking scientifically requires learning this method throughout one’s life. [...] Ironically, when we come to believe that giving up our beliefs threatens our very identity, that’s often when those beliefs can be the most destructive... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED (wikipedia): Methodological naturalism
