Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Since the vast majority of humanity is religious, more so if you consider the issue historically, then you've got a problematic defintion of sanity. If religions are infectious memes, then they are more like symbiotic gut bacteria than they are like diseases.

The definition of sanity, along with other psychological parameters, evolves over time. What could be considered sane behavior for lesser primates or children would probably be considered insane, or at least not fully sane or retarded, by adult homo sapiens standards.

If the vast majority of humanity carries gut bacteria that makes them behave irrationally, it doesn't make the gut bacteria carrying population sane, compared to those who don't carry the bacteria and don't act irrationally. The definition of sanity doesn't appear to be linked to the behavior of the vast majority of humanity, whether they are sane or not.

Can one be sane without being rational? Can one be rational without being logical? Does intelligence play a part? To be able to help people who suffer from lack of "straight thinking" one needs to know what it takes to be rational and logical.

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I wouldn't call them sane with respect to that particular issue. If you unhesitatingly repeat back memes composed by authors some of whom suffered from organic brain disorders, you can't exactly be called "sane" even if you don't suffer from the same organic brain disorder yourself.Since the vast majority of humanity is religious, more so if you consider the issue historically, then you've got a problematic defintion of sanity. If religions are infectious memes, then they are more like symbiotic gut bacteria than they are like diseases. Religion has been a key ingredient of human culture since the beginning, and it's part of what made us human.

That's not to say that we necessarily still need it. Perhaps we've arrived at a historical point where we can rid ourselves of religious memes, maybe they do more harm than good. But it's hard to evaluate that if you don't have any concept of what the good might be, and a lot of the proudly atheist don't seem to have any sense of the real role of religion in society.

I presume that the people here must have given some thought to situations where it might be beneficial (in the evolutionary or economic sense) to believe in things that aren't true, or at least aren't provable. If your goal is to eliminate false beliefs then you need to have a theory of why people might want to hold onto those false beliefs.

Religion is a really interesting case because it involves deeply-held beliefs that are deeply counterintutive and often completely unprovable, with the latter trait somehow reinforcing the former.

Expand full comment
17 more comments...

No posts