Binary religious thinking

[robvalue]

This is something I've mentioned sporadically, but I think it's worth its own topic.

I've noticed a tendency for some religious theists to have a very binary, black and white approach to various aspects of life and the universe. I'm not accusing every theist of this, and not every person who is guilty of one of them is guilty of all. But there are several extremely common oversimplifications that get made, which I encourage people to think about. I think this happens partly because religion benefits from encouraging people to think this way, and that things appear simpler to deal with when neatly put into two distinct categories. Often, I hear the argument from discomfort; if it isn't this simple and binary, I don't like the consequences of that. That's not a defence, it's an admission that your emotions are running the show in that instance. Things are rarely black and white, we live almost constantly in the grey area, whether people want to admit it or not.

Here are some examples. Again, I'm not saying every theists thinks all of these. Just that some theists think some of these; or at least appear to.

1) If you don't worship God, you worship Satan.

2) Something is either objectively morally good, or objectively morally bad.

3) There must be an easily understood and instantly available explanation for an event or situation; or else it was done by magic.

4) You either believe in God or you pretend not to believe in God.

5) Things are either in a totally controlled order, or there is utter chaos.

6) People say what is objectively true, or else they are willfully lying.

7) Things (like the bible) are either completely true or completely false.

8) You either believe in God and worship it, or you don't believe in God.

9) Either science can explain everything down to the minutest detail with absolute proof, or God did it.

10) If there is no external or eternal purpose to something, it is completely pointless.

11) You either have an objective list of morality to follow, or you have no meaningful morality at all.

12) You are with us or against us.

13) You get an eternity of bliss or an eternity of torment.

14) Something is either a sin deserves eternal punishment; or it is not a sin and deserves no punishment.

15) Either Jesus existed and was God, or he didn't exist at all.

16) Either the universe appeared out of nowhere, or God made it.

Feel free to discuss, and add any of your own. I would really like to shake up this binary thinking and get people guilty of it to look at the bigger picture.

[I_am_not_mafia]

I've noticed the same thing myself. They have an inability to recognise that the world is not black and white. Particularly with morality, hence the constant harping on about objective morality and things being either good or evil.

And it's either one explanation or another.

I read once that if a religious zealot is highly educated then they'll probably be an engineer because they are used to thinking in terms of rules about what works and doesn't work.

[robvalue]

Maybe religion's simplistic answers to difficult questions appeal to a certain kind of person who is prone to thinking in false dichotomies and needs mentally spoon feeding.

[Alex K]

I've noticed the same thing myself. They have an inability to recognise that the world is not black and white. Particularly with morality, hence the constant harping on about objective morality and things being either good or evil.

And it's either one explanation or another.

I read once that if a religious zealot is highly educated then they'll probably be an engineer because they are used to thinking in terms of rules about what works and doesn't work.

In my field of theoretical and mathematical physics I've noticed that the more religious people are, the more they tend to feel drawn towards the formal and mathematical side of physics. I know religious people with physics phds who have managed to stay almost entirely clear of the messy natural-scientific aspects of the field by concentrating on formal developments far removed from empirical matters, or mathematical techniques. I think this is a related phenomenon. To do proper science, all the ideas in your head have to come with caveats and p values attached, and the fundamentalist mind cannot grog that.

[I_am_not_mafia]

They also assume that there is a binary distinction between something being alive or not being alive which is why they struggle with the concept of abiogenesis. And why they talk about things being created from nothing.

It's also why they love strict gender roles and can be homophobic bigots.

Sye Ten Bruggencate is a perfect example of an apologetic who can only think in binary terms. He has a stupid website which is based on a decision tree and every option presented ultimately leads back to one single conclusion. But it does convince other people who can also only think in terms of true and false.

Logic is another example. Theists who think that logic would exist even if the human race disappeared.

[Alex K]

Sye Ten B. is more annoying than having your ass itch while both arms are in plaster.

[robvalue]

That's really interesting Alex! It seems there may well be something to this.

[I_am_not_mafia]

It makes me wonder if it's actually some kind of mental deficiency. I don't mean this in a patronising or condescending way, that's just a perk. Ahem. But some people lack certain faculties that the rest take for granted. I knew someone once who could not mentally visualise for example. Some people are dyslexic, others suffer from dyscalculia  (dyslexia of numbers). Sociopaths lack empathy. You have people with Aspergers who have trouble seeing things from other people's point of view and can have trouble focusing on more than one thing at once. So it doesn't seem far fetched to me that some people are only able to think in discrete rather than continuous ways.

In terms of the brain being a physical system this makes sense. The brain self organises and is therefore constantly trying to settle into a stable state. So for example we decide on a single action rather than dither between satisfying competing needs. There are many optical illusions where you can see something in two different ways, but generally only one way at once.

The framing problem is a common problem in Artificial Intelligence. At what point do you stop looking at alternative solutions and make a decision? And people with brain damage that affects how they process emotions can often be unable to make arbitrary preferences for one choice over another. We need to be able to do this in order to behave rationally.

So I'm thinking that religious people have a tendency to form particularly strong preferences and have trouble flipping into different states of thinking.

[Alex K]

I wouldn't extend this to religious people in general now that I think about it. It's a special kind of religiosity, which is why I wrote fundamentalist for lack of a better word. Your new age spirituality hippie type will probably not fit the bill

[Anomalocaris]

Religion is the art of pretending to know all the essentials Without the messy, hard and seemingly unpromising business of actually finding out.   Once one has accepted that pretense is adequate substitution for, nay, superior alternative to, reality, then why would one make pretending to know harder by needlessly making what one pretends to know more complex?