Do you see any benefits to religious faith?

[Angrboda]

Are there clear lines that one can draw to distinguish 1. What we know, 2. What we don't know, and 3. What we simply cannot know, due to our epistemic situation, and moreover, which should be determined by faith, as opposed to that which should be left to our intellect?  And how should we assess which content belongs on the side of faith rather than that which belongs on the side of knowledge, or its counterpart, pure imagination?

Not unless you have a very good imagination!

I know what I know because I think I know it having satisfied my own questions to the level of confirmation I need.  This level might not be good enough or even too much for another, and many others do not care about the questions I have ask. There is no accounting for anyone else.

What I don't, I know a little about, but it mostly consists of what I don't know I don't know and that's half the reason I'm here getting my ass regularly handed to me. The fastest way to gain growth for me currently is to expose what I think I know, which at the same time exposes my ignorance and I get shone where I am weak and and they are strong. I'm finding it a quite enjoyable self destruction.

I don't put limits on what I can't know. I am (and so is everyone else) objectively composed by what ever universal truth exists, immersed in it and propelled by it, there is no where to go to escape from it. Unless one is actively fighting against it, apprehension is inevitable. Truth is the like the ocean and the journey of life is like a river. When you get to the truth/ocean, the journey does not end, there is a new dimension to explore and new freedom from a one way current to explore it.

Faith means something very different for me.  Mine was authored during a powerful spiritual experience that was followed by an NDE. It was not produce from my mind but it was induced in it...couldn't very well be induced anywhere else...

You could think of it like a grain of sand that was introduced to my consciousness.  One extremely irritating to the private ego (I am transparent to higher orders of beings) and so over many years I have accreted a pearl of research over it with many many layers.

My faith and intellect work hand in hand, beliefs are nebulous and subordinate but I also use them like a fishing rod and line, using my informed imagination (belief) to cast out beyond my sphere of knowledge and pull things intuitively out of the ethers. I come up with descriptions that I look up online and it leads me to other peoples works regarding the same things.

I try to orchestrate everything in concert and work the inconsistencies out in all my internal spheres as I go. I've shed scores of beliefs like old skin I've outgrown and grow better ones in a new form....till I outgrow that one.

Knowledge to me is like the rungs on a ladder; to be reached for, pull up by, stood upon, and passed beyond.

[bennyboy]

Religion is of false comfort.

What's a "false comfort"? Comfort is a feeling-- either someone feels comfort, or they don't. Faith brings comfort to some, and this is a benefit of faith.

Religion is really just another way of our species to make excuses to set up social order. In reality it is still gap filling, a sugar pill.

That's a pretty narrow view of religion. If you think you can take thousands of years of human experience and thought, and "wrap it up" in a sentence, then I'd like to suggest that you need to broaden your view.

Religion includes superstition, instinct, wonder, history, moral ideas, and a wealth of metaphor and symbolism: much of the human experience. Yes, the things you said are part of the truth-- religion often IS used to control others. but to say it's "really just" that is almost infinitely too closed-minded.

[Pat Mustard]

And this, Tazzycorn and Stimbo, is why I said a while ago that it's a waste of time to respond to Arki. This thread has painted that picture perfectly.

I'm not doing this to respond to arkilogue, really. I'm doing it to keep pointing out how anti-science he is.

Plus, it is amusing seeing him tie himself in knots trying to make out he didn't say what he said, just like his "electromagnetism didn't work like we know it works before we found out how it works" schtick.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

[Arkilogue]

Why is it always assumed a creator is benevolent? Where does that come from?

Considering ~100% of our universe is toxic to us, I wouldn't say he's really that crazy about us.

Perhaps all that cold empty space radiated by starlight is required to naturally form DNA structure out of nebular clouds saturate with organic molecules?

@ 4:01

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kanYuBptuZ0

Even better around a star that has circularly polarized light which favor only left or right handed molecules.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1...r-circles/

---

And this, Tazzycorn and Stimbo, is why I said a while ago that it's a waste of time to respond to Arki. This thread has painted that picture perfectly.

I'm not doing this to respond to arkilogue, really. I'm doing it to keep pointing out how anti-science he is.

Plus, it is amusing seeing him tie himself in knots trying to make out he didn't say what he said, just like his "electromagnetism didn't work like we know it works before we found out how it works" schtick.

I'm sure you can back up that accusation with the direct quote....no? Here let me be of assistance.

And what was electromagnetism before scientists explored, worked out the math and explored the mechanics of it?

If you think current science is the end all/be all paradigm, you don't know history and you aren't doing science.

And now to back up my claim that electromagnetism was considered hocus pocus "magic" before it was scientifically understood.

http://www.howmagnetswork.com/history.html

The Greek & Chinese

The earliest discovery of the properties of lodestone was either by the Greeks or Chinese. Stories of magnetism date back to the first century B.C in the writings of Lucretius and Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD Roman). Pliny wrote of a hill near the river Indus that was made entirely of a stone that attracted iron. He mentioned the magical powers of magnetite in his writings. For many years following its discovery, magnetite was surrounded in superstition and was considered to possess magical powers, such as the ability to heal the sick, frighten away evil spirits and attract and dissolve ships made of iron!



But keep hanging on to your one misinterpreted thing, you seem to need it very badly.

[drfuzzy]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

So does watching a lot of comedy videos.  Doing some form of meditation.  Basically, religion falls into the same category as every other escape from reality.

[Jesster]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

So does watching a lot of comedy videos.  Doing some form of meditation.  Basically, religion falls into the same category as every other escape from reality.

And this is exactly why my response was that any benefit of religion could just as easily be found through secular means, but without the negative side-effects.

[Simon Moon]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

The studies I've read on the subject, seem to point more to the community and support theists have associated with their religion, not the religion itself.

I will read these later to see if they say anything different.

[Arkilogue]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

So does watching a lot of comedy videos.  Doing some form of meditation.  Basically, religion falls into the same category as every other escape from reality.

Ugh, can't stand most comedy movies or any sitcom with a laugh track. They come across to me as puerile and very irritating. The pacing is manic. Have you ever watched a sitcom without the laugh track? A bunch of dumb one liners and awkward silent stares.

But with the laugh track you are entrained by false social pressure, and I see peoples eyes glaze over. Part of a modern social trend to be entertained to death...all the while paying taxes of course!

Personal religion is not about entertainment. Abram was asked to sacrifice Isaac for a covenant with God. Isaac means "to laugh". And was Isaac destroyed? No. But the urge to be entertained must be put on lethal hold....because it has a lethal hold on the egoic monkey mind, chasing the dancing banana.

[Simon Moon]

I'm surprised that few have made reference to any studies or scientific literature. I think the general unbiased consensus is that religion tends have a net positive mental health benefit:

http://baylorisr.org/wp-content/uploads/...health.pdf
http://roa.sagepub.com/content/27/2/197.short

The studies I've read on the subject, seem to point more to the community and support theists have associated with  their religion, not the religion itself.

I will read these later to see if they say anything different.

Yep, just as I thought.

The studies that are quoted in the first link in Chad's post (Larson, Gartner, Koenig) point to religious attendance, not the religion itself.

As a Forbes article says in reference to these and other studies, "Interestingly, there is a large body of research on the health, economic, educational, and other benefits (or lack thereof) of religion. Most researchers have found that the myriad non-spiritual benefits of religion are related to regular religious attendance. It is less the strength of your faith than the dependability of your arrival at religious services and other events that matters. This suggests that the mechanism for these benefits may be as much or more the social network that a religious community provides than the actual practice of the religion in a theological sense. Or it may be that those with the most faith also attend services regularly.

Also, all the results presented here are benefits found to derive from religious attendance or involvement in any religion, so there is nothing here to suggest that one’s particular beliefs are the key to the results."


So, as much as you'd like to believe the benefits are due to the religion itself, it is actually due to the community the 'ingroup' receives as part of the religion.

In other words, the same benefits could be received from regular attendance to ANY group where the sense of community is included.