Asklemmy

Compartmentalise. It's a trait of Homo sapien to convice themselves things are true, so they can believe any bullshit, try not to fall for it yourself in otjer areas.

The problem for me arises when they speak from authority on another subject they are expert in, if they're so naive and easily misled on that, how can i trust their opinion on anything substantive?

A superb example of this is Katherine Hayhoe. I get around it by just reading nothing she writes on climate change because her evangelical christianisim just muddies the waters too much to take her at all seriously. On a side note, my goto is Professor Kevin Andersin.

You likely also participate in rituals that were taught to you that are not solely grounded in logic or science. Do you do things in a certain order for no reason other than your parents taught you to do so? Do you avoid eating certain foods because you never ate them growing up?

People who are raised religious may not be fanatic believers, but they may still be "culturally religious" e.g. take part in Ramadan, avoid eating pork, because that's the way they grew up, and a lot of the time it means they can be included in cultural matters of the community they come from.

As for why some people are proper religious, fully believing and all, I also don't think all beliefs have to be rational. Some beliefs are comforting. If it helps someone to get through a difficult time by believing there's a higher power rooting for them, or who has pre-planned their suffering for a greater good, they may choose to believe that because it's mentally easier. Arguably that is a rational belief anyway because it benefits you and makes your life easier to get through.

The end scares most people so much that logic gets thrown out the window.

Wait, there's more: Some people are skeptical even of religion, yet still practice a religion.

We reconcile that by:

• admitting that we can't make sense of everything

• recognizing that many of the ways our religion interacts with reality are aspirational rather than descriptive

• rejecting dogma

• choosing to persevere in doubt rather than cling to false certainty

Deep cultural conditioning. When a person approaches something totally new they will use reasonable standards of evidence, but in religious communities there's a expectation present and deeply established that certain things shouldn't be questioned, or at least don't need to be shown true.

Note that in certain places there basically aren't atheists, so it's not like you need to be illogical relative to most to believe.

I used to know this guy who majored in astrophysics or astronomy (can't remember which).

To paraphrase his reasoning: There is nothing about physics that prohibits the existence of a god. The Bible has many things that clash with modern scientific understanding, but the Bible was an interpretation of things as they stood almost two thousand years ago, and is therefore likely to fail in many of its explanations. Religion is about faith, science is not.

He considered himself a Christian, and didn't see why that and his field of study would be mutually exclusive. Also, he was pretty open minded about most things and overall a pretty chill guy regarding other people's view and lifestyles.

Not everyone who is deeply religious is a true believer. Some just see it as a community, and the rigid adherance to the rules as the key to that community. One of the rules is to always say you're a true believer, though. My sister in law is like this. She just decided one day to join a religion, researched the ones with the perks that best suited her and joined it.

Tbh I think a lot of people bury that logical side deep down and compartmentalize. The narrative we tell ourselves can be quite powerful.

Historically/anthropologically, conforming to the beliefs of the society you live in is the most logical thing a human can do for their survival.

The way i think about it:

The brain has two halves (hemispheres)

The left hemisphere does rational thinking

the right hemisphere does magical thinking (which probably also covers religion)

Both of these hemispheres developed through evolution, because both of them are useful and beneficial to your life. That is why you should employ both.

veritassium did a video replicating a FASCINATING study that proves that logical people get dramatically less logical when they encounter facts that contradicts their deeply held beliefs; they get even less logical that "non-logical" people

so they don't consolidate the 2 sides of themselves; instead they apply their logic to the things that they don't care much about and get less logical on the subjects/topic that they care more about it.

I’m curious what you mean by “drop their skepticism.”

I believe the universe was created and I also believe that modern science does an incredibly good job describing the way it functions to the best of our ability. I do not believe the idea of religion is 100% at odds with science

Yes, I know a guy like this. I'm not aware of his considerations of how he is able to separate science from religion, other than I guess the fact that they are two separate things.

I had a colleague a few years ago, who wasn't dumb. He'd question everything, often discussing things down to excruciating details. Like, you seriously couldn't shut him up, with how much he was putting everything into question.

Except when it came to the bible. That was what he considered unquestionable truth.

One time, I felt like I kind of got through to him. We were discussing the Big Bang and whatnot, and I told him that I don't believe that actually started the universe, which really caught him off-guard, because he thought all the science people were a big hivemind and no one's allowed to disagree. I'm guessing, because that's how he's been taught about the bible, so he just assumed the enemy is taught the same way.
And yeah, I explained to him that I don't believe it started things, that I don't believe in creation (the fundamental concept as well as the non-evolution thingamabob), because things don't just randomly start existing. When you produce a chair, that's just some atoms rearranged from a tree, which is just some atoms rearranged from the ground and the air, which is rearranged from yet another place. That explanation also kind of got to him, because it really is all around us that things don't just pop into existence, ever.

What's also kind of interesting/funny, is that he did not actually have a terribly good understanding of the bible.
One time, I don't know how we got to that topic, but I was like, wait, isn't there a commandment that says you shouldn't be using god's name in vain? And at first he just said no, there's not, to then start really heavily thinking when I didn't back down. But yeah, I had to then look it up to confirm it, because he did not know his commandments.
That was his worst moment by far, but we had many bible debates, where I, with my shitty school knowledge and never having been interested in any of it, was telling him things he didn't know.