Why do intelligent people still believe in Religion? 28: Reverse your thinking

Just recently I possibly discovered where the chemical name, tartaric acid came from.
Tartaric acid is selective agent we use to inhibit bacterial growth in an attempt to
test for mold. I knew it had the same negative charged ion tartarate, that was in cream of
tartar but for some reason in my brain it never clicked that cream of tartar was named
first. I had always found it funny that there were Russia Muslims named the tartars who
had a similar name, and it wasn't until a few months ago that it clicked, In my new
thinking the tartars possibly discovered cream of tartar, and the ion was named after the
tartars. We can sometimes do that, have all the pieces laid out, but never make the connection.
With these long standing connections in my memories, a small paradigm shift was required
in my thinking, that the names weren't a coincidence but directly opposite of how I had thought
about it. Sadly I can find no evidence of my idea and it may have just be coincidental
with a Persian word that had nothing to do with the Russian Muslims, but for a day the
world felt reversed because my mind was opened to a new idea.
This form of paradigm shift happens in science happens often. When it does and it is proved
inconclusively to be true it temporarily feels like the world turns inside out as you now
have to adjust your thought process. When an idea occurs in science and pieces just
fall together, it can cause this and make it difficult to remains skeptical for a temporary
period of time because the paradigm shift was so overwhelming that undoing a paradigm
shift is disappointing as well. When we discovered Ardi and Austrolopithcus sediba my understanding
of human evolution changed in exciting ways. When the discovered the there is one to four
percent Neanderthal DNA in humans which means that they interbred with us which by definitions
make us the same species, I had to rethink how I thought about our history which was
exhilarating but mind-blowing. People in science or people just studying science have had a
lot of practice in reversing their thought processes. If unproven common sense is what
you were raised with, proven science can go against this and cause discomfort, especially
for people who fear change. The feeling of being right is many times to addictive to
be overcome with just logic. I remember growing up with faith. When no
one is challenging your faith with evidence or logic you can remain relaxed. However anytime
you are presented with evidence, doubt or conflicting logic you tend to become tense
especially if it means you will lose some happiness, certainty, comfort or lead to punishment.
I remember growing up as my doubt increased it felt like I had to tighten my grip mentally
on my faith or I would slip and fall into the fires of hell. Faith and belief were an
active conscious decision, which took a lot of work to maintain as intelligent and knowledgeable
I was. It took a lot of work constructing my logical house of cards to rationalize my
beliefs. Luckily, as my Christian self would view it, at the time I did not have a clear
understanding of the scientific process and the probability of evidence. However as I
began to learn more and more about science, reality began stomping on my fingers as I
held my grip on my faith. At a certain point I relaxed my grip on my faith and it vanished
and very little changed with me except to get better. What the think you know should
not require maintaining a grip on it. If your ideas are threatened by new evidence, and
you have to put effort into continuing to believe what you believe then something is
very wrong, and you are being intellectually dishonest.
Sadly because change is so hard for the believer, they will ask “why should I change and what
is in it for me?” This is something I discussed in the first video in the series. Losing your
faith means losing your certainty, and belief in your knowledge of the future. It also means
that your invisible friend who loves you unconditionally is no longer there and you have to actually
work at being cared about by others instead. This means you can't be mean, manipulative
or passive/aggressive and still have an invisible person who thinks you are one of the greatest
of his creations. As Bill Maher said “Religion is arrogance masquerading as humility.
Changing your thinking on things like evolution and the age of the earth also requires a lot
of study and research which is not something they feel like doing. Many of these people
did not go into science for the very reason that they hated studying so why would they
want to give up a religion that required research to accept as real?
To understand what it takes to get people to reverse their thinking one has to think
about things that has changed their way of thinking.
The following are factors that may help the average person get into the habit of putting
the effort into reversing their thinking. Social. Acceptance is one of our core drives
losing acceptance is a massive loss. To get me to give up something like that, you had
better make sure that the risk is worth it Humor. The ability to understand and laugh
at a joke is a reason change your ideas. Humor was something instilled into me as important,
and I found that the best and most intelligent humor was made by people with different beliefs
from myself. Nykytyne2 postulated that fundamentalism stunts humor as they cannot see the absurdity
of reality. If everything is gods plan and everything is divine then its difficult to
find absurdity especially if reverence is getting in the way
Risk. To a christian, you are asking them to risk the fires of hell for what you are
trying to tell them. Why should they bother learning it? To them it holds the same risk
vs reward as you telling them to cut off their hand and bury it and it will grow them another
hand. There is the risk that you could be wrong, the change will be very painful, and
they don't see how it will make their life any better.
I didn't have a cell phone until 2007, which made dating very difficult for someone with
zero experience. I could not see a reason for getting a cell, but I was making several
cell faux pas, that in the days of land line would have been considered regular phone etiquette.
Now that I have a cell I will never go back to land line willingly, but until I experienced
the advantages I thought it was a waste of money. The same is true with texting and IM,
and I'm sure there will be new cloud sites and programs that I don't know I can't live
without, and might shun until I experience them.
When you get used to the paradigm shifts of reversing your thinking, you get better at
it and instead of thinking of them as scary new ideas and discoveries become exciting.
You can be OK with being agnostic about the world around you because you know the levels
of probabilities that something you know will change and when something does, like the latest
findings of stone tools probably used by afarensis, it will surprise you, but it will also excite
you instead of scare you.
Hey guys, a fairly new youtuber named painfulmass actually made a video called “why do intelligent
people believe in religion” and stumbled on my series. I told him I should sue him.
We both enjoyed each others videos and his will be added to my Intelligent people playlist.
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