There's nothing essentially wrong with belief. — gurugeorge
There are things wrong with believing wrong things, but there's nothing essentially wrong with belief. Many of the beliefs you're pointing out there (like religious beliefs) are high-level or superficial beliefs that have very little effect on how people navigate the world on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis. (There's a lot of belief stuff, the bulk of the iceberg, so to speak, that's been "solved", that functions very well.)
The massaging of statistics to align all the bad things with religion is also quite tendentious - it's more or less rationalist boosterism, and quite unbecoming for rationalists - in fact (speaking as a rationalist) it's a bit embarrassing. — gurugeorge
Well something that allows people to mostly ignore evidence (namely belief), is actually counter to how humanity has progressed. — uncool
Religious beliefs too are based on evidence. "Gods" are first-pass explanations of natural phenomena, God in the classical sense is an attempt to explain the existence of anything at all, etc., etc. — gurugeorge
But belief is based on evidence, it's just that sometimes people make mistakes in the interpretation of evidence, or in the construction of beliefs based on evidence. To condemn belief as such on the grounds that beliefs are sometimes mistaken is ludicrous. — gurugeorge
A quote of mine: This means that belief tends to facilitate that old mistakes are kept, regardless of belief updating, whereas abandoning the concept of belief is reasonably a way to prepare the individual to be ready to discard mistakes, and move on.
Religious beliefs are not based on evidence — uncool
Belief on the other hand, by definition says that people are mostly not even required to follow the evidence. — uncool
But it's simply untrue to claim that religious beliefs aren't based on evidence. — gurugeorge
Well something that allows people to mostly ignore evidence (namely belief), is actually counter to how humanity has progressed. — uncool
Nonsense, you may not think it's good evidence, or you may think the arguments based on that evidence are wrong - and you may be right. But it's simply untrue to claim that religious beliefs aren't based on evidence. — gurugeorge
It sounds like you're conflating faith and belief — gurugeorge
I might even go as far as to say most of the beliefs are based on evidence and are the most logical and likely conclusions that can be drawn from that evidence. — BlueBanana
evidence-based argument has also always been a part of religion — gurugeorge
You can quickly see that religious "evidence" is not actual evidence, because religious stuff contradicts scientific stuff. — uncool
Doesn't mean it isn't evidence. — BlueBanana
For example, the existence of one's physical body, the existence of other people, the existence of any reality outside one's self....., — BlueBanana
Yes true. religious evidence is evidence that people are gullible and generally stupid. — charleton
It's called knowledge and requires no belief. — charleton
If you throw dice 100 times and get a six 99 times, that's evidence the dice are rigged, and those 99 times are evidence for that. — BlueBanana
belief is defined to especially occur without proof or evidence. — uncool
You can quickly see that religious "evidence" is not actual evidence, because religious stuff contradicts scientific stuff. — uncool
a practically infinite amount of beliefs supported by evidence. For example, the existence of one's physical body — BlueBanana
Although those are heavily supported by evidence, they don't have proof, only evidence, and are therefore beliefs. — BlueBanana
Well it's directly comparable to evidence for/against religions. The evidence as a whole is against them, including for example the science, but even if that is stronger than the evidence for religions, it doesn't mean there is no evidence for them. — BlueBanana
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