Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

[charliebrown]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

I'm cool with that.

I believe that God gave us rational minds, and accurate senses. As long as we are honest, all arrows of investigation will point to the creator. I have no problems turning over any rock, or fracturing any atom. In fact I boldly encourage it.

Science tries to answer
What
When
Where
How
Religion tries to answer
Who
Why (purpose or intent, not empirical why)

[c1ue]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

I believe that God gave us rational minds, and accurate senses. As long as we are honest, all arrows of investigation will point to the creator. I have no problems turning over any rock, or fracturing any atom. In fact I boldly encourage it.

Indeed.

One point which I see consistently discussed among the more open minded religious is the folly of assuming that all that is known about God is already known.

If indeed such a being exists and is omnipotent and omniscient, it is arrogant in the extreme to place the boundaries of limited human understanding around it.

We cannot always tell the whole truth to a child because of the child's limited understanding, what then of God and man?

[charliebrown]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

If you believe in an eternal after life. I do. If we knew everything about God it would be kind of boring. Kind of like that star trek next generation where they visit the Q continum, and it looks like a sleepy old west town. I do believe there will be a quantum leap in understanding upon arrival (whatever that means), but it will take an eternity to understand God.

I don't quote scripture often here, but this passage is so fitting ...
If you have been to a christian wedding you probably have heard this.
NLT 1 Cor 13

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ...

Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
...
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love

I actually disagree with the italicized part about know completely about God (oh please hold the lightning bolt). I think it was hyperbole to describe the many things we do not know now will be answered, the quantum leap. I think after the leap there will be new list of questions without end.

This goes for empirical knowledge as well, maybe heaven is powered with LENR.

[shiny!]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

My dad was Jewish and my mother Catholic. I was a devout child, wanted to be a nun so I could know God. Thought that if I got to wear the habit they would let me in on all the secrets. Studied the bible, prayed, tried with all my heart to "believe". But beliefs didn't get me through the night. I finally realized that for me, belief isn't enough. I need to know.

I don't believe I have a dog, I know I do. I don't believe my husband loved me, I know he did. I don't know if the house I was born in still exists. I could believe it does, but that won't change the reality of whether it exists or not. Speaking only for myself, compared to knowing, belief seems hollow.

As I get older, I'm more comfortable with not having all the answers. The Unknown used to be frightening and I needed beliefs to face it. Now I'm more curious than frightened, perhaps because it's hard to imagine the unknown being more terrible than life has been.

When I was eighteen I had a spiritual experience that led me to convert to Sikhism. Sometimes people ask me what I believe. The only answer that feels honest to me is, "Belief is the enemy of Truth". There's Truth that's beyond all religions, beyond all comprehension or description. I've been fortunate enough to have had glimpses of It from time to time. That's the only Truth that really matters to me.

******

Back to the OT, the article says that analytical thought decreases religious belief. I think that analytical thought can prove the existence of God. Feel free to pick this apart...

Bob Earll once said that God is either all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful, or It doesn't exist. That statement ticked me off. All I had to do was look around to see a world full of stupidity, meanness and suffering. God for sure didn't seem all-loving, and I had doubts about the other attributes as well. Here's where that statement led me:

To my knowledge, nothing exists that is all-knowing. The smartest thing in the entire universe will have a limit to its knowledge.

Nothing exists that is all-loving. With enough provokation, the most patient, loving soul can be driven to a state that is less than perfect love. Even Jesus Christ had his moments of anger, self-interest and despair.

Nothing exists that is all-powerful. The most powerful force can always be topped by something even more powerful.

And then it hit me. If there is one constant in creation, it is that everything exists in polarity. Without polarity there can be no existence. Objects are defined by the empty space around them. No light without darkness. No coin with only one side. Negative/positive, good/bad, feminine/masculine, hot/cold, happy/sad... I have yet to know of anything that exists without its polarity.

Because nothing can exist without its polarity, the fact that there is nothing that is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful means that something all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful must exist. Some people call It God.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Good post Shiny.

[shiny!]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Thanks :-)

[jpetr48]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Nothing exists that is all-loving. With enough provokation, the most patient, loving soul can be driven to a state that is less than perfect love. Even Jesus Christ had his moments of anger, self-interest and despair.

Shiny, thank you for your story. Thankfully, we all have free will to make choices using our analytical minds. Going through your thought process allowed you to choose a religion.

Without getting into the weeds on perfect love, the analytic side in me asked if there is a polarity, is there a good anger and a bad anger. Like you suggest the answer is yes. Jesus did show anger. It was a righteous anger and not a selfish anger.
Good anger often is a response to an injustice or something destructive. For example, Jesus reponded with anger over the misuse of the temple and the abuse of God’s people (John 2:13–17; compare Is. 10:1–2). His anger was not self-serving or vindictive; actually it served a purpose of mercy. The same with Mark 3:5 where Jesus got angry with the religious leaders because they would not allow him to help a disabled person- due to their tired and numerous religious traditions.

On despair, Jesus had his share of despairing moments but he never despaired as with the demon possessed boy in Mark 9:19-24
How did he meet the moment of despair? “Bring the boy to me,” he said. When we cannot deal with the ultimate situation, the thing to do is to deal with the situation which at the moment confront us. It was as if Jesus said, “I do not know how I am ever to change these disciples of mine, but I can at this moment help this boy. Let me get on with the present task, and not despair of the future.”

The amazing thing is that Jesus never knew despair. In face of the dullness of the minds of men, in face of the opposition, in face of crucifixion and of death, he never doubted his final triumph—because he never doubted God. He was always certain that what is impossible with man is completely possible with him. His purpose in coming to earth was not self interest rather our interests.

The analytic side in me has caused many questions to be asked as you mention. If there is a God, how can there be war, disaster etc. The answers to these and more significant questions can be answered thru a systematic study of the Bible.

[Raz]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

...The analytic side in me has caused many questions to be asked as you mention. If there is a God, how can there be war, disaster etc. The answers to these and more significant questions can be answered thru a systematic study of the Bible.

Buy a paperback copy of "The Problem of Pain" by C. S. Lewis. It will be one of the most informative and spiritual reads you will ever undertake,
and some of your questions will be answered.

[Forrest]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Getting back to the original post, analysis, can indeed decrease the religious notions and practices attached to true belief...one finds that one does not need the practices of religion itself to believe, or to rest firmly in that belief. Yeshua, although steeped in the practices of the culture He was raised in had no difficulty in stepping outside the box of that culture when He thought it necessary, yet kept the Torah in perfection.

We however, are under grace, and grace, a product of love and compassion, defies analysis.

Originally Posted by jpetr48
...The analytic side in me has caused many questions to be asked as you mention. If there is a God, how can there be war, disaster etc. The answers to these and more significant questions can be answered thru a systematic study of the Bible.


As to the pains of this world, you will recall that mankind, and even the world itself, was cast down from dynamic equilibrium, through a freewill choice. We keep our ability to have free will in a broken world, but our choices cause no end of unintended consequences, many of them painful, or deadly.

The moment we touch another person's life, the results of our choices and actions, like a single drop of water into a still pool, causes a ripple effect that we cannot prevent, and know not whose frail barque will founder on that effect, nor what their choices may be as they deal with the effect our action has caused in their life. And yet, we cannot cease from choice or action, and live.

Let us always remember that YHVH makes all things to work together for good for those that love Yeshua, and are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:27-29

[jiimbergin]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Romans 8:28 is what I have lived by for the past 30 years. No matter how bad things seem, or even how bad I screw up, I know that God will make something good from it, even it I don't ever realize what it is.

[jk]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Veritas Vos Liberabit

[jk]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

btw, fwiw, i've always been an athiest as long as i can remember. the only thing that would qualify for a label like "god" for me would be the total universe [or maybe it's a multiverse] viewed as a systemic whole, and that doesn't fit most people's concept of a human-like consciousness, although of course it includes all of our consciousnesses, and any others in the universe. if i were a missionary, i'd be like the guys in the cartoon i just posted above.

p.s. re andrew flew- my take is that he was going senile as he passed 80.

[Alvaro Spain]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Bob Earll once said that God is either all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful, or It doesn't exist.

With respect towards you, I believe that what can be said is that He is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful from His point of view.

[Raz]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

With respect towards you, I believe that what can be said is that He is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful from His point of view.

If He does in fact exist, then His "point of view" is the only point of view that matters.

And I firmly believe He exists; so did one of the world's pre-eminent atheists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Flew

[jpetr48]

Re: Analytic Thinking Can Decrease Religious Belief, Study Shows

Speaking of science and the debate over existence of a God, this DVD is part of a series from a think tank in Seattle.
http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Myst.../dp/B00007KLDW

Then there is the work of Lee Stroebel who examined the evidence from a scientific view as an atheist who later became a believer in God and Christ. One of his books is Case for a Creator.