If religion has always been with us and was there before science- it represents one of the fundamental insights of human culture. That there is a world beyond the gross experience of existence. That there are concepts that govern that world and that these concepts can explain, predict and control the world.
It’s what allowed for science to exist in this sense.
I can only imagine. I’m friends with a family who used to be Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then the couple decided not only to get a divorce, but they started relationships with other people. Apparently JW allows divorce, but you can’t remarry. So they excommunicated the entire family, including their kids. The family now celebrates birthdays bigger than anyone you’ve ever seen. It’s a big deal to them. And the ex-husband and wife are very, very good friends to this day. JW’s loss, I guess. The family is good people.
That’s correct. However, the nature of Boing Boing topics like this is that some “New Atheist” proselytisers usually arrive to lump all religious faith into fundamentalism (or enabling fundamentalism). I’d rather they don’t turn this into the usual shambles (even if it might deliver more engagement to the author of the FPP).
Bears reposting… A well-known secular humanist on why belief and stories matter…
I miss Sir Terry… few people were able to get at the complicated nature of us weird ass animals as he… 
Yes, because the fundamentalists keep beating us over the head with their beliefs.
That scene hit me really hard. IMHO Sir Terry is one of the great philosophers of our time.
Most media will take this study and run with the idea that religious people have brain damage.
How is that the authors’ fault?
And in all fairness, the linked PsyPost article doesn’t do that either. It explains how the study was done, what the results were, what some of the limitations were. It does not suggest that we institute a national brain protection program to ward of the tide of religious fundamentalism, or that we should lock up anyone that has had a traumatic brain injury.
I don’t think it’s bigoted to ask “What causes people to have traits of religious fundamentalism?”, as long as what constitutes religious fundamentalism is clearly defined.
To some degree, they should be aware of how the public will understand a study… it’s not all of them, but if there is a problem with the framing of the question, than yes, that IS on them.
And it’s not like science communication isn’t a thing now.
Again, you are focusing on the ‘what’ not the ‘why’
How would you differentiate the results of religious abuse from other kinds of abuse though?
We know abuse causes brain damage. Even emotional abuse! And it isn’t like people are going to offer up that they sexually abuse their kids in order to participate in a survey on religious households kwim?
Yes, and we know that there are other forms of authoritarianism that aren’t based on religion. The problem is authoritarianism, of whatever flavor…
I find the apparent connection between religiosity and criminal behaviour interesting. It helps explain how many overtly religious people assume atheists are all filled with unchecked criminal thoughts, if the religious person is filled with criminal thoughts that are only held at bay (if they are) by their religion.
To be clear, this is absolutely NOT what the authors found. They found that religious fundamentalism was associated with certain brain lesion networks in two subsets of brain-damaged patients, and that other studies have shown that criminal behaviour is also associated with those same networks. They did not look at religiousity more generally, and they did not look at whether religious fundamentalism causes criminal behaviour.
It absolutely isn’t, especially when they are very careful to warn against the misuse of their findings in their own paper:
Acknowledgments
We would like to note that our personal beliefs span a broad continuum from adherents of religious faiths through agnosticism to atheism. We approach the weighty subject matter of this research as earnest seekers of scientific data and encourage readers to receive our results in the spirit of open-minded empirical inquiry driven by scientific curiosity and without prejudice or malice to any group or faith.
I’d also note that at least two of the named researchers involved in this study are funded by the Templeton foundation, which is about as far from hostile to religious belevers as it can be.
I feel like we do need to acknowledge that a broad segment of the US that identify as Christian proudly this way and see themselves as the legacy Christians united by a common cause in Christian Nationalism to the tune of like 25-40% of the population by any reckoning I have seen.
That’s going to skew things and also it needs to be heard even if it hurts because these assholes are literally trying to bring slavery back at this point in the name of Jesus Christ and not all Christians just isn’t enough to save us.
In an environment where the power majority of a religion is de facto authoritarian fundamentalists is it so unfair and bigoted to perceive it as such?
I’m not sure I can agree.
Thank you for posting that.
I think @Mindysan33 is correct that the authors of a scientific study bear some responsibility for how it is communicated. But just within this thread, they have been misconstrued, with some posters referring to “religiosity”, and assuming that is what they were looking at - rather than a specific concept of religious fundamentalism. Certainly the linked PsyPost article doesn’t stray there.
That’s a great disclaimer, the kind we need to see a lot more of in scholarly articles. Unfortunately, quoting it in the FPP and expanding the headline to include criminal behaviour and confabulation might have meant less engagement in the comments and fewer people clicking through to the article from social media. Can’t have that.
By design.
That was my fault! Sorry!
No, you just connected the dots the authors laid out.
Gonna have to disagree here. Taking the worst of any group to tar the entire group is not ok. It would be (and is) unacceptable to use Hamas and its actions to say that all Muslims are bad. It is equally unacceptable to use christofascists to paint all Chrstians as evil. That is, most certainly, a “not all Christians” argument, but i think it is legitimate in this case. I confess to being one of those Christians, so not terribly objective about the issue, just to be honest.
