Religion-Psychology?

[David Sklansky]

Wanted to clear up some misconceptions about why I posted about religion and why I posted about it on this forum.

First of all it has no bearing on me personally. I'm not examining my own mortality or anything like that. Actually it all started when someone asked why poker players tended not to be religious. I answered that it was because being religious was not compatible with the clear thinking that pokers players need to use.

Lo and behold I got a lot of responses from apparently clear thinking people who were also religious. And at this point it was obvious to me that there must be psychological issues involved. It made me wonder if I could figure them out. And to what legnths people would go to deny strong arguments against them. Clearly a subject for the Psychology forum.

To believe that there is some sort of God out there does not mean you are either stupid or crazy. But as you start getting more specific, things change. It would be different if there was only one major religion. But as it stands if you believe specific facts (eg Mary was a virgin, Mohammed talked to Allah, dinosaurs walked with man, etc) you are disagreeing with the majority of people smarter than you who are not only atheists or agnostics, but also members of some other religion. In other words if you are the five millionth smartest person on the planet, at least four million of those smarter than you believe different from you on these specific issues. (80% of those dumber than you also believe differently but you could argue that doesn't matter).

In light of the above what does it say, psychologically about yourself if you are still sure you are right? If you are not sure, that's different. If you believe that your SPECIFIC religious beliefs are an underdog to be true but you merely HOPE they are, I have no problem with that. It's even somewhat rational to believe that that your religious beliefs are the most likely from among many to be true. As long as you understand that you are less than 50% to be right. But if you truly believe, not just hope, that your specific beliefs are more than 50% you have a psychological problem. It's worse if you truly believe the probability is at or near 100%. (I understand that we run into a problem here because most religions don't consider anything less than complete faith acceptable. So some who have doubts won't admit them)

Worse even yet are those who not only believe with certainty in their religion but also think that others should clearly want to convert. Those people not only have an irrational belief, they also have an irrational opinion that the OBJECTIVE evidence for their religion is stronger than the evidence for all other religions, agnosticism or atheism, combined. As I've said before this is akin to those stroke victims who will not believe they are paralyzed and are astonished others believe differently.

So to reiterate, I never actually was interested in debating religion per se. I was only interested in trying to figure out what makes people who believe this stuff tick.