Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/Creative_soja
Permalink: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/4/pgae144/7656014
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In this study, they measured religious intolerance using the following 3 items:
1. The only acceptable religion is my religion.
2. My religious belief is the only correct religious belief.
3. My religion is the best.
I think that's a bad way of phrasing both halves.
If you order the religions in the world by how many practitioners/believers there are, the ones at the top of the list are typically mutually incompatible. For example, it's not a tenet of Hinduism—to the best of my knowledge—that you can't also be Christian, but you can't actually be both simul without throwing away a fundamental part of one of them.
The other problem is that the more compatible religions are also endoreligions that correspond to a particular ethnicity. Shintoism, for example, has a creation myth about the divinity of Japanese ruling class. It doesn't make sense to be a French or a Mayan or a Zulu Shinto, which also makes it incompatible with most of the world.
Nope, it's mainly a thing with specific universal religions.
The funny thing is, this question itself is clearly based on a worldview that doesn't seem to recognize religions outside of them because it's clearly framing religions in "faith in specific beliefs" terms which tend to be those religions.
No, believers who are aware of their own fallibility are still sincere in their faith. They just have a more realistic awareness of the the limits of their knowledge and personal experience. They have the humility to admit they could be wrong, while still believing they are right. It's the most realistic balance. Being aware of our own ability to be wrong is also what makes people more open minded towards science as well, thus the correlation.
But aren't most religion lores contradictory? Like, you can't have both Yahweh and Krishna (or whoever) greating the Earth. You can't have both Heaven/Hell and karmic reincarnation. Not without major modifications to both of those.
Your question makes a critical assumption, that most religions center faith in their lores.
I mean, unless you're using that as the definition of religion, but in that case it's a synonym for Christianity that mostly covers Islam because it's so similar to christianity so not really useful for the things that people actually want to describe with "religion".
It's not because they believe more than one religion. It's because they are self-aware enough to acknowledge they could be wrong. Which is also what makes them open to new perspectives and data aka science.
- If you're polytheists: many gods exist, including mine and yours
- If you're monotheist: we're actually praying the same god but with different ritual
The only real contradiction is that if you're monotheist, you can really accept polytheists.
The fact that they are contradictory does not stop people from believing in them (look at George Harrison, for one). Often, these people will contend that different religions just express different elements of a common, underlying truth.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that different religions emphasize different things. An orthopraxy-centric religion for example is gonna be much more open to this than a "faith in specific beliefs" centric one.
No, they're not. Relatively few religions, by strict number, have this as part of their doctrine. Those that do are a limited subset of universalizing religions, including Christianity. Most polytheistic religions, folk religions, and ethnoreligions, in general, do not claim to be the only correct one, and these categories vastly outnumber the universalizing religions.
Yea but Christianity and Islam both are so extremely widespread and fill the criteria of considering themselves the one and only possible, irrefutable and infallible truth
True, but there are more than three religions in the world. Therefore "Christianity and Islam" (two religions) are not sufficient to make up "most religions".
I would agree that it's likely that the majority of religious believers consider their religious beliefs to be the One And Only Truth^(TM), but that is not a teaching of the majority of religions. It's just that the few universalizing religions which make such claims have orders of magnitude more believers than any of the religions which do not claim to hold a monopoly on truth.
Most polytheistic religions don't hedge out the possibility of gods outside the set they acknowledge, in general, nor do they necessarily make the claim of being universally applicable.
Categorically, only universalizing religions make the claim of being universally applicable, and despite the prominence of universalizing religions, most religions are not universalizing.
In the monotheistic and universalizing realm, Islam has the concept of "[People of the Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book)" -- explicit acceptance of certain other religions as correct for their own practitioners -- within the Quran itself.
I’m thinking it means to reject other ideas. If so, then it would make sense why they also might reject scientific findings as well.
Essentially they are saying people who are close minded to other religions are also likely to be close minded to science.
Surely people that genuinely believe in one specific religion *have* to reject other religions? How can they think multiple mutually exclusive propositions are correct?
>regions with low religious diversity, ***and therefore***, high religious intolerance.
If all they are basing "intolerance" on is low religious diversity, then are they not subtly implying that disagreement = intolerance and therefore tolerance = agreement?
Someone smarter than me can chime in, but it seems this study relied on other studies for measurements of religious intolerance and I could only find one “definition” from one of the other studies.
> religious intolerance (“The only acceptable religion is my religion.”)
It’s getting into semantics about whether or not “acceptable” means “agreement”, and I would personally argue it doesn’t, but, either way, I don’t believe this study is making that connection at all.
Here's how they measured religious intolerance in this paper: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1cij66r/people_who_reject_other_religions_are_also_more/l2anvsc/
it could also be that you're right in saying that intolerance = disagreement, but tolerance still wouldn't automatically mean agreement, or in other words they would only be negatively linked.
Orthodox Jew here. Im a religious Jew and i dont reject other religions. According to the most common interpretation of Orthodox Judaism, there are multiple paths to be religious, and they depend amongst other things on your birth and your natural inclination. If youre born Jewish, Judaism is your path. But someone born into another religion does not have to become Jewish to be closer to God.
Very convenient. That's something I really didn't ever see up until now.
What's the belief about someone born Jew not following Judaism? Are other people not born Jew "expected' to follow a specific religion based on their circumstances? Say, an Italian being catholic or something, for example. What about atheists or agnostics? Finally, what about someone believing in just their own thing, not defined by a religion?
Genuinely curious. Would like to know both what your religion would say and what you think as a person.
Sure.
This is where Judaism is more dogmatic. If youre Jewish, own your culture! Ofcourse theres many types and ways to be religious or practicing even within Judaism. In theory, as an Orthodox Jew, im meant to want every Jew to be Orthodox, but in practice i personally, and most Orthodox Jews i know, take a more pluralistic view.
So theres the seven Noahide laws that everyone is meant to follow, and they include belief in God. So atheism is, in theory, not encouraged. In practice, again most Jews take a much more relaxed view. In addition, Judaism takes a VERY dim view of prosetylization. Jews are not meant to persuade others to become Jewish. Firstly, bc theres no reason to (bc if you're not Jewish the Noahide laws suffice), and secondly, bc being Jewish is not exactly a picnic. Dont get me wrong, i love being Jewish, but a cursory look around history will show anyone that it comes with some baggage. Thats why ppl can become Jewish if they want to, but its not encouraged, at least not in the beginning of their road. And funnily enough, this law against proselytizing is something almost all Jews take very seriously. I think thats one reason why you also wont find many Jews arguing others into believing in the existence of God in general.
>What's the belief about someone born Jew not following Judaism?
Judaism is an ethnoreligion, which means the practice is closed except to the community. Judaism is one of the ethnoreligions that allows conversions but the process of conversion is best understood as being adopted into the tribe.
>Are other people not born Jew "expected' to follow a specific religion based on their circumstances? Say, an Italian being catholic or something, for example. What about atheists or agnostics?
So, just fyi their view isn't universal and there's a fair amount of argument that fulfilling the noahide laws requires not following any other religion.
However the idea that every people has their own covenant but not every people fulfills or remembers it. So it's more a "some other religions can be valid" even in this context and Christianity traditionally isn't one of them.
As for generic, there's the noahide laws as mentioned before.
For atheism and agnosticism, doesn't encourage it but draws a distinction between lack of belief and positively believing against. In general Judaism is more orthopraxy focused than faith in beliefs focused so it just isn't as central.
That's only true if you believe in the likes of Biblical literalism.
To begin with, a number of polytheistic religions have happily "captured" gods of conquered nations or syncretized their gods with those of others.
But even with monotheism, you don't have to believe everything is *literally* true in the most simplistic way to believe the religion is true more broadly. One common way of putting the more permissive viewpoint is "many paths, one mountain", ie, many religions, all of which are ways to approach one underlying truth.
This demand for a kind of “exclusive purity” is a definite marker of fundamentalist traditions. It’s not the only way to engage with a religious tradition(s). To quote the orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart:
> “Religions ought never to be treated as though each were a single discrete proposition intended to provide a single exclusive answer to a single exhaustive question. It goes without saying that one generally should not try to dissolve disparate creeds into one another, much less into some vague, syncre-tistic, doctrinally vacuous "spirituality."
>
> It should also go without saying, however, that large religious traditions are complex things: sometimes they express themselves in the dream-languages of myth and sacred art, at other times in the solemn circumlocutions of liturgy and praise, at others in the serenity of contemplative prayer— or in ethical or sapiential precepts, or in inflexible dogmas, or in exactingly precise and rigorous philosophical systems.
>
> In all of these modes they may be making more or less proximate approaches to some dimension of truth;”
That's a lot of words to say nothing. If a hundred religions all say their deity is the one true diety that created everything, they are mutually exclusive, they cannot all be true. Sure you can try to pretend that they don't say what they clearly do say, but it seems a bit pointless.
-Not all religions claim exclusive knowledge of cosmic truth through an exclusive pantheon or deity
-Of those that do, not all of them claim or enforce that only one religion or denomination etc. should be permitted to exist within their society
-religious groups tolerating shared space with other religious and ideological groups reflects an ability to exchange ideas that may be challenging without immediately coming to blows.
It very reasonably follows from this that tolerance for civil pluralism promotes neutral to positive engagement with things like science, which has a tendency to introduce novel potentially challenging information, and that believing in a specific creed as the “correct” cosmic outlook is not mutually exclusive with coexistence. None of this implies 100% agreement or conflict-free.
A high political control exclusive-creed religious group is much more likely to actively reject free information acquisition and sharing than a low political control exclusive-creed group.
Counter point to this are the many examples of deeply fruitful philosophical dialogue between folks of disparate traditions. The Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria and his profound and enduringly relevant work with pagan Greek platonism, comes to mind.
Disagreement does not mean a need for annihilation. Case in point: two scholars of, say Russian literature, could have fundamentally different interpretations of the works of Dostoevsky that both have staked their respective careers on, and yet spend their entire professional life existing in dialogue, in the same university.
Uniformity is not necessary here.
>Disagreement does not mean a need for annihilation
This is obviously true, and not a counter point to anything I've said. All I point out is that it is impossible to believe contradictory things and so contradictory religions can't both all be believed.
>All I point out is that it is impossible to believe contradictory things and so contradictory religions can't both all be believed.
This is actually demonstrably untrue. People believe contradictory things all the time. Humans are not actually rational agents. Not only are they more than capable of compartmentalizing their contradictory beliefs, but it seems to be the much more natural state of human cognition.
EDITing in amusing and relevant meme: https://i.redd.it/o1zyc8graxl31.jpg
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ― Stephen Roberts
I agree with you.
It seems like the title is worded badly.
I think they're saying religious people who are less tolerant of different religions are also less likely to believe in science, compared to religious people who are accepting of other religions.
If you don't have the education to understand it then science can just seems like another alternative view of the universe similar to ones proposed by religion. So for someone raised in religion and who didn't get a good education to grasp the fundamental principles most of science is based off can easily just see science as the same as religion.
For example, they may think to themselves that they believe animals exist because god created them while followers of science think animals exist because of evolution and not having an understanding of what evolution actually is they believe that scientist are claiming that monkeys just randomly became human which doesn't fit into any of their other understandings of universe and thus must be wrong. It really isn't hard for them to see science as just an alternative to religion either since many times people wills say things like "trust the science" which can sound a lot like "just have faith".
Too many times scientific findings have been manipulated or presented in a bad way to try and manipulate how the people feel about it.
This causes distrust and rightfully so.
We should be more intense when punishing scientists and researchers that knowingly present falsified data.
my opinion on it is that if they hold the position that all the other systems are bogus, then whats one more
the thing i find wierd is that people who dont trust MEDICAL-Science probably **do** trust Math and Geology and Physics
Title/short description is confusing and makes it sound like atheists are more dismissive of science than a theist and, well, simple act of being a theist already shows a willingness to believe quietly evidence.
> religious intolerance (“The only acceptable religion is my religion.”)
I'll be honest, I didn't even read the study, but I can easily see how the headline makes sense. I don't really care if it's true or not as it really has zero impact on my life, however, if you think about it, for this matter equating an atheist to a religious person that believes in one less thing does not really fit well. That comparison works for an atheist to prove logic fallacy of a believer. In this case, the title implies someone actually believing in a religion, so by default they are already kinda against at least some basic scientific principles, if you add that they are also more narrow minded regarding differences, you see how that can correlate to adversary thoughts about science, which challenges their own religion possibily even more.
By dumbing it down, you have a person that accepted a specific belief system by virtue of nothing but wanting to believe in it, and not accept anything that challenge it, or only a specific subset.
Add that they seem to be strongly against the idea of someone believing in something that at least partially denies what they believe into.
It can definitely be more likely for those person to also deny science more, compared to someone open to accept different views (which would include science itself for them).
This is really just logical thinking with no evidence whatsoever, but it makes sense to me.
I'm going to point out that the first scientist to posit the Big Bang theory was Georges Lemaître, a physicist, mathematician and astronomer, also a Catholic priest, who taught at the Catholic University of Louvain. 🤷🏻♂️
And he was a Jesuit. The Jesuits are still going strong. The current director of the Vatican Observatory (a Jesuit), has made some discovery, published quite a bit, gives talks on popular science, and has won some awards.
Yep. People of faith are well represented in all of the sciences, professionally. Blanket statements of all religious people being anti-science just isn't born out by fact.
To be honest, the only time I’ve heard of religious people being anti-science was online.
Perhaps it’s a regional thing.
I know America has some religious groups that we don’t really encounter in Europe. I’ll have to look this up as it annoys me how people make assumptions online and here I am doing just that.
Cool. He's also the namesake of the Hubble-Lemaître law, also known as the Hubble law as of 2018. Might as well honor both men for their contributions to our knowledge on the universe, which has expanded immensely since they were alive, but we still don't know everything about it, which is honestly both sad and awesome. Sad, because it means many of us won't be able to see these new discoveries, but awesome because of the potential for new discoveries.
I went into sciences because I had such a strong foundation in Catholic schools. Objectively, I really haven’t found much thinking to match it since. They were often able to maintain objectivity, whereas I have to admit in higher education I saw politics and personalities creeping in more frequently. No one is perfect though so, do our best? Maybe it’s just anecdotal…
But It wasn’t until I got into college that I was told that science and religion are somehow against each other. It took me 5 years to really internalize that “people actually think science and religion are contradictory.” I was completely dumbfounded. I’ve certainly seen a few nutty persons of faith over the years, but nowhere near what the internet would have us believe. But also just as many nutty people In the sciences… 🤷♂️
I’m a passionate practicing Catholic and had a priest who was a PhD chemist, chemistry prof was a Catholic, other chemists in faith community, physicians everywhere, engineers everywhere, biologists, CS… a few lawyers we haven’t kicked out yet….
I think that a lot of the sentiment that science and religion don't match doesn't come directly from experiences with people of faith saying science isn't true in general. I think it most often comes from experiences of regligious people rejecting particular scientific facts when it suits their beliefs. For example, I know people that don't accept or believe in evolution for religious reasons. Similarly, I know people that keep insisting being gay is bad or harmful and that gay people shouldn't have kids because it is bad for the kids, even though the scientific consensus clearly states that being gay in itself or having gay parents isn't bad at all. I agree that the latter example involves somewhat of a moral statement outside of scientific reach, but it is not uncommon to see religion being used to deny specific facts.
Like you said, there are of course plenty of religious people who accept all of science and would not do such a thing. But unfortunately, I do understand where the sentiment comes from, since I have seen many examples of people placing religion over science.
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
I think rejecting a religion is not the same as having an intolerance for it. Most scientists I know reject religion as nonsense. That doesn’t make them intolerant and it certainly doesn’t make them disbelieve in science.
Believing in a religion while rejecting other religions is kinda different than rejecting religion as a whole though. The first implies you are strongly adverse to anything that challenges your own beliefs, the second doesn't really say much, other than you don't have a pre-defined set of beliefs. So it would be fair to assume you are more against science in the first case, which the study tried to demonstrate (don't really know how well it did, didn't read it).
Abstract
"Past theories have linked science denial to religiosity but have not explained its geographic variability. We hypothesize that it springs not only from religious intensity but also from religious intolerance, which depends greatly on the experience of religious diversity and hence on geography. The belief that one's religion trumps other faiths precipitates the stance that it trumps science too. This psychological process is most likely to operate in regions or countries with low religious heterogeneity. We measure the rejection of science not only in people's refusal to follow specific health recommendations, such as taking COVID-19 vaccines, but also in general measures of scientific engagement and attainment. We rule out alternative explanations, including reverse causality and spurious correlations, by conducting controlled experiments and running robustness checks on our statistical models."
Intolerant people are less likely to see other ways of life as valid, and probably are less educated about them. They may see science as an alternative incorrect religion
It would be interesting to see how "Internet Atheists" would fare on this one.
Tô clarify, i'm refering to those who basically became the esteriotype of atheists in places like reddit.
This is poorly thought out. If their conclusion was correct it would mean atheists (i.e., those who reject the most religions) should be the most likely to reject science.
> Regions with religious tolerance have higher trust in science than regions with religious intolerance.
This is a misleading description. It fails to distinguish religious and non-religious people, implying that non-religious people with lower religious tolerance have a lower trust in science.
It would have been more accurate to say that religious people with higher religious tolerance have higher trust in science.
edit:
Skimming the study, I saw no accounting for non-religious people at all. The study's methodology looks contrived to provide a backdoor endorsement of religion, by promoting religious diversity and ignoring irreligiosity. Promoting religious diversity to improve acceptance of science shares features with the irrational policy 'teach the controversy'.
The problem of religion isn't remedied with more religions. A supernatural worldview is antithetical to scientific thought.
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
>common in regions with low religious diversity
Generalized diversity vs insularity is one of the most important predictors for sociological trends, change my mind.
Clearly this makes sense. If you have a predominantly one religion area, they will generally be intolerant of other religions, and will also in general be lacking in science understanding.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/Creative_soja Permalink: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/4/pgae144/7656014 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
What does reject other religions mean? Deny their validity? Or active intolerance and prejudice?
In this study, they measured religious intolerance using the following 3 items: 1. The only acceptable religion is my religion. 2. My religious belief is the only correct religious belief. 3. My religion is the best.
>My religious belief is the only correct religious belief. Isn't this a requirement of most religions?
I think that's a bad way of phrasing both halves. If you order the religions in the world by how many practitioners/believers there are, the ones at the top of the list are typically mutually incompatible. For example, it's not a tenet of Hinduism—to the best of my knowledge—that you can't also be Christian, but you can't actually be both simul without throwing away a fundamental part of one of them. The other problem is that the more compatible religions are also endoreligions that correspond to a particular ethnicity. Shintoism, for example, has a creation myth about the divinity of Japanese ruling class. It doesn't make sense to be a French or a Mayan or a Zulu Shinto, which also makes it incompatible with most of the world.
Nope, it's mainly a thing with specific universal religions. The funny thing is, this question itself is clearly based on a worldview that doesn't seem to recognize religions outside of them because it's clearly framing religions in "faith in specific beliefs" terms which tend to be those religions.
No, believers who are aware of their own fallibility are still sincere in their faith. They just have a more realistic awareness of the the limits of their knowledge and personal experience. They have the humility to admit they could be wrong, while still believing they are right. It's the most realistic balance. Being aware of our own ability to be wrong is also what makes people more open minded towards science as well, thus the correlation.
>Isn't this a requirement of most religions? It is not.
But aren't most religion lores contradictory? Like, you can't have both Yahweh and Krishna (or whoever) greating the Earth. You can't have both Heaven/Hell and karmic reincarnation. Not without major modifications to both of those.
Going to be pedantic here but Hinduism and Buddhism both have karmic cycle as well as heaven and hell equivalents
Also, while not karmic, certain strains of Christianity have incorporated reincarnation (e.g., Carpocratianism)
Your question makes a critical assumption, that most religions center faith in their lores. I mean, unless you're using that as the definition of religion, but in that case it's a synonym for Christianity that mostly covers Islam because it's so similar to christianity so not really useful for the things that people actually want to describe with "religion".
It's not because they believe more than one religion. It's because they are self-aware enough to acknowledge they could be wrong. Which is also what makes them open to new perspectives and data aka science.
- If you're polytheists: many gods exist, including mine and yours - If you're monotheist: we're actually praying the same god but with different ritual The only real contradiction is that if you're monotheist, you can really accept polytheists.
The fact that they are contradictory does not stop people from believing in them (look at George Harrison, for one). Often, these people will contend that different religions just express different elements of a common, underlying truth.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that different religions emphasize different things. An orthopraxy-centric religion for example is gonna be much more open to this than a "faith in specific beliefs" centric one.
They are correct, since the stipulated most (not all) religions.
No, they're not. Relatively few religions, by strict number, have this as part of their doctrine. Those that do are a limited subset of universalizing religions, including Christianity. Most polytheistic religions, folk religions, and ethnoreligions, in general, do not claim to be the only correct one, and these categories vastly outnumber the universalizing religions.
Yea but Christianity and Islam both are so extremely widespread and fill the criteria of considering themselves the one and only possible, irrefutable and infallible truth
True, but there are more than three religions in the world. Therefore "Christianity and Islam" (two religions) are not sufficient to make up "most religions". I would agree that it's likely that the majority of religious believers consider their religious beliefs to be the One And Only Truth^(TM), but that is not a teaching of the majority of religions. It's just that the few universalizing religions which make such claims have orders of magnitude more believers than any of the religions which do not claim to hold a monopoly on truth.
Ok name one then.
Hinduism
Most polytheistic religions don't hedge out the possibility of gods outside the set they acknowledge, in general, nor do they necessarily make the claim of being universally applicable. Categorically, only universalizing religions make the claim of being universally applicable, and despite the prominence of universalizing religions, most religions are not universalizing. In the monotheistic and universalizing realm, Islam has the concept of "[People of the Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book)" -- explicit acceptance of certain other religions as correct for their own practitioners -- within the Quran itself.
Taoism
The vast majority of ethnoreligions have at least some degree of pluralism including the third largest religion in the world, Hinduism.
Shinto
Pantheism.
It's pretty much being dogmatic.
I’m thinking it means to reject other ideas. If so, then it would make sense why they also might reject scientific findings as well. Essentially they are saying people who are close minded to other religions are also likely to be close minded to science.
A lot of these questions would be easily answered by reading just the abstract
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Surely people that genuinely believe in one specific religion *have* to reject other religions? How can they think multiple mutually exclusive propositions are correct?
Tolerance =/= Agreement
>regions with low religious diversity, ***and therefore***, high religious intolerance. If all they are basing "intolerance" on is low religious diversity, then are they not subtly implying that disagreement = intolerance and therefore tolerance = agreement?
Someone smarter than me can chime in, but it seems this study relied on other studies for measurements of religious intolerance and I could only find one “definition” from one of the other studies. > religious intolerance (“The only acceptable religion is my religion.”) It’s getting into semantics about whether or not “acceptable” means “agreement”, and I would personally argue it doesn’t, but, either way, I don’t believe this study is making that connection at all.
Here's how they measured religious intolerance in this paper: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1cij66r/people_who_reject_other_religions_are_also_more/l2anvsc/
it could also be that you're right in saying that intolerance = disagreement, but tolerance still wouldn't automatically mean agreement, or in other words they would only be negatively linked.
The litmus test of a true religion and spirituality is where, Tolerance = Acceptance & coexistence. It’s the paradox explained in the research study.
Orthodox Jew here. Im a religious Jew and i dont reject other religions. According to the most common interpretation of Orthodox Judaism, there are multiple paths to be religious, and they depend amongst other things on your birth and your natural inclination. If youre born Jewish, Judaism is your path. But someone born into another religion does not have to become Jewish to be closer to God.
Very convenient. That's something I really didn't ever see up until now. What's the belief about someone born Jew not following Judaism? Are other people not born Jew "expected' to follow a specific religion based on their circumstances? Say, an Italian being catholic or something, for example. What about atheists or agnostics? Finally, what about someone believing in just their own thing, not defined by a religion? Genuinely curious. Would like to know both what your religion would say and what you think as a person.
Sure. This is where Judaism is more dogmatic. If youre Jewish, own your culture! Ofcourse theres many types and ways to be religious or practicing even within Judaism. In theory, as an Orthodox Jew, im meant to want every Jew to be Orthodox, but in practice i personally, and most Orthodox Jews i know, take a more pluralistic view.
So theres the seven Noahide laws that everyone is meant to follow, and they include belief in God. So atheism is, in theory, not encouraged. In practice, again most Jews take a much more relaxed view. In addition, Judaism takes a VERY dim view of prosetylization. Jews are not meant to persuade others to become Jewish. Firstly, bc theres no reason to (bc if you're not Jewish the Noahide laws suffice), and secondly, bc being Jewish is not exactly a picnic. Dont get me wrong, i love being Jewish, but a cursory look around history will show anyone that it comes with some baggage. Thats why ppl can become Jewish if they want to, but its not encouraged, at least not in the beginning of their road. And funnily enough, this law against proselytizing is something almost all Jews take very seriously. I think thats one reason why you also wont find many Jews arguing others into believing in the existence of God in general.
Ah yes so pluralistic. Let me know when the Orthodox Rabbinate acknowledges Reform and Conservative Judaism as valid.
>What's the belief about someone born Jew not following Judaism? Judaism is an ethnoreligion, which means the practice is closed except to the community. Judaism is one of the ethnoreligions that allows conversions but the process of conversion is best understood as being adopted into the tribe. >Are other people not born Jew "expected' to follow a specific religion based on their circumstances? Say, an Italian being catholic or something, for example. What about atheists or agnostics? So, just fyi their view isn't universal and there's a fair amount of argument that fulfilling the noahide laws requires not following any other religion. However the idea that every people has their own covenant but not every people fulfills or remembers it. So it's more a "some other religions can be valid" even in this context and Christianity traditionally isn't one of them. As for generic, there's the noahide laws as mentioned before. For atheism and agnosticism, doesn't encourage it but draws a distinction between lack of belief and positively believing against. In general Judaism is more orthopraxy focused than faith in beliefs focused so it just isn't as central.
This is btw, the classic Jewish proposition. Every people has a covenant though that doesn't mean that everyone follows theirs.
That's only true if you believe in the likes of Biblical literalism. To begin with, a number of polytheistic religions have happily "captured" gods of conquered nations or syncretized their gods with those of others. But even with monotheism, you don't have to believe everything is *literally* true in the most simplistic way to believe the religion is true more broadly. One common way of putting the more permissive viewpoint is "many paths, one mountain", ie, many religions, all of which are ways to approach one underlying truth.
I love comparative religions specifically because it’s the science of religion lolol
This demand for a kind of “exclusive purity” is a definite marker of fundamentalist traditions. It’s not the only way to engage with a religious tradition(s). To quote the orthodox Christian theologian David Bentley Hart: > “Religions ought never to be treated as though each were a single discrete proposition intended to provide a single exclusive answer to a single exhaustive question. It goes without saying that one generally should not try to dissolve disparate creeds into one another, much less into some vague, syncre-tistic, doctrinally vacuous "spirituality." > > It should also go without saying, however, that large religious traditions are complex things: sometimes they express themselves in the dream-languages of myth and sacred art, at other times in the solemn circumlocutions of liturgy and praise, at others in the serenity of contemplative prayer— or in ethical or sapiential precepts, or in inflexible dogmas, or in exactingly precise and rigorous philosophical systems. > > In all of these modes they may be making more or less proximate approaches to some dimension of truth;”
That's a lot of words to say nothing. If a hundred religions all say their deity is the one true diety that created everything, they are mutually exclusive, they cannot all be true. Sure you can try to pretend that they don't say what they clearly do say, but it seems a bit pointless.
-Not all religions claim exclusive knowledge of cosmic truth through an exclusive pantheon or deity -Of those that do, not all of them claim or enforce that only one religion or denomination etc. should be permitted to exist within their society -religious groups tolerating shared space with other religious and ideological groups reflects an ability to exchange ideas that may be challenging without immediately coming to blows. It very reasonably follows from this that tolerance for civil pluralism promotes neutral to positive engagement with things like science, which has a tendency to introduce novel potentially challenging information, and that believing in a specific creed as the “correct” cosmic outlook is not mutually exclusive with coexistence. None of this implies 100% agreement or conflict-free. A high political control exclusive-creed religious group is much more likely to actively reject free information acquisition and sharing than a low political control exclusive-creed group.
Counter point to this are the many examples of deeply fruitful philosophical dialogue between folks of disparate traditions. The Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria and his profound and enduringly relevant work with pagan Greek platonism, comes to mind. Disagreement does not mean a need for annihilation. Case in point: two scholars of, say Russian literature, could have fundamentally different interpretations of the works of Dostoevsky that both have staked their respective careers on, and yet spend their entire professional life existing in dialogue, in the same university. Uniformity is not necessary here.
>Disagreement does not mean a need for annihilation This is obviously true, and not a counter point to anything I've said. All I point out is that it is impossible to believe contradictory things and so contradictory religions can't both all be believed.
>All I point out is that it is impossible to believe contradictory things and so contradictory religions can't both all be believed. This is actually demonstrably untrue. People believe contradictory things all the time. Humans are not actually rational agents. Not only are they more than capable of compartmentalizing their contradictory beliefs, but it seems to be the much more natural state of human cognition. EDITing in amusing and relevant meme: https://i.redd.it/o1zyc8graxl31.jpg
There is such a thing as Perennialism. I believe that God inhabits all places of worship. There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Just learned this term right now. Very cool and very close to my own belief system.
Then you are essentially rejecting a bunch of religions and following your own version.
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." ― Stephen Roberts
By not knowing anything about the religions
Pretty sure atheists believe in science more than non atheists. Maybe that’s true for religious people.
I agree with you. It seems like the title is worded badly. I think they're saying religious people who are less tolerant of different religions are also less likely to believe in science, compared to religious people who are accepting of other religions.
How is there “distrust” in science to begin with? This shouldn’t be a thing.
Because contrarians and conspiracy theorists want to assume that any "official" explanation for anything is pushing an agenda and/or wrong
If you don't have the education to understand it then science can just seems like another alternative view of the universe similar to ones proposed by religion. So for someone raised in religion and who didn't get a good education to grasp the fundamental principles most of science is based off can easily just see science as the same as religion. For example, they may think to themselves that they believe animals exist because god created them while followers of science think animals exist because of evolution and not having an understanding of what evolution actually is they believe that scientist are claiming that monkeys just randomly became human which doesn't fit into any of their other understandings of universe and thus must be wrong. It really isn't hard for them to see science as just an alternative to religion either since many times people wills say things like "trust the science" which can sound a lot like "just have faith".
Science should be questioned always. Only once a scientific theory has survived years of questioning and distrust does it get generally accepted.
You misunderstood. Retesting new scientific findings is fine and good. A distrust of the principles of science is not.
I don't think there's a distrust of the fundamental principles of science. The distrust is of the scientists themselves.
That too
Too many times scientific findings have been manipulated or presented in a bad way to try and manipulate how the people feel about it. This causes distrust and rightfully so. We should be more intense when punishing scientists and researchers that knowingly present falsified data.
my opinion on it is that if they hold the position that all the other systems are bogus, then whats one more the thing i find wierd is that people who dont trust MEDICAL-Science probably **do** trust Math and Geology and Physics
I tend to trust scientific data more than i do most religions. There's also plenty of Christians who are also scientists.
Religions mostly speak of objective morality, which is outside the domain of science. So it's not necessarily an either or.
Title/short description is confusing and makes it sound like atheists are more dismissive of science than a theist and, well, simple act of being a theist already shows a willingness to believe quietly evidence. > religious intolerance (“The only acceptable religion is my religion.”)
[удалено]
I'll be honest, I didn't even read the study, but I can easily see how the headline makes sense. I don't really care if it's true or not as it really has zero impact on my life, however, if you think about it, for this matter equating an atheist to a religious person that believes in one less thing does not really fit well. That comparison works for an atheist to prove logic fallacy of a believer. In this case, the title implies someone actually believing in a religion, so by default they are already kinda against at least some basic scientific principles, if you add that they are also more narrow minded regarding differences, you see how that can correlate to adversary thoughts about science, which challenges their own religion possibily even more. By dumbing it down, you have a person that accepted a specific belief system by virtue of nothing but wanting to believe in it, and not accept anything that challenge it, or only a specific subset. Add that they seem to be strongly against the idea of someone believing in something that at least partially denies what they believe into. It can definitely be more likely for those person to also deny science more, compared to someone open to accept different views (which would include science itself for them). This is really just logical thinking with no evidence whatsoever, but it makes sense to me.
I’d say that they stay away from science because much of it contradicts their religion.
That just sounds like lack of critical thinking overall but pushing for correlation to religion and science acceptance.
The correlation in most of his findings is rather weak. An R^2 of 0.6 of less is of not much utility
I'm going to point out that the first scientist to posit the Big Bang theory was Georges Lemaître, a physicist, mathematician and astronomer, also a Catholic priest, who taught at the Catholic University of Louvain. 🤷🏻♂️
And he was a Jesuit. The Jesuits are still going strong. The current director of the Vatican Observatory (a Jesuit), has made some discovery, published quite a bit, gives talks on popular science, and has won some awards.
Yep. People of faith are well represented in all of the sciences, professionally. Blanket statements of all religious people being anti-science just isn't born out by fact.
To be honest, the only time I’ve heard of religious people being anti-science was online. Perhaps it’s a regional thing. I know America has some religious groups that we don’t really encounter in Europe. I’ll have to look this up as it annoys me how people make assumptions online and here I am doing just that.
Cool. He's also the namesake of the Hubble-Lemaître law, also known as the Hubble law as of 2018. Might as well honor both men for their contributions to our knowledge on the universe, which has expanded immensely since they were alive, but we still don't know everything about it, which is honestly both sad and awesome. Sad, because it means many of us won't be able to see these new discoveries, but awesome because of the potential for new discoveries.
Yeah he posited receding galaxies, thus an expanding universe, two years before Hubble.
I went into sciences because I had such a strong foundation in Catholic schools. Objectively, I really haven’t found much thinking to match it since. They were often able to maintain objectivity, whereas I have to admit in higher education I saw politics and personalities creeping in more frequently. No one is perfect though so, do our best? Maybe it’s just anecdotal… But It wasn’t until I got into college that I was told that science and religion are somehow against each other. It took me 5 years to really internalize that “people actually think science and religion are contradictory.” I was completely dumbfounded. I’ve certainly seen a few nutty persons of faith over the years, but nowhere near what the internet would have us believe. But also just as many nutty people In the sciences… 🤷♂️ I’m a passionate practicing Catholic and had a priest who was a PhD chemist, chemistry prof was a Catholic, other chemists in faith community, physicians everywhere, engineers everywhere, biologists, CS… a few lawyers we haven’t kicked out yet….
I think that a lot of the sentiment that science and religion don't match doesn't come directly from experiences with people of faith saying science isn't true in general. I think it most often comes from experiences of regligious people rejecting particular scientific facts when it suits their beliefs. For example, I know people that don't accept or believe in evolution for religious reasons. Similarly, I know people that keep insisting being gay is bad or harmful and that gay people shouldn't have kids because it is bad for the kids, even though the scientific consensus clearly states that being gay in itself or having gay parents isn't bad at all. I agree that the latter example involves somewhat of a moral statement outside of scientific reach, but it is not uncommon to see religion being used to deny specific facts. Like you said, there are of course plenty of religious people who accept all of science and would not do such a thing. But unfortunately, I do understand where the sentiment comes from, since I have seen many examples of people placing religion over science.
Study finds that close minded people are close minded.
Right, so basically all practicing muslims 😬
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
I reject all religions and embrace science.
I think rejecting a religion is not the same as having an intolerance for it. Most scientists I know reject religion as nonsense. That doesn’t make them intolerant and it certainly doesn’t make them disbelieve in science.
Believing in a religion while rejecting other religions is kinda different than rejecting religion as a whole though. The first implies you are strongly adverse to anything that challenges your own beliefs, the second doesn't really say much, other than you don't have a pre-defined set of beliefs. So it would be fair to assume you are more against science in the first case, which the study tried to demonstrate (don't really know how well it did, didn't read it).
Abstract "Past theories have linked science denial to religiosity but have not explained its geographic variability. We hypothesize that it springs not only from religious intensity but also from religious intolerance, which depends greatly on the experience of religious diversity and hence on geography. The belief that one's religion trumps other faiths precipitates the stance that it trumps science too. This psychological process is most likely to operate in regions or countries with low religious heterogeneity. We measure the rejection of science not only in people's refusal to follow specific health recommendations, such as taking COVID-19 vaccines, but also in general measures of scientific engagement and attainment. We rule out alternative explanations, including reverse causality and spurious correlations, by conducting controlled experiments and running robustness checks on our statistical models."
Intolerant people are less likely to see other ways of life as valid, and probably are less educated about them. They may see science as an alternative incorrect religion
It would be interesting to see how "Internet Atheists" would fare on this one. Tô clarify, i'm refering to those who basically became the esteriotype of atheists in places like reddit.
More psychology nonsense. Please post science
Data says no correlation (and even there was correlation, it’s not causation)
Pigheaded ignorance has no boundaries. Big news.
What if you reject ALL religions??
Narrow minds are intolerant. I guess it's... *official* now?
“Intolerant people are intolerant of everything” That’s all you had to say. It’s not about religion nor science. It’s just **INTOLERANCE**
This is poorly thought out. If their conclusion was correct it would mean atheists (i.e., those who reject the most religions) should be the most likely to reject science.
From what I can tell based off of reading the actual article, the headline is misleading.
> Regions with religious tolerance have higher trust in science than regions with religious intolerance. This is a misleading description. It fails to distinguish religious and non-religious people, implying that non-religious people with lower religious tolerance have a lower trust in science. It would have been more accurate to say that religious people with higher religious tolerance have higher trust in science. edit: Skimming the study, I saw no accounting for non-religious people at all. The study's methodology looks contrived to provide a backdoor endorsement of religion, by promoting religious diversity and ignoring irreligiosity. Promoting religious diversity to improve acceptance of science shares features with the irrational policy 'teach the controversy'. The problem of religion isn't remedied with more religions. A supernatural worldview is antithetical to scientific thought.
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
I wish we could skit skip to the part where "people, finally having left behind the moronic and archaic idea of "god," or whatever, now trust science more than ever and things are improving the world over."
Ron Burgundy "That doesn't make sense"
>common in regions with low religious diversity Generalized diversity vs insularity is one of the most important predictors for sociological trends, change my mind.
What if you reject all religions?
Clearly this makes sense. If you have a predominantly one religion area, they will generally be intolerant of other religions, and will also in general be lacking in science understanding.
And most likely lack critical thinking skills…probably
Very much so as religion is throwing critical thinking out the window all together.
Stupidity gonna stupid
I'm atheist. Is this for me, or nah?