The problem with Belief is that if you allow yourself to believe things, then you also automatically allow yourself permission to believe ANYthing. If something new comes along, if you decide that you like the sound of it, then you have given yourself the power to choose to believe that thing, no matter what it might be.
Religion trains people to believe stuff - to accept information as "true" without any evidence. And then to lock it in the mind, never to be questioned again. So once you've been brainwashed into perfecting this ability (dis-ability?) (usually while you are young and impressionable), you then go through life carrying that option to use that far-from-laudable "life skill" whenever you are faced with new information. That's now one of the cognitive weapons in your mental bag of tricks.
So a typical example would be:
A person was taught (perhaps in childhood) that it is perfectly acceptable to believe things - to decide/accept things to be "true" without evidence. Then they are told that there is a bunch of stuff about magical people wearing sandals that they must believe (... or else!).
Then that person, living daily life, comes across some new information - a claim, a statement made without evidence.
In that moment, they honestly think that it is a perfectly acceptable life choice, to simply believe that thing, if they so choose.
What tools do they have in their minds, in their mental bag of tricks, to help them make that choice? To decide whether to accept the information as "true" … to "Believe" it or not?
Oh, dear, how unfortunate. They weren't taught *those* tricks in childhood. Woops.
The Unscientific way of judging whether something is True or not, is to let your feelings decide for you. People do this all the time. You make a snap judgement about whether you want to accept something as being "true" - by listening to your feelings. The catastrophic danger of this method is that your feelings are influenced by what you *want* to be true. That makes it quite easy for me to convince you that something is True, if I know how to manipulate your feelings.
"A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on." -Terry Pratchett
The Scientific way of judging what is True or not is to let the *facts* convince you. Observable, testable, repeatable facts.
However if you don't know how to judge the truthfulness of some information by evaluating the weight of its supporting evidence, sadly, most people will just trust their feelings. This is such a risky gamble, because feelings are a terrible guide toward Truth.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
@soundwave
I get most of it- but before answering it's perhaps not obvious the "why"- why you mention this... so Yes is my answer to many of the things but for example
- Are you more on the side of thinking people are not critical thinkers
- Do you think many are even religious?
Good quotes by the way
So you compare some religion and science... and ah there is a part with "most people will just trust their feelings" ok I get it this maybe solves some of what you were thinking... but still have you also seen some evidence of people not using it - or which do you feel most offended by?
I think taking the opposite side a bit I'd say we are good people and STILL we don't have the answers, courage, training above certain levels which is not necessarily that everyone is sheep.
For example, in my experience, there are enough good people but even the experts are lacking lower-level skills and mixture of high and low (though it's getting much better as I use my own endeavours as the bar which ranges from full -on great conversation to people using excuses and only want to narrow-minded specialists or communicate with peers only to reinforce somewhat separation by work / classism / non-mixing).
