One thing that occurs to me while reading this is that for most people, their religion consists nearly entirely of cached beliefs. Things they believe because they were told, not because they derived the result themselves.
This makes any truly critical examination of one’s religious beliefs rather a daunting task. To start with, you’re going to have to recompute potentially thousands of years of received wisdom for yourself. That’s… A lot of work. There’s a reason we cache beliefs, otherwise it would take a lifetime just to be minimally educated.
And then there’s the bigger one that I think most of the other commenters have glossed over. Recomputing your religion into self-consistency can be scary because if you recognize that previous generations were no less intelligent and no less searching for truth than you are, then there is a not-insignificant chance that your recalculations will introduce more errors than they correct. That would be bad.
On the other hand, if nobody ever grinds through all the equations again, then any bad values that slipped in somewhere never get caught. At some point the balance of old mistakes vs. potential new mistakes tips in your favor.
My personal strategy is that, when there’s a contradiction, recompute until it is resolved without creating any new ones. If you can’t, flag it as a hole in your model and keep your eyes open for a better fit.
Obviously, any religion that prohibits honest questioning should be laughed off the face of the Earth.
One thing that occurs to me while reading this is that for most people, their religion consists nearly entirely of cached beliefs. Things they believe because they were told, not because they derived the result themselves.
This makes any truly critical examination of one’s religious beliefs rather a daunting task. To start with, you’re going to have to recompute potentially thousands of years of received wisdom for yourself. That’s… A lot of work. There’s a reason we cache beliefs, otherwise it would take a lifetime just to be minimally educated.
And then there’s the bigger one that I think most of the other commenters have glossed over. Recomputing your religion into self-consistency can be scary because if you recognize that previous generations were no less intelligent and no less searching for truth than you are, then there is a not-insignificant chance that your recalculations will introduce more errors than they correct. That would be bad.
On the other hand, if nobody ever grinds through all the equations again, then any bad values that slipped in somewhere never get caught. At some point the balance of old mistakes vs. potential new mistakes tips in your favor.
My personal strategy is that, when there’s a contradiction, recompute until it is resolved without creating any new ones. If you can’t, flag it as a hole in your model and keep your eyes open for a better fit.
Obviously, any religion that prohibits honest questioning should be laughed off the face of the Earth.