I think you’re likely overweighting this, at least in the general case.
It’s hard to overestimate how good people are at selectively interpreting, and more importantly compartmentalizing, evidence to fit their identities. Now, selective interpretation alone would support your line of thinking—if people accept only those data points that fit some preconceived notions, then of course their opinions aren’t good evidence for anything related to those ideas, and religion theoretically touches just about everything. But when you take compartmentalization into account, it becomes possible—even likely—for people to hold sweeping irrational beliefs without significantly damaging their reasoning abilities on questions more than a couple of inferential steps away: inference isn’t ignored, it just isn’t propagated all the way through a network of beliefs.
If I’m considering a book by some author whom I know to follow a religion with strong views on, say, eating crustaceans, then I can safely discount any arguments against crab-eating that I expect to find in that book. But highly abstract topics are probably relatively untainted, unless the author’s religion likewise incorporates a position on those topics into its group identity.
I didn’t give information on how much priority did I put on the author’s religion, but it’s relatively low, because I’ve seen some quite rational religious people. Also I’m not sure about the significance of the correlation between
The issue I have with the author’s religion isn’t about the fact that his religion might prevent him from accepting certain bits of knowledge. It’s because he believes in religion in the first place—this had negative implications on his personality - I’m talking mostly about Keith Stanovich’s dysrationalia, but it also says that he isn’t a strict follower of the scientific approach. Truly, he’s born in 1900 when that wasn’t so popular, but the fact still remains.
I think you’re likely overweighting this, at least in the general case.
It’s hard to overestimate how good people are at selectively interpreting, and more importantly compartmentalizing, evidence to fit their identities. Now, selective interpretation alone would support your line of thinking—if people accept only those data points that fit some preconceived notions, then of course their opinions aren’t good evidence for anything related to those ideas, and religion theoretically touches just about everything. But when you take compartmentalization into account, it becomes possible—even likely—for people to hold sweeping irrational beliefs without significantly damaging their reasoning abilities on questions more than a couple of inferential steps away: inference isn’t ignored, it just isn’t propagated all the way through a network of beliefs.
If I’m considering a book by some author whom I know to follow a religion with strong views on, say, eating crustaceans, then I can safely discount any arguments against crab-eating that I expect to find in that book. But highly abstract topics are probably relatively untainted, unless the author’s religion likewise incorporates a position on those topics into its group identity.
I didn’t give information on how much priority did I put on the author’s religion, but it’s relatively low, because I’ve seen some quite rational religious people. Also I’m not sure about the significance of the correlation between
The issue I have with the author’s religion isn’t about the fact that his religion might prevent him from accepting certain bits of knowledge. It’s because he believes in religion in the first place—this had negative implications on his personality - I’m talking mostly about Keith Stanovich’s dysrationalia, but it also says that he isn’t a strict follower of the scientific approach. Truly, he’s born in 1900 when that wasn’t so popular, but the fact still remains.