From a practical perspective, it seems to me that we need religion to bolster the arrogance of the non-religious. It seems a-priori impossible that I could be right when my opinions go strongly against social consensus. I am thus tempted towards a weak form of philosophical majoritarianism
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/on_majoritarian.html
but then I remember religion and it sets me back on the right track.
\begin{tautology}
On average, most people will not be better than average.
\end{tautology}
If we want to improve the world’s knowledge, we need to be willing to deviate from norms. So yes, perhaps having a few atrociously bad but widely-believed ideas (like religion) is helpful in reminding us of this. (Another way would be to look at ancient beliefs that are obviously wrong, like geocentrism and astrology.)
From a practical perspective, it seems to me that we need religion to bolster the arrogance of the non-religious. It seems a-priori impossible that I could be right when my opinions go strongly against social consensus. I am thus tempted towards a weak form of philosophical majoritarianism http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/on_majoritarian.html but then I remember religion and it sets me back on the right track.
\begin{tautology} On average, most people will not be better than average. \end{tautology}
If we want to improve the world’s knowledge, we need to be willing to deviate from norms. So yes, perhaps having a few atrociously bad but widely-believed ideas (like religion) is helpful in reminding us of this. (Another way would be to look at ancient beliefs that are obviously wrong, like geocentrism and astrology.)
That’s only tautological if the distribution of “goodness” is symmetrical. The average is not the same thing as the median.
Also, I find it interesting that you’re using pseudo-TeX tags instead of pseudo-HTML tags like people usually do. Do you write a lot of TeX?