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The Psychology of Religion – Steven Pinker

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The Psychology of Religion – Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Professor Derose

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48 thoughts on “The Psychology of Religion – Steven Pinker”

  1. when you look at religion through the eyes of psychology of sociology you naturally come to these types of conclusions. The underlying
    worldview materialism , reductionism are also based on belief systems also full of holes. Talk to a few scientists about the basic nature of reality if you want to see some fun, beware of the experts whether they wear robes or p.hs . The so-called new atheists use the the most superficial socilaized aspects of the western religous traditions .Take a long serious look at Taoist ,Buddhist, and Hinduism if you are interested in expanding your knowledge into wisdom, an aspect of reality that your brilliant ego-bound experts have no idea about.

  2. I don't mean to naysay the concepts presented here, but one could have picked up — and retained — 90% of this from a good, social-psychology-oriented, comparative religion text. One could start with Karen Armstrong's =A History of God=. My problem with Pinker (for years) has been that he writes and lectures like he thinks, I expect. He brings up very significant concepts, spends a sentence or two with them, and then heads off in another direction. Unlike, say, Jack Miles (=God, a Biography=; =Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God=) he does not build his writing or his lectures scaffolded layer by layer. Which makes Pinker's presentations (for me anyway) like discourses in disconnected dots the auditor may have grave difficulty hooking together.

  3. Sorry, I clicked "dislike" on the video because at the end of it the discussion is literally cut in half right in the middle of a sentence (and an interesting one!). 🙂 And also because the description doesn't bother telling anything about the source(s) of this material.

  6. Everybody has suppositions. When debating a critic there is always a point to start the discussion because the critic will always have conditions that he believes to be true regardless of proof. They just need to be defined. That is when internal critiques using the critics presuppositions can be used.

    The issue with debating a religious individual is that they criticize your position internally but ask that you critique their position externally. Which is the best chance they have for leveling the field. This is because they can not form any material proof for their beliefs outside their ideology. The last part of the video shows this dynamic.

    I will admit that this is a technique of winning an argument not debating for truth (whatever that may be defined). It hinges on the believers own knowledge of their belief and your ability to capitalize on that knowledge and logic.

  7. Neil degrass tyson found an analysis that the higher education have less religious people. The number of religious people decrease when there is a higher degree associates, bachelor, masters, phd ect.

  9. AAAH, it cuts off at the end, Dawkins was asking one of those super-pwnage "Your answer to this is gonna destroy your own argument" questions, and it just cuts off!! dammit man, The ol professor was gonna go all hulk smash on that wishy washy weirdo!

  10. A religion is a set of stories, symbols and rituals that help people orient themselves to the mystery of life–the truth beyond perception. Religious institutions are groups of people who (generally) take these stories and symbols and turn them into polarizing dogmas that kill the mystery and block the light of truth. Most religion hating is really an aversion to the corrupting influence of institutions rather than to religion itself. This same corruption also happens within Science, when dogmatic assumptions (like the mind being in the brain for example) block free inquiry and experimentation to discover truth. Truth is one. Science and religion are meant to help us discover this. But Institutions (of every form) do everything they can to destroy awareness of truth, pitting us against one another based on polarizing beliefs that remain unquestioned. Based on many of the comments, I'd say they've been quite successful.

  11. Atheists, if you're going to worship, at least worship someone decent. The atheist saints on YouTube are all empty suits like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, uneducated like laymen like Bill Nye or Stephen Fry, or con men like Richard Carrier. Try Stephen Hawking. He's done something to earn respect beyond just being an atheist. Sort yourselves out.

  12. "Mind" is similarly ambiguous just as "Soul" and "Spirit" – just by using it does not remove the caveat of "belief" unless it is accurately and consistently defined. Dennett seems to think it does not exist. Does that mean (because he also thinks "God" does not exist) that Mind is part of Religious Belief…? No. That would be silly – and so is the whole line of thought presented.

  13. I would love to see a panel discussion on the psychology of scientists are obsessed with disparaging religion. For starters, they always conflate religion in general with the particular religion that was presented to them as children, no matter how much they pretend otherwise. (Maybe, for instance, their parents forced them to go to church every Sunday, and this OCD attack on religion is their attempt at payback?) They always share with religious fundamentalists the inability to tell the difference between prose and poetry in the sense that they conflate religious mythology with religion itself. It may be that a high degree of mathematical intelligence precludes certain other sorts of intelligence from developing? We need a panel of psychologists to flush this out!

  14. What bothers (or amuses me) is that if you take a globe and put you finger anywhere on it, you find that wherever there is prosperity, architecture, joy en general good living standards, it is where religion also is. Where there is no religion, there is nothing else as well. Even religious nations are more successful and happier than the rest, e.g Albania who was the world first atheist country, and became the poorest white culture on earth. Compare that to the British, who is very religious, and one of the most blessed nations in the history of man. So I am thinking that religion appeals to the more intelligent brain, which is able to function on a more spiritual level, understanding cause and effect better, being able to grasp the relationship between mind and universe better etc. I personally think that is why King James asked Isaac Newton to revise and write the King James version of the Bible, because he was the cleverest man king James could find. Alternatively, it is just God keeping his side of the deal—worship Me and keep My commandmends, and you will be blessed for a thousand generations…

  15. I think the psychology is simple when it comes to religion. It is a control system that is designed to play upon human emotions. There is reward and punishment. It provides a false sense of security. A child might feel safer with it's security blanket, but that sense of security is an illusion. That's what religion is, a security blanket.

  18. religion connects human ontology into it origin from emergence ,a metacognitive processing about all powers that can be conceptualized by brain ,and those from unknown origins .

  19. The video stopped at a crucial point. Dawkins was asking Derose why theism should be granted status of 'innocent until proven guilty"? I really wanted to hear Derose's answer- the discussion was getting to the heart of the issue at that point.

  22. I don't think Pinker and Dawkins' argument enables the conclusion that religion is false. Both use the framework of evolutionary psychology as a theory to explain and account for the phenomenon of religion among people, but we can turn this same framework to explain the phenomenon of atheism as well. However, this doesn't mean that we thereby prove atheism is false.

  26. You cut it off at the most important question of all… Why privilege religious beliefs, over the billions of other beliefs…
    WTF?
    Thumbs down to the video. Even though the discussion was fascinating.

  31. Why do we have to call ourselves atheist? We don't invent words for people that don't believe in trolls,gnomes, bigfoot, elves,fairies, and the loch ness monster. Why can't we just be normal people while theist can be called theist. So everyone is normal until they claim they know the unknowable . Then we call them a theist.

  33. Religion is used by Pinker like a straw man. He does not realize that he himself is a product of christianism. This does not mean that god exists or not, but equanimity dictates that historical truth. Pinker and Dawkins does not have in account history, they opposes religión to science, and that is absolutely stupid

  34. If Pinker applied the same experimentation to the world of spirit as he does to the natural world he may come to a different conclusion. It's not either there is a natural world we can observe or there is nothing. It is actually that there is an observable natural world and a world of spirit. One is navigated by reason. The other is navigated by faith.

  35. , , , and if there really is a god then the psychology of believing in Him or the any number of counterfeits fallen man has invented to compensate for the emptiness that comes from rebelling against Him is TOTALLY different. to reduce religion to only psychology is at best to damn with faint praise

  36. In what way is genital mutilation a sacrifice his parents make?! It's nothing but the baby's involuntary sacrifice, inflicted on him by his brutal parents!
    Which goes to show: With very little variation, all religions are brutal and inhuman in nature!

  39. 1. Religion is not a biological adaption but rather a byproduct of cognitive faculties
    2. Religion is not one thing, we don't have a God module
    3. Ways of thinking and feeling brought together in different combinations and cultures to create what we call religion
    4. Belief in disembodied spirits made possible by 'theory of mind'/intuitive psychology/intentional stance
    5. Pascal Boyer/Scott Atran most religious concepts consist of mundane concepts with one property struck out e.g. mind without body. You don't have to tell people that a saint will be pleased if you give it something it wants. Experiments verify this
    6. An amulet an idol an object with supernatural powers will obey our intuitive physics with one quality crossed out or replaced like curing disease or listen to one's speech
    7. People holding religious belief are not deluded they do not believe the laws of the universe are abrogated routinely which is why there is a sense of mystery with religious experience
    8. a) An ability to entertain counterintuitive beliefs
    b) Connect these beliefs to existential issues
    c) Shared avowal of experiences – ceremony shares the religious belief and reinforces group solidarity
    i] group selection is unlikely (likeminded groups have greater survival value)
    ii] Religious systems exploit cognitive/emotional systems to weed out defectors/cheaters e.g. through public sacrifice – animals, abraham's son, circumcise son
    iii] Perceptual/cognitive tricks to induce person to group is evidence that religion is unnatural – non-relatives aspire to familial solidarity by likening the group to family e.g. brethern/brotherhood/family
    iv] Psychological essentialism – living things have essence that gives them their powers seen in children
    v] gestalt law of common fate – when objects move in parallel trajectory they're seen as part of a larger group e.g. praying to mecca creates a larger superorganism
    d) in snails, birds etc self-sacrificial behaviour can be observed when a parasite is present manipulating the snail to the parasite's benefit. Sacrificing control to a higher power can be a clever negotiating technique

  46. Religion imposes C-O-N-T-R-O-L of the minds of the congregants lest they exercise their own free will. Snails do not have a mind enabling them to exercise any free will. Now go out and get yourself a nice ham and cheese sandwich and don't feel guilty about it.

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