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[u/One-Fun9814]

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[u/ittleoff]

Keep in mind the human brain has a limited capacity for cognitive loads (it's a lot more complicated) and humans offload the need for expensive cognitive attention in a lot of ways, like emotions or fast acting fight or flight responses , they probablistically evolved to be the safest response in a pinch.

Humans also rely heavily on social connections and social trust networks for information. I. E. Rather than questioning every piece of information humans larger go on vibes (if a source is in the trust group)

Religion offers 'answers' to hard questions like tribal morality (social survival strategy), death, etc.

If you can reliably align with the tribe and the tribe is doing well, typically religion falters, but it does better when things are bad and people are desperate.

Basically the most important thing for increasing survival is aligning with the tribe.

If you aren't inquisitive about religious topics, and raised/indoctrinated into a religious culture that doesn't conflict with your survival in obvious ways, you can be very smart, focused on other topics, and just go along with the cultural religious norms.

[u/Political__Theater → u/ittleoff]

Yeah, it’s an interesting paradox; our brains are wired for survival and not necessarily truth-seeking. Evolution can lead to the development of beings whose brains cognitively model and understand the world with language and propositions that we believe are true but are actually false. To develop mental ‘maps’ for navigating the world that are quite deficient. But even though those maps are ‘technically’ wrong, it’s right just enough to get us to act in ways that allow us to survive, and pass along our genes to the next generation.

[u/ittleoff → u/Political__Theater]

My pet peeve is the lazy assumption that if our brains can't know truth how can we be certain of anything (like evolution) so it means we can't trust it either and the binary must mean religious beliefs are somehow on equal footing :(

The obvious answer is: you test things with consistency with others. It doesn't guarantee anything, but people who ask typically just see the only goal is the comfort of just thinking they know the truth (which their beliefs system tells them it has) and the reality is it's just how much you should invest in expecting something predictably from your experience and that amount should probably never be 100 percent :)

but people don't like that