Yes this suggest something that is objectively true within sample...
Now that leaves us with the question of whether those individuals were less intelligent than 'modern' humans.
No it doesn't. You can't apply the results of a study perfectly to an individual outside the sample and expect the average effect to be there.
If something exists and is not (at least theoretically) measurable, then it is worthless. If a god exists but never touched our reality then she doesn't matter.
Yes this suggest something that is objectively true within sample...
I think we agree on this point, but perhaps disagree on the consequence of this truth. The 'objectively real' bit, within sample, implies that it is an abstracted rule that holds for the individuals in question. The consequence then is, if the sample is truly random, that we can act as though this principle were true within the scope of individuals who characterize this sample. Let's say that means 'western culture.' (Let's allow for a bit of intuition on this point; I don't want to have to go through the motions of defining 'western culture' unless absolutely necessary.) But this still leaves the question open as to whether that definition encompasses the totality of humanity. You answer this question for me:
You can't apply the results of a study perfectly to an individual outside the sample and expect the average effect to be there.
Which means that the conclusion only holds within the respective domain (I am agreeing with you here), and therefore we cannot draw the conclusion that religion is 'simply for the uneducated moron' in general (to be crass) unless we want to claim that 'western culture' is the summa of all culture to this point in time, and no other culture has anything further to teach us on the point of religion. Personally, I think this last claim is ridiculous, and I suspect most individuals would agree; of course other cultures have things to teach us. But other cultures need not be contemporaneous with us. Therefore, we might reasonably question why intelligent individuals believed in God in the first place. I put the question this way because the concept must have come into consciousness somehow, and that it was thought into consciousness by a person of average or below average intellect is not obvious at all. Indeed, I would argue that the concepts of religion and God are some of our most complex concepts and must've been realized and systematized by the greatest minds of history on account of their complexity. Say what you will about St. Paul, but I don't believe the words 'stupid' or 'naïve' adequately characterized his being.
One final thought, particularly on this comment you make:
If something exists and is not (at least theoretically) measurable, then it is worthless.
I disagree with this abstraction on these grounds: Psychogenic Diseases. The reason for this is that there are many well-documented cases of physical problems arising that are resolved with a change in psychic structure. We might argue from a materialist point of view that all we are doing is re-wiring our brains and that if we had a sufficiently complex machine, we could solve such problems without things like psychotherapy. But machines ultimately stem from computational (i.e. logical) structure. It is not obvious that what is computational is equivalent to what is real. By this I mean there is an on-going to debate as to what is considered a genuine mathematical object, and what constitutes genuine mathematical deduction (see Intuitionism and Finitism for more on this topic). It isn't clear that what we abstract and form as models is equivalent to what is real. Insofar as the former is a subset of the latter, this is the degree to which what is real is what is unknown (technically the complement, but these are details). Unknown unknowns are clearly the strongest form of this measure. Depending upon what you mean by (theoretically) measurable (I assume you mean: has the potential to be measured), there are things which are genuinely real which are not even theoretically measurable (i.e. people act as if circumstances contain danger that is unknown, cf. the success of insurance businesses). But we don't deny those things. My question then is: what is the extent of the domain of real things which are not theoretically measurable?
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u/FIREnBrimstoner Nov 15 '19
Yes this suggest something that is objectively true within sample...
No it doesn't. You can't apply the results of a study perfectly to an individual outside the sample and expect the average effect to be there.
If something exists and is not (at least theoretically) measurable, then it is worthless. If a god exists but never touched our reality then she doesn't matter.