589. The Difference Between Philosophy And Religion

589.  The Difference Between Philosophy And Religion

I am calling myself atheistic as a part of being apistic.  But there are many people, who call themselves atheists in spite of being religious.  They do not consider this as a contradiction, as long as their preferred religion does not include personalized deities. Buddhism is an example, which is wrongly defined as a philosophy by those alleged atheists.    

There is a fallacy, when the decisive distinctions between philosophies and religions are underestimated or ignored.  

1.  Philosophies are thoughts.   These thoughts can exist only in one person's head, they can be taught, shared and talked about, they can be preserved on media and read or listened to.   

The philosophies are immaterial, they have no impact upon the material world.     Whenever people's actions are influenced by a philosophy, this is an independent consequence, not a part of it.    The behavior following a philosophy can be determined by it, but the philosophy can exist without causing any behavior.   
As an example, Epicureanism is a philosophy.   Living in the garden of Epicurus was some people's individual choice.  But one can be an Epicurean without living in the garden.

Discussing, teaching or learning about a specific philosophy is independent of agreeing with it.   


2.  Religions are more than just irrational and delusional beliefs and claims in people's heads.  Material and physical expressions are an intrinsic constituent of all religions. Participation is the expression of conscious genuine or faked agreement with the beliefs.

I mentioned before, how the behavior of christians in Lourdes is a weird spectacle. when seen from my mental distance.   But Lourdes is only an example, which can be generalized, based upon what I have either observed in real live or watched as documentaries of what is offered as spectacles by christianity, islam, judaism, hinduism, sikhism, buddhism and a few other creeds.   

Each of these religions is defined by the display of certain behaviors, both ritualistic as scripts learned by rote and more flexible reactions to situations, which all appear more or less weird, hilarious, ludicrous and senseless to any person not sharing the belief.   

Each of these religions is materialized by buildings and objects, which are useless without the belief, not serving any non-religious purpose, except those of amusing and entertaining tourists.

• Buildings for public religious behaviors like temples, churches, sanctuaries
• Furniture like altars, shrines, confessionals
• Objects like wands, statues, vessels
• Alleged special immaterial values of redefined simple objects like bones, pieces of textile, splinters of wood 
• Conformity like prescribed attires and body modifications
• Noises not qualifying as enjoyable music, like chanting, screaming, bells, drums, gongs
• Non-communicative body movements like prostrating, bowing, gestures and gesticulations 
• Chemical hazing of the brain like by incense, scents or drugs
• Abandoning and wasting goods like food on altars, candles or material sacrifices for the embellishment of the religion's material environment

All of these observable expressions of religion are driven by the motivation to obtain benefits.  They have also a perpetuating effect upon the mind.

When a christian prays for the fulfillment of a wish, this is implicitly the expectation of starting a sequence of two steps of causation.   The deity is a black box containing a kind of a relay, which, when activated, has the alleged power to fulfill the need.   The praying person believes, that the prayer presses a button on the black box, which in turn then activates the relay and causes the wish to be granted, even though the fulfillment of the wish is not considered to be in the realm of own direct action.

This pattern is not restricted to black boxes imagined as deities.    All religious behaviors are the attempt to activate some fuzzy black box, which as a consequence would then cause something beneficial for the believers.   This is a general part of all religious beliefs, that irrational behavior, which makes no sense to apistics, is expected to be sufficiently effective to obtain benefits.

An example:  When a buddhist chants, which means him to be positioned in front of a shrine, swaying some parts of his body and producing weird, funny and to the bystanders annoying noises, this is essentially the same pattern as the christian praying.   The buddhist's black box is not a personalized deity, but he too does something, which has no direct benefits whatsoever, but is based upon the mere belief of causing indirect benefits.  

Religious behaviors, especially rituals following a routine learned by rote, have a strong effect upon the brain, which is enhanced by the presence of olfactory, auditive and visual stimuli.    Thus the cognition gets temporarily blurred, blunted, dulled and hazed.   The sense for the own individuality is diminished, rationality reduced and the reason disabled.   
This enhances gullibility freeing it from rational control.   The hierarchy instinct to submit and be humble and the gregarious instinct to feel as a particle of some vague entity are also relieved from cognitive control.   This temporary heightened gullibility reinforces the religious beliefs and gets the person even more entangled.  


Along with mistaking religions like buddhism for a philosophy, people also confound it as a method of self-improvement.   This is a fallacy.  Self-improvement requires insights and introspection, which are best gained in a state of the most undisturbed and undistorted faculty for reasoning.    Self-improvement cannot be any better than the ability to be rational and the knowledge of scientific psychology and neuroscience.   
Dimmed cognition as a result of religious behavior is certainly counterproductive to self-improvement.  

586. Jerks With Halos

586.  Jerks With Halos

In entry 381 I described Diego Rivera as a jerk with a halo.   He is just one specimen of many, and it is a pattern of very detrimental and unfavorable dynamics.

I consider people (usually men) as jerks with a halo, when they are accomplished or outstanding in some area, as artists, writers, scientists, actors, politicians or even as benefactors for many people, while they also inflict a lot of suffering upon persons close to them.   

Jerks are jerks, and the suffering of their victims is real and no halo seen by any third party does reduce this suffering, it only hides it in an unjustifiable way.
  
Accomplishments need to be evaluated by themselves, without any impact upon the subjective recognition of the magnitude of personal transgressions.   The harm done to the unfortunate victims is an unacceptable moral failure, this is independent of any coexisting achievements.   

Accomplishments do not exempt people from being responsible for what they do to others.  

But this is unfortunately not reality.   Instead, there is a general tendency to condone unacceptable, immoral and cruel behaviors in proportional accordance with the transgressor's fame due to his accomplishments.  By this fallacy of accepted compensation, someone can buy by his accomplishments the right to harm without consequences.

This fallacy is enhanced and perpetuated by any combination of several factors, which all lead to the underestimation of the harm done to the victims: 

1.   Women's apparent and alleged compliance when continuing to expose themselves to their plight.   
1.1.  Women are dependent upon the material support by the man, especially by raising children.   They would leave the jerk, if the could.  
1.2.  Women in asymmetrical relationships have got onesidedly emotionally attached to the jerk, who in return has an entitlement delusion.  His fallacy is his belief, that women exist for his convenience, his accomplishments justifying their commodification.  I described this in entry 268 (The Jerk Attachment Syndrome).

2.  The generalization of suggestive influences of religion, especially christianity, upon both the jerks and the victims.  The jerks with halos subjectively consider their accomplishment as their currency to buy the right to harm women. 

In religion, sin is believed to be compensatable by penitence, so that after having paid for the previous sin, there is no cognitive obstacle to prevent the next sin.  Replacing penitence by accomplishments is a fallacy, which is not very far fetched, considering the weirdness of the religious beliefs in themselves.
Thus jerks are not only haloed by others, but they also halo themselves by believing, that their accomplishments entitle them to privileges, even when the privileges harm others.  

Women allow men to harm them for the purpose of buying the reward after death with the currency of their forgiving the unforgivable and by their prolonged suffering .  

3.  Sometimes people feel a vague, fuzzy and unspecified need to improve themselves, but are uncertain, how to proceed.  When they discover persons, whom they do not know personally, but only by the presentation in their work and in the media, such persons are chosen as role models.   The nearer the role models appear to be perfect, the stronger the appeal to imitate them.  The successful imitation boosts the self-esteem and causes good feelings.  This motivates to maintain the idealization of the role model, even when it is not at all justified in the case of haloed jerks.   As a consequence, the idealization of such a role model is protected by the denial of unpleasant and dark sides.    The focus is restricted to the perception of the halo, while the jerk underneath is willfully overlooked.   

Seen from this perspective, many admired and famous men are in reality only jerks with halos.  

477. Non-Religious False Beliefs Concerning Happiness

Non-Religious False Beliefs Concerning Happiness

Gullibility causes people to restrict their own lives by false beliefs.   But those false beliefs are not only religious, there are also false beliefs about happiness.  

For both animals and humans, avoiding dishomeostasis and stimulation of the pleasure center are motivated by urges to enhance the subjective wellbeing.    Sexual homeostasis and material provision of food, shelter and health are causes of contentment and satisfaction for both humans and animals.    But this is not happiness.

Only for humans, happiness is the extreme of what is experienced as wellbeing.   Happiness as an abstract emotion is much more than the sensation and perception of being contented and satisfied.    Happiness is a consequence of the specific and unique human cognition for non-physical homeostasis and pleasures.  

There are two major false beliefs, which gullible people are misguided by:

• A materially luxury life is believed to be the best life possible.
• Sexual homeostasis, either with one person in a relationship or by promiscuity is the only purpose of and the best to be derived from the interaction with the opposite gender.  

Both false beliefs are caused by predominant animal instincts in the absence or repression of the full emotional and intellectual cognitive capacities.    Strong dishomeostasis of animal instincts enhances these false beliefs, the further the unique human cognition is evolved in an individual, the less the individual is prone to be mislead by these beliefs. Unfortunately those false beliefs impede people from achieving the happiness and fulfillment in accordance with their cognition. 

• Luxury is not sufficient to cause happiness.    In the case of material survival, happiness is a bit too strong a word, so I will use joy and fulfillment instead.   
• With personal relationship, the situation is similar.   Sexual homeostation is not sufficient to cause happiness.  

People often claim, that a relationship is not a job, and expectations should be different.    But both can be compared in many ways.   A job is a method to earn physical wellbeing, a committed relationship is a method to earn emotional wellbeing.  

The following analogy has limitations.   

Happiness requires a symmetrical relationship, that only works, when the happiness is reciprocally available, while the impact of material circumstances is asymmetrical.  
My analogy concerning material wellbeing is even valid for selfish and self-centered persons, while the relationship derived emotional wellbeing depends additionally upon egalitarian and responsible maturity. 
But if someone with both false beliefs is oblivious of the difference between satisfaction due to the homeostasis of instinctive urges and the human ability to experience fulfillment, joy and happiness, then he is deprived of true human quality of life.   

1. Being deprived of basic material necessities causes suffering.
   Being lonely causes suffering.
   
2. Earning good money but disliking the job causes dishomeostasis and dissatisfaction, even though it allows a high standard of living.
   Having a relationship with a person based upon initial physical infatuation causes emotional dishomeostasis and dissatisfaction, when the partner is not respected and appreciated as a person, but only perceived as a source of advantages.
   
3. Professional fulfillment means both in combination:  Enjoyment with what one does for a living and to get appropriate payment.   The activity would be enjoyed by itself even without being paid.  
   Happiness means to enjoy to be with a person and to get sexual homeostasis.   Intellectual intimacy with and attachment to this person would be rewarding by itself even if there were no sexual homeostasis.  
   
4. Being paid is not the motivation to prefer a specific activity, it is important only to avoid suffering from deprivation.
   Sexuality is not the reason to be committed to a chosen mate, it serves only to avoid dishomeostasis.   
   
5. People with advanced human cognition are motivated to the self-realization of intellectual and creative activities even when they are from a rich family and have no necessity to earn money.
   People with advanced human cognition are motivated to the self-realization of intellectual intimacy with a bonded close partner, even when they are in the situation, that sexual homeostasis with haphazard bodies is also available.
   
6. People, who do not need to work but are not able to occupy themselves intellectually, get bored and dissatisfied, no matter if they are poor or rich.   
   People, who only get sexual homeostation and nothing else from the other gender, get bored and dissatisfied, no matter if they experience this as promiscuous predators or as cheaters on mismatched partners.
   
7. Self-realization is a process of earning self-improvement by effort.   The more one invests in learning, the better it gets.   It is an enjoyable process, not a static final state.     
   Bonded commitment is a process of making efforts to earn attachment by improved emotional, intellectual and physical intimacy.    Happiness is the process of growing closer, it is not a final state. 
   
8. Finding an opportunity to earn money depends on circumstances beyond individual control. Making oneself qualified to be suitable for the opportunity is the choice to make the effort.  
   Finding a compatible partner depends upon circumstances beyond individual control.   Learning to communicate and to be suitable as a considerate and responsible partner is the conscious choice to make the effort to learn. 
   
9. If someone takes the money and does not earn it, he will not be allowed to stay in the job for long.
   If someone enters a relationship and only takes the advantages without caring equally for the other's needs, then the relationship cannot last.
   
10. Fulfillment in a job means to know the requirements, to be qualified and to be motivated.
    Reciprocal happiness means to know the other's needs, to be able and motivated to fulfill them.  

369. Irrationality and the Baseline

Irrationality and the Baseline

When I compiled a list of weird beliefs for the rationality questionnaire page, again as so often before, I was puzzled and at a loss of comprehension, how anybody in his right mind could ever believe any of this utterly preposterous and ludicrous ideas and claims.    How could a person expect something to happen as a result of something as weird as prayer?   It is incomprehensible to me, but people do it all the time.

For an explanation I looked at the baseline of behavior and at deviance.   

In entry 366 I explained the importance of being aware of and of accepting one's own innate, personal, genuine baseline.    A person can feel at ease, when the own behavior is congruent with what he perceives and considers consciously as his baseline.    Otherwise a person feels, considers himself or experiences himself as either externally or internally deviant.    

Of course, different aspects of behavior can have different baselines.   A person can conform in one aspect of life and not in another.   The topic of this entry is the baseline of either irrationally believing or skeptically disbelieving as a result of the faculty for rationality.

   

The conscious baseline can be

1. an average person's genuine baseline and also the normative baseline of the social environment.
2. a person's genuine baseline and he refuses to accept the normative baseline.
3. the normative baseline and he considers his own behavior or behavioral tendencies and impulses as deviant.  

There is internal deviance, when the person feels deviant only by comparing the own behavior with the conscious baseline, and there is external deviance, when the person is treated as or feels deviant in the interaction and comparison with the social environment.  
Internal deviance motivates people either to learn and to improve themselves or to change their conscious baseline or a combination of both.    
External deviance is a very strong system of punishment or reward.    Feeling embarrassed and ashamed of any flaw, fallacy, inferiority, deficiency, insufficiency or weakness compared with the normative baseline is a very strong punishment, especially when in interaction with and exposed to the feedback of more conforming people.   Attempts to adapt and to conform are usually rewarded by positive feedback and by a reduction of bad feelings about oneself.

People openly display their behavior, they are proud and confident about it, when it is congruent with their conscious baseline.    When they feel deviant and feel ashamed or embarrassed, they attempt to hide their deviance.   Congruent people reinforce each other in accepting their common baseline.  Consciously deviant people reinforce each other to feel more deviant and as a result to enhance the attempts to conform.


Unfortunately, the normative baseline is derived by prevalence, not be quality.    The question, if the brain of a skeptical, atheistic scientist is of better quality and of more value to progress and to the human species than the brain of a clergy man is not asked.   

The following is an illustration of the problem by an analogy of the power of the normative baseline.   In my analogy I am assuming, that my speculation were correct, and that there are people, in whose brain is wired a strong faculty to be rational, while other people are gullible and credulous, because this faculty is lacking.    Assuming also, that the tendency to be angry in a disruptive way is an innate trait of some people, while the majority can stay calm enough to stay out of trouble.   

1. The normative baseline of the majority is irrationality in one case and calmness in the other.  For both, the innately irrational and the innately calm persons, the conscious baseline is congruent.   The normative baseline is identitcal with their genuine personal baseline.
2. Those rational people and angry people, who accept their own baseline and refuse to feel deviant in comparison with the normative baseline, have both their own subcultures and they are treated as deviant, without perceiving themelves as such. 
   Skeptical and atheistic scientists become accomplished activists in the education of people and there are groups of like minded people online and offline.  They are above feeling deviant.  
   Angry people often end as psychopaths in jail, if and when they accept their anger as a suitable survival skill.   
3. Rational people and angry people, who have accepted the normative baseline as their conscious baseline, perceive themselves as internally deviant in the interaction with their social environment. 
   3.1. They hide it to avoid punishment from being additionally exposed to external deviance, but they attempt to reduce the deviance by attempts to conform.  
   3.2. They become group members, where they share the rational and the angry baseline with others.   This gives relief from the punishment of external deviance, while they are sharing the internal deviance.
   Angry people join an 'angry anonymous' group. 
   Those few rational people, who do feel deviant from the normative irrationality join groups for survivors of a trauma, catastrophe, extreme loss and such.   They are those, who have been shocked into discovering their own true rationality by comprehending, that the belief in a god was absurd due to experiencing a drastic disappointment.   But they are still struggling to find back to the irrationality, that continues to be their baseline. 
   Group members have the relief of being able to admit and to talk about, what they need to hide outside the group, due to be considered and punished by the conforming majority.   Being temporarily free from the pressure of external deviance, they can focus upon coping with the internal feeling of being deviant and of supporting each other's attempts to conform.  

As a result, irrational and calm people reinforce each other to remain irrational and calm.   Those rational and angry people, who feel deviant and join self-help groups, reinforce each other in the acknowledgment of the need to change and to become more irrational and more calm.     The normative baseline gets stronger.  

 

When I am imaging a better world, it is one in which the rational people are the majority, and the normative baseline is rationality, atheism, skepticism and the refusal of any belief. 

For all innately rational people, their conscious baseline is congruent with their genuine and the normative baseline.    The irrational people are those, who are considered and treated as deviant.  Sanity and maturity imply rationality.   Irrationals, who refuse or fail to adapt to rationality, because the faculty in their brain is lacking, are considered as disabled and not fully sane.   

If they attempt to solve problems by prayer or if they refuse a luggage tag number 13 as unlucky, then this is considered as indicating their need of psychotherapy.   

If they do damage to others by behavior caused by their delusion, then their place is in a mental institution.    A man allowing himself cheating as justified by a deity having allegedly written in a book, that it is OK for a man to have 4 wives and countless concubines, is insane and dangerous to trusting mongamous women.  
 

For those, who accept to have a problem, there are self-help groups like 'irrational anonymous', where they help each other deal with their affliction and support each other in the attempt to learn rationality..   They feel ashamed of the weakness and dysfunction of their irrational brains.  They hide their irrationality, they never admit their weird believes to anybody accept to others equally afflicted.  
Every grown up and sane person allows himself to be aware, that praying to a god is as preposterous as searching in the garden for eggs hidden by the easter bunny.    Rational people would lead and guide and be role models, and the irrational people would be a subculture of those, who are unable to do any better.    They are treated with pity and compassion, but nobody ever sees their believes as anything except a pathetic affliction.  

But my dream world has not much chance to become real.    In the sad reality, people reinforce each other in their most delusional beliefs, and by experiencing the ubiquity of the shared delusions, they loose all sense for the absurdity and utter loudicrousness of the beliefs.    I feel like living in a world, where the mental instituion of irrational people reinforcing each other has spread over most of the territory, not leaving much space for the few rationals, atheists and skeptics.  

I suspect, that rationality has not yet evolved to have sufficient prevalence and strength in the gene pool.   It cannot replace gullibility as the only way of interacting and learning in the majority of the adult population.   Also rationality of the individual is only developed after going through the gullibility of childhood, therefore rationally as the genuine and the conscious baseline not only requires the faculty to develop it, but this also requires unlearning and discarding gullibility.   

Thus rationality has a double disadvantage impeding it from becoming the normative baseline of the majority.   

344. Reinforcement of Gullibility

344.   Reinforcement of Gullibility

In entry 343 I speculated that gullibility had been adaptive at some past period of evolution, while by now, consequencity has become a much better adaptation, but that people during childhood pass through a phase of gullibility, before the brain has fully matured to be able to function with consequencity.  

The following is a further elaboration.  

1.   When people are stuck in the gullible reactions to influences while having reached an age, when they should have matured enough for consequencity, this can be due to two different reasons:

1.1.   Gullibility is due to ignorance and the absence of the ability to know any better.  
When describing in entry 342  the levels of consequencity, I focused on dealing with emotions.   More generally there are different levels of the ability of thinking.  

Level 1. 
Concrete thinking.   Simple contingencies, like thunder following a flash are understood.   But in the absence of a clear concept of pseudocontingencies and coincidences, often irrational behavior is applied for the purpose of creating a contingency.
Level 2.
Abstract thinking.   This means the understanding of the difference between coincidence and contingency, also by detecting contradictions with the accumulative storage of previous experience.  This enables extrapolation into the future by estimating probabilities. 
Level 3.
Complex thinking.  This means deriving a consistent value system and ethical guidance from the abstract thinking in level 2.   Internal and external stimuli requiring behavior are processed in accordance with it.  

For those, who have not or not yet developed levels 2 and 3 of consequencity, gullibility is the only way of coping in social interactions.      Only Level 1 and gullibility are not mutually exclusive.  

1.2.   Gullibility is reinforced, when it becomes virulent as a consequence of some severe psychological trouble, which impedes a person either in reality or in his subjective perception from fulfilling important needs by consequencity, especially emotional and immaterial needs.   The person remains stuck in a gullible state (entry 343), while the ability to act by consequencity exists in the brain, but is deactivated.    This gullibility is often in contradiction to evidence and basic reasoning.    The stronger the unfulfilled or unfulfillable needs, the more people are gullible and susceptible to uncritical submission under external influences. 

2.   Gullibility determines the perception and acceptance of being the target of any influences.   How the behavior of the gullible people is influenced depends upon the availability, strength and kind of the influences.
2.1.  In pre-media times, usually people were exposed to one set of influences only, one religion and the rules of one society.   Depending on their gullibility and on how much the external influences contradicted their true personal needs and inclinations, their only choice was between fully conforming, externally resisting and risking punishment or external submission in spite of better judgment and different wishes.
2.2.  Since traveling and books became available, and even more with TV and the Internet, for gullible persons life is a warehouse of influences to choose from.    While they cannot resist to have a strong need to fulfill by being gullible, they are free to choose, what belief suits them best and there are countless religions, cults, quackeries.    For every trouble, there is a belief as a pseudo-remedy.      

3. Gullibility and self-improvement are mutually exclusive.   Self-improvement as the path of maturation requires consequencity of level 3.  Only awareness for rational procedures based upon understanding and influencing real contingencies allows change.  Gullibility and the belief into fake change impede real change.

Gullible people, who turn to religion or to woowoo in the hope of self-improvement are confounding self-improvement with self-modification.    They move from being taken advantage of and manipulated as the puppet of one influence to being the puppet of another.   I know of the case of someone, who after the upbringing in a less extreme christian family first choose to become a mormon, then a buddhist, then a believer in NLP and then a taoist.   Nothing of this ever helped him to solve the problem, which caused his wish to improve.