Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
Remember what “faith” means in this context: the conflation of personal belief with objective reality. The act of “Justify[ing] any belief” is an act of “faith”.
That is how certain people work, not all people. You have identified a set of people who “conflate their personal beliefs with objective reality”.
I don’t think so, but let’s check on it: is it a mental health issue when we use an incorrect order of operations in a mathematical statement? For example, x=1+2*3. Is the person who gets “7” mentally healthy? Is the person who gets “9” mentally unhealthy? What of the 3-year-old, who has not yet been taught numbers, and scribbles a stick image of a cat on the sheet?
Logical thought is not inherently known. It must be learned. An inability to learn logic would be a mental health condition; a refusal to learn logic would simply be an error.
No. It is literally a function of the human brain. https://www.healthline.com/health/stress/amygdala-hijack#how-to-stop Every single person on earth has done this and will do it again.
That is simple incorrect logic. What I’m talking about is emotions overriding logic.
Having faith in a religion is very different from justifying emotional reactions with bad logic. You are conflating your personal belief that they are the same with objective reality.
Everyone conflates personal belief with objective reality to varying degrees. A mentally healthy person can process their emotions well and recognize when they do so most of the time. A mentally unhealthy person will not recognize it because of their lack of emotional intelligence.
Again, I am not talking about a clinical condition that inhibits clear logic. I’m talking about the ability to process your emotions in a healthy way.
From your link, emphasis mine:
“Belief” is a “conscious input.” Conflating belief with objective reality is a conscious act, as is “declaration of an individual’s religiosity”. “Philosophy” is a consciously-developed worldview. As an unconscious response, “Amygdala hijack” is well outside the scope of these conscious, deliberate acts.
I have confined the scope of my discussion to the realm of consciousness, as it is only within this realm that we are capable of deliberate action. The unconscious realm does not interest me.
Yes, you do not consciously make the decision to give up rational thought to emotion. This does not detract from my argument.
Have you considered that an automatic response might have a large impact on what you believe? The reason people don’t see the lack of logic in their beliefs is because their emotions don’t allow it.
Even outside of this specific function, neocortex activity is inversely correlated with amygdala activity. The more emotionally attached to a belief they are, the more difficult it is to stop believing it.
I don’t see how you can just ignore this and pretend it has nothing to do with our conversation. It is literally the entire cause of the problems you’ve mentioned.
I would say that you are overvaluing the effects of emotion on the initial decision, and you are ignoring their emotional response to their own rationalization.
There’s a video floating around of a guy who instinctively reacted to a threat by hiding behind his significant other. He reacted in fear. Now comes the rationalization phase: He tries to understand the act he instinctively performed. Rationalization is the act of applying his philosophical model to his actions. He evaluates his behavior against the expectations of his model.
He could subscribe to a philosophical model where the sanctity of his body is greater than that of hers, in which case he could rationalize that his actions were good and proper. (He would then experience the emotion of “pride” that he followed his philosophical model correctly.)
He could subscribe to a philosophical model where he is expected to protect other people from harm. He would then rationalize that his actions were improper. (He would then experience the emotion of “shame” for falling short of his idealizes principles.)
(It is important to note that we are talking about a fraction of a second between the unconscious act and the rationalization of that act: the actor is feeling “pride” or “shame” at his action before his significant other has even realized what he has done. His initial, instantaneous reaction may not be controllable by his philosophical model. He might initially flinch behind her in fear, realize his error, and move to shield her from harm. Or, he might deliberately abandon her, and seek better protection from the perceived threat by fleeing. The point is that within fractions of a second, his actions are being influenced by his philosophical model. The “automatic response” you are talking stops being relevant as soon as this has occurred, and the philosophical model becomes the driving factor.)
In both cases, the initial act is identical, sparked by an unconscious, unintentional process. “Amygdala hijacking” may, indeed, be responsible for this initial act, but it is not responsible for the differing effects. The difference in outcomes is due to the conscious, philosophical model held by the actor. Philosophy plays a big part in driving emotion.
I am uninterested in discussing the conditions that are, by definition, outside of the will and control of the individual. My interest here extends only to those things we can consciously affect.
The outcome is whatever avoids the feeling of shame, unless the person is emotionally intelligent enough to recognize it happening. It absolutely can and will affect your logic.
The response is not just to physical threats, it is trying to avoid negative emotions. That may be the shame from recognizing your actions, or realizing your belief is illogical.
Emotion is the initial decision. The rationalizations are just an attempt to pretend is reasonable.
Do you have any relevant issues to add, or shall we conclude our discussion?
That’s what I was just doing, but I guess I’ll expand upon it.
Remember all of the groups of people you mentioned earlier, like anti vaccine or anti mask people? Do you think it was a fully conscious decision to hold that belief? No, they did not sit down and logically come to the conclusion that vaccines or masks are bad. Chances are, they heard a story on Facebook about it that scared them into that belief.
They thought with their emotions instead of actual logic, because they aren’t in touch with their emotions enough to reliably differentiate between the two.
There was no conscious decision to conflate personal belief with reality. All of the examples you’ve given were not caused by a conscious decision at all. They were caused by unconscious emotional processes that they failed to recognize.
To say that things that happen without conscious input are irrelevant to this conversation is completely incorrect. The difference between a normal religious person and a religious person with the problematic beliefs you’ve mentioned is this unconscious process.
A normal person regardless of religiosity is mentally capable of recognizing that process. A mentally unhealthy person regardless of religiosity is not capable of this.
When you say that’s outside of the scope of this conversation, here’s what I hear:
I have nothing more of value to add to this conversation, so I will desperately try to end it while maintaining the illusion that my argument had any value in the first place.
That is not an important question. Again, emotions are automatic responses. By definition, they are not controllable. There is no point in discussing them because we cannot directly affect them.
The only route through which we can affect emotional response is philosophy. We can’t affect the immediate response, but we can affect the rationalization process by focusing on a different philosophical model.
A philosophy that an individual’s personal beliefs are of greater importance than objective reality exacerbates the issues you discuss. A philosophy that rejects this mitigates your issues.
Your condescending tone aside, that is correct. You are diverting us away from a path of consciously affecting behavior and mindsets, and toward a path that, by definition, we cannot. You are knowingly choosing a dead-end road; I have nothing of value to add to your decision to follow that path, and I do not choose to walk it with you.