The question I have is in any matter at all, be it religious or not, how does a person who believes in ghosts and spirits and souls and gods, a non physical reality, make decisions about what is real and what is not real. Maybe the better question is how such a person makes a decision on what is worth their time at all.
Do religious people just have a greater need for authority and so they are more likely to believe something I would casually dismiss? How do they know what to dismiss and what to take seriously? Found this informative article:
The two paragraphs do not seem to be really linked.
Do you wish to know if
a) How does a 'religious' person makes a decision on what is 'real'?
or
b)Do 'religious' people have a greater need for authority, as you phrase it?
Please advise.
Religion is all about authority. What is 'real' is what the authorities say is real. You can dispute that authority, by appeal to a higher authority; Or you can decide that your preferred authority is the highest (biblical literalists, for example, claim that their specific version of the bible is the highest authority; And they tend to select, elect, or defer to a group of interpreters whose role is to explain the inconsistencies, and prioritise the conflicting advice and instructions. Roman Catholics have a formal hierarchy of authorities, with the pope at the top).
Science is directly opposed to authority. The first rule of science is "Take nobody's word for it".
Of course, in practice most "science" isn't scientific at all - life is simply too short not to use the heuristic shortcut of simply believing what you are told by qualified experts. But science as it is practiced seeks to reward the undermining of authority. If you don't have the time, money, or equipment to reproduce Millikan's famous oil drop experiment; Or to devise another way to measure the charge of a single electron, you can rely on the value found in textbooks, because the entire scientific system is configured to reward anyone who can demonstrate that the accepted 'true' value is wrong.
If you demonstrate that a scientific "fact" is in error, you get a Nobel prize.
If you attempt to demonstrate that a religious "fact" is in error, you get shunned, excommunicated, forced to start your own breakaway religion (blackjack and hookers optional), or simply set on fire.
These are two VERY different ways of establishing what is true; And the point of difference is entirely the acceptance or rejection of arguments from authority.
Religious people derive truth from authority. It's true because the bible says so; Or because the pope says so; Or because Jesus said so. (Religions other than Christianity do the same, they just use different authorities).
Scientific people derive truth from observation. It's true because they checked, really carefully; And then asked other people to check their work, and nobody's yet been able to demonstrate that it's not true.
In the real world, everyone uses a mixture of both techniques to build a worldview. The question is just how much of each people use, and what methodology they use to decide who should qualify as an authoritative source.
"SCIENCE: a way of finding things out and then making them work. ... So does RELIGION, but science is better because it comes up with more understandable excuses when it's wrong." — Terry Pratchett,
Wings
