I work in a used book store in the Religion & Philsophy section and daily have interesting interactions with customers.
The layout of the Religion section is two separate divisions. The fluffy side is Chri-Fi (christian fiction) and christian living books. The meaty side has bibles, textbooks, theology, hermenutics, reference guides, etc.
I keep a sort of mental scorecard going as to who goes where.
I try and ask subtle questions about why each person is looking for a particular item.
I hardly ever run into anybody of a skeptical nature unless they are trying to prove somebody else wrong.
Which reminds me of when I was a good little JW in a bookstore all those years ago...
I'd look up what a book might have to say about the name "Jehovah." But, that's about it! Outside research? Nope!
And to think, I thought I was fair-minded!
All this came to mind when I re-read an old article about a psychologist studying chessplayers. Here is a brief excerpt:
Science secret of grand masters revealed
Chess experts gain the edge over opponents by falsifying their own ideas.
"In deciding which move to make, chess players mentally map out the future consequences of each possible move, often looking about eight moves ahead. So Michelle Cowley, a cognitive scientist and keen chess player from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, decided to study how different chess players decide whether their move strategies will be winners or losers. Along with her colleague Ruth Byrne, she recruited 20 chess players, ranging from regular tournament players to a grand master. She presented each participant with six different chessboard positions from halfway through a game, where black and white had equal chances of winning and there was no immediately obvious next move. Each player had to speak their thoughts aloud as they decided what move to make. Cowley scored the quality of the move sequences by comparing them with Fritz 8, one of the most powerful chess computer programs available. She found that novices were more likely to convince themselves that bad moves would work out in their favour, because they focused more on the countermoves that would benefit their strategy while ignoring those that led to the downfall of their cherished hypotheses. Conversely, masters tended to correctly predict when the eventual outcome of a move would weaken their position. "Grand masters think about what their opponents will do much more," says Byrne. "They tend to falsify their own hypotheses." "We probably all intuitively know this is true," says Orr. "But it's never a bad thing to prove it like this." Strategic thinking The philosopher Karl Popper called this process of hypothesis testing 'falsification', and thought that it was the best way to describe how science constantly questions and refines itself. It is often held up as the principle that separates scientific and non-scientific thinking, and the best way to test a hypothesis. But cognitive research has shown that, in reality, many people find falsification difficult. Until the latest study, scientists were the only group of experts that had been shown to use falsification. And sociological studies of scientists in action have revealed that even they spend a great deal of their time searching for results that would bolster their theories."
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The above article reminded me of something Carl Sagan wrote in his book DRAGONS OF EDEN when he referenced what happens
when a religion has its foundational beliefs falsified. His quote speaks for itself:
Doctrines that make no predictions are less compelling than those which make correct predictions; they are in turn more successful than doctrines that make false predictions.But not always. One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and -- while the events of that year were certainly of some importance -- the world does not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, "Oh, did we say '1914'? So sorry, we meant '2014.' A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren't inconvenienced in any way." But they did not. They could have said, "Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth." But they did not. Instead, they did something much more ingenious.They announced that the world had in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn't noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the face of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry.