Why do intelligent people still believe in Religion? 26: The perception of experience | GinaConspiracy
A recent psychological study was performed where individuals were given tests in math and problem solving They were then sat down with a accountant or a person pretending to be an accountant and the person was given a similar set of problem of the same difficulty level and the capability
The scores showed that the work done alone was much higher quality than the work done with an expert or perceived there to help even though it was the same level of difficulty What this discovered is that parts of the brain shut off in the appearance of experts Our minds go into passive mode and are less functional as we rely on the appearance of expertise This is useful in pack animals or tribal societies or everyone would try to do their own thing and there would be no organization Division of labor would not work at all, confusion would ensue
It is also the mechanism for blind faith in children that I discussed very early in this series It is also required to allow learning and teaching to occur otherwise the student will be unteachable However it can lead to trouble and blind faith in adults When I'm trying to tutor a student, many times their brains shut off and they want me to do the work for them and I have to work hard against this mechanism to keep their minds active When I'm trying to help a perfectionist or temporary perfectionist with their project I tend to find my brain shutting down and I am much less proactive in helping them much of which is because they are stressed and might snap at me if I go beyond the boundaries of help that they want
I am also more likely to make mistakes because of their expertise is making me mentally passive Micromanaging is not a good way to manage In management one must be able to maintain the rules without overmanaging so that the employees or in my case students don't know how to think in their job without you They will be much more likely to be mentally active if they are allowed to be experts at their own job as opposed to you being an expert at everyone's job The effect of perceived expertise can get you to buy something you don't want and it can lead to brainwashing
One must work to balance their minds between passiveness and arrogance that prevents learning Also that person should show their credentials and demonstrate those credentials in the field they are discussing before you trust the majority of what they say Humility and mental passiveness are not the same thing Church has the same effect Most people going to church assume that the preacher is an expert on religion and god and therefore they are more likely to trust that preacher even if the logic the preacher is using makes no sense and the person listening would never use that kind of abuse of logic on their own
The worst thing they could have told me to do was to study the bible and know it by heart After a certain point, I knew the bible and all the apologetics for it I knew every sermon and nothing was new I no longer saw my pastor as an expert and in many ways biblically I knew more than he did The logic he used did not make nearly the sense they did when I deferred expertise to him
Mind you, my pastor was also my high school chemistry teacher and if you watched my video “high school chemistry” you will realize my self-imposed expertise on chemistry and he helped knock my ego down a few pegs on a few occasions It was only after I went to college and discovered just how my college chemistry class was just the tip of the iceberg did I begin to realize I had to defer experience and humility to my teachers and I was no where near an expert I would think there was possibly that I had the same level of unwarranted arrogance toward Christianity, but unlike chemistry where there are advanced books and mountains of evidence and research to do, the bible is only one book There is no advanced bible for experts, there is no moving on to the next class, the bible is all you get Once you've learned it, you are an expert, and the preacher no longer can tell you any more about it than what you already know
Your intellect goes stagnant and you start to argue semantics like the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, or you think there must be some secret meaning in the bible and you look for non-existent patterns in the bible like the bible code, or you ignore what you know and spend that mental energy on the other things and don't question it because the consequences of doubt are not worth it to you The phenomina of mental shutdown has shown itself again in a recent study about how a persons mind shuts down when a faith healer prays for them(link in the bottom bar) This form of suggestive hypnosis is why people who shouldn't be walking, will walk across the stage like it is nothing The damage it is doing can be extremely dangerous This mental shutdown in the presence of an expert is most likely a component of what caused people to think they were applying lethal voltages to people but continue anyway when a person with a white coat was in the room
Being aware of your brains own limitations is highly important if you want to think for yourself Striking a balance is extremely important and if you can, you will go far in your discoveries
Source: Youtube
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