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Some hypothetical examples: You may believe that someone looking at you with a frown, means that they are a jerk, even if they just happened to have had a bad experience - so you ignore him when he tries to say hi. Or, a woman may come up to you, smile and give you a hug and you may think she wants to have sex, but really, she's just that way with everyone. It could be you're tired, been eating junk food & not exercising & feel really crappy - and assume that life sucks because you feel so sucky. Or it could be that you assume that because you do not go to any religious service, you must disagree with everything - because it's "all or nothing."
Haha, I couldn't help but laugh at your description. I've got a friend exactly like this. Figures he's my friend who "sees dead people".
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Originally Posted by SuperSoul
And this is not different from religious beliefs, really. In fact, religious beliefs also have many cognitive distortions - especially polarized thinking and emotional reasoning. Consider these points:
1) It is estimated that up to 80% of mental illness is rooted in misunderstandings of Judaic/Christian interpretations (ie shame, anxiety).
2) A study sought to find what, if any influence, religious involvement had on physical healing. Of 3 groups, those who were excessively involved and those not involved religious at all - did poorest. The group that did best were those who were moderately religiously involved.
They're not much different in that they both demonstrate a complete lack of ability to reason.
That said, if a guy is really mean mugging you, then the appropriate response would be to use what you know about people giving you dirty looks from past experience and apply it to this situation. It has much less to do with your religious interpretation of what them staring at you could mean and much more to do with past experience.
This would be the appropriate way to analyze the situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Religion, especially when taken to the extreme can be harmful. But it's also been shown in studies to be healthy, ie, as a contributing factor in helping teenagers avoid drugs and drinking STDs, etc..
By telling people that condoms are evil, right?
Why is avoiding drugs good? How does it make you healthy?
I hate when people condemn "drugs" because it's such a broad group of substances that the claim is meaningless. For instance, DMT does not cause any physical damage to your body AT ALL when ingested. It's even used by a church in New Mexico in a brew called Ayahuasca.
I don't know what religions you're referring to here.
I wasn't referring to probable exercise of faith - like that of trusting a chair to hold you up. I was referring to every day cognitive distortions or logical fallacies that most of us believe.
What you said is that it's in people's best interests to "develop healthy faith", which sounds like something other than "everyday cognitive distortions or logical fallacies". My point is that there's no such thing as healthy religious faith (affording belief without a requirement of substantiation). There is benefit in going with the preponderance of evidence (or lack thereof) in any given matter however.
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Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Some hypothetical examples: You may believe that someone looking at you with a frown, means that they are a jerk, even if they just happened to have had a bad experience - so you ignore him when he tries to say hi. Or, a woman may come up to you, smile and give you a hug and you may think she wants to have sex, but really, she's just that way with everyone. It could be you're tired, been eating junk food & not exercising & feel really crappy - and assume that life sucks because you feel so sucky. Or it could be that you assume that because you do not go to any religious service, you must disagree with everything - because it's "all or nothing." I don't know if these are thoughts and emotions that you've had. What matters is that you do think and feel about things - and you do jump to conclusions at times - in those interpretations - like all of us do. It has nothing to do with religion or a deity. It's about your specific psych-ology - your belief system that you've accumulated since being born.
Your examples sound like situations in which people need to not overthink, take things personally, or assume too much, which generally comes with maturity and experience unless a person does very little self-development. These are in no ways examples of faith by any definition I use in normal conversation. They are examples of cognitive bias of various kinds, especially confirmation bias and availability bias as well as a bias towards evaluating events as potential threats rather than also considering positives. That's also a very common bias as natural selection has caused us to pay by far most of our attention to threat vectors (real and perceived) and to err on the side of caution in evaluating them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
And this is not different from religious beliefs, really. In fact, religious beliefs also have many cognitive distortions - especially polarized thinking and emotional reasoning. Consider these points:
1) It is estimated that up to 80% of mental illness is rooted in misunderstandings of Judaic/Christian interpretations (ie shame, anxiety).
2) A study sought to find what, if any influence, religious involvement had on physical healing. Of 3 groups, those who were excessively involved and those not involved religious at all - did poorest. The group that did best were those who were moderately religiously involved.
I don't think most people who value religious faith would find this a flattering association, so thanks for making some of my points for me. However when it comes to true religious faith, which affords belief without evidence, there is really no room for "cognitive distortion" in the sense that there's no valid cognitive basis TO distort. It's entirely baseless from the get-go because it's not substantiated, and generally not substantiatable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Religion, especially when taken to the extreme can be harmful. But it's also been shown in studies to be healthy, ie, as a contributing factor in helping teenagers avoid drugs and drinking STDs, etc.. A similar research finding discovered that pastors (extremely religiously involved) suffered more depression than those in other careers. As Aristotle taught, moderation in good things. Take the best, leave the rest - take what makes sense and is helpful and leave what is potentially harmful - in philosophy, science, religion etc.
I think what can be deduced from what you're pointing out here is not that moderate / middle of the road religion is beneficial, but that reasonably balanced people can absorb religious ideation and still function in spite of it. The unstable ones on the other hand have their instability amplified (religious ideation in mental illness as you cited) and the stress of that contributes to less well-being both mentally and physically.
As for "too little faith" causing problems I think here again you have to be careful not to confuse association with causation. In my experience loss of faith (deconversion) tends to produce a temporary existential crisis because of the need to "reboot" one's worldview and how one frames reality, and it takes time and effort to overcome the operant conditioning of religious faith, which programs you to feel that losing your faith means everything must be untenably awful and hopeless and that there are NO answers other than the ones the faith offers, all others are counterfeit. Other than that, I do not see particular problems in the faithless at rates any different from the general population. People of faith often see it, as it serves as confirmation bias for their typical apologetics.
All that said, I do not claim that there are no positive ideations in religion and that people can't successfully cherry-pick them from among the "clinkers" and thereby improve their quality of life. I just prefer to have a coherent and defensible philosophy with a minimum of moving parts, as it reduces cognitive dissonance. It's hard enough to get a sense of what is real and true in life without rooting around in a grab-bag of mostly bad ideas for a few gems.
Mordant,
I'm getting the impression that you now want to appear to be with your herd - the other Atheists - refusing to consider perspectives that conflict with your new Atheist herd. However, based on your last paragraph, I might be mistaken.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
What you said is that it's in people's best interests to "develop healthy faith", which sounds like something other than "everyday cognitive distortions or logical fallacies". My point is that there's no such thing as healthy religious faith (affording belief without a requirement of substantiation). There is benefit in going with the preponderance of evidence (or lack thereof) in any given matter however.
And my point (& some philosophers') is that re-ligion (legion) is about group thought - which includes atheism, politics and other illogical herd mentality ideologies.
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Your examples sound like situations in which people need to not overthink, take things personally, or assume too much, which generally comes with maturity and experience unless a person does very little self-development. These are in no ways examples of faith by any definition I use in normal conversation. They are examples of cognitive bias of various kinds, especially confirmation bias and availability bias as well as a bias towards evaluating events as potential threats rather than also considering positives. That's also a very common bias as natural selection has caused us to pay by far most of our attention to threat vectors (real and perceived) and to err on the side of caution in evaluating them.
Many people - including people on TV (news, government, etc.) engage in these cognitive distortions - it is not just religious people who do. People of all religions (or lack of religion) exercise faith - and often it's misguided in the case of such distortions and logical fallacies.
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I don't think most people who value religious faith would find this a flattering association, so thanks for making some of my points for me. However when it comes to true religious faith, which affords belief without evidence, there is really no room for "cognitive distortion" in the sense that there's no valid cognitive basis TO distort. It's entirely baseless from the get-go because it's not substantiated, and generally not substantiatable.
I thought you already understood that I'm not arguing with you for the sake of arguing. If we agree, we agree - if you state something logical that I know to be true, I will agree with you. But it's not all-or-nothing (polarized cognitive distortion). Religion is not all bad or all good - but both - that was my point, which you seemed to have miss this time.
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I think what can be deduced from what you're pointing out here is not that moderate / middle of the road religion is beneficial, but that reasonably balanced people can absorb religious ideation and still function in spite of it. The unstable ones on the other hand have their instability amplified (religious ideation in mental illness as you cited) and the stress of that contributes to less well-being both mentally and physically.
My point is that EVERYTHING you perceive - news, religion, this forum, conversations with others, etc. - is ALL interpreted subjectively by YOU, or by me, or by whoever is perceiving it. It's also conveyed subjectively by the messengers (whether it's ancient prophets or biased news casters). All groups have some good and some bad. All of them! I'm pointing out the need to take the best and leave the rest of everything - religion, atheism, philosophy, politics, etc. The way you do this is with an understanding of cognitive distortions/logical fallacies and intuition (emotional intelligence).
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As for "too little faith" causing problems I think here again you have to be careful not to confuse association with causation. In my experience loss of faith (deconversion) tends to produce a temporary existential crisis because of the need to "reboot" one's worldview and how one frames reality, and it takes time and effort to overcome the operant conditioning of religious faith, which programs you to feel that losing your faith means everything must be untenably awful and hopeless and that there are NO answers other than the ones the faith offers, all others are counterfeit. Other than that, I do not see particular problems in the faithless at rates any different from the general population. People of faith often see it, as it serves as confirmation bias for their typical apologetics.
Several studies showed this - and some of them were not religious-based. IE: One of the studies included religion as well as about 4 other aspects that help teenagers from becoming delinquent.
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All that said, I do not claim that there are no positive ideations in religion and that people can't successfully cherry-pick them from among the "clinkers" and thereby improve their quality of life. I just prefer to have a coherent and defensible philosophy with a minimum of moving parts, as it reduces cognitive dissonance. It's hard enough to get a sense of what is real and true in life without rooting around in a grab-bag of mostly bad ideas for a few gems.
That's reasonable and I agree to an extent. I go to church (I think I mentioned this) with my husband, despite no longer believing in the religion. My beliefs have evolved so much that I don't think they fit into any religion. I like parts of many different religions and philosophies. I even like elements of Greek mythology - not that I believe in those deities as they used to superstitiously be believed in, but I consider the possibilities of categorizing motives and energies that are scientifically unexplainable.
You mentioned, "It's hard enough to get a sense of what is real and true in life" - how do you measure REAL and TRUE? Let's say you're walking late at night down a street after just watching a thriller movie - and you hear footsteps and your heart races. It's only a child running. When your heart was racing, was that real, true? Your physiology is much more based on unproven faith (beliefs) than you realize. My point in all of this is that it's better to make the most of such beliefs - to consciously CHOOSE what to focus on, rather than let our fears, anger etc. control us.
The medical industry understands very well the power of the mind (beliefs) over body which is why meds are tested with the placebo effect. Why is it that so many other people don't understand this power by which they are influenced?
That's reasonable and I agree to an extent. I go to church (I think I mentioned this) with my husband, despite no longer believing in the religion. My beliefs have evolved so much that I don't think they fit into any religion. I like parts of many different religions and philosophies. I even like elements of Greek mythology - not that I believe in those deities as they used to superstitiously be believed in, but I consider the possibilities of categorizing motives and energies that are scientifically unexplainable.
I respect curiosity and nuanced intelligence and the desire to "evolve" one's thinking. And I recognize the threads one can pick up from different belief-systems, particularly if one is willing to take them allegorically / figuratively / symbolically. I just see way more value in focusing on being as objective, rational and unbiased as possible to begin with, rather than wading through the inherent bias in various religious ideations. Sure, there's nothing that's utterly bias-free, including science; the scientific method is not a cure for bias, it is just far and away the best methodology yet devised to my knowledge for controlling for the bias we all acknowledge is inherent in our thought processes.
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Originally Posted by SuperSoul
You mentioned, "It's hard enough to get a sense of what is real and true in life" - how do you measure REAL and TRUE? Let's say you're walking late at night down a street after just watching a thriller movie - and you hear footsteps and your heart races. It's only a child running. When your heart was racing, was that real, true?
It was real -- a real example of agency inference, a form of confirmation bias. Recognizing that I am the product of natural selection in this regard (which is concerned with survival over enjoyment), when in dark places after watching horror or thriller movies, I would do my very best to override that inherent bias in the light of what I actually know to be true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Your physiology is much more based on unproven faith (beliefs) than you realize. My point in all of this is that it's better to make the most of such beliefs - to consciously CHOOSE what to focus on, rather than let our fears, anger etc. control us.
Which is precisely my point. I choose to focus on objectivity, rationality, research, and to use the scientific method to maximize that focus. My resistance to most religious ideation is the way it multiplies entities that aren't needed to explain reality or predict outcomes -- and in fact get in the way of explaining or predicting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
The medical industry understands very well the power of the mind (beliefs) over body which is why meds are tested with the placebo effect. Why is it that so many other people don't understand this power by which they are influenced?
I fully recognize the power of beliefs and their role in health. That is why I strive to have evidence-based, substantiatable, justifiable beliefs that are grounded in something real.
A lot of it, I suppose, comes down to the luck of the draw. I have been misled by my past religious beliefs, and have had many personal loses and mis-steps in life related to that. So I am more interested than many people in rooting out my misbeliefs, rather than embracing my illusions simply because they feel subjectively comforting at present. I have found for myself at least that the most overall long term benefit comes from dealing in reality. And by "reality" I do not mean something meaningless like "what is real for me". I mean what can be evidenced and substantiated to a reasonable degree as real in the reality I share with others -- not what exists strictly in between my ears.
Is there any such thing as 100% objectivity? No. But it is a worthy goal.
Nor does my orientation rule out subjective explorations as entirely useless or uninteresting. I have borrowed some from relatively evidence-based, non-theistic religious tradition / ritual such as Buddhism, Jungian psychology, and the like. It's useful to understand that the mind deals in symbols at a fundamental level. I just see no reason to afford belief to deities so I don't. That doesn't mean I don't value being as aware, wise and evolved as I can be, or that I would not change by beliefs about theism if I saw good evidence that I should.
My bias against subjectivity is more a facet of my personality and life experience than anything inherent in atheism. I don't trust subjectivity. I explore it from time to time, see little practical benefit from those explorations, and note that such explorations have a tendency to enhance inherent human bias. And so I am not especially open to it as a result.
One must be careful not to conflate towering intellect with infallibility. Kaku is just as prone to bias as anyone, and using the loaded word "god" as a label for an overarching order he sees in the universe is good for business. He is a mathematician, not a philosopher.
You'll also note that he offers as evidence for his questionable definition of "god", mathematical principles and concepts that most of us can't understand anyway. So it comes down to the same thing any religionist says: 'just trust me'.
Kaku isn't the first to groove on the "music of the spheres" but he'd be wrong to personalize it. I don't think he's doing that, but I think he's wrong to imply agency, too, even an impersonal one. Humans see agency where it doesn't exist as a matter of course. He should know better, and probably does. He's just too needy for attention to maintain his integrity in this respect.
I am sure that we can expect fundamentalist Christians to post headlines in their echo-chamber websites now that a respected prominent scientist has "proven" god created the universe (though Kaku makes no such claim to my knowledge, he only expresses his opinion). It won't be THEIR personal invisible interventionist god as revealed in the Bible, but they don't need it to be. It's just god, and "everyone" "knows" that this god is the BibleGod, right?
I'm getting the impression that you now want to appear to be with your herd
And I get the impression that you use the move of making comments about the "herd" in order to avoid having to SPECIFICALLY rebut what ACTUAL people on here have written to you. As long as you can slap a label on someone and attack the label, you can simply dodge dealing with what they actually write.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
And my point (& some philosophers') is that re-ligion (legion) is about group thought - which includes atheism, politics and other illogical herd mentality ideologies.
Except it does not include atheism because atheism is a grouping based on what people do NOT think, not on what they DO think. It would be like finding 100 people who simply do not collect stamps, and then start to act like you have grouped them based on their hobbies. You are simply engaging.... quite contrived and wantonly I suspect..... in a linguistic and category error.
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Originally Posted by SuperSoul
it is not just religious people who do. People of all religions (or lack of religion) exercise faith
By all means show me what my "faith" is. Show me anything, for example, that I claim, believe, espouse or subscribe to on insufficient evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Religion is not all bad or all good - but both - that was my point, which you seemed to have miss this time.
If you reduce it to such simplistic terms then you might, with the application of enough linguistic pedantry, even manage to carry that point. But the "big picture" is a lot more complex than the simplistic reductionism you adhere to. It is not simply about whether religion is "all good" or "all bad".
It IS about whether religion is superfluous to requirements. It IS about whether religion provides any "good" that can not be attained without it, and without paying the costs and harms of it. It IS about the cost-benefit analysis of the price we pay for any "good" we actually receive from religion. And it IS about identifying what "good" religion brings at all, as most of the things people list when asked are things religion does not actually bring, but has merely successfully associated itself with.
So by all means list the things you think are "good" with religion, and we can discuss A) whether they actually are from religion B) what the costs of attaining that "good" are C) whether there are better ways to obtain the same good and D) does the "good" scale with what we must endure to obtain it.
Something tells me however your answer to this challenge will be similar to your usual answers to challenged. Ignore. Run. Retreat. Hide.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
My beliefs have evolved so much that I don't think they fit into any religion.
This is hardly surprising given you have shown yourself FREQUENTLY to be someone who does not fit your beliefs in with anything. Including reality. For example many of the scientific claims you make, usually when discussing homosexuality or abortion, are simply fabricated untruths and fantasy that are in no way supported by, or scale with, reality or the evidence we have in science. Fabrications that, when corrected and challenged, usually lead to you retreating.... waiting awhile..... then finding another thread on another forum to pop up in to espouse them ENTIRELY UNEDITED OR CORRECTED all over again.
So it seems that you form your beliefs in isolation from reality, religion and just about everything else. So that they have "evolved" to the point where they do not fit in...... was pretty much a given and to be expected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
You mentioned, "It's hard enough to get a sense of what is real and true in life" - how do you measure REAL and TRUE?
Entirely differently to you it seems. I would measure it by seeing how it scales with the evidence. How substantiated it is. And I would place any claim or idea on a CONTINUUM somewhere between "definitely false" and "definitely true" based on how powerful the substantiation for it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Your physiology is much more based on unproven faith (beliefs) than you realize.
Not at all. And the example you gave shows this, not what you think it shows. The physiological reaction there is not based on faith, but on probability and readiness. An evolutionary "knowledge" that if you are in a potentially threatening situation then your survival chances are increased by engaging in some preparation. And this "knowledge" has been honed by generations of objective real world events and facts, not unproven faiths or fantasy.
For example imagine in our evolutionary past that an individual sits near a bush and hears a rustle. He can react in fright and be wrong, and the worst that will happen is he will look silly. He can not react at all and be wrong, and he will get dead. So straight away evolution will "select for" over reactions to even the hint of danger. No faith. No fantasy. Real world objective statistical results is all that is required for this.
But this is the usual when you talk science. You usually simply make it up, invent it, and end up entirely talking falsehoods and nonsense. Science simply is not your field. You would do well to stop pretending it is so often. It erodes what little credibility you might have left when you do this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
The medical industry understands very well the power of the mind (beliefs) over body which is why meds are tested with the placebo effect.
Again your ignorance is showing. In epidemiology and evidence based medicine we no longer compare medicines to placebo. We compare it against the current best known treatments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperSoul
Why is it that so many other people don't understand this power by which they are influenced?
I think many people do understand it, and the placebo effect is indeed very interesting. But people run away with this "power" and over estimate it, read too much into it, or use it to substantiate total nonsense.
Not running away with it wantonly in this regard is NOT the same as not understanding it.
There is an old saying that says something like "If you meet an idiot they were probably an idiot. If you find you KEEP meeting idiots, then likely it is YOU who is the idiot". I think intellectually there is a similar concept. When you think "so many people" are not understanding something...... then perhaps it is YOU who has failed to understand something.
How about that? My old posting mate Boxcar went from atheism to sortagod -Theism by concluding that there had to be an intelligence behind it. Here is another one who apparently concludes that there has to be an intelligence behind the universe.
It's the best Theist argument and I don't say it's wrong. But in the context of the thread, I'd say he made that decision on the evidence - as he sees it. He didn't choose to believe, but was led there by the evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
One must be careful not to conflate towering intellect with infallibility. Kaku is just as prone to bias as anyone, and using the loaded word "god" as a label for an overarching order he sees in the universe is good for business. He is a mathematician, not a philosopher.
You'll also note that he offers as evidence for his questionable definition of "god", mathematical principles and concepts that most of us can't understand anyway. So it comes down to the same thing any religionist says: 'just trust me'.
Kaku isn't the first to groove on the "music of the spheres" but he'd be wrong to personalize it. I don't think he's doing that, but I think he's wrong to imply agency, too, even an impersonal one. Humans see agency where it doesn't exist as a matter of course. He should know better, and probably does. He's just too needy for attention to maintain his integrity in this respect.
I am sure that we can expect fundamentalist Christians to post headlines in their echo-chamber websites now that a respected prominent scientist has "proven" god created the universe (though Kaku makes no such claim to my knowledge, he only expresses his opinion). It won't be THEIR personal invisible interventionist god as revealed in the Bible, but they don't need it to be. It's just god, and "everyone" "knows" that this god is the BibleGod, right?
Yes. I'd like to talk to him to clarify a few misconceptions that would inevitably pop up. How does he reconcile this idea with a universe that actually doesn't look designed, that accidents do seem to be involved in where we have got to and that a managing/ intervening god of any kind does not seem to be supported by evidence.
Kaku may well have to opt for a very extreme Deism if not lapse back into agnosticism (and all atheists are agnostics ) in which something said 'Go' and perhaps decided some basic parameters. Then left everything to go its' own way. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't scratch his head and say 'When you put it like that...I suppose we can't rule out some non -intelligent natural cause that we know nothing about."
That's if it isn't what he is saying already and has been taken out of context by a sensationalist press.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 11-18-2016 at 03:13 AM..
And I get the impression that you use the move of making comments about the "herd" in order to avoid having to SPECIFICALLY rebut what ACTUAL people on here have written to you. As long as you can slap a label on someone and attack the label, you can simply dodge dealing with what they actually write.
Except it does not include atheism because atheism is a grouping based on what people do NOT think, not on what they DO think. It would be like finding 100 people who simply do not collect stamps, and then start to act like you have grouped them based on their hobbies. You are simply engaging.... quite contrived and wantonly I suspect..... in a linguistic and category error.
By all means show me what my "faith" is. Show me anything, for example, that I claim, believe, espouse or subscribe to on insufficient evidence.
If you reduce it to such simplistic terms then you might, with the application of enough linguistic pedantry, even manage to carry that point. But the "big picture" is a lot more complex than the simplistic reductionism you adhere to. It is not simply about whether religion is "all good" or "all bad".
It IS about whether religion is superfluous to requirements. It IS about whether religion provides any "good" that can not be attained without it, and without paying the costs and harms of it. It IS about the cost-benefit analysis of the price we pay for any "good" we actually receive from religion. And it IS about identifying what "good" religion brings at all, as most of the things people list when asked are things religion does not actually bring, but has merely successfully associated itself with.
So by all means list the things you think are "good" with religion, and we can discuss A) whether they actually are from religion B) what the costs of attaining that "good" are C) whether there are better ways to obtain the same good and D) does the "good" scale with what we must endure to obtain it.
Something tells me however your answer to this challenge will be similar to your usual answers to challenged. Ignore. Run. Retreat. Hide.
This is hardly surprising given you have shown yourself FREQUENTLY to be someone who does not fit your beliefs in with anything. Including reality. For example many of the scientific claims you make, usually when discussing homosexuality or abortion, are simply fabricated untruths and fantasy that are in no way supported by, or scale with, reality or the evidence we have in science. Fabrications that, when corrected and challenged, usually lead to you retreating.... waiting awhile..... then finding another thread on another forum to pop up in to espouse them ENTIRELY UNEDITED OR CORRECTED all over again.
So it seems that you form your beliefs in isolation from reality, religion and just about everything else. So that they have "evolved" to the point where they do not fit in...... was pretty much a given and to be expected.
Entirely differently to you it seems. I would measure it by seeing how it scales with the evidence. How substantiated it is. And I would place any claim or idea on a CONTINUUM somewhere between "definitely false" and "definitely true" based on how powerful the substantiation for it is.
Not at all. And the example you gave shows this, not what you think it shows. The physiological reaction there is not based on faith, but on probability and readiness. An evolutionary "knowledge" that if you are in a potentially threatening situation then your survival chances are increased by engaging in some preparation. And this "knowledge" has been honed by generations of objective real world events and facts, not unproven faiths or fantasy.
For example imagine in our evolutionary past that an individual sits near a bush and hears a rustle. He can react in fright and be wrong, and the worst that will happen is he will look silly. He can not react at all and be wrong, and he will get dead. So straight away evolution will "select for" over reactions to even the hint of danger. No faith. No fantasy. Real world objective statistical results is all that is required for this.
But this is the usual when you talk science. You usually simply make it up, invent it, and end up entirely talking falsehoods and nonsense. Science simply is not your field. You would do well to stop pretending it is so often. It erodes what little credibility you might have left when you do this.
Again your ignorance is showing. In epidemiology and evidence based medicine we no longer compare medicines to placebo. We compare it against the current best known treatments.
I think many people do understand it, and the placebo effect is indeed very interesting. But people run away with this "power" and over estimate it, read too much into it, or use it to substantiate total nonsense.
Not running away with it wantonly in this regard is NOT the same as not understanding it.
There is an old saying that says something like "If you meet an idiot they were probably an idiot. If you find you KEEP meeting idiots, then likely it is YOU who is the idiot". I think intellectually there is a similar concept. When you think "so many people" are not understanding something...... then perhaps it is YOU who has failed to understand something.
I wasn't going to post, but couldn't rep you yet, so I will post. Supersoul's argument here does seem to call on a quite familiar tactic - discrediting atheists by forcing on them accusations bias and faith based thinking and insisting it sticks no matter what they say.
The term "projection" comes to mind.
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My old posting mate Boxcar went from atheism to sortagod -Theism by concluding that there had to be an intelligence behind it. Here is another one who apparently concludes that there has to be an intelligence behind the universe. 
) in which something said 'Go' and perhaps decided some basic parameters. Then left everything to go its' own way. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't scratch his head and say 'When you put it like that...I suppose we can't rule out some non -intelligent natural cause that we know nothing about." 
