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Vladimir_Nesov comments on BHTV: Yudkowsky & Adam Frank on "religious experience" - Less Wrong
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Throwing out religion would be like throwing out folk medicine - you lose all the traditional knowledge about which plants are good for what. In both cases, it's best to squeeze out the cultural juices before consigning to the dustbin of history.
But practicing religion is as disastrous as practicing folk medicine. You may use both as raw material, as better-than-noise source of hypotheses, but not as out-of-the-box applicable techniques.
According to most of the studies I have seen, religious people are systematically more healthy than unbelievers. Also, atheists are one of the most distrusted American minority groups, according to a recent survey. "Disastrous" seems like a bit of a curious synopsis in the light of such results.
Believing religion is disastrously antithetical to epistemic rationality. Practicing religion is potentially quite useful from an instrumental rationality standpoint.
Presumably, epistemic rationality only suffers if you believe untrue things.
The whole idea that religion is concerned with belief is quite a western one. Look at some of the eastern religions, and they are more concerned with what you do and how you live - and do not necessarily place an emphasis on faith.