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Comment by cf498 | Hacker News Reader

Psychology could learn something from studying some of the tools religions apply for example to for example influence and guide people.

Which is sure is true, just like you can learn a lot watching a used car salesmen with the tools he or she uses. Robert Cialdini wrote some great books about that topic.

The author is how ever mixing up things here on purpose, best seen with the title.

>What Science Can Learn from Religion

It should read what Psychology can learn by studying religious groups. Those two are very different things.

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But that’s just saying that science can learn from studying religion, not that science can learn by following the teachings of religion. Of course science can learn from studying religion, just like it can from studying the rainforest, or stars, or diseases.

It's saying that the bias against religion in the sciencey tribe presents a barrier to actually studying religions as sources of psychological knowledge that are better than random speculation (presumably on the grounds that there was some competition between religions, so that religions that were based on bad ideas about psychology died out and the ones that remain are based on better-than-random ideas about psychology)

Sciencey people think religions are wrong, so they are prone to acting like all ideas to come out of religion are bunk. They shouldn't, so the hostility of sciencey people toward religion hurts science.

well said !

A most excellent summary.

It's funny how hardly anyone in this comment thread seems to have taken away this message. I do however see a whole lot of rather defensive comments about how religion is useless and bad for this reason or that reason, or attacking the article (which I thought was very reasonably written) for religious apology. I think that offers a visible example of the phenomenon under discussion - any suggestion of positive things flowing from religion is met with a kind of allergic reaction.

The religion as a concept has a use or a few. The allergy cuts both ways, with religious people not wanting their sociotechnological or psychological practices broken down and appropriated without core memes.

To do so is considered heresy or worse. More so if done with required irreverence of science where anything can be shown wrong.

I don't think anybody sees a problem with religion as a tool for self-improvement: discipline, patience, altruism, etc.

The problems start when religion attempts to "fix" others against their will.

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