Social science explains much about human behavior but rarely offers practical prescriptions for daily living or evidence that widespread adoption of its suggestions would produce positive effects. Philosophy generates big ideas about life that often remain abstract and detached from everyday practice. Religion functions as a parallel laboratory of human behavior and experience where people adopt new beliefs, change actions, and produce observable outcomes. Religions effectively ask adherents to opt into mass human experiments involving conversion, new thinking, and different daily living aimed at particular benefits in life and after death. Research shows that learning about different faiths promotes deeper understanding of psychology and culture. A Baha'i maxim states: "All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization."
One of the biggest gripes I have about my academic field of social science is that it explains a lot about human behavior but is very short on prescriptions for how to live day to day. Even when it does have something suggestive to offer, the research almost never supplies evidence of whether its widespread adoption would have a positive effect. The same deficiency is even truer for philosophy, a realm in which big thoughts about life usually remain abstract ideas.
Religions in effect ask people to opt into mass human experiments, which require them to convert to a new way of thinking and to live differently from nonbelievers, all in pursuit of particular benefits (both in life and after death). Even for those who don't practice a religion and merely observe religious people, such study can be an invaluable source of information. Indeed, researchers have shown that learning about different faiths promotes a deeper understanding of psychology and culture.
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