A friend of mine shared the following video on Facebook, as if it were by itself a damning attack on religious belief:

I think that the research summarized in the video is fascinating, but the video’s creator commits a huge logical fallacy that really undermines its conclusion. The psychology experiments described in the video explain quite well about group dynamics and how we form opinions, but they tell us nothing about how we should react to the majority opinion of a group or how to approach the question of the truthfulness of Christianity.

The studies presented in the video generally involved situations where the study subject was presented with a situation where everyone else in the group (who, unbeknownst to the subject, are all actors and not true study subjects) expressed an opinion that clearly contradicted the study subject’s personal observation. Rather than contradict the rest of the group, the subjects would give answers that they secretly believed were wrong.

This does not perfectly replicate the real world, however. In many cases, the majority of the group will come to the right conclusion (which is probably why we evolved this cognitive bias for group conformity in the first place — probably because in many cases, it may help us arrive at the right conclusion). The internet has proven quite well that the “wisdom of the crowds” can help arrive at better answers than one person could come up with by themself (just look at prediction markets or Wikipedia).

Overcoming group bias is a great thing to strive for — but it is not useful to try to overcome group bias just for the sake of being a contrarian (which is what this video seems to advocate). The video is a great tool to remind us groups can be wrong. But it is a huge leap to then conclude that groups are usually wrong .

The video says that the answer to our tendency to conform to groups is “dissent.” The video presupposes, without providing any basis for doing so, that Christianity is false and advocates that non-believers dissent against the group to give fellow dissenters the courage to also make their true opinions known. But what if Christianity is true? What is the point of “dissent” if your group is already right?

Dissent is probably a reasonable tactic, but only after you’ve come to a valid conclusion that the group’s opinion is wrong. The first step after you learn about the problems with group dynamics and conformity is not dissent. The first step is to figure out a proper approach to epistemology. Read some basic books about the philosophy of science and some basic philosophy on epistemology. Another great book to read is The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Once you’ve nailed down some good approaches on how to know things, you will probably realize that no one can ever really be completely certain about anything. The next step after studying epistemology is to evaluate your personal beliefs and opinions and come to some conclusions about what you think is the most probable conclusion. Only then would dissent be warranted. But even after this, you need to watch out for the big problem of confirmation bias. You should thus keep an open mind and continually look out for evidence that contradicts your current beliefs. Always be willing to reject your beliefs and opinions if you find disconfirmatory evidence, or if you find new ideas or conclusions that better fit the facts.