Should the godless be a little more generous in dealing with believers? Here’s an argument that advocates a little more charity; that we ought to recognize that belief in the supernatural is a nearly universal human condition, that it’s a useful coping mechanism for dealing with the unknown, and that it’s a mistaken belief, not a moral failing.
I’m not entirely convinced. You can substitute the word “ignorance” for “supernatural belief/spirituality/religion” and it fits the whole argument just as well. Yet I don’t feel any desire to make excuses for ignorance, and I certainly don’t have sympathies for the promoters of ignorance.
I found his post descriptive, not prescriptive, i.e., an effort to understand why people believe (so we can perhaps figure out how to treat the condition). Now, on second read, I kinda also like his older post, the one that he links to in the first sentence: Today the soul, not the body, reigns supreme – the two go welll together.
Argument from popularity/commonality.
Every kind of delusion is “useful” to its holder in some way. That doesn’t mean that we should embrace delusions.
Bull. People actively choose to accept these strange dogmas because they find them soothing. It is possible, but highly unlikely, that people would get things so wrong AND have their conclusions be so comforting at the same time so consistently. It seems far more likely that people choose comforting beliefs without caring about their correctness. That IS a moral failing.
It’s also true that your average Norwegian bachelor farmer does smell a bit, but it’s impolite to tell him to take a bath.
Well, I don’t consider ignorance to be a moral failing, either.
Willfull ignorance, on the other hand….
I have a concern about the logic of your post. First, while ignorance may be a near-universal human condition, belief in the principle or value of ignorance is not, not intentionally. That’s why it was important for you to include “supernatural belief” in the quotes of your second paragraph rather than just “supernatural/spirituality/religion” for which “ingorance” would be substitute. I think there is a subtle but important distinction.
So, to take it in reverse, I may have sympathy for someone who is ignorant (under certain circumstances), but I would not have sympathy for someone who promotes ignorance. I may have sympathy for someone who believes in the supernatural, but not as much for someone who promotes belief the supernatural.
When a society values politeness over truth, the accumulation of unpolitic but vital truths quickly proves lethal.
Sometimes you just have to point out the deficiencies in the Emperor’s fashion sense.
It is only a choice if a person gets religion as an adult. If one is, as usually happens, inculcated as a child, and, as many a born-again atheist attests, losing religion is a difficult and painful process, then I would not say that religiosu belief for most people is a choice and a moral failing. The argument that it is presumes that a little child is a rational animal, and we know that adults are not that good either. Religiosity chould be treated as a developmental disorder, not a moral failing. The irrationality/religiosity is a pathology, serious pathology, that parents give to their children, and which we need to study in order to learn how to treat it.
So let me get this straight. A deleterious condition which afflicts the vast majority of the species, and is notoriously difficult to eradicate from any mind in which it is once planted, needs to be handled with kid gloves as though it were some delicate, fragile flower? I don’t think so.
Re: Caledonian
“People actively choose to accept these strange dogmas because they find them soothing.”
That is one possibility, or one contributing factor. Another factor is that without the proper intellectual and emotional tools, it is not particulalry difficult to see how people actually believe in the supernatural. Without the necessary underlying framework to incorporate the logical, rational or scientific understanding of a phenomena, it is not that much of a jump to say “something else must be out there”. That person’s subjective experience of an event may be very powerful to them, and reinforced over time. To dismiss all of that as “Bull” I think is a bit much, IMO.
Bull! Children are not mindless, irrational, automatic victims of adult culture and adult teaching. I realized my parents had no idea what they were talking about on the subject of religion when I was six, and I’ve been an atheist ever since.
You can make sophisticated tools with more primitive tools. A mind would have to be deprived indeed to be rendered incapable of process of thought.
The real issue is that the vast majority of people don’t care about truth or rationality — when culture says that they *should* care, they give the concepts lip service. Ultimately those considerations simply don’t enter into their decisions of what should be done and how we should do it.
I call bullsh-t on anyone proclaiming full, intellectually honest recognition of and adoption of atheism and the rejection of the supernatural at age six.
Bull.
Argument from incredulity. It happened whether you find it plausible or not. Deal.
I was raised an atheist and I was still not fully rational, not to mention capable of serious critical thinking until I was about 13 or so. There is such a thing as intelectual and emotional development, that goes well into 30-es. So, yes, becoming an atheist at 6 is stretching it too far.
No, you have sacrificed your own credibility with your puffed-up claims. I suggest going and hanging out with some six-year-olds before making that same claim again.
Ecological fallacy.
^^^Ego getting in the way of honesty.
I was a Christian until the age of 34. Admittedly I was a stubborn, crazy dissenter for much of that time, asking the bad questions and getting kicked out of Sunday school, but I worked hard to be the “good Christian.” The nonsensical nature of the whole mess just didn’t catch me sufficiently off guard until I was reading the Pauline epistles seriously one Easter morning a few years go, and it just stopped making sense.
I wouldn’t ordinarily believe the 6-year-old freethinker claim either. But I know that children of that age get indelible notions of one strange kind or another, usually not by exercising anything we would recognize as rationality (their rational faculties are not quite out of alpha testing at that age, you might say), but quite accidentally as a result of jumping hugely to conclusions about things they don’t really understand. And you know what they say about a stopped clock being right twice a day.
“It’s also true that your average Norwegian bachelor farmer does smell a bit, but it’s impolite to tell him to take a bath.”
True, but if he’s advocating that his stink should be accepted by everybody and goes out of his way to infringe on making you stink because of determined goal he has in order to achieve some kind of unprovable status in the afterlife, then he must be slapped down.
I agree it is possible for a rare 6-year old to conclude there is no God, but that does not mean that this 6-year old has a coherent atheistic worldview and is immune from other silly beliefs and superstitions. Kids are not robots, they are developing organisms, and a 6-year old just cannot possibly have full mental capacity for coherent critical thinking.
Yes, we should have no sympathies with the promoters of ignorance. That includes all the cases where the criticism that the blog-entry makes does not fit. :-)
is not an argument from popularity/commonality. It is an observation that most people on this planet believe shit. It is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Caledonian writes:
Which is the conclusion of the article.
I have yet to see evidence indicating that any atheist, of any age, is immune from silly beliefs and superstitions. This is not a matter of being without flaws, this is a matter of being able to recognize and discard a specific type of mental flaw.
In my experience, people hold on to incorrect beliefs despite abundant evidence and reasoning to the contrary not because of deficiencies in their processing abilities, but deficiencies in their desires. It’s not that they can’t think, it’s that they don’t wish to and do not choose to do so. A person who will not open their eyes is nearly as blind as a person without eyes, and it requires profound flaws in vision before someone with open eyes is rendered as incapable of perception as someone who keeps them closed. So to speak.
From the article – it starts with the question:
…and ends with:
The question is, similarly to what Dan Dennet and David Sloan Wilson are calling for, to investigate the evolutionary origins of the capability to believe. I do not see the article as calling for us to be more charitable towards religion/superstition, but a call to understand where it comes from, so we can deal with it more efficiently. Or, as I wrote above, to understand the disease so we can cure it, instead of blaming the patient/victim and imputing immorality – that is witch-hunting.
Several years ago I sat on an airplane next to an engineer (from Texas, naturally) who turned out to be super-religious. It was about that time that I had decided to come out of the closet about being an atheist. I used to say I was a non-believer, or some wishwash like that, but this time I just called myself an atheist.
He looked at me like I had horns sprouting from my head, but in the conversation that ensued he came to view me with more respect. Note that we did *not* have a debate about god; we just talked about our lives. We shared a lot of values, including kindness and compassion. I have had several foster children (war orphans) who were being religiously and racially persecuted in their own country (they are Christian), and he admitted at one point i was actually doing more good works than the vast numbers of “godly” people he hangs around with in his church.
I know he exited the conversation with an improved, more tolerant view of atheism.
Question: how do you think he would have exited if I had judged him or insulted him or his beliefs?
The moral is, you can sit around glorying in your own smug superiority, or you can go out and influence people and change the world for the better. If you choose the latter course it pretty much mandates, on a humane *and* a strategic level, that you choose kindness, compassion and understanding. A tiny bit of it, in fact, goes a long way.
It helps, btw, if you distinguish between the craven opportunitists – Falwell, etc. – who use religion as a means of personal aggrandisement and enrichment – from the ordinary folks who are very much like us but just happen to be religious. Ignore the former; cherish the latter.
Dawn
Disassociating a state from the person that generates it is a very old and fairly successful method of convincing people that their problems lie elsewhere. It is not, unfortunately, usually correct.
There never was any reason to believe that witches in the most traditional sense existed. There is massive and overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of human beings are not capable of rational thought on a systemic basis on matters where their emotional prejudices are involved.
Discarding attempts to place responsibility where it belongs by references to “witch-hunting” is therefore invalid.
We need to determine what psychological processes generate supernatural beliefs to determine what, exactly, a person who wants to fully embrace the human animal must respect. Is he required to respect religion and folk beliefs or just the primal drives that give birth to these? In other words: Are supernatural beliefs themselves animal drives which we are obliged to respect, or are they the product of several more fundamental animal drives?
We also need to determine what biological processes generate body odor to determine what, exactly, a person who wants to fully embrace the human animal must respect. Is he required to respect ethnicity and radio humor or just the primal drives that give birth to these? In other words: Are personal hygiene beliefs themselves animal drives which we are obliged to respect, or are they the product of several more fundamental psychological processes?
Re: being kind to believers, I don’t buy the argument given in the article, but I will offer these:
1) Rudeness is an ineffective way to convince people
I don’t believe you convince people to change their beliefs by belittling them and calling them stupid. You’ve raised the stakes: in order to change their mind now, the person also has to admit they were stupid, not merely mistaken. You’ve also identified yourself as an arrogant jerk who’s viewpoint need not be taken seriously.
2) Rudeness is rude.
We owe our fellow-beings courtesy by default. Unless there is some special reason to be discourteous, kindness is the appropriate response. (Yes, I realise this is an unsupported moral assertion.)
3) A skeptical attitude requires that you accept the possibility you could be wrong. If you’re sufficiently emotionally attached to your own worldview that you feel the need to rudely confront others who have the temerity to differ, is it possible you have emotional and not merely rational reasons for doing so?
Translation: we can’t stop the credulous from being credulous, but we can induce them to change their beliefs to be more favorable to our position.
Thank you, but that’s not what we need.
Hatred
“Yet I don’t feel any desire to make excuses for ignorance, and I certainly don’t have sympathies for the promoters of ignorance.”
Hubris
“I was raised an atheist and I was still not fully rational, not to mention capable of serious critical thinking until I was about 13 or so.”
delusion
“I realized my parents had no idea what they were talking about on the subject of religion when I was six, and I’ve been an atheist ever since.”
All before 8:00 in the morning! If nothing else it must be acknowledged that this is quite a productive group.
Such industry!
It’s not 8am everywhere in the world, klystron
A person who rejects a position not because of its merits, but because of the incidentals of the way it was presented, is not thinking on a level more sophisticated than raw association. Pandering to that kind of “reasoning” reinforces it.
Intellectual honesty, which is a condition very few people can sustain for more than a brief time and a short list of topics, frequently requires that we acknowledge that we’ve been stupid, and will be stupid again. If you reject an argument merely because the person making it says you’ve been stupid, that person might not have been right about your post, but he’s right about your present.
Caledonian:
Which says: people are rational, and if they think, say, do stupid things, they should be held responsible.
Caledonian, immediately after:There is massive and overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of human beings are not capable of rational thought on a systemic basis on matters where their emotional prejudices are involved..
Which says: people are not rational, and if they think, say and do stupid thing, they should not be held responsible beause they cannot help it.
So, which is it?
It’s one thing to say that you find an assertion made by another so improbable that you must disbelieve it until evidence for it is presented. It is quite another to say that the assertion must be false because you don’t think it can be true.
There’s that pesky inability to reason, again…
Wow. I guess kindness really is unfashionable in these parts Coturnix. Fine.
What a slothful display of human failings! Why it’s almost 11:00 in Buenos Aires! To work ye wretches!
Also, the linked article says nothing about “being nice to believers”. That is just not a topic touched on by that article. It is about understanding (as in studying and comprehending) the underlying biology of belief. It is not about “being understanding (as in ‘nice’, or ‘charitable’) toward” believers.
I’d say you’re making certain assumptions about the nature of culpability and choice that makes understanding difficult if not impossible.
People choose to be irrational. They make this choice because of constitutional tendencies. And they become unworthy of acclaim or respect by making the choice as they do.
I am *really* not interested in combatting ancient rhetoric about “free will” at this hour of the morning.
klystron:
Bull
Such industry!
As long as we’re telling everyone what they shouldn’t be doing. I never knew that lacking sympathy for promoting ignorance == hate. I always thought it was more of a != situation.
OK, I am having problems with blockquoting today. In my 8:46EDST comment only the first sentence is supposed to be a quote, the rest is mine.
In my 8:53EDST comment: “There is massive and overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of human beings are not capable of rational thought on a systemic basis on matters where their emotional prejudices are involved.” was supposed to be quoted.
And I have no idea to whom and to what comment is Caledonian’s 8:54EDST comment meant to be a response.
Irrationality is not a choice. It is a psychopathology. It can be treated with patience and care.
You are asserting free will pretty much all along (except when you contradict yourself on occasion) – you are not combatting it. You have even said that little kids have full rational capability to make choices and that some people, I guess because they are mean or something, wake up one mornig and choose to be irrational… this is confusing. Anyway, gotta go, will check in again in PM.
To Edwin and others arguing for kindness or even simple politeness – you’re completely on target.
To Caladonian –
re your comment:
Translation: we can’t stop the credulous from being credulous, but we can induce them to change their beliefs to be more favorable to our position. Thank you but that’s not what we need.
First, thank *you* for reading and considering my post. :-)
Second, if what you mean by “credulous” is to believe things we can’t prove, then we are all credulous in one way or another. If you find this point incredible, read Hume. Better than anyone else, he points out the limits of our knowledge and how we routinely go beyond these limits. We have absolutely no knowledge of the future, for instance, but we all routinely and confidently state things about it that we can’t prove.
btw, I’m a vegan for ethical and health reasons. I happen to think anyone who eats meat and dairy (esp. non-organic) is being incredibly credulous in falling for the (dangerous) propaganda of the meat industries. Read The China Study by Cornell professor or nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell. It’s the largest epidemiological study of nutrition to date, and in it he states that there is no nutrient (except B12) that you can’t get better from plant than animal sources.
The intro to the book (by another author) says, “The inescapable fact is that certain people are making an awful lot of money today selling foods that are unhealthy. They want you to keep eating the foods they sell, even though doing so makes you fat, depletes your vitality and shortens and degrades your life. They want you docile, compliant and ignorant. They do not want you informed, active and passionately alive.”
Sounds like the religious demagogues, doesn’t it? Do you eat meat/dairy Cal? If so, how can you be so credulous?
Dawn
Good point JoeB. Your selected example could just as well be Fear.
I stand corrected.
it’s interesting that the author mentions Nietzche.
I think there is a difference between atheists heavily influenced by Nietzche, vs atheists who use science to describe almost everything in life.
I find Nietzche compelling because he stands outside of natural science, on the side of poetry, in assessing vital topics such as morality and art.
These days, science is touted as the solution in areas it actually cannot help, especially with regards to how to live and deal with people. In other words, the sketchy field of clinical psychology has replaced religion. I believe a much better replacement would have been something related to the now extinct field of philosophy, which Foucault described as the study of “how to live”.
I’ve never much bought the ‘religion is everywhere, thus it might/must be useful’ argument I notice early in this piece.
Viewed on that level, I wonder if part of the problem here isn’t a bit of teleology sneaking in unnoticed, again. To paraphrase the assumption: it is ubiquitous; there must be a reason; that reason must be that it has some benefit from our narrow perspective?
I don’t see how this follows. Religions presumably exist because they’re reasonably good at reproducing themselves. It’s not particularly safe to assume on that basis alone that said success has any accidental benefit for the cultures in which it reproduces.
Hell, smallpox was pretty much everywhere too, once. Doesn’t mean trying to reduce its incidence isn’t a sensible thing to do. Nor is it in any sense ‘necessary’. Inevitable, maybe. Necessary, no.
The thread Nick at Back To The Woom spins from his first post breaks in the second.
The first post was excellent – it made me think new and different on morality vs society and on the vagaries of the soul/body dualism at the core of many religions. It was an epiphany, or in Caledonians word I had to acknowledge that I’ve been stupid, and will be stupid again.
But while the second post picks up the thread nicely, Nick soon stretches it until it breaks. He forgets that we have more psychological processes going on – I am especially thinking of the sense of wonder his first article gave me. It is also a part of the psychology of the human animal, the feeling of figuring or experiencing something new out.
But there is a conflict here. The willful and lazy ignorance of supernatural explanations prohibits many enlightened sense of wonder experiences from knowledge or new situations. In Nick’s own terms, one can’t simultaneously poop and eat. (Well, maybe one can, but I’m not going to.)
So we have to choose which urges we follow. Contrary to what Nick says, we can’t embrace the bodily drives that generate supernatural beliefs wholeheartedly. Assuming willful ignorance is bad and knowledge/new experiences good, we do best as we fight them as much as possible.
edwin,
The point you raise is frequently made here. Not everyone agrees.
“Re: being kind to believers, I don’t buy the argument given in the article, but I will offer these:
1) Rudeness is an ineffective way to convince people
I don’t believe you convince people to change their beliefs by belittling them and calling them stupid.”
Granted. But to state the truth is an efficient method of making the point clear – and the truth about religious beliefs are that they are stupid. There is plenty of evidence for that and none against. We should tolerate, but not respect.
That doesn’t make a person who holds religious beliefs totally stupid, and I don’t think anyone says so. A person with religious beliefs are free to think that makes him more stupid than necessary.
“You’ve also identified yourself as an arrogant jerk who’s viewpoint need not be taken seriously.”
Not granted. When did stating the truth become arrogant?
“If you’re sufficiently emotionally attached to your own worldview that you feel the need to rudely confront others who have the temerity to differ, is it possible you have emotional and not merely rational reasons for doing so?”
Yes, it is not very emotional, but there is such a component. Nonbelievers, especially atheists, are treated rudely and unfairly in all cultures I know of – except some blogs. Truth is not often used, they are simply not tolerated.
Now I will make an unsupported moral assertion. Unless there is some special reason to be lying, truth is the appropriate response.
I think it’s ignorance to equate religious belief with ignorance. While frequently make the same argument myself, hearing it from others always tends to put me off for some reason; I can’t even imagine how the argument plays to those we should worry about most.
I tend to side with Dennet on the importance of focusing more on breaking the taboo of studying religion as a natural phenomenon. I’d be much more inclined to agree with the argument of the author you linked to had he instead replaced the bulk of his argument with Dennet’s argument of the underlying evolutionary imperatives that made religion such a universal phenomenon in the first place, even in the most disparate locations.
Perhaps, PZ, that would make his argument of understanding more logical, and maybe more palatable?
Should the godless be a little more generous in dealing with believers?
http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/departments/a0036387.cfm
———————————————————————————-
U.N. heeds Bush’s call for cloning ban
A United Nations resolution on human cloning–one of the strongest pro-life statements the liberal institution has ever made–could become a tool for convincing the U.S. Senate to pass a total ban on cloning here at home.
“I am extremely encouraged that the international community has made such a strong statement today in support of protecting innocent human life and human dignity,” said U.S. Senate Sam Brownback, R-Kan., in a statement after the vote.
Brownback said he would reintroduce legislation to ban cloning, “and it is my hope that the Senate will pass the ban this year.”
The House of Representatives has twice passed legislation to ban human cloning, and President Bush supported a ban in a speech at the United Nations last year.
An influential U.N. committee adopted a resolution Feb. 18 asking all the world’s governments to ban human cloning. The 71-35 vote (43 nations abstained) effectively ended three years of negotiations over the issue; the General Assembly approved the resolution by a similar margin on March 8. The ban includes “therapeutic” cloning, in which human embryos are created and then destroyed for their stem cells.
“This is a huge victory. It’s the most pro-life resolution ever passed by the United Nations,” said Thomas Jacobson, Focus on the Family’s liaison to the United Nations.
————————————————————————————————————
????? Why does “Focus on the Family” need a “Liaison” to the UN?
Yeah right………”you unbelievers need to reconsider your contempt for us poor god-fearing people” while advancing their own agenda with *everything* they’ve got is- and I know I keep saying this- a policy of incremental surrender on the part of materialists.
And now a bedtime story….
http://camelphotos.com/tales_nose.html
———————————————————————————————
The Camel’s Nose In The Tent.
One cold night, as an Arab sat in his tent, a camel gently thrust his nose under the flap and looked in. “Master,” he said, “let me put my nose in your tent. It’s cold and stormy out here.” “By all means,” said the Arab, “and welcome” as he turned over and went to sleep.
A little later the Arab awoke to find that the camel had not only put his nose in the tent but his head and neck also. The camel, who had been turning his head from side to side, said, “I will take but little more room if I place my forelegs within the tent. It is difficult standing out here.” “Yes, you may put your forelegs within,” said the Arab, moving a little to make room, for the tent was small.
Finally, the camel said, “May I not stand wholly inside? I keep the tent open by standing as I do.” “Yes, yes,” said the Arab. “Come wholly inside. Perhaps it will be better for both of us.” So the camel crowded in. The Arab with difficulty in the crowded quarters again went to sleep. When he woke up the next time, he was outside in the cold and the camel had the tent to himself.
————————————————————————————————–
Sleep tight, y’all.
First off, you’re mistaken. You’re overstating your case, and setting yourself up, as you often do.
The kinds of bad reasoning people typically fall prey to usually are at a level quite a bit above raw association, and much more interesting. The heuristics that make people reasonably smart in most situations have failure modes that make them stupid in others. (And religion exploits that.)
If you just say people are “stupid,” you’re generally not going to get anywhere. Rightly or wrongly, they’re going to guess that they’re not stupid, or not quite stupid enough to justify your being an asshole about it, and that you are rather stupid to toss the word “stupid” around quite so freely.
Even if they’re wrong, it’ll be a good guess on their part that you’re not as smart as you think, so they’ll tend to tune you out as a blustering asshole.
And I think they’re partly right about that. People are smarter than you think, being smart is harder than you think, and you’re not as smart as you think you are.
One thing that usually works better than calling people stupid is explaining that you understand why they’d come to the conclusion they’d come to—what heuristic they’re using, and why it’s often right but wrong in the case in question.
It often helps to acknowledge that somebody is right up to a point, but pushing their point too far. That helps them see their mistake clearly, rather than just seeing an argument pro and an argument con, without seeing exactly why one argument actually beats the other in the final analysis.
It’s usually not helpful to tell somebody they’re “just stupid,” even if it’s true, for several reasons.
One is that if they’re actually stupid, it’s just beating them up and likely making them too defensive to carry on a rational discussion. It’s like whipping a dog that’s too “stupid” to understand what you’re telling it to do.
Another is that it changes the topic, and puts much more burden of proof on you—to “win” the argument, you now have to show that they are not merely wrong, but stupidly wrong—so stupidly wrong that your behavior is justified. They don’t have to prove they’re right—just that they have some reason for their view that isn’t stupid, or isn’t quite as completely stupid as you imply.
If they can do that, you look stupid for raising the bar, and switching from an argument that maybe you could have won to one that you lose, or don’t win decisively.
It also makes you vulnerable to counterattacks. Once the issue of who’s stupid comes up, they are justified in arguing that no, you’re the stupid one, and attacking anything you have said whether it bears on the original point or not. If they can show you’ve said some stupid things, you lose. Even if they can’t, it turns the discussion into an unmanageable flame war, because you’ve given them license to drag all sorts of things in and muddy the waters.
If you’re interested in winning an argument rather than provoking an unwinnable flame war, it’s usually best to focus on that argument rather than berating and insulting people in an over-the-top way. Changing the topic from whether somebody is mistaken to whether they’re “stupid,” an “idiot,”—or even (quoting you) “a waste of protein”—is setting yourself up to fail.
And if they come back and beat you on the original point, you’ll look very stupid indeed, for setting yourself up to lose multiple arguments, including the one about who’s stupid.
When you start acknowledging that you’ve been stupid, I’ll take your pontificating more seriously. But I won’t hold my breath.
The moral is, you can sit around glorying in your own smug superiority, or you can go out and influence people and change the world for the better. If you choose the latter course it pretty much mandates, on a humane *and* a strategic level, that you choose kindness, compassion and understanding.
Dawn O’Day is right on. I have many theist friends whose view of atheism has changed radically after thoughtful and polite discussion.
Translation: we can’t stop the credulous from being credulous, but we can induce them to change their beliefs to be more favorable to our position.
Thank you, but that’s not what we need.
It isn’t? Its a start. For example, it would have been nice for George Bush senior to acknowledge that atheists are citizens too. (remember that quote).
All we need is a society that respects reason, is tolerant, and bases its public policy on evidence and science. Godlessness is not necessarily a requirement.
But we aren’t going to get the society we want by agitating believers and providing an excuse for them to rally behind. Is the mainstream public more sympathetic to atheism after Nedow’s Pledge of Allegiance suit? Remember PZ’s post a few weeks ago about how the majority of the public views atheism (yikes), but that is the reality. The current approach is obviously not working.
If people believe that atheists are raving mad, militant, religious hating, arrogant bastards then they aren’t going to be too sympathetic when in comes to making sure we atheists/agnostics have our voices heard. In a democracy that’s all we ask — to have our voices heard fairly.
Religion has been a part of humanity for thousands of years. It ain’t going away anytime soon. It took 75 years for the women’s suffrage movement to convince Americans that women should vote. Change is slow. We will be living with religion for a long time.
The best strategic position is not to insult believers or thrust godlessness in their faces, but to convince them with sound and polite reasoning that secularism is the best possible form of society and that secularism works to their own advantage.
We don’t need to convince them that their beliefs are ludicrous or that they are stupid. We don’t even have to convince them to be godless. We only have to convince them that their faith is exactly that and not absolute proof of their worldview. And as such the best arbiter for human affairs is science and reason. I think there are millions of believers who are not comfortable with the dogma and irrationality of their traditional religions, but still want to hold on to their cozy notion of a supreme being. I believe this silent majority may be persuaded to see the value that a compromise worldview like deism (for example) places on reason and science.
To do that might require playing hardball with the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Fallwells of the world. But it also requires playing nice with the average well meaning theist.
It is the difference between trying to change society the Ghandi/MLK way or the PLO/IRA way. History shows the former works (slowly) while the latter provokes more mistrust and persecution.
coturnix:
Sure it is. Once each day.
:-)
FEAR and GREED
Works for the stock market.
Works for God.
Personally, I slam religion in general and sometimes in particular when
A) it produces ridiculously violent results or
B) the slam is simply to funny to pass up.
HOPEFULLY, from my POV, I am also generally respectful of my silly fellow folk who thrive on the dang thang. I understand needin’ hope where none is readily apparent. As you suggest though, PZ, ignorance is only an excuse in the abstract. It doesn’t pay to rely upon it for very long. It’s hard to find sympathy for someone who could know better and does “it” anyhow under the guise of ignorance.
Belief in the supernatural is one thing — human beings are practically wired to see ghosts and goblins and fairies and aliens and witches and djinni and such. I find those kinds of beliefs to be perfectly understandable (albeit irrational). Indeed, it often takes a certain amount of education in logic, statistics, cognitive science, etc. not to believe the evidence of your own eyes, when your own eyes are lying to you. (Just a couple of weeks ago, while my cat was home dying of cancer, I swore I saw a cat-like shadow twine around my legs as I sat at my desk 20 miles away. Feline bilocation or just plain anxiety?)
I’m gentle and kind when talking to spiritualists, cryptozoologists, and ufologists. I like hearing and telling those kinds of stories myself. I get into the stories, and I only suggest rational alternatives with a suggestion of dissapointment that this particular sighting isn’t true. I only get angry at people who exploit this kind of supernaturalism to fleece the credulous (cold readers, cult leaders, etc.)
Belief in God, however, is a very different kind of belief than belief in spirits or Sasquatch. People don’t need any help to see ghosts (and indeed, they continue to see ghosts even when their religion denies that ghosts exist), but God-belief requires massive institutions to maintain. People don’t see the hand of God unless they’ve been specifically indoctrinated to see it. There is no God without temples or priests.
I think it is disengenuous to link perfectly understandable supernaturalism with the undemocratic power structures of institutional theism.
Some have pointed out that a lot of theistic belief is imprinted early in a child’s mind, before many have a chance to think through the implications.
It’s effective because at some level, people realize – especially children – that going along to get along is a smart survival strategy, at least in the short term. It’s not wise, for example, to express interest in converting to Christianity if you’re a Muslim in Afghanistan.
People grow up and sink roots in a theistic culture, and when that’s done, extricating yourself from theism and realizing that you’re setting yourself apart from the vast majority of your people – friends, family, employers, etc. – can be a scary bit of business. Pointing out the emperor has no clothes when everyone is committed to pretending can entail ugly consequences.
I have a lot of respect for those who have made that journey, and I suspect that there’s an iceberg effect too – for every open, outspoken atheist, there are 10 more who have come to realize that religion is bunk, but are too deeply embedded in their culture to be outspoken about it.
It can’t always be evident who these people are, but we can at least be warm and welcoming enough to encourage them. The intellectual foundation of atheism isn’t enough by itself, not if social change is the goal. Social skills matter too.
And yet, most of Ireland *is* independent today. Despite the fact that Ireland isn’t on the other side of the world from England the way the US and India are. (For that matter, the US itself is a counterexample to the idea that *only* peaceful resistance works.) That doesn’t necessarily mean those are the best tactics in any particular case, but confrontation *can* work, and possibly, can even work better.
Anyway, I don’t think the ignorance of religious people is necessarily willful, and deconversion stories don’t really change that. Frederick Douglass taught himself to read and escaped slavery practically single-handedly; does it follow that everyone who remained an illiterate slave did so willfully? The fact that one person overcomes a given obstacle should not be translated into a moral demand that *everyone* faced with the same or similar obstacle also overcome it or be judged morally inferior for their inability to do so.
And yes, I *do* mean to compare a religious upbringing with slavery… being ordered to obey God with the threat of punishment if you don’t isn’t all that different from being ordered to obey your master with the threat of punishment if you don’t. God’s tortures are more remote, but also more horrible. (And quite possibly nonexistent, but that doesn’t prevent them from being used as a weapon of terror. Slavery is sustained by terror on earth, but hell is the ultimate form of terrorism.)
As HP points out, an authoritarian god is always propping up an authoritarian priest or king (or both). There’s a reason they call it a “kingdom” of heaven. It’s quite different from (and an exploitation of) the tendency to see teleology in everything, to believe your dreams or hallucinations reflect external reality, etc.
I just saw the movie “Grizzly Man,” and will admit that at one point in my life I was seduced by the “children of the universe” argument (though certainly not to the point of Timothy Treadwell’s loopiness!) of reverting back to our so-called animal natures (which are more based on 18th-Century Romanticism than modern science). I will admit that Nick’s argument also flitted across my mind. For an instant. It’s like all the New Age talk about “body knowledge,” and me having to admit that when the local church carrion plays, I still know all of the words. (I was in the church choir for probably eleven years, and quite frankly, I love religious music–just not the popular, modern slop.) But is this a “basic need” or is it early imprinting?
I don’t agree that we should get in touch with every aspect of our animal nature. What, after all, is our “nature?” One may as well argue for political dictatorship, since it is more prevalent in human history (and seemingly more “natural”) than democracy. One may as well argue for unchecked promiscuity or male dominance, eating one’s young, human sacrifice, etc.
Our nature is that we are not passive hostages to “nature.” Richard Dawkins has reiterated that tirelessly, Carl Sagan said it, and so did Bronowski I believe. Do we even have a nature and what does that mean? “Nature,” as opposed to what is really out there, seems to be largely a social construct, fabricated to support this or that ideology. One must observe nature without veering into complacency in quick conclusions.
HP is exactly right. Mystical feelings are part of how our brains are wired. Religions are social entities that prey on that part of our nature and thus aren’t deserving of any charity on that part of unbelievers.
I meant to say “church carillon!” (Laughter) Man, those dead fish at the local church play great music!
Mystical feelings are part of how our brains are wired. Religions are social entities that prey on that part of our nature and thus aren’t deserving of any charity on that part of unbelievers.
I’m not so sure you can easily decouple the nature from the institutions that rise up to capitalize on them. There is also probably something wired in us as political animals that allows those institutions to flourish. Otherwise religion (in all its variants) would not be so ubiquitous across all cultures and continents.
But having made the distinction, I believe there is a difference between the institution which may have evolved mechanisms for maintaing uniformity (i.e. clergy, greedy televangelists, opportunistic politicians, etc.) and that of the average follower who is just trying to lead a “good life”.
Unfortunately, the typical practitioner is blinded to the evils (if you will) of the institution and instead tends to associate his/her belief with tradition and family. He/she is not guilty of willful ignorance as a previous comment skillfully pointed out.
Thus militant attacks by secularists are not seen as liberating, but as a threat to their traditional lifestyle and culture.
Indeed I can imagine that for a believer, it would be hard not to view some of the comments on this thread as hostile to their way of life. Thus they are easily drawn into the O’Reilly type propaganda that evil secularists are trying to destroy their culture.
I think my previous statement would be better phrased as:
I’m not so sure you can easily decouple the nature from the institutions that rise up to support them. There is also probably something wired in us as organizational animals that allows those institutions to flourish.
What would everyone say if I told you I just spoke to God?
Dawn O’Day:
Maybe some of us just like eating meat because it tastes good, and don’t give two shits about what the meat industry says or doesn’t say.
Did that ever occurt to you?
As are feelings in general, and moral impulses. Most people have a natural abhorrence to killing fellow humans that has little to do with rationality. (This abhorrence has some features that are very difficult to explain were it rational, for instance it is considerably stronger when it comes to stabbing as compared to clubbing, and is generally weaker with distance and anonymity). I may be an atheist, but I am not a completely rational one; I am in no position to criticize those with a few sacred cows of their own.
The existance of a God in any way anthropromorphic strikes me as a very dubious proposition. But I am mindful that I perceive the evidence through biased eyes, and that believers have different biases in addition to internal experiences of “the devine”. Believers are not necessarily being particularly irrational (compared to anyone else); keep in mind that they, due to their biases, see the evidence differently, and the existance of God may be a fairly reasonable conclusion with what they see. (This seems to be part of what Nick is saying). One could object that we should see/perceive without bias, or correct for the bias, but that just isn’t possible. (This doesn’t mean the attempt is worthless, just that the end goal of being an unbiased observer is a chimera.)
So while believers in God/the supernatural/etc. are wrong (in my opinion), it doesn’t follow that they are stupid or deserving of scorn.
Unfortunately, in many religions it is the shit-heads that get the attention, there is no denying that there are many Christians, Muslims, etc. deserving of scorn. But do remember that us atheists have our own home-grown shit-heads too.
>Maybe some of us just like eating meat because it tastes good, and don’t give two shits >about what the meat industry says or doesn’t say.
>Did that ever occurt to you?
Hey Dan, you may well love the taste of meat. but if you think you’re immune to the pervasive marketing propaganda and other strategies of the meat industries, which have been “telling” you you love meat since you were a kid, and your parents before you, I believe you are very wrong.
now I’m not addressing the below to you Dan in particular, but to others on this thread who seem to be claiming themselves to be some kind of rational superbeing beyond the “credulous” theists:
meat, esp. nonorganic meat, is dangerous and unhealthy. cholesterol, calories, chemicals, hormones, E. coli, nitrates, etc. industrial farming is also bad for the environment, labor, the animals, etc. given all of that, and given the importance of eating healthily, are you going to investigate your dietary habits? Or, do you have reasons for not doing so?
If one has reasons for not examining or testing one’s credulity on this important topic, I don’t see how one can blame others for not examing or testing their credulity on other important topics.
Dawn
>Unfortunately, in many religions it is the shit-heads that get the attention, there is no >denying that there are many Christians, Muslims, etc. deserving of scorn. But do >remember that us atheists have our own home-grown shit-heads too.
Terrific point, Andrew. All of us belong, formally and informally, to certain groups or cohorts, and presumably none of us would want to be judged by the shitheads within those groups.
Prominent atheist shitheads include Stalin and Mao. Let’s remember that before we revel in our own superiority.
Dawn
Referring back to the squabble above, over whether a 6-year-old can be a freethinker…
I’ve read parts of the Bible with my 6-year-old (in an “illustrated children’s bible” version). I think it’s an important part of cultural literacy – we’ve also read Norse myths and the Iliad and Odyssey for children.
She’s often asked very perceptive questions, quite without prompting, like: if God made everything, and thought it was good, why did he change his mind about the dinosaurs? That started us talking about evolution – we read a wonderful book called Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story.
Since she’s started grade school, she’s heard a lot about the Bible from evangelical classmates – she was taunted in the playground recently that she wouldn’t be snatched up into the air when the Rapture comes.
The other day, my four-year-old son was firing questions at me, like: Did God make our house? Did he make the sidewalk? 6-year-old listened for a moment, then butted in:
6yo: No one really knows if God exists, do they, Daddy?
Me: No, they don’t.
6yo: I don’t want to believe anything in the Bible.
Me: Well, some of the stories are kind of interesting to read…
6yo: But they’re not true, not like science is true.
Me: No, not true in the same way. But you could think of them like Aesop’s Fables [which we’d recently read]. We don’t really believe there was actually a fox and some grapes, but the story might give us some important things to think about…
6yo: [looking at me fiercely] No, you don’t understand, Daddy. I don’t want to believe anything in that book!
I’m very proud of her independent thinking. I’ve tried to be as even-handed as I can about religion, encouraging her to read a wide variety of mythological narratives, and thinking about the moral lessons we might get out of them (6-year-olds need stories to help them think about ethical behavior). Her wholesale rejection of the Bible doesn’t come from me – though I think she can detect my indifference to the Bible, and my much greater enthusiasm for stories about Thor… No, I think she’s smart enough (and with enough of an ethical sense already) to see that her classmates’ worldviews are scary, and completely lacking in the concern for others which she knows is important for being a good person.
yorktank,
Well, naturally I would think that you were mistaken. By “spoke to” I assume you mean that God communicated with you in addition to the other way around. I know very little about such experiences. What was the nature of this communication? I presume you didn’t hear a voice, how do you know what God said? How do you know it was God you spoke with/to and not some other supernatural entity (or nothing at all)?
Thanks,
Andrew
Maybe some people just like religion because it makes them feel good, and don’t give two shits about what so-called “rationalists” say.
Did that ever occur to you?
Actually, I’d be careful throwing the term psychopathology around in this topic. Mental illness is based on what is the norm in human psychology; atheism would be a better candidate than credulous religion.
And Caledonian, while you may truly wish with all your heart to be free of this social construct you find yourself tangled in, to ignore it in favor of your own image of a “rational” society is stupid. Regardless of how ignorant you think the poor rubes are, they overmatch you in number, value, and collective intelligence, and to insult them will not change their minds. Argumentum ad popularum may be a logical fallacy, but it is also a reasonable model of how society works, without regard to your opinion of its efficiency.
Statistical deviance is only a very small consideration. Whether a set of behaviors/beliefs leads to maladaptive strategies and emotional distress is a much bigger concern.
And given that atheists don’t:
-Fret about the “homosexual agenda”
-Fret about the “deaths” of millions of zygotes
-Fear the devil and his wily plans
-Avoid otherwise pleasurable activities out of fear god’s wrath
-Blow several hours a the week sitting in a pew
-Obsess about a violent image of a dead guy on a cross
I think that Coturnix had it right in the first place, at least for the non-trivial subset of the religious who fit the above.
Yeah, I think there is something to this. However, from my (admittedly limited) reading about religions in early civilization, I understand that they were for the most part creedless and non-exclusive (Judism being the notable exception). Religious worship mainly consisted of ritual sacrifice. The idea that religion tells you how to live your life was far from a universal idea (unless you count the fact that most kings claimed some sort of godly inspiration for their rule and laws). The idea that you have to believe in a god and obey its spiritual laws or suffer spiritual consequences (in the afterlife) doesn’t seem to have been really popular until Christianity hit the scene.
It is also not clear to me that a religion that tells you how to live you life is going to be more sucessful for psychological reasons. Christianity’s success seems to be due to its adoption by the Roman emperor and the fact that the “stoic” outlook (this life is not as important as the next life) promoted makes it friendly to totalitarian rulers.
Now, I don’t know if the continued survival of Christianity until now is primarily due to social momentum or whether there really is some structural advantage of an creed-based exclusivist religion over a universalist one. (I don’t really know how Islam fits in here for example)
Yeah, Andrew, you’re right. I was mistaken. Apparently there are extremely high levels of lead in the water cooler here at work. I told a co-worker about the experience and she informed me that it was the intercom and that everyone had heard it.
I’ll pin that sucker down one of these days, though!
What would everyone say if I told you I just spoke to God?
Not a problem until you start claiming to get an answer, but do try to do it quietly.
Since I gave up Christianity, I’ve come to regard religions, specifically Christianity, as being for people with very short attention spans. Christianity takes about five minutes to explain. Once you get passed “Christ died for your sins! If you don’t love and accept him, you’re going to be cast into a fiery lake for eternity!”, all the rest of it is details you don’t REALLY have to learn. Oh, learn them if you must, but the above really states what it’s about.
Now, let’s compare that with the study of, say, evolution. How much of it can you really understand after five minutes? Not very much, I’d say. Heck, I spent four years in college to learn Computer and Information Science. There’s not four years worth of stuff to learn about in Christianity, and I’m still learning about computers.
That’s why religion will always he held in such high esteem in this country; because a ridiculous percentage of us can’t be bothered to learn about something that takes more than five minutes to figure out.
Unless it’s sports. Then people can sit and discuss touchdowns and free-throw percentage and assist-to-turnover ratios ALL DAY LONG.
I’m going to admit to something here… I had what I can only describe as a religious experience. In about 1980, I was driving on a rainy freeway with three other people in the car, at night, in traffic, going about 60mph, and I just had “A feeling” that I HAD to move over one lane ASAP. I couldn’t see more than 150 feet. But something told me, “Move the F over, NOW.”
Well, within 1/4 mile of moving over one lane, there it was, parked in the lane I’d just vacated, a camper shell that had slid off the back of someone’s truck.
To this day, I have no explanation. I just remember that voice in my head, “Move the F over, right now.”
Weird. Spooky. I can’t explain it.
Religion is the perfect thing for our short attention-span society, though.
Paul W,
Hmm, what you say applies to me too, even though I try to separate the subject and the person. (And I overstated my case stupidly anyway, since I was mening to argue that supernatural beliefs are stupid, not religious beliefs. The latter is a subject for a philosophical treatise.)
I like your idea of making the minimal statement instead of the maximal when arguing. That avoids the rudeness issue – I think sometime you will have to be slightly rude to make them see efficiently that they are pushing their point too far, much as I said earlier. At the same time one can explain the difference between statements in the in group and the out group if necessary.
But a blog is different since in and out groups are mixed. PZ seems to solve this by being straightforward.
It was in no small part the result of listening at length to avowed atheists that I began to move from the agnostic to the theistic camp. Religous people are generally happier, healthier, and more pleasant to be around. In contrast, most of the (vocal) atheists I knew were vitriolic, neurotic individuals whose anger toward religiosity was typically fueled by some deeper personal issue. While I have no logical argument for religion or empirical evidence to support the supernatural, I like religious people better so I will side with them against the lot of you. You see, I figure there has to be something to all the chanting, swaying, and what not. Everyone, at some point, has to consider how it is they relate to the vast unknown, the infinite, the absolute, yadda yadda. At least the church folks have taken a stab at it. Whether or not you should believe in an infinite omniscient being or not can not be resolved by logical analysis. There is no a priori argument, using self-evident axioms, to be made one way or the other. Outside of such an airtight argument, you have only inference based on empirical evidence. There is no a priori argument for the logical legitimacy of any such inference (research “problem of inferrence/induction”) Or just read Hume, as someone above suggested. We just sorta bank on things playing out statistically as they have before. Not very logical when you get right down to it. Rational? Perhaps. Depends on your definition of rational. If being rational is extended beyond the logical (hint: it must be) to doing what is practical and conducive to wellbeing, then yes, it’s rational. So we are rational when we believe and behave in a way that yields useful, happy results. Religion seems to be conducive to health and happiness over the longterm. So it is rational to believe in jebus/sweet_daddy_grace/ whatever suits you. Or at least as rational as anything else is in this rather absurd existence. You foolish atheists are being thoroughly irrational. You believe in an assertion concerning existence that you can not prove, it is not a normative belief and thus results in swimming upstream, and it ultimately yields nonoptimal health. Perfectly ludicrous behavior. Literally pathological. And to think some of you admit to this madness in public. Meanwhile are plenty of internet sites offering quality religion at absolutely no cost. Some will go so far as to mail you stuff. I urge you all to come to your senses, abandon this atheistic foolishness, and sign up today.
–grrreat_ape
I’m going to admit to something here… I had what I can only describe as a religious experience. In about 1980, I was driving on a rainy freeway with three other people in the car, at night, in traffic, going about 60mph, and I just had “A feeling” that I HAD to move over one lane ASAP. I couldn’t see more than 150 feet. But something told me, “Move the F over, NOW.”
Well, within 1/4 mile of moving over one lane, there it was, parked in the lane I’d just vacated, a camper shell that had slid off the back of someone’s truck.
To this day, I have no explanation. I just remember that voice in my head, “Move the F over, right now.”
Before anyone decides that a kindly benevolent Jesus is behind such things, it might be worth noting that little old Adolf Hitler had an experience just like that. Apparently, it was during WW1, when Hitler was a corporal with the German Army. He was in the trenches, eating a quick dinner during a lull in the shelling. Apparently he was sitting down to eat with some of his kameraden, when a little voice in his head said “Get up and move over there”. So without knowing why, he got up, moved a hundred feet away, set back down, and resumed his meal. Very shortly a shell came, landed exactly where he had been sitting, killing all his friends. Hitler continued to have remarkable psychic insights about when his person was in danger for the rest of his life.
I think the explanation is clear: God does these things when we like the person, and the Devil does them when we dislike the person.
No. People like to embroider their errors with more sophisticated mistakes atop them, but the root problems are usually rather straightforward — and tediously common.
A person who reacts to critiques of their reasoning as attacks on their person that must be deflected at all costs are already incapable of entering into a rational discussion on any topic on which they hold an opinion.
We must take our intellectual strengths and weaknesses into account. Failing to do so is yet another culpable offense.
There’s the problem right there. I don’t care about winning arguments — that is a matter of social combat. I care about finding, and following, the truth. If a person doesn’t care about the truth, it doesn’t matter how much intellectual potential they possess or how many points they score for rhetorical style. If your desire to win is greater than your desire for truth, you will inevitably use effective sophistry — or at least attempt to.
NO.
Some people change their rewligion.
The classic examples are communist-to-catholic, and vice versa.
There is also this scary example ….
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2149298,00.html
grrreat_ape,
“Religous people are generally happier, healthier, and more pleasant to be around.”
I think the statistics is the other way around, actually. And secular people divorces less often, too, at least in US.
“Outside of such an airtight argument, you have only inference based on empirical evidence.”
You have triggered my strongest pet peeve. In science inference and specifically induction is tools that can suggest hypotheses, it is not used to verify theories. Verifying theories beyond reasonable doubt is much stronger, involving prior data and theories, falsification et cetera.
If you are discussing airtight claims, you are asking for a philosophical method to assert truth. It has failed. It is also not the way we use data from observations. There are a number of ways evidence support the atheist claim. And if you insist to blow up the meaning of residual doubts or possible falsification for this claim specifically, you are inconsistent with the use of other empirical knowledge.
Caledonian,
“I don’t care about winning arguments — that is a matter of social combat. I care about finding, and following, the truth. If a person doesn’t care about the truth, it doesn’t matter how much intellectual potential they possess or how many points they score for rhetorical style. If your desire to win is greater than your desire for truth, you will inevitably use effective sophistry — or at least attempt to.”
Thank you for bringing another clear view. This is really the reason I read blogs or discuss with ingroups. Since blogs are mixed in- and outgroups (and outgroups and interactions with them are also ways to get to knowledge) the conclusion I make is that use of straightforwardness is the only realistic position. Perhaps political blogs are the natural arenas for social combat and minimal argumentation since that field is more faith than fact.
grrrrr ape:
Your argument for being theistic is they are more fun?? That equates with becoming an alcohalic, because drunks are a RIOT! You paint with a pretty broad brush, my dear, to say atheists are all angry. I would have to say by terms of definition, then the religious zealots are entirely more prejudicial and intolerant.
And George Cauldron:
What scientific basis do you have that this experience was “religious” in nature? I have had these things happen a few times in my life, some that extreme, some prescience of a fairly mundane nature. While any discussion on anything remotely metaphysical can lead to the desired conclusion of the one whom it happens to…..the best my limited thought process has come up with in my case is this:
Our higher thought processes take place in our cerebral corteex, of which we commonly use about 10%. Thought is electrical in nature. There is always the possibility that some receptionary capabilities are as yet to be discovered. Ok, tinfoil hat time…but just as plausible as divine intervention.
If the divine wanted to keep you from a car wreck, wtf doesnt it stop millions of dying, staving people worldwide?
Are we just more worthy, or perhaps a little more evolved??? I pick B! LOL
I always try to be as kind and polite as possible with religious believers, even when I’m disagreeing with them. It’s harder for them to dismiss you as a “whackjob” if you’re behaviour is more respectfuland, (dare I say it?) Christlike than theirs.
Doesn’t mean I’ll turn the other cheek forever. I stand my ground and if I’m pissed off you’ll certainly know about it, but I won’t throw the first stone.
This was interesting:
“most of the (vocal) atheists I knew were vitriolic, neurotic individuals whose anger toward religiosity was typically fueled by some deeper personal issue.” grrreat_ape,
I think you’ll find a lot of atheists are people like me who were turned off of religion initially by the rudeness, smugness, hypocrisy and intolerance of many of the religious people we met. I grew up in a religious home (my father wanted me to become a minister), and I still have profound respect for people like my parents who take a thoughtful, compassionate approach to their faith, but I gradually came to see that faith was no guarantee of compassion or thoughfulness. My parents are the way they are because that’s the kind of people they are, not because faith made them that way, and I know too many kind, compassionate atheists and too many cruel, arrrogant Christians to think that faith, or the lack of it, makes a big difference either way.
Most of the atheists I know are like me; we’re quiet about our the shedding of our faith, so don’t make the mistake of thinking that the loudest voices are all that’s out there. I know that most believers aren’t like the ones who turned me away from religion, you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that atheists are all neurotic whackjobs.
Sincerely
A Hermit
What scientific basis do you have that this experience was “religious” in nature?
“Absolutely none!”, he answered cheerfully.
I make no statements as to what causes these things. I merely point out that they happen to many many people. (Not me, tho.) Natch, if it isn’t religious, that gets around the inconvenient dilemma of why God would have been ‘protecting’ Hitler during World War 1. :-)
“Our higher thought processes take place in our cerebral corteex, of which we commonly use about 10%.”
AFAIK this is an urban myth, see for example http://staff.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html or other googleable sites. I believe it has been shown that the brain is energy restricted, but that all parts are engaged sooner or later. The best we can say is that if parts of the brain dies early on, which I believe is possible, the child can make up for most, possibly all, of that.
On second thought, I’m not sure my lane-changing story was religious at all. More like, “No rational explanation”, which doesn’t fully satisfy me. At no point did I feel like Jesus or Lord Buddha or any other deity was reaching me. I just had a nagging feeling that I urgently needed to change lanes, so I did.
It could have simply been a coincidence.
It brings me no closer to believing, but if I told this story to a pastor or priest, he or she would ask me what more proof do I need. My answer would be something like, “Um, a lot.”
My apologies to those of you who were angered by my insinuation that most atheists are angry.
I thought it was clear that I was only speaking toward my subjective experience. I know of no objective surveys on the matter, but perhaps they exist. Do let me know.
Yes, many religious folk are abnoxious, vindictive, etc. Some even have the rather annoying having of blowing themselves up in crowded places. On the whole, however, in my experience, they are less neurotic and generally more pleasant to be around.
Torbjörn Larsson,
Every study on the matter that I have come across in the last few years (at least in the popular press) contradicts your statement that secular folks fair better healthwise than the religious. As for marriages, I have not read anything and I would interested in seeing such data.
Also:
I did not intend to suggest that scientific theories/hypotheses were proven through inference/induction.
They are, as you suggested, established beyond a reasonable doubt via hypothesis formation (via inference) and deductive elimination based on empirical data. Nevertheless, our entire scientific enterprise–of which I’m a big fan and active participant–ultimately rests on the inference that our natural unviverse will be a properly behaved universe and continue to behave in a manner consistent with previous observations. In so much as this inference is not “logical” per se, as the philosophical underpinnings of induction are shaky, it is only rational in the sense that rational means practical and conducive to well-being. As there appear to be multiple empirical studies–I welcome specific evidence to the contrary–that participating in religion produces positive health benefits, then one could say that such belief and participation is, in fact, rational. It has been suggested multiple times in this thread that the secular position is equivalent to the rational position. I would like for people to rationally consider whether or not this claim holds true.
stand corrected on the 10% thing (she adds sheepishly hanging her head) I do know better, just spouted off…regardless, we do not know the brains full potential.
I just felt it was more logical to suggest a scientific uknown to a Holy Interfence!
I dont know about a loving GOD, but having a loving DOG is fine by me. Peace
grrreat_ape,
We are at a standoff I guess, because I can’t find my statistics and you don’t present yours. About the marriage stuff i think it was here on Pharyngula.
Diane,
Aawww, I didn’t mean to make you feel sheepish. I recently learned this myself, so a month ago you could have told me.
As one of my psych profs glossed it, if we used a much higher percentage of our neurons at one time, we’d be having seizures. If we used most of them, they’d probably be fatal seizures. Not recommended.
I think that you can get by with about half the usual amount of brain tissue without any noticeable cognitive impairment, if your brain develops that way rather than being damaged later in the game.
There was a student at the U of Chicago who, it turned out, had a head mostly full of cerebrospinal fluid. (Due to a mild case of hydrocephaly that had gone undiagnosed since infancy.) Her brain was just a half-inch layer lining the inside of her slightly-enlarged skull. Apparently it wired itself up fine despite being a hollow ball with about half the usual mass, and she was an honor student.