TheRussianRocket. Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 *Looking for a meaningful discussion without any hate or emotion. Please give the article a read before any comments are made and try not to start a fight. If you can't do this, don't bother posting and stirring the discussion off topic, thanks.*http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982 Metaphysical thought processes are more deeply wired than hitherto suspected WHILE MILITANT ATHEISTS like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesnt exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find that atheists might not exist. Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged. While this idea may seem outlandishafter all, it seems easy to decide not to believe in Godevidence from several disciplines indicates that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself. Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone. This line of thought has led to some scientists claiming that atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think, says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul. This shouldnt come as a surprise, since we are born believers, not atheists, scientists say. Humans are pattern-seekers from birth, with a belief in karma, or cosmic justice, as our default setting. A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith, writes Pascal Boyer in Nature, the science journal, adding that people are only aware of some of their religious ideas. INTERNAL MONOLOGUES Scientists have discovered that invisible friends are not something reserved for children. We all have them, and encounter them often in the form of interior monologues. As we experience events, we mentally tell a non-present listener about it. The imagined listener may be a spouse, it may be Jesus or Buddha or it may be no one in particular. Its just how the way the human mind processes facts. The identity, tangibility or existence of the listener is irrelevant. From childhood, people form enduring, stable and important relationships with fictional characters, imaginary friends, deceased relatives, unseen heroes and fantasized mates, says Boyer of Washington University, himself an atheist. This feeling of having an awareness of another consciousness might simply be the way our natural operating system works. PUZZLING RESPONSES These findings may go a long way to explaining a series of puzzles in recent social science studies. In the United States, 38% of people who identified themselves as atheist or agnostic went on to claim to believe in a God or a Higher Power (Pew Forum, Religion and the Unaffiliated, 2012). While the UK is often defined as an irreligious place, a recent survey by Theos, a think tank, found that very few peopleonly 13 per cent of adultsagreed with the statement humans are purely material beings with no spiritual element. For the vast majority of us, unseen realities are very present. When researchers asked people whether they had taken part in esoteric spiritual practices such as having a Reiki session or having their aura read, the results were almost identical (between 38 and 40%) for people who defined themselves as religious, non-religious or atheist. The implication is that we all believe in a not dissimilar range of tangible and intangible realities. Whether a particular brand of higher consciousness is included in that list (I believe in God, I believe in some sort of higher force, I believe in no higher consciousness) is little more than a detail. Starry Night at La Silla EVOLUTIONARY PURPOSES If a tendency to believe in the reality of an intangible network is so deeply wired into humanity, the implication is that it must have an evolutionary purpose. Social scientists have long believed that the emotional depth and complexity of the human mind means that mindful, self-aware people necessarily suffer from deep existential dread. Spiritual beliefs evolved over thousands of years as natures way to help us balance this out and go on functioning. If a loved one dies, even many anti-religious people usually feel a need for a farewell ritual, complete with readings from old books and intoned declarations that are not unlike prayers. In war situations, commanders frequently comment that atheist soldiers pray far more than they think they do. Statistics show that the majority of people who stop being part of organized religious groups dont become committed atheists, but retain a mental model in which The Universe somehow has a purpose for humanity. In the US, only 20 per cent of people have no religious affiliation, but of these, only one in ten say they are atheists. The majority are nothing in particular according to figures published in New Scientist. FEELING OF CONNECTEDNESS There are other, more socially-oriented evolutionary purposes, too. Religious communities grow faster, since people behave better (referring to the general majority over the millennia, as opposed to minority extremists highlighted by the media on any given day). Why is this so? Religious folk attend weekly lectures on morality, read portions of respected books about the subject on a daily basis and regularly discuss the subject in groups, so it would be inevitable that some of this guidance sinks in. There is also the notion that the presence of an invisible moralistic presence makes misdemeanors harder to commit. People who think they are being watched tend to behave themselves and cooperate more, says the New Scientists Lawton. Societies that chanced on the idea of supernatural surveillance were likely to have been more successful than those that didn't, further spreading religious ideas. This is not simply a matter of religious folk having a metaphorical angel on their shoulder, dispensing advice. It is far deeper than thata sense of interconnectivity between all things. If I commit a sin, it is not an isolated event but will have appropriate repercussions. This idea is common to all large scale faith groups, whether it is called karma or simply God ensuring that you reap what you sow. NARRATIVE PRESENCE These theories find confirmation from a very different academic disciplinethe literature department. The present writer, based at the Creativity Lab at Hong Kong Polytechnic Universitys School of Design, has been looking at the manifestation of cosmic justice in fictional narrativesbooks, movies and games. It is clear that in almost all fictional worlds, God exists, whether the stories are written by people of a religious, atheist or indeterminate beliefs. Its not that a deity appears directly in tales. It is that the fundamental basis of stories appears to be the link between the moral decisions made by the protagonists and the same characters ultimate destiny. The payback is always appropriate to the choices made. An unnamed, unidentified mechanism ensures that this is so, and is a fundamental element of storiesperhaps the fundamental element of narratives. In childrens stories, this can be very simple: the good guys win, the bad guys lose. In narratives for older readers, the ending is more complex, with some lose ends left dangling, and others ambiguous. Yet the ultimate appropriateness of the ending is rarely in doubt. If a tale ended with Harry Potter being tortured to death and the Dursley family dancing on his grave, the audience would be horrified, of course, but also puzzled: thats not what happens in stories. Similarly, in a tragedy, we would be surprised if King Lears cruelty to Cordelia did not lead to his demise. Indeed, it appears that stories exist to establish that there exists a mechanism or a personcosmic destiny, karma, God, fate, Mother Natureto make sure the right thing happens to the right person. Without this overarching moral mechanism, narratives become records of unrelated arbitrary events, and lose much of their entertainment value. In contrast, the stories which become universally popular appear to be carefully composed records of cosmic justice at work. WELL-DEFINED PROCESS In manuals for writers (see Screenplay by Syd Field, for example) this process is often defined in some detail. Would-be screenwriters are taught that during the build-up of the story, the villain can sin (take unfair advantages) to his or her hearts content without punishment, but the heroic protagonist must be karmically punished for even the slightest deviation from the path of moral rectitude. The hero does eventually win the fight, not by being bigger or stronger, but because of the choices he makes. This process is so well-established in narrative creation that the literati have even created a specific category for the minority of tales which fail to follow this pattern. They are known as bleak narratives. An example is A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry, in which the likable central characters suffer terrible fates while the horrible faceless villains triumph entirely unmolested. While some bleak stories are well-received by critics, they rarely win mass popularity among readers or moviegoers. Stories without the appropriate outcome mechanism feel incomplete. The purveyor of cosmic justice is not just a cast member, but appears to be the hidden heart of the show. ROOTS OF ATHEISM But if a belief in cosmic justice is natural and deeply rooted, the question arises: where does atheism fit in? Albert Einstein, who had a life-long fascination with metaphysics, believed atheism came from a mistaken belief that harmful superstition and a general belief in religious or mystical experience were the same thing, missing the fact that evolution would discard unhelpful beliefs and foster the growth of helpful ones. He declared himself not a Freethinker in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition (Einstein on Peace, page 510). Similarly, Charles Darwin, in a meeting with a campaigner for atheism in September 1881, distanced himself from the views of his guest, finding them too aggressive. In the latter years of his life, he offered his premises for the use of the local church minister and changed his family schedule to enable his children to attend services. SMALL DIFFERENCES Of course these findings do not prove that it is impossible to stop believing in God. What they do indicate, quite powerfully, is that we may be fooling ourselves if we think that we are making the key decisions about what we believe, and if we think we know how deeply our views pervade our consciousnesses. It further suggests that the difference between the atheist and the non-atheist viewpoint is much smaller than probably either side perceives. Both groups have consciousnesses which create for themselves realities which include very similar tangible and intangible elements. It may simply be that their awareness levels and interpretations of certain surface details differ. THE FUTURE But as higher levels of education spread, will starry-eyed spirituality die out and cooler, drier atheism sweep the field, as some atheism campaigners suggest? Some specialists feel this is unlikely. If godlessness flourishes where there is stability and prosperity, then climate change and environmental degradation could seriously slow the spread of atheism, says Lawton in New Scientist. On a more personal level, we all have loved ones who will die, and we all have a tendency to puzzle about what consciousness is, whether it is separate from the brain, and whether it can survive. We will always have existential dread with usat a personal or societal level. So the need for periods of contemplative calm in churches or temples or other places devoted to the ineffable and inexplicable will remain. They appear to be part of who we are as humans. Furthermore, every time we read a book or watch a movie, we are reinforcing our default belief in the eventual triumph of karma. While there is certainly growth in the number of bleak narratives being produced, it is difficult to imagine them becoming the majority form of cultural entertainment. Most of us will skip Cormac McCarthys crushingly depressing The Road in favor of the newest Pixar movie. POPULATION IMPLICATIONS When looking at trends, theres also population growth to consider. Western countries are moving away from the standard family model, and tend to obsess over topics such as same-sex marriage and abortion on demand. Whatever the rights and wrongs of these issues, in practice they are associated with shrinking populations. Europeans (and the Japanese) are not having enough children to replace the adult generation, and are seeing their communities shrink on a daily basis. Africans and South Asians, on the other hand, are generally religious and retain the traditional model of multi-child familieswhich may be old-fashioned from a Western point of view, but its a model powerfully sanctioned by the evolutionary urge to extend the gene pool. Its clearly the case that the future will involve an increase in religious populations and a decrease in scepticism, says Steve Jones, a professor in genetics at University College London, speaking at the Hay Festival in the UK recently. This may appear as bad news for pro-atheism campaigners. But for the evolutionary life-force which may actually make the decisions, this may augur well for the continued existence of humanity. (An image of Richard Dawkins and his selfish gene having a testy argument over dinner springs to mind.) In the meantime, it might be wise for religious folks to refrain from teasing atheist friends who accidentally say something about their souls. And it might be equally smart for the more militant of todays atheists to stop teasing religious people at all. We might all be a little more spiritual than we think. I apologize for merely quoting people, journalism-style, and not providing academic-style citations. I write for the popular press quite a lot, and my reading of Science 2.0 led me to think that it was better suited to a magazine style than an academic journal format. But for anyone else who wants more, heres the data. In my article at the top, youll find references to pieces in the New Scientist and Nature, the Theos survey, the Pew Forum, Einstein on Peace, and Steve Jonesall of these are easy to find. If you have trouble, contact me for links. And heres the further reading list for anyone wanting to pursue the topics. For a general overview, look at The Science of Religious Beliefs by Justin L. Barrett, Jonathan A. Lanman, which came out maybe six or seven years ago. For background, look at Paul Blooms 2004 book Descartes Baby. This has interesting material arguing that developmental psychologists recognize that very young children are measurably prone to essentialismthe idea that things and people have essences. And this was an interesting paper on karma and cosmic justice: What goes around comes around: The evolutionary roots of the belief in immanent justice, by Baumard, N.&Chevallier, C (Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2012). Im intrigued by the work of Timothy Fitzgerald who wrote an Oxford University Press book a few years ago, I forget the title, arguing that religions are non-existing objects (i.e., they are natural.) For the other side of the debate, a piece that leans towards the naturalism of atheism was: Religion is natural, atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong, by Armin W. Geertz and Gudmundur Markusson. If you are based at a university or research lab, most of these are available through databases. If you have trouble finding them, drop me a note and Ill see if I can get them for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dral Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jägermeister Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 No, that article was definitely a joke. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gross-Misconduct Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Ok, so lets se if I get this... Atheists scientists that really exist say that atheists might not exist in research that does exist by atheist scientists that might not actually exist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRussianRocket. Posted August 10, 2014 Author Share Posted August 10, 2014 Nothing's written in stone. Title says "might", it's just a perspective. I thought the read was interesting tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gross-Misconduct Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Nothing's written in stone. Title says "might", it's just a perspective. I thought the read was interesting tbh. Not really. Kinda nonsensical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRussianRocket. Posted August 10, 2014 Author Share Posted August 10, 2014 Eh it's not as bad an article as the click bait title suggests. It's basically saying that majority of the people that consider themselves outside of religion still have a notion of spirituality and agnosticism. Pretty much. I don't know what got on the nerves of others lol. Was just a cool read I had and thought I'd share here. Thanks for reading it...seems the others didn't for whatever reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GLASSJAW Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Nothing's written in stone. Title says "might", it's just a perspective. I thought the read was interesting tbh. how do you DISCOVER something that MIGHT exist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Grimes Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 I think, therefore, I am. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CALGARY! Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 That was a neat read, without battling vs Atheism I'll leave it at that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheRussianRocket. Posted August 10, 2014 Author Share Posted August 10, 2014 how do you DISCOVER something that MIGHT exist? It's discovering something that might not exist and it's explained in the article. Title is worded funny, I know but whatever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostViking Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 The article draws on the idea that what we believe consciously may be different than what we believe subconsciously, and that the choices we make may have been subconsciously already made for us. The article then greatly extrapolates that idea to suggest that humans are hardwired towards some form of spirituality. This is an interesting idea, but despite the efforts of the author to argue the contrary, I believe it has far greater ramifications for theists than atheists. If there is a deep rooted spirituality, this revelation would still lack a clear connection to any deity, it could simply be something we developed as we naturally evolved due to it being useful to helping us to survive. On the other hand, the implications for theists could be massive. It could mean there is no ability to choose to be of faith. Many believe that they gain special privilege in the eyes of their deity in exchange for their beliefs, and this could be rendered obsolete. Since the concept of free will in worship and faith is the cornerstone of all major religions, this would complicate things, all belief would essentially become meaningless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gross-Misconduct Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 The article draws on the idea that what we believe consciously may be different than what we believe subconsciously, and that the choices we make may have been subconsciously already made for us. The article then greatly extrapolates that idea to suggest that humans are hardwired towards some form of spirituality. This is an interesting idea, but despite the efforts of the author to argue the contrary, I believe it has far greater ramifications for theists than atheists. If there is a deep rooted spirituality, this revelation would still lack a clear connection to any deity, it could simply be something we developed as we naturally evolved due to it being useful to helping us to survive.On the other hand, the implications for theists could be massive. It could mean there is no ability to choose to be of faith. Many believe that they gain special privilege in the eyes of their deity in exchange for their beliefs, and this could be rendered obsolete. Since the concept of free will in worship and faith is the cornerstone of all major religions, this would complicate things, all belief would essentially become meaningless. This is a good post. But, even though I don't like to stereotype, I doubt a lot of the religious flock sitting in the pews would comprehend what you just said there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Ambien Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 I think if we weren't such a militant group on these discussions we could have a bit of fun with this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VICanucksfan5551 Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 What a really crappy article. The author is defining "atheism" to encompass things that have nothing to do with belief in the existence of a deity. Essentially, he's trying to stretch the definition of the word to the point of meaninglessness. It also has absolutely no links to any of its sources, but a lot of the quotes and references are structured in a way that make me highly suspicious of quote mining and mischaracterization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILL BILL NECRO Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gross-Misconduct Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Ambien Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Then Gage Creed was hit by a semi truck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-AJ- Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 Interesting article, thanks for posting. It seems to me that the writer is a bit biased towards theism or at least deism. It appears as if the article was meant to appear unbiased, but failed to appear as such. Regardless, I still found it interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bure to Mogilny Posted August 10, 2014 Share Posted August 10, 2014 *Looking for a meaningful discussion without any hate or emotion. Please give the article a read before any comments are made and try not to start a fight. If you can't do this, don't bother posting and stirring the discussion off topic, thanks.*http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982 Thanks for shareing! A good read hopefuly opens some minds! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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