Scientists: sorry, atheists, you don't exist

[LukeinNE]

Provocative title aside, this isn't about religion, or even atheism as we tend to think about it, and certainly not about who's right or wrong on the existence of God or whatever. It's a long article (and I do encourage you to read it all), but here's the summary:

 

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 outlandish—after all, it seems easy to decide not to believe in God—evidence 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 shouldn’t 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”.

 

 

As I interpret what they're saying (again: read the whole article), this is much less about atheism as we think about it (not believing in a higher power) than what I'd call maybe logically consistent atheism, that is, thinking and behaving in ways that are 100% consistent with the idea that humans are just sentient carbon life forms that sprang up on some random rock in the universe as little more than a cosmic accident without ever indulging in spiritual or metaphysical thoughts in any way, shape or form. The article's case is that this is impossible.

 

Anyway, I thought it was interesting enough to be worth sharing.

[AR Husker Fan]

In a way, I agree with the basic premise, but disagree with the alleged causation - that "we are born believers". Actually, I think it's a natural part of sentience coupled with the level of intelligence of man. That is, we are aware of ourselves. We are curious and have the intellect to ask "WHY". We want to know why everything is - why the sun comes up in the east and sets in the west, why the sky is blue, why the wind blows. Every child drives adults crazy asking those questions. That, naturally, leads us to trying to explain...which leads to making up answers when we can't know the actual cause. A thousand or two thousand years ago, we attributed our existence to multiple gods that lived on at the top of mountains we could not scale. No real evidence of that - but we had the need to create a reason for our existence. The only difference is that other gods have become fashionable, and we no longer believe in the earlier gods of Zeus or Odin. We looked up at the stars and asked what they were, and then "explained" them using concepts familiar to us based on our knowledge at the time - which was damn little. Thus, stars became lights placed in the sky by gods - the "gods" part was necessary for two reasons. First, we were unable to comprehend anything coming into existence without some kind of intervention by some kind of being. Second, to explain how these beings were capable of such a feat. So, we created a race of beings that had powers beyond our comprehension.

 

That hasn't changed - the only thing that has changed is the description of those gods. Again, at one time it was Zeus or Odin or their like. But if you take a dispassionate, purely intellectual look at it, those gods are really no different from the current gods in favor. Neither has any real evidence of proof. Yet people want to believe. Why? Well...

 

Our sentience makes us conscious of our own existence and, more importantly, our mortality. We don't want to die, so we conjure up ways to make that fear have less finality. We envision - again, with no real, demonstrable, replicable evidence - that there is some kind of existence after our death. For most, the alternative is too grim - we have an inability to conceive our own finality. Yes, we know we are going to die, but we don't want to believe it, and we can't really envision the finality of death. But to envision some kind of post-death existence, we also need to believe there is some creature out there that provides that existence.

[strigori]

Everything in that article has no relation to actual science. Everything is anecdotal. The jumps that because some atheists and agnostics have some sort of metaphysical belief does not instantly equate to 'god' Particularly when nearly every single one of them would have been raised in and around religious people. The level of indoctrination people receive from birth eliminates a 'control group' making any real observations and conclusions, by definition, flawed.

[knapplc]

This is not an article based on science, it's a bunch of anecdotal points strung together to pretend to be science. "Scientists say..." is not a citation of a source, it's hearsay.

 

This isn't that surprising, since the author isn't a scientist, nor has he conducted any scientific study. He's a children's book author and "blogger of the absurd." www.misterjam.com

[NUance]

This is not an article based on science, it's a bunch of anecdotal points strung together to pretend to be science. "Scientists say..." is not a citation of a source, it's hearsay.

 

This isn't that surprising, since the author isn't a scientist, nor has he conducted any scientific study. He's a children's book author and "blogger of the absurd." www.misterjam.com

.

 

http://mrjam.typepad.com/

[knapplc]

I saw that. The author has an eccentric sense of humor.

 

Kinda reminded me of the blurb on the back of one of Berke Breathed's Bloom County books:

 

Raised a vegetarian in postwar Croatia near the River Dungh, an unschooled and unkempt Berke Breathed began drawing and selling his humorous sketches of the local kelp divers as a way to supplement his family's meager income from fishing. Arriving on the shores of South Carolina during the infamous Myrtle Beach boatlift of 1964, the young artist wandered the eastern cost of this country earning money by carving nude caricatures of local politicians out of tar balls until 1979, when he was discovered by Al Leeds, then a night janitor at the Washington Post Writers Group.

 

Introduced in 1980, Bloom County is now read in over 6,700 daily and college newspapers all over the world...nearly but not quite as many as Nancy. A major motion picture based on the comic, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Prince, Yoda and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Opus, is set to be released in time for Christmas 1986.

 

Boasting a catalog of over 3300 lines of licensed Bloom County merchandise in addition to two best-selling cartoon anthologies published by a company who is normally above such things, Berke Breathed is easily earning well into eight figures and consequently has the commercial clout to permit him the rare privilege of writing, unedited, the promotional notes on the back of his books.