Could you expand on why this is?
Edited: Also, I read your whole comment but not still sure. Could you give me an example?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Scientists discover that atheists might not exist
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Could you expand on why this is?
Edited: Also, I read your whole comment but not still sure. Could you give me an example?
Feel free to correct me, but I am beginning to get a sense that he means that what actually makes people believe or doubt the existence of deities is usually outside their control, even if we don't consciously realize that.
Doesn't quite mesh for me.
It conflates us having a naturally metaphysical outlook with atheism not being real. That is a strange equation, to my mind.
Perhaps what they mean is hardcore materialism isn't natural to us?
Even if something is 'unnatural' though, it doesn't make it untrue, nor mean that my rational brain is wrong.
Regardless, I'm the wrong person to respond, since I find a lot of the beliefs they are suggesting are common amongst atheists are quite foreign to me personally...
Ultimately, though, I have no issue with a view that atheism might not be a 'natural' position for humans, and is instead a rational one. Just not convinced this article does much to promote or evidence that.
Well determinism makes sense. Everything has cause and effect, at least that seems to be the way the observable works.
That would mean every decision you make was cause by something that happen before, which intern was cause by a prior event.
So parents, culture, environment, teachers, books you read, ethical ideas, people you admire/wish to imitate. Now of course genetics as well. All being the cause with your choice being the effect of all of those causes.
The question arises you being who you are, cause by all of these influences, could you actually have made any decision different then the one you made.
If not then was there an actual choice involved. In this case does one choose to be an atheist or believer or is it the result of sub-conscious influences which we rationalize we actually had any control over.
IOW did an Atheist choose to be an Atheist or was it the the only choice that was possible for them to make. Could they choose to be a believer it they wanted to? Or is that option impossible for them to choose?
Certainly one could give it lip-service but to truly believe?
I didn't agree totally with the article myself. More interested in whether Atheism is a real choice. Could you choose to be a "true believer" if you wanted to?
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
Nonsensical drivel.
It is not new information to students of the human mind that we are predisposed to "magickal" thought processes.
Does not mean we are incapable of realising that they are inherently irrational and moving beyond them.
I think some started a thread about this a couple of weeks ago.
It is not new information to students of the human mind that we are predisposed to "magickal" thought processes.
Does not mean we are incapable of realising that they are inherently irrational and moving beyond them.
I think some started a thread about this a couple of weeks ago.
I haven't. Walking around in my house at night without lights on, I still feel like some monster is going to jump out at me from any doorway.
From an evolutionary perspective, we're supposed to be afraid of the dark. That's when the monsters come out. (I know, while safe in our houses, they're just animals; bears, panthers, tigers, etc.; trying to survive and probably feed their own children, but when you're alone in the woods at night, they're monsters.) When we're children, the monsters are going to eat us. When we're adults, the monsters are going to eat our children.
No, I don't think I could, and I'd agree on the face of it that this indicates atheism (or theism) isn't a choice.
However, I can choose my information sources. I can choose who I associate with. I'd suggest that indirectly I can effect my atheism or non-atheism, at least to some degree, and at least at some stages of my life.
samosasauce
Active Member
That's a very interesting article. I'd want to learn a lot more about the subject before coming to any conclusions myself. But the belief that there's got to be something more than just the materialism of our lives seems like a generally accepted concept, whether what's bigger is God, love, spirits, karma, etc.
Yeah, kinda.
But I don't believe in anything 'bigger'. The only thing I'd agree is that we don't know everything, so I don't count myself a hardcore materialist.
I also don't WANT to know everything, in some cases. For example, I'm not sure breaking 'love' down into it's componentry is going to improve my life. I do think it could be broken down (even if not by us at our current technological level).
Triumphant_Loser
Libertarian Egalitarian
This article is probably every Calvinist's wet dream.
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
WOW! The title of the article says "Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and thats not a joke" and yet the author doesn't give a single citation to a study that even addresses the question!
And in passing notes as a given fact that "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." And again no citation to any study whatsoever, merely one statement from no body."
This guy does nothing but take half a dozen comments from completely different disciplines from across the globe and builds what seems to be a monumental case, in his mind.
They are wise in choosing not to support such drivel. People might want to check their sources if they supplied any, after all.
I'm not exactly sure if I'm following. I believe you are saying that their is no choice hence no free willl?
I firmly believe in free will because the laws of the very small behaves in probability. It's not deterministic. I don't believe in a God, but if God created our composition to behave in probability so we also behave in an in-deterministic way.
Skwim
Veteran Member
If you're talking about the lack of determinism at the quantum level and how it impacts free will, please consider the following by Erik Tegmark:*
"Quantum mind and free will
"The main argument against the quantum mind proposition is that quantum states in the brain would decohere before they reached a spatial or temporal scale, at which they could be useful for neural processing. Michael Price, for example, says that quantum effects rarely or never affect human decisions and that classical physics determines the behaviour of neurons."
source
*Max Erik Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist. Tegmark is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the scientific director of the Foundational Questions Institute."The main argument against the quantum mind proposition is that quantum states in the brain would decohere before they reached a spatial or temporal scale, at which they could be useful for neural processing. Michael Price, for example, says that quantum effects rarely or never affect human decisions and that classical physics determines the behaviour of neurons."
source
Alceste
Vagabond
The headline makes a rather absolutist claim that the content of the article does not affirm.
"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"
In what confused mind is this a "puzzle"? Obviously, 62% of respondents were either atheists or agnostic atheists, and the other 38% were agnostic theists. D'uh. And later,
"In the US, only 20 per cent of people have no religious affiliation, but of these, only one in ten say they are atheists."
This is a needlessly fancy way of saying 2% of Americans are religiously unaffiliated atheists. Bundling these unrelated stats together not-so-subtly suggests these atheists are not really atheists. Except that 2% of Americans are, according to that very sentence.What a mess.
"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"
In what confused mind is this a "puzzle"? Obviously, 62% of respondents were either atheists or agnostic atheists, and the other 38% were agnostic theists. D'uh. And later,
"In the US, only 20 per cent of people have no religious affiliation, but of these, only one in ten say they are atheists."
This is a needlessly fancy way of saying 2% of Americans are religiously unaffiliated atheists. Bundling these unrelated stats together not-so-subtly suggests these atheists are not really atheists. Except that 2% of Americans are, according to that very sentence.What a mess.
Well, this splash of cold water. Hmmm, I'm going to have dig deeper into this now. Thank you for that tid-bit.
I've always felt free-will was the best proposition for everyone, well mostly for myself at least. One, I can't blame my unhappiness on anyone else or concepts. It is up to me to make myself happy. To say that I have no choice is saying I have no choice to be sad and have a miserable life if that were to happen. Two, who do you blame then when someone like Hitler comes along? Some one or thing was pulling his strings so you can't blame him but that other some one or thing?
Alceste
Vagabond
Nah, the writer is just making a very retarded leap that any kind of metaphysical or magical thinking or behaviour is "theism", whether or not it has anything to do with god/s.