Testing the strength of your Atheism

[AFTT47]

Yup, makes sense. It was a complex question.

[Animated Earth]

I'm not sure. I can see that giving a crap about your own existence is not rational; it is emotional. Given that you DO care, taking action to protect your existence becomes rational. But you didn't answer my example about a simple creature like an ant; you only quoted it.

I think it is safe to say that simple creatures like ants are pretty hard-wired in whatever they do. The urges/instincts we experience are - and I'm going out on a limb here as I'm not a biologist, neurologist or psychologist - probably what happens if this hard-wiring gets paired with a high-powered independent brain in the course of evolution. Many of these functions can be overridden by conscious efforts now, even breathing, so this instinctive drive has to be somehow implemented into the workings of this apparatus which we call the conscious part of our mind. I conjecture that the urges and emotions we feel which lead us to do basic things like keep safe, eat and produce and take care of offspring, are exactly what this implementation of formerly hard-wired urges into the mind looks like "from the inside". Does that make sense?

I think that is broadly correct. Of course we don't just have the one brain...our brain is composed of sub-brains, if you will, which inter-communicate and act somewhat independently. This guy has some excellent books and YouTube videos on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran

As our conscience perception is a subset of our whole brain function it is no wonder that we experience emotions and intuitions...signals from other parts. A sense of religious "connection" or intuition, I conclude, is a misattribution of internally generated signals. The misattribution being the conscious conclusion that the sensation is externally generated.

[FlyingNarwhal]

When I hear "Testing the strength of you're atheism" I imagine Dawkins doing a Rosie the Riveter-esque pose.

[Alex K]

Love Ramachandran!

[xr34p3rx]

Say you were in building in an earthquake zone and a large earthquake struck.
You were buried and in great pain as concrete trapped your legs and arms.
The hours went by and you heard some activity outside.

As days then passed without any rescue would you then decide to pray
to be rescued as a kinda last resort as the pain increased even more?

As weird as this might sound, the first thing that would pop in my mind is something like "Its about god damn time i die! lol!". I'm a person who doesn't really enjoy life...? (even as a christian i was suicidal). So i would be exited to die and see what is at the other end of the tunnel.

[Mr.wizard]

Say you were in building in an earthquake zone and a large earthquake struck.
You were buried and in great pain as concrete trapped your legs and arms.
The hours went by and you heard some activity outside.

As days then passed without any rescue would you then decide to pray
to be rescued as a kinda last resort as the pain increased even more?

Pray to the same god that just sent an earthquake and buried me alive?