I feel like a lot of the wording was intentionally used to make the guys point. I think it's more his opinion with a little science sprinkled in.

I'm pretty sure I still exist.

I found the Nature article but you have to login or pay for it to actually read it. The link proves that it exists, though.

Being human: Religion: Bound to believe?

Not all atheists are critical thinkers or interested in how the human brain works. If they get vague feelings of things like a higher power, karma or life after death they aren't going to analyse them and ask what's going on in their unconscious mind.

It's all too easy for humans to substitute an ideology for religion and a cult of personality for a cult of a deity. It's the same drive with a different focus.

(July 24, 2014 at 8:09 am)Insanity Wrote: I feel like a lot of the wording was intentionally used to make the guys point. I think it's more his opinion with a little science sprinkled in.

I'm pretty sure I still exist.

It's paragraphs like this that make me agree with you:

Quote: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 nature’s way to help us balance this out and go on functioning.

Ok, I don't think anyone here disagrees that the propensity to believe in something (such as a god or deities) has an evolutionary story.

But the author completely misses his own point in this statement. Spiritualism has evolved as a way to allow us to "go on functioning". Ok, so what happens when we reach a stage in our own evolution as a species, and perhaps as an individual, where we no longer require a spiritual explanation for events? Say, when we discover that the sun is actually a big ball of hydrogen that is fusing to create other elements and generate copious amounts of energy rather than an actual deity?

This also annoyed me a little:

Quote: 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.

Since when does reading form old books or having a farewell ritual equate to religion, a 'god', or even spirituality? Subtly putting in "not unlike prayers" screams bias and the author forming a conclusion based on his own perspective and is thus, for me, conjecture. I also would expect, of all places, for the author to cite which commanders have said soldiers who are atheists pray more "than they think they do". I know a couple of servicemen who are atheists and I'm not sure this sort of patronisation would go down to well with them, especially considering a recent article written by a soldier in Afghanistan about how he dealt with being an atheist in a country surrounded by theists: http://rationalist.org.uk/2684/last-post

The fact that the article is replete with these inconsistencies that even a novice like me can highlight and question suggests that there is something faulty with it. I think it actually does a disservice to the real articles it cites.

(July 24, 2014 at 8:20 am)Confused Ape Wrote: I found the Nature article but you have to login or pay for it to actually read it. The link proves that it exists, though.

Being human: Religion: Bound to believe?

Not all atheists are critical thinkers or interested in how the human brain works. If they get vague feelings of things like a higher power, karma or life after death they aren't going to analyse them and ask what's going on in their unconscious mind.

It's all too easy for humans to substitute an ideology for religion and a cult of personality for a cult of a deity. It's the same drive with a different focus.

I don't think you need to be logged into an institution to read it? I'm not logged into my university proxy at the moment and I could gain access:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v45...51038a.pdf

Also, it's not a peer reviewed article. It's an editorial/opinion piece or 'review' published in every journal edition. There is no research cited.

(July 24, 2014 at 8:25 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: I don't think you need to be logged into an institution to read it? I'm not logged into my university proxy at the moment and I could gain access:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v45...51038a.pdf

Also, it's not a peer reviewed article. It's an editorial/opinion piece or 'review' published in every journal edition. There is no research cited.

I'm still getting -

Quote:Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).

(July 24, 2014 at 8:34 am)Confused Ape Wrote:

(July 24, 2014 at 8:25 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: I don't think you need to be logged into an institution to read it? I'm not logged into my university proxy at the moment and I could gain access:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v45...51038a.pdf

Also, it's not a peer reviewed article. It's an editorial/opinion piece or 'review' published in every journal edition. There is no research cited.

I'm still getting -

Quote:Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).

Oh, maybe I am logged into the proxy then? Could have sworn I wasn't?

Anyway, you're not missing much. Like I said, it's not an article, just an opinion piece.

Quote:When looking at trends, there’s 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 families—which may be old-fashioned from a Western point of view, but it’s a model powerfully sanctioned by the evolutionary urge to extend the gene pool.

“It’s 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 ignores the (I think) increasing numbers of deconverted people who had a religious upbringing. Furthermore this passage correlates religiosity (the abortion and gay marriage-thing) with shrinking populations, I'd like to see some citation on that. China has got the highest population growth on earth, and it's not very religious.

Damn can we execute these scientists?

This is exactly how little we need to give a shit about this article, dudes:

A few paragraphs in, the writer "quotes" Graham Lawton:

Quote: 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.”

The full quotation, not taken out of context, is:

Quote:Some scientists – notably Pascal Boyer at Washington University in St Louis – have even claimed that atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think. 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.

The writer starts off his opinion piece with a quote mine from a guy who was referencing another guy. That's a quote mine double reacharound, folks.

Incidentally, in the article Lawton had written that the quote mine initially comes from- it's behind a paywall, but here it is if you're interested- comes to precisely the opposite conclusion that Vittachi manipulates it to say in his dishonest tirade.

If you're going to quote mine in your fourth paragraph, I'm not gonna pay much attention. End of story.

(July 24, 2014 at 7:32 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote:

(July 24, 2014 at 7:23 am)ManMachine Wrote: Having said all that the article does used some very imprecise language to represent the arguments in an effort, it would seem, to foster misinterpretation.

MM

Making it a poor article, IMHO.

I (for one) am not dismissing the studies, I'm dismissing the presumption based on faulty reasoning (as above - stating that we are born 'believers' - This is demonstrably false and I chalk it up to imprecise langauge, as you say).

Another example: when the article says that people have spirituality. Well, fine. That has nothing to do with atheism, and as the article seems to focus on this one possiblity, it makes the header of the article moot.

IT also juxtaposes well researched, valid journal articles with suspect, arguably bogus claims. It cites Theos:

"Theos, a think tank, found that very few people—only 13 per cent of adults—agreed with the statement “humans are purely material beings with no spiritual element”. For the vast majority of us, unseen realities are very present."

What it doesn't tell you is that Theos is a christian religious/theological think tank that promotes articles based on their proclivity to support religion in the public sphere in the UK (I've written about many of them in my PhD thesis so I know a couple of them and the authors). Indeed it doesn't even cite the research the author refers to in the article. I had to try and dig it up:

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/201...al-instead
http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/publicat...us-britain

Again, this would be a blow to critical thinking, not 'atheism'.

You're quite right, it is a poor article, clearly written by someone with an absurd agenda.

I was just pointing out the studies are actually interesting and while this article can be largely disregarded as popularist crap, it does reference some good scientific theory worth of investigation IMO. We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.

MM

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(July 24, 2014 at 8:03 am)Ben Davis Wrote: Cogito atheos ergo ego sum?

I am an atheist. I exist. Debunked.

That doesn't follow.

I am an atheist, therefore I am an entity capable of convincing myself I am an atheist.

That's about as far as you can get with that.

MM