Good exists - a Catholic comments

[Mister Agenda]

The 'in our hearts' nonsense reminds me of the fake polygraph story that christians like to tell. It goes like this: When hooked to a polygraph an atheist is asked if god exists or if they believe in god. When the atheist responds 'no' the polygraph indicates that they are lying.

Telling this story only demonstrates the desperation present in some christians.

There was a study, in Finland in 2014, but the error bars are too high (polygraphs are notoriously unreliable) and there wasn't a proper control group, IMHO. The atheists were asked to state things like 'I wish my parents would drown' and 'I dare God to drown my parents'. More anxiety was indicated over the second kind of statement. A more complete study would have tried out similar phrases on another group of atheists, like 'I dare Odin to drown my parents' or 'I dare the faeries to steal my child' or 'I dare Great Cthulhu to devour my entire family'.

I couldn't find a study that just asked atheists 'do you believe God is real' while hooked to a polygraph.