Uprooting believers.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've been giving it a little thought lately, and I think part of the problem with a typical atheist debate is it doesn't address the causes for belief or the resistance to change one's mind. To an atheist, the debates that address evolution, lack of evidence, date of the universe, big bang, etc address the crux of the issues. But to a religious person, I think that only addresses the surface of their concerns. It doesn't get to the roots of why a religious person would want to resist the truth. Imagine a 50 year old who's been religious all his life. Has a wife, kids, family, friends, coworkers/boss, that largely have shared his views, for much, if not all of their lives. What our argument asks of them is not only to look for evidence for his beliefs - a tough intellectual challenge to take on after years/decades of indoctrination, but to accept this totally opposite view in the face of all that social structure. I believe that is great pressure not to believe in the science that invalidates their beliefs. So even though the evidence stands for itself, they will nevertheless find ways to rationalize its inaccuracy.

Imagine, also, the internal conflict if one suspected that not only were they taken for a ride, they took others for a ride as well...their friends - their loved ones. Not only a victim but also a willing accomplice and perpetrator. The stage has been very well set for dissonance on this count.

I think this is massive motivation to cling to their beliefs, and it's one I've seldom, if ever, thought about before the other day. It makes me wonder what other reasons I'm not considering that would pressure them to believe. There may be many.

Well, we tend to hold on to what we've got, it;s been a pretty useful tendency. Now, what we've got may not actually be working, or it may be neutral - sitting there doing nothing while we erroneously think that it;s helped somehow. This would be an artifact of heuristics. We do have a tendency to think that if we percieve something as "working" that this is indicative of how correct the proposition is - not that this is a problem in and of itself- but failing to explore the proposition further seems to be. Even now, when we possess the knowledge required to come to this realization - we can still very easily continue to go with what we have, what "works".

What I think would be a fantastic atheistic project would be to survey religious people to ask them aside from their belief that it's true, what reasons they believe in religion. Obviously, surveys have inherent dangers with the wording of questions, and the legitimacy of the answers, especially for polemic topics. But I think it would be useful in any case. Hopefully, the survey would produce at least a handful of "secondary" reasons that people have faith, that the atheistic debates don't address. Or maybe hundreds of reasons, which are sorted based on frequency reported or significance or something. Then an atheist think tank could produce a report on how to counter these top 5/10 additional fears. I think these are really the barriers that hold people back, and if you could allay/comfort/address those, they would come tumbling down.

We already see this sort of thing day in and day out on the forums. The faithful often appear to be perplexed at how we manage not to go around slitting throats and raping adolescents. Asking how something could come from nothing - etc.