(September 6, 2013 at 11:55 am)apophenia Wrote: Emotion is an essential part of reasoning and decision making, and there's a tendency to avoid acknowledging the emotional aspects because it is often viewed as implying a lack of rationality to the actions and decisions. Unfortunately, perhaps, atheists have a tendency to be more vulnerable to the loaded and somewhat biased nature of the suggestion from theists because, in general, they are often encouraged to elevate the value of rationality, and devalue that of emotion. Unfortunately, that bias, combined with a loaded question, can result in unnecessary difficulty in formulating a reasoned response to the question.
Oddly enough, perhaps emotion is involved there as well, as the atheist is reluctant to go down avenues where they might experience their position as a nonbeliever as vulnerable to shameful or embarrassing accusations of unreasonableness, made all the more acute by the general atheist/rationalist trend to avoid being seen as being influenced by emotion rather than reason, because of their polarized valuation of the two mental resources.
Yep, pure rationality is what I expect from a circuit board. People will be far more complex. Fortunately it isn't necessary to abandon emotion in order to justify a lack of belief in gods. Better to abandon the inclination to justify everything.
