(April 10, 2014 at 3:20 pm)fr0d0 Wrote: Now that you've been duped into opening this thread, you might as well help us with our little survey to find out your opinion of what atheism is all about.
Thanks for your time.
Love,
Me
God(s) as a concept does exist and has persisted for thousands of years. That in itself is worthy of enquiry.
We know that children are predisposed to invent supernatural beings to explain the purpose of things, Olivera Petrovich of the University of Oxford has found these cognitive biases to be so strong that children spontaneously create the concept of god without adult intervention, "They rely on their everyday experience of the physical world and construct the concept of god on the basis of this experience." Because of this when children hear the claims of religion they seem to make perfect sense.
Adults who are brought up specifically to reject any notion of god, by parents who thought they were doing the right thing in raising enlightened children, often display psychological frailties and even in some cases, dysfunction. It does seem these childhood constructs help with our psychological development and we carry these processes into adulthood.
Jesse Bering of Queen's University Belfast had one of his students carry out some interviews with atheists from which it was clear that they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. He says "They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it."
Scott Atran of the University of Michigan says this difficulty in jettisoning beliefs is 'the tragedy of cognition.' With our capacity to remember past events and anticipate future events it is easy to see how things can go wrong - including death. There is a need to ' ... figure out a solution, otherwise you're overwhelmed... when nature gives us a get-out-of-jail-free card we take it."
While these theories provide some insight into the myriad complex processes that are part of our systems of belief and the establishment of supernatural beings as 'cognitive parking spaces' in times of emotional crisis, there is no clear overview. The question that we should be asking is do religions and gods have a useful part to play in our psychological development and would it be detrimental to our psychological wellbeing to eliminate them entirely?
I think that makes them worthy of enquiry.
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
