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I think C.S. Lewis said it does take a lot of faith to be an atheist, more faith than it takes to be a Christian. In my mind, you will have to learn to ignore many things and try to unsee them.
As in so many things, C.S. Lewis was wrong.
I tried to read him, I really did. But even at 15, I thought he was preaching balderdash. I'm actually pretty good at suspending rationality in order to immerse myself in, say, Lord of the Rings. Narnia? Piffle.
I think C.S. Lewis said it does take a lot of faith to be an atheist, more faith than it takes to be a Christian. In my mind, you will have to learn to ignore many things and try to unsee them.
I've long considered myself to be agnostic. I don't find anything compelling about modern religion because upon close inspection its content seems entirely of this world. Nevertheless, I do tend to think there is some greater organizing principle at work in our universe. I don't know why this is the case, but I look around the world and see a great deal of organization in nature, a degree of tidiness that seems to be far beyond mere chance.
A lot of Atheists I know not only do not believe in God, but seem to take great pride in knowing that this is the case. I can't relate to this sentiment. The late Christopher Hitchens explained that his anti-thesim originated from a desire to be free from constant supervision, i.e. not being a "slave" to a celestial force. I get this is some ways, but I think all it really does is confirm the secular conception of God and its relation to us. If such an entity does exist, or some force like it, how do we know our relation to it is hierarchical in nature?
The intellectual leap? It seems to me people are born atheists until someone tries to convince them there's a God, angels, all that stuff. As a kid, I didn't understand why adults would harbor these Santa Claus-like beliefs. He judges if you're naughty or nice, he's up somewhere in the sky, where once upon a time he and his elves created the Earth....really? How does anyone make that leap of faith? And why would they do that, what's the motive? It's irrational.
I can't relate. But I don't see the point in declaring my atheism from the rooftops, either. Why would anyone care?
I personally do not agree that people are born atheists except arguably in a very technical sense. The truth is that all humans are born with a tendency (usually a pretty strong one) to confirmation bias and agency inference and this makes one vulnerable to thought systems that reinforce those tendencies -- such as belief in invisible personal interventionist gods.
While childhood indoctrination and environment are huge factors in moving this along, the very fact that some children concoct for themselves imaginary friends tells me that many children would invent a sort of religion for themselves if adults did not provide it for them. Whether this would tend to die out or not as the child matured is an interesting question; I'd like to think that it would, at least for a healthy percentage of such children.
Speaking for myself, I was quite open to the claims of my religion of origin, and recall that it appealed to my not quite six year old brain at the time. It was not something imposed on me that I resisted or found manipulative. I embraced it wholeheartedly and with that fabled "childlike faith" so prized by evangelical Christians. And I am not too proud (in both senses of that phrase) to admit that if the abstraction had mostly worked for me I would still likely be in its embrace.
So even if we allow for the sake of argument that everyone is "born atheist", it is not so simple as no child would become religious or curious about religion if a magic button could be pressed that would remove all overt and implicit cultural and familial indoctrination / tradition / social pressure to embrace and conform to parental religious beliefs. The removal of these influences would not remove the child's awareness of its own mortality, its own questions and fears around that topic, nor would it remove the tendency of the mind to self-delude and self-comfort around those issues. It would not prevent the totemic belief that symbolic personal power such as popularity (real popularity with people or imagined popularity with invisible beings) would not be embraced to reduce the child's sense of powerlessness and helplessness.
It is a failure to understand the human condition to suggest that a child is a blank slate with no innate proclivities or vulnerabilities to magical beliefs, including religious ones. I think such children exist, and probably some of those are adults here on this forum who suggest, simply because they don't recall ever finding religious notions compelling, that no one would if it weren't imposed. I hate to pop their bubble, but most children find religion, at least as typically presented to children, to be quite compelling indeed. That they do, doesn't speak to its validity or accuracy or even its ultimate efficacy. It just speaks to its appeal. And one of the reasons for that appeal is inherent in homo sapiens itself. Most of us just aren't that rational in the first place.
Normally I agree with you, mordant. But not this time.
I'm not an eloquent speaker (typer!) so I'm not prone to making long arguments, and I won't try now.
But I think that religion is a tool used for 3 basic purposes: explain, control, and power.
Explain: early humans tried to answer the question 'why'. Why does it rain? Why did this person get ill and die? Why is there a sun and moon and stars? Rather than just accept the true answer of the time - I don't know - superior beings were invented.
Control: once the idea that a superior being existed many attempts to control that being came about. Rain dances, prostration, sacrifice, prayer. Appeasement through actions. Make the gods happy.
Power: Now that there are rituals towards the god, someone grasps the power to guide that ritual. When to pray, what to say, what is bad or displeasing. That's where the twist comes in. How many times do we point out that it's so amazing that god seems to want exactly what the preacher wants?
Now we have education, science, and some understanding of the physical world. Weather patterns, germs, chemical reactions explain what was unknowable to our ancestors.
If there were some way to eliminate all religions, knowledge of religions, history of religion, and religious artifacts from the planet today, do you really believe that, with our current scientific understanding, that a cult of Jesus, Mohammad, Vishnu, Gaia or any other god would just spring into being?
Atheism is the default. But our world is far too screwed up with centuries of mythology to shake off the chains of such fantastic thinking. And it's a pity, because I think it'll condemn the human race.
I've long considered myself to be agnostic. I don't find anything compelling about modern religion because upon close inspection its content seems entirely of this world. Nevertheless, I do tend to think there is some greater organizing principle at work in our universe. I don't know why this is the case, but I look around the world and see a great deal of organization in nature, a degree of tidiness that seems to be far beyond mere chance.
A lot of Atheists I know not only do not believe in God, but seem to take great pride in knowing that this is the case. I can't relate to this sentiment. The late Christopher Hitchens explained that his anti-thesim originated from a desire to be free from constant supervision, i.e. not being a "slave" to a celestial force. I get this is some ways, but I think all it really does is confirm the secular conception of God and its relation to us. If such an entity does exist, or some force like it, how do we know our relation to it is hierarchical in nature?
I can't speak for other atheists (I think people arrive at atheism through a wide variety of pathways), but for me it was the result of a long process of thought.
Religion is one thing, I never bought into religion, but disbelief in god is something else.
I think most of us struggle with the big questions...how did we come to be here?...how can nature be so complex?...why do we have conscious thought?...How is it that the earth seems to be unique?...etc etc.
I sat on the fence about whether or not there might be a god for many years, but the more we understand about the processes of nature, the more we realise that life on earth was an inevitable consequence of natural processes, paired with many, many eons of TIME.
Really when it comes down to it - it's just a process of elimination. The god of the gaps has receeded to a point now where he is barely anywhere, so there is no longer a need to think of a god having any part in creation.
I don't believe we can say definitively that atheism is the default position, at least in western society. I don't think there are enough atheistic control groups in the world to draw any conclusion about whether we are born atheistic by default, or not.
People throughout history have believed in gods, god, spirits or otherwise some sort of supernatural force to explain away what we did not understand. It is only in very recent times that we have begun to get to grips with how nature works and we can do away with god concepts.
I personally do not agree that people are born atheists except arguably in a very technical sense. The truth is that all humans are born with a tendency (usually a pretty strong one) to confirmation bias and agency inference and this makes one vulnerable to thought systems that reinforce those tendencies -- such as belief in invisible personal interventionist gods.
While childhood indoctrination and environment are huge factors in moving this along, the very fact that some children concoct for themselves imaginary friends tells me that many children would invent a sort of religion for themselves if adults did not provide it for them. Whether this would tend to die out or not as the child matured is an interesting question; I'd like to think that it would, at least for a healthy percentage of such children.
Speaking for myself, I was quite open to the claims of my religion of origin, and recall that it appealed to my not quite six year old brain at the time. It was not something imposed on me that I resisted or found manipulative. I embraced it wholeheartedly and with that fabled "childlike faith" so prized by evangelical Christians. And I am not too proud (in both senses of that phrase) to admit that if the abstraction had mostly worked for me I would still likely be in its embrace.
So even if we allow for the sake of argument that everyone is "born atheist", it is not so simple as no child would become religious or curious about religion if a magic button could be pressed that would remove all overt and implicit cultural and familial indoctrination / tradition / social pressure to embrace and conform to parental religious beliefs. The removal of these influences would not remove the child's awareness of its own mortality, its own questions and fears around that topic, nor would it remove the tendency of the mind to self-delude and self-comfort around those issues. It would not prevent the totemic belief that symbolic personal power such as popularity (real popularity with people or imagined popularity with invisible beings) would not be embraced to reduce the child's sense of powerlessness and helplessness.
It is a failure to understand the human condition to suggest that a child is a blank slate with no innate proclivities or vulnerabilities to magical beliefs, including religious ones. I think such children exist, and probably some of those are adults here on this forum who suggest, simply because they don't recall ever finding religious notions compelling, that no one would if it weren't imposed. I hate to pop their bubble, but most children find religion, at least as typically presented to children, to be quite compelling indeed. That they do, doesn't speak to its validity or accuracy or even its ultimate efficacy. It just speaks to its appeal. And one of the reasons for that appeal is inherent in homo sapiens itself. Most of us just aren't that rational in the first place.
I think C.S. Lewis said it does take a lot of faith to be an atheist, more faith than it takes to be a Christian. In my mind, you will have to learn to ignore many things and try to unsee them.
A quote from Frank Turek who may have gotten it from someone else "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist" seems to embody your point. If atheism made a claim that God does not exist, then I'd be in that boat too, but as mordant pointed out, atheism not claim any such thing. Atheism is simply a lack of faith in a God.
For a while, I thought I was agnostic. Then I realized it was a semantics mistake. I can't remember where, but I had heard the definitions:
Weak Agnostic: "I don't know if there's a God"
Strong Agnostic: "Nobody could know if there's a God"
Weak Atheist: "I don't believe in a God"
Strong Atheist: "There is no God"
So, I was going around calling myself an Agnostic when I really was an atheist.
If there were some way to eliminate all religions, knowledge of religions, history of religion, and religious artifacts from the planet today, do you really believe that, with our current scientific understanding, that a cult of Jesus, Mohammad, Vishnu, Gaia or any other god would just spring into being?
No, although I would strongly suspect that within a few generations some fairly influential religious notions would have been invented.
But the reality is that we DO have those artifacts, that history, and that knowledge, and things are the way they are because they got that way. And they got that way because the human mind is imperfect and tends to be very vulnerable in most cases to such influences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kab0906
Atheism is the default. But our world is far too screwed up with centuries of mythology to shake off the chains of such fantastic thinking. And it's a pity, because I think it'll condemn the human race.
Well at least we have had a lot of experience with it and even believers know, on some level, that it is of limited utility. It is better than your scenario, if I'm correct, because if we magically could start right now from scratch, some people would still invent religion and it would pass through the human race like wildfire because of lack of experience with its limitations and downsides and because it would not be burdened with traditional and primitive ideas about deities that have to be compensated for.
Sure, with our current scientific understanding it would have a slower start initially. But people still fear their mortality and still seek symbolic immortality and ego inflations and would still respond to certain religious notions. Religion introduced after some Magic Reboot today would take an entirely different form; but it would still be influential.
I see humanity's evolution away from ignorance and superstition as far less advanced and far slower than you do, I suppose. Every generation thinks it's at some sort of actual pinnacle of knowledge, wisdom and understanding merely because it's risen to an historical hight; but in reality we are climbing tortuously out of a very deep hole into the light of knowledge, and still have a long way to go.
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