7 replies to this topic

[Ungodly]

An article found on Yahoo news this morning which was very carefully polished to avoid giving offense seeks to shine a light on why it is, exactly, that some humans believe in an invisible, mass murdering, genocidal God of Love while other people realize theism is ridiculous bullshit from start to finish.

Quote

For many people, believing in God comes down to a gut feeling that a benevolent deity is out there. A study now finds that gut feelings may be very important in determining who goes to church every Sunday and who avoids the pews.

People who are generally more intuitive in the way they think and make decisions are more likely to believe in God than those who ruminate over their choices, the researchers found. The findings suggest that basic differences in thinking style can influence religious belief.

(source)

If we replace "more intuitive in the way they think" with "reach conclusions without requiring evidence" and we replace "ruminate over their choices" with "think logically" then the discussion would be closer to my personal view of the differences between theists and atheists.

And of course I have no objection to anyone believing or not believing anything. What people do or do not believe ultimately becomes a matter of choice, and this article strives to present that fact in a dispassionate and neutral fashion, possibly doing a good job of achieving that goal.

I don't mind if somebody thinks a fictional mass murderer guilty of planet-wide genocide is a sweet and charming character. I don't mind if they say that is what they believe either. Freedom of speech requires freedom of thought as a prerequisite, after all.

My problems with people who are suffering from religious delusions revolve around the insistence of many of these folks that I act, live and behave in accordance with their superstitions. When people hijack commercial jets full of people and intentionally fly them into buildings or into the ground on behalf of their imaginary villain friend I think the world has progressed to a level of technological advancement in which fundamentalist religious beliefs have crossed the line from stupidity to clear and present danger.

If somebody wants to use their intuition alone to make decisions that affect their own lives that is none of my business, but when they cross the line to a land where I must live according to their delusions I find it necessary to resist their mind numbing stupidity.

I don't believe because of the total lack of evidence for invisible sky monsters, I say that I don't believe in self defense.

[Joe Bloe]

Ungodly, on 23 September 2011 - 08:59 AM, said:

An article found on Yahoo news this morning which was very carefully polished to avoid giving offense seeks to shine a light on why it is, exactly, that some humans believe in an invisible, mass murdering, genocidal God of Love while other people realize theism is ridiculous bullshit from start to finish.

Very "carefully polished" indeed - not just a god, but a "benevolent god".

Quote

For many people, believing in God comes down to a gut feeling that a benevolent deity is out there.

Well I always knew that a sensible person could never read the bible and come out at the other end with a "benevolent" god under his arm, so there had to be some other explanation.


I can understand somebody acting on gut feelings and deciding that a god (one of the pretty ones) really exists because the decision can be made in a split second: "Believe in god? Yes or No?". But how do they do the follow-up exercises (like reading the bible) and not realise that their gut feeling has led them astray? That's the bit I'd like to see studied.

[Ungodly]

Just the fact that the author felt it necessary to modify the noun God with the adjective benevolent implies that there are other versions of fictional deities that are not benevolent, such as Yahweh, Allah and Super Jeebus - the ones whose followers are responsible for so much mayhem, cultural imperialism, genocide, intolerance, oppression and injustice in an effort to emulate the sky monsters they have projected into imaginary existence.

Obviously a benevolent God, if she existed, would bear no resemblance whatsoever to the villainous God of Abraham.

As the article points out, it is fairly easy to believe in non-corporeal invisible faeries if you can manage not to think about what you believe. It's just when Satan tempts people into eating from the tree of knowledge that the house of cards collapses.

[Storybook]

It's more than just a gut feeling as the article said. Indoctrination from a young age and severe family pressure can make a difference for some people.

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a fictional mass murderer guilty of planet-wide genocide is a sweet and charming character

Ha ha ha! I love that, Ungodly.

I too don't care what superstition someone believes but I don't want them forcing it on me.

[alteredmind]

I find most yahoo news to be annoying. It's gotten to the point where I get mad every time the news pops out in my face when I go on the net, I'm switching my hompage.

[Natsel]

This is interesting to me because it is so contradictory to my personal experience. I've taken personality tests three or four times and each time I scored extremely high on the Intuitive scale. By "high," I mean in the top 1 to 2 percent. So, intuition is extremely important in my analysis and decision making. And here I am, an atheist. Fortunately, intuition led me in the right direction.

[Ungodly]

alteredmind, on 29 November 2011 - 06:33 PM, said:

I find most yahoo news to be annoying. It's gotten to the point where I get mad every time the news pops out in my face when I go on the net, I'm switching my hompage.

Check out Bing News, or maybe even one of our sister news sites like UnFox News, Liberal Media News

Natsel, on 01 December 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

This is interesting to me because it is so contradictory to my personal experience. I've taken personality tests three or four times and each time I scored extremely high on the Intuitive scale. By "high," I mean in the top 1 to 2 percent. So, intuition is extremely important in my analysis and decision making. And here I am, an atheist. Fortunately, intuition led me in the right direction.

I'm also very intuitive. Intuition is not exclusive of logic or reason, together they can produce a synergistic result.

[CainEnabled]

intuition

noun
1. direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.
2. a fact, truth, etc., perceived in this way.
3. a keen and quick insight.
4. the quality or ability of having such direct perception or quick insight.
5. Philosophy .
a. an immediate cognition of an object not inferred or determined by a previous cognition of the same object.
b. any object or truth so discerned.
c. pure, untaught, noninferential knowledge.

Now this is an interesting concept. What this article seems to be passive-aggressively suggesting is that people who believe in God have some direct perception of "truth" that we skeptics talk ourselves out of having.

It seems to me that this is telling us that because we over-think things, we convince ourselves that the "truth" is not actually true, therefore bypassing our natural tendency to just "know" that God exists.

My favorite part of number 1 in the definition: independent of any reasoning process.

Somewhere along the line, someone told the ignorant masses something astronomically unbelievable. And because they didn't know any better, without question, without reason, they accepted it, and religion was born.

The notion that people who believe in God are trusting their intuitive nature suggests that what their intuition tells them is, in fact, the truth.

The existence of a god or gods has time and time again been revealed as having no basis in truth other than the fact that an Israeli Jew that was the basis for the character of Jesus Christ may have existed.

Yes, I ruminate over my choices. I think about them. When deciding the best time to step off the curb, I think about whether or not the city bus coming up the street will run me over. Why? Because my ruminating brain tells me that I will probably die. Why? Because the bus is made up of a denser material than my body, and is moving at a speed much greater than my own. A collision of these two types of matter would cause the sudden and violent acceleration of the slower moving mass (me), and would transfer damaging force through the softer, less dense material (also me), resulting in the likely destruction of material vital to the support of my over-active brain.

But do I think about all of this before stepping off a curb? No. My intuition tells me. Because my intuition is showing me an instant and direct perception of the truth, based in the facts I already know. The facts that came to light through research, and trial and error, and scrutiny, and..gasp..skepticism. I am sure at some point in human history, someone was skeptical about the idea that something hard will hurt when it hits you. Then, the trial happened, they got hit with something hard, and realized their error. The reasoning is taken out of the equation in this moment, because it was already processed at the moment I learned that hard things hurt when they hit me.

There are no ascertainable facts that could lead to a logical intuitive decision to believe in God.

I'm not sure yet if I've made my point clear, so I may come back to this and edit.