Where do atheists come from? | Hacker News Reader

Where do atheists come from?

newscientist.com

14 pointsdimas15 comments

I think the best point this article makes is that you hurt your cause whenever you assume the other side of an argument is "just stupid". Part of the problem atheists have in debates is they tend to think the other side's beliefs are so ridiculous that they don't even think through counter points (beyond foolish things like "If there's a God why do we suffer")

To Tichy: I can't reply because of the killing of the article but the basic point is that empirical data shows that (a) religion is not just for fools and (b) that there might be an evolutionary reason for it and as such it shouldn't be discounted as "just stupid"

How does the article make that point, that is, how does it explain how religion is not "just stupid"? What point did the article make at all?

They're born that way. Then they have to be taught to not be atheist.

I disagree. Animals in general are naturally inclined towards superstitious thought. I recall experiments with rats and pigeons where they dispensed food at regular intervals. The animals ended up developing an elaborate ritual they repeated before each presentation of food, a sort of rain dance [1].

[1]: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4533467 (Hank Davis was my professor for intro psych)

Following that train thought how do you explain that all (most?) human civilizations have invented (discovered?) gods?

Same way kids discover monsters - they need an explanation for the shadow / noise / ... That's especially true for the civilisations before writing, education, ... Gods in those times were mostly equivalent to things in nature - gods of thunder, sun, nature, etc.

When I was young, food came to me because my parents brought it. I didn't understand where most things came from, but I could ask my dad, and he would bring them to me.

When I became a parent, I wondered who brought the other things I needed that I needed. When I was cold, who brought me warmth? When I was thirsty, who brought the rain?

Reapplying the model from my youth makes sense, right?

We do the same thing today. When we are young, we are taught that if we are good, Santa Claus will reward us in the short term. If we are good, Jesus will reward us in the long term.

At some point, people realize Santa Claus was a lie.

What are we going to start debating whether god exists in this thread now? I'm flagging this.

Ditto. Relevant to my interests, but not what I want to see on HN.

I wonder about the degrees of those that believed in telepathy according to the World Values Survey - are they "soft" or humanities degrees? Self-reported or aggrandized degrees?

I am acquainted with people with those beliefs, and many of those that are college educated have degrees from the easier colleges (or even degree mills), or in more dubious areas. This is of course anecdotal and highly local :) - and yes, very non politically-correct, but I don't believe all degrees should be held as equal.

"48.9 per cent claimed not to believe in any god, with 49.6 per cent claiming no religious affiliation[....]an astonishing 57.3 per cent of the Oxford sample did [consider themselves as "athiest" or "agnostic"]."

How does that make sense? Doesn't that mean there are quite a few who both consider themselves "athiest" or "agnostic" yet still do believe in (at least one) god? I'm confused.

I know people who claim to be agnostic, but still fall on the side of believing in a god. It is just one that is unknown. Generally I think they would be considered deists but the term seems to be relatively unknown\out of favor.

I'm not sure that's true. A Deist is someone who believes there's a God. That's different from someone who is agnostic but who would say there's a God if forced to give an opinion.

Example: A deist is probably going to read religious text even if they don't completely believe in them. Because a Deist believes there is a God meaning that God has some preference as far as our behavior and so they'd be looking for evidence of that preference even if they don't believe in things like miracles (think Thomas Jefferson creating a Bible that omitted any supernatural elements).

An agnostic who might lean towards a God isn't going to preoccupy his or her self with moral judgments of a God because they're not really convinced one exists. They might try to be a good person for secular reasons and "just in case" but they aren't going to go out of their way to divine the judgement of something that may very well be imaginary.

In other words: One's a seeker while the other just holds an academic belief that there might be something to seek.

One (of the many) definitions of agnosticism is to " the view that the truth value of certain claims - especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims - is unknown or unknowable." In other words, you think it's impossible to know. I've written a blog post on the matter a few days ago http://syskall.com/why-we-should-eradicate-agnosticism-from-...

Among atheists the terms "gnostic atheist" and "agnostic atheist" are thrown around a lot. It's the different between a positive assertion and a lack of assertion, i.e. - "I believe there is no god" vs. "I don't believe in god."

(A)gnosticism has more to do with certainty than belief - someone who is gnostic is sure, someone who is agnostic is not sure. There are plenty of agnostic theists, as many religious people don't claim to be sure about the existence of god, but choose to believe or think it probable.

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