- Home
- Find a Therapist
- Topic Streams
- Get Help
Mental Health
Addiction
ADHD
Anxiety
Asperger's
Autism
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Eating Disorders
Insomnia
OCDPersonality
Passive Aggression
Personality
ShynessPersonal Growth
Happiness
Goal Setting
Positive PsychologyRelationships
Low Sexual Desire
Relationships
SexEmotion Management
Anger
Procrastination
StressFamily Life
Adolescents
Child Development
Elder Care
Parenting
SiblingsRecently Diagnosed?
Diagnosis Dictionary
- Magazine
- Tests
- Psych Basics
- Experts
Whether you believe in God is not as much a matter of how smart or educated you are, but a matter of whether life has worked out in a way that makes you feel comfortable enough to be an atheist. The smart just happen to be lucky enough to lead a comfortable life, and this comfort affords them the luxury to be an atheist. Read More
With all due respect, this
With all due respect, this blog post is as inaccurate as it is insulting. Your basic argument is that even die-hard atheists are really, at their core, believers in God, and that the right set of stressful circumstances will reveal their true belief. As an atheist myself, I think your contention belongs in the same family as the "you are an atheist because you are mad at God" argument. Both assume that it is not possible for a person to simply lack a belief in God on the basis of a rational analysis of the arguments and evidence for and against the existence of God. I lack a belief in God for the same reasons I lack a belief in Zeus, the Virgin Mary, and the Tooth Fairy. There is no sporting match, stressful life event, or other circumstance that will make the existence of Santa Claus or Jesus Christ suddenly appear plausible enough to warrant my belief. The fact that you personally lack the ability to understand why a person would choose to be an atheist does not mean that atheism does not exist.
Why insulting?
I can understand if you are not convinced of my arguments, but I find it interesting that you find it insulting. My contention is not in the same category as "you are mad at God," but the fact that you find my arguments insulting suggests to me that you are mad at people who believe in God!
It is, of course, quite possible that there are some atheists out there who, regardless of the circumstances, will never ever subscribe to the notion of a God (just as there must be people who will never ever unsubscribe to belief in God), but most people that claim to be atheists are in the category that I could classify as "soft atheists".
Here's a question that you could ask yourself: do you believe in anything at all that could be considered "superstitious" (e.g., you have a lucky shirt, or that whenever you have an important presentation to make you make sure that you listen to a particular song before it, etc.)? Most people--even atheists--have these types of superstitions and to me, subscribing to a superstition is not that different from believing in a God.
Your argument is that my
Your argument is that my contention that I do not believe in God is false. It is insulting because you pretend to know my own mind better than I do. Presumably, you lack a belief in the Easter Bunny. Would you feel insulted if I suggested that (a) your professed lack of belief was a product of having lived a privileged life, and (b) despite your protestations to the contrary, deep down you really do believe in the Easter Bunny? I am not mad at people who believe in God. But I am irritated by people who go out of their way to foist their own notions of theology onto others. And by the way, your statement that “there are some atheists out there who, regardless of the circumstances, will never ever subscribe to the notion of a God” contradicts the entire point of your blog post.
bunny
Brett,
I am a psychologist and hence, compared to the average person, know more about the average person's mind than the average person does. Now, if there is one theme that seems to emerge consistently across a huge variety of findings in decision making is this: people don't seem to know: 1) why they do what they do (they don't have much idea of the hidden forces that shape their decisions (see Ariely's book Predictably Irrational, and Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein), 2) we don't know where our ideas come from, so we really don't know the original of our thoughts--they are based in our sub-conscious, and 3) we often don't even know what is in our best interests (see Luxury Fever by Bob Frank). So, we float around in a sea of uncertainty, which is, of course an aversive state since we crave clarity on things. What is interesting to me is that people seem most certain about issues that they should be least confident about--like the issue of whether there is a God. I don't know about you, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments one way or the other about God (or about the Easter bunny). Hence, rationally, one should be agnostic.
With regard to the Easter Bunny, the reason why I wouldn't subscribe to it is because belief in the bunny does nothing to alleviate my existential angst...
Hi Raj. Thanks for the reply.
Hi Raj. Thanks for the reply. I too am a psychologist, but that is beside the point really. You are undoubtedly correct that the causes of what people think, and the reasons why people do what they do, are often irrational and/or largely unknown. In the case of at least some atheists, the lack of belief in God is different from the whims of everyday cognition because of the large dose of research and deliberate thought given to the matter. I have no idea what thought will pop into my head 5 minutes from now, and I probably can't explain why I did some of what I did today. But I can tell you exactly why I don't believe in God, and (right or wrong) I believe the answer I would give is correct. Unlike you it would appear, I have seen many arguments against the existence of God, and I find some of them quite compelling. Rationally, sure, we should be agnostic about God, dragons, and unicorns, but few can honestly pull off such a mental feat. The atheist philosopher Michael Martin suggested that one is justified in not believing a claim if (a) it has been subject to extensive study, (b) there is no direct evidence supporting it, and (c) it is the sort of claim that, if it were true, would clearly have available evidence to support it. Works for me.
Good points Brett
You bring up good points, Brett. I hadn't come across Michael Martin and so thanks for introducing me to his theory/philosophy.
Now, I am no theologian and so I am not personally knowledgeable about this, but I will take your word for it that the subject of God has indeed been subject to extensive study (although, given the passion and intense emotions it seems to evoke, I feel that most scientists would be a little scared to delve into this subject, much as scientists are afraid to touch topics like feminism or genetic sources of intelligence). However, I disagree with your suggestion that there is no direct evidence supporting the existence of God (loosely defined as an Intelligence that is responsible for the life we see around us and for supporting life-systems and for propagating it). The reason I say this is because I have had personal experience of experiencing something that is difficult to put in words, but I have felt, with intense emotions, the "spirit" behind things (not just animate things, but even inanimate ones). It's difficult for me to explain this experience in words (just as a person who is able to "see" the pattern in one of those "3D" pictures that you can only see if you focus on a point beyond the surface of the picture) , but it is similar to what researchers are now finding happens when people take "magic mushrooms" or when they meditate. (You can google search these studies.) Most people consider only verbal arguments and logic as proof, but what if the proof of God lies in directly and personally experiencing something through switching the mind off and thereby going beyond logic and rationality? Now, if you ask people who are into meditating, many will claim that they have sensed the "spirit" behind things--the intelligence that operates things even as one is unaware of this intelligence. And my hunch is, most meditators (I have hung around with a few) wouldn't object to calling this spirit or intelligence "God" (or Universal mind as John Lennon referred to it).
I am intrigued by what you mean by "few can honestly pull off such a mental feat". I don't find being an agnostic that difficult and I don't see why it is any more difficult being agnostic than it is being atheist.
As a psychologist, you must
As a psychologist, you must realize that the "feelings" you get from your specific god is also the same feelings that Muslims get from Allah, that Hindu's might get from Shiva, that the ancient Greeks get from Apollo and Zeus. When you want something to be true, such as eternal paradise after death, the power of suggestion can do amazing things to you. If you are truly a psychologist, you must be aware that our brains are very susceptible to illusions. People have dreams that they think are reality, just because of the way the brain perceives it. I understand that without religion you may have that uncomfortable feeling, I believe it's called cognitive dissonance, because it takes away some kind of purpose in life. Because of that you are much more willing to take a feeling, and make it work to how you want it to work in order to feel more comfortable.
Respons to Argo
Argo, I am not suggesting that you go by feelings or feelings alone. What I am suggesting is that you check out a route (meditation) as open-mindedly as possible, without any preconceived notions of what it is going to lead to and then make up your own conclusions. Frankly, it seems you are the one who is going by feelings--that religion is "bad" and therefore you won't have anything to do with it! You may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater by doing so!
If you consider your personal
If you consider your personal experience to be some form of evidence you basically strip yourself of any scientific credentials, especially in psychology.
personal experience is just another data point
For some things, we have nothing but personal experience to go by, and if everyone seems to be having the same kind of personal experience (as far as we can tell), then we have greater confidence that that personal experience exists. For example, if someone were to ask you, "do you feel different after you drink alcohol?" and you say, "yes" and then the person says, "No, you don't--you are just telling me your personal experience! There is no data to prove that you feel different!," should you then agree that alcohol does nothing to you?
He formulated it wrong. If
He formulated it wrong. If you use personal experiences to prove anything unrelated to yourself and try to call it scientific, you lose all scientific credibility.
Of course, if you belief your god is personal, that's possible, but then there's no evidence for a good outside of yourself like for me.
No, because have good
No, because have good scientific data on the effects of alcohol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_effects_of_alcohol
Inter-subjective, testable and reproducible evidence is a fundamental pathway to truth, and more to the point, personal experience sometimes tells people to go on killing sprees, and as a psychologist you should know what herd mentality is.
If I say, "I was just filled up with the Holy Spirit, and he told me to bomb an abortion clinic!" would you tell me that that is a good experience or a bad experience? I hope you would say bad, because I probably have a chemical imbalance, not a divine experience, and I should seek medical treatment.
Faith is belief without evidence. Tell me something that I have faith in, that I cannot examine previous evidence for and reproduce reliably, and I will stop believing it.
I'm not sure how you can make
I'm not sure how you can make such a mistaken interpretation or illogical argument.
Our personal experiences are evidence of our personal experiences. Your personal experience of god is evidence of your personal experience, not of god.
See the difference?
There are lot of people who have all kinds of personal experiences and we do not take them seriously as it is quite evident they are deluded. For some reason, religion and religious get a free pass.
no, I don't see the difference
you can only have personal experiences--you can't experience what another is going through (in a literal sense, although you could empathize with it).
you agree that there is such a thing as love, don't you? How do you know that it exists? only from personal experience--not from hard evidence
The difference is easy to spot.
Imagine a police officer knocks at your door and informs you that your wife has died in a car accident. Your will experience feelings of intense sorrow and will probably feel sick to your stomach.
Now imagine that the police officer had made a mistake and your wife wasn't dead at all. That means your wife is alive, despite your personal experiences of intense sorrow and feeling sick to your stomach.
Your personal experience, the feelings you felt after the police officer informed you that your wife had died, only proves itself. It only proves that you honestly belied she was dead, it had no bearing on reality.
Likewise with religious personal experiences. They only show that the person honestly believed in their own version of God. Its not proof of that God itself.
I dont understand. How does
I dont understand. How does this analogy amount to the conclusion that Gods dont exist ? The wife was alive regardless of personal experiences in your example and similarly Gods could be present regardless of personal experiences. Just because you did not have the personal experience of experiencing God , doesnt mean that God doesnt exist ! Have you made a sincere attempt to read and attempt everything there is to experience God ? Or are you just convinced that he doesnt exist and hence wouldnt attempt to find him ? If it's the latter, i guess you are in no position to comment on someone that claims has actually experienced God!
The love cliché. Are you serious?
The argument that people believe in love because they experience it and that God is in the same category as love is an amazingly bad argument, especially from a psychologist.
The reality is we don't know that love exists. Sure we agree that most everyone experiences it, but we're not certain that we're all having the same experience. And even if we were, love is an emotional state, not some external being like a God, so the analogy fails.
My suggestion: dump the love analogy. It's a poor argument and your using it reflects poorly on you. I mean this as constructive criticism, not as hurtful criticism.
It's a great analogy!
Why is the love analogy a poor one ? Experiencing god is also an intenesly personal experience and experiencing love is also an intensely personal one! There is an assumption in all these discussions that God is an external supreme deity. There are many definitions of God. In many beliefs, God is something that's within each one of us! There are numerous interpretations of these. But the common link across all versions of God is that "god needs to be realized" - meaning personally experienced.
It's a mental/emotional state of pure joy exactly like how love is. The difference is, love has it's ups and downs , whereas a person who has experienced God is in a constant state of joy!
Many people have experienced it across the world just like how many people experience real love in their lives. If you dont believe in love , you wouldnt experience it, just like how you wouldnt experience God, if you dont believe in it.
Raj, The problem of your blog
Raj,
The problem of your blog is more apparent in this post. You lack an understanding of the main issues, and the philosophies surrounding them.
Agnostics ARE Atheists, since Agnosticism is a sub-set of Atheism.
Atheism (in it's most popular usage today) means having a lack of belief in a god. Many have misused this label to suggest that it's the belief that no god exists. I'm sure I don't have to explain how completely different those two definitions are.
Agnosticism is an admission of ignorance about whether a god exists or not.
Theism/Atheism is tied to our BELIEFS.
Gnosticism/Agnosticism is tied to our KNOWLEDGE.
Therefore, there can be Agnostic-Atheists, Gnostic-Atheists, Agnostic-Theists, and Gnostic-Theists. You seem to have some understanding of this (I'm referring to your use of "soft Atheist").
Richard Dawkins (whom you mentioned in your blog) addresses this in the very book you attributed to him.
Michael Martin
@Brett: I've never read Michael Martin before, but what you write of him intrigues me. His suggestion that one is justified in not believing a claim if (a), (b), and (c)... where might I find it?
Thanks in advance.
Martin's book
Hi Chas. I believe Martin's claim can be found in his book "The Case Against Christianity" (http://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Christianity-Michael-Martin/dp/156639...).
Best,
Brett
Thank you, Brett. I'm sorry I
Thank you, Brett. I'm sorry I didn't back to you until; I've been on my work computer, which is painfully slow. I'll look for his book. Thanks again!
Agnostic atheist reporting in
It's clear you don't understand the terms agnostic and atheist, they mean different things. Atheism is a lack of belief in a god or gods. Agnosticism is knowing that is a god or gods. I'm an agnostic atheist, I don't know there's not god or gods as I can't prove a negative, I believe there's not god or gods as I've seen no evidence to support that notion.
I'd consider having bombs go off and being shot at `times of great stress' and at no time did any thought of a supernatural power enter my head.
I am an atheist too..
By defn i am an atheist. However, i find myself in times of extreme stress, if not praying atleast wishing for a super power ! So, does that mean i am a lesser of an atheist ? You are not a representation of all atheists out here. I guess you havent seen evidence of me or my thought processes during normal and stressful times, so you might just conclude i dont exist or to suit your arguments conclude that i am not an atheist !
Offensive but Possible
To Brett:
I think when posts like this pop up, it can be easy to see it as a personal attack and get emotional, thereby forgetting that you must combat that attack with a fully rational argument. And while Raghunanthan's reasoning is quite inadequate, I think your post suffers from a few problems, too.
Your post rightfully criticizes Raghunathan for denying the possibility that a person can not believe in God based purely upon a rational analysis of the argument, but it then goes on to offer the personal experience of how you arrived at your worldview as proof that Raghunathan is incorrect. But inherent in this "proof" is an equal denial of the possibility that all of your reasons for disbelieving in God are mere post-hoc rationalizations similar to those discussed in the link below.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experiments-in-philosophy/200804/wha...
While, the item discussed in the linked article is how people maintain their irrational moral judgments, I think it can easily be applied to how we maintain both religious and nonreligious viewpoints. Such a phenomenon deems Raghunathan's hypothesis at least tentatively possible.
My problem with Raghunathan's post, however, is that it offers little in the way of proof to it's ambitious claim that ALL people are, at their core, theists. But what his post does do is offer a "window" for such a possibility by pointing out the implications of the "broken window" study. Furthermore, it properly highlights the problem with the prevailing notion of increased IQ and atheism having a causal relationship, in that the said causality of this relationship has yet to have been proven, and that the correlation could instead be a result of a positive causal relationship between secularization and comfortability.
It would be very interesting to see such a study, but without such, Raghunathan's argument is indeed pretty weak.
Response to Cameron
Cameron, I agree with everything you say, including that I don't offer much by way of proof. However, that's why I am blogging about this on PT than submitting it to a journal!
Thanks for your post.
Thanks, and I'm afraid that
Thanks, and I'm afraid that PT has spoiled me with it's wealth of references to psychological studies. This places is an intellectual goldmine.
I totally agree! I get so
I totally agree! I get so tired of people indicating that if I was smarter.. or if I would just EDUCATE myself more... I'd come around to their way of thinking - and BELIEVE! LOL - Like having brains and a belief in God have anything in common! Faith = Hope. Prayers= wishes. I just use the latter terms!
Being scientific doesn't negate being spiritual
Thanks for your comment, Anon. Your comment reminded me of something related: smart people are generally correct about many things, and I think they take this as a sign that they are therefore qualified to speak about even those things that can't be figured out through logic and IQ-type intelligence. The idea that one can logically and factually "prove" that God doesn't exist isn't true--even if it is repeated a thousand times!
Couldn't disagree more.
Perhaps, then you could explain what scientific evidence or papers have been produced on the "spiritual". To my knowledge, ALL scientific inquiry into "spiritual" phenomena has yielded negative results.
To the extent that one cannot "prove" that there's no bigfoot or that homeopathy doesn't work. ie. provide sufficient evidence that this is the case.
If what you're saying is that this particular hypothesis is unfalsifiable, then clearly it IS unscientific.
Post new comment