(Mar 3, 2018 03:29 PM)elte Wrote: [ -> ]Probably hard to take for most people, this viewpoint is hard for me to take, yet it is the one that, by a long way, I see as most likely to be true.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141219...-disappear
Which viewpoint is that, elte? That there is no god or that the majority of people may always be believers?
Secular Sanity, it seems both. Well, there could be a God or once might have been. It reminds me of the famous quote, by Nietzsche--I think it was--who said that God is dead, and that we killed him. Except the second part would be highly unlikely. It would be more like God died from other causes. Yet regardless, it appears humans depict God as they wish, whether there is one or not.
Quote:. . . Part of religion’s appeal is that it offers security in an uncertain world. So not surprisingly, nations that report the highest rates of atheism tend to be those that provide their citizens with relatively high economic, political and existential stability. “Security in society seems to diminish religious belief,” Zuckerman says. Capitalism, access to technology and education also seems to correlate with a corrosion of religiosity in some populations, he adds. [...] all places where religion was important just a century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries feature strong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. “Basically, people are less scared about what might befall them,” says Quentin Atkinson
Would seem to be a type of explanation that could reflect poorly on both religious belief and atheism, if the underlying trigger for flip-flopping to either was just a long-lived feeling of security or lack of it stemming from the quality of the social and natural environment.
In some brain experiments, a random behavior or decision can be triggered externally by researchers, but the test subject believes the resulting act was caused by itself. Accordingly, the person unconsciously constructs a reason for why s/he deliberately did such -- a story treated as true that provides personal comfort in regard to the event. A superficial appearance of intentionality for a result in which no volition and deliberation on the part of the test subject was actually involved.
Similarly, a complex set of rational motives could be entertained by the flip-flopped theist or atheist as to why they switched. When underneath the intellectual facade all it really stemmed from was just a primal emotional issue of protective reliability.
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Reminiscent of the notion of choosing beliefs and what that means.
Quote:Descartes couldn't imagine how a machine could be capable of thinking, feeling and imagining. Such talents must be God-given. He was writing in the 17th century, when machines were made of levers and pulleys not CPUs and RAM, so perhaps we can forgive him.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39482345