https://bigthink.com/the-well/atheism-rare-rational/
EXCERPTS (Will Gervais): We scientists are increasingly learning that the puzzle of faith cannot be solved without also solving the puzzle of atheism. And as we learn more and more about atheism and nonbelief, they are forcing us to rethink some of our bedrock assumptions about how both belief and disbelief work.
A commonly offered solution to the puzzle of faith is that religion just comes naturally as a sort of cognitive byproduct. A suite of specific mental adaptations helped our ancestors solve recurrent challenges, and these adaptations interact in such a way that religions are just good fits for how we think...
[...] “Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions — hardly the easiest ideology to propagate.”
This notion that religion comes naturally has proven influential within science and has also attracted surprising support from New Atheist cheerleaders (perhaps because it situates their own rationality and cleverness as a key ingredient in their atheism)...
[...] Atheism is heavily stigmatized, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. For example, my lab has studies in which we describe a villain engaging in some sort of immoral action — they kick a puppy, or dabble in cannibalism, or experiment with incest. We then subtly gauge participants’ intuitions about the perpetrator.
In study after study, our respondents intuitively assume that people doing immoral deeds like these don’t believe in gods. In one study, we described [...] a full-blown serial killer ... Participants from 13 countries, including even atheist participants in some highly secular countries, intuited that the murderer cannot believe in god(s).
Not only do people readily infer atheism from described immorality, it turns out that they also read immorality into atheism.
[...] How about the other major claim about atheism made by the byproduct account: Does atheism require cognitive effort? Anecdotally, public atheists posit that intelligence, rationality, and science (all effortful cognitive endeavors) are the root cause of their own atheism...
Around 2009 or 2010, Ara Norenzayan and I sought to scientifically test the idea that atheism is underpinned by effortful cognitive reflection. In an initial study, we found [...] seemingly solid evidence to vindicate their central claim that atheism was all about rationality!
But the plot thickened. Rigorous follow-up studies repeatedly have been unable to produce similar results to our initial experiments. I have now accepted that the experiments in our initial Science paper were fatally flawed, the results no more than false positives. Beyond the experimental failures to replicate, the correlation between rational thinking and atheism turns out to be both weak and fickle across cultures.
Even in the U.S., my team found in a large and nationally representative sample that effortful cognitive reflection doesn’t at all predict atheism among people strongly exposed to religion as kids. [...] There is little scientific reason to believe that rationality and science are key causal contributors to atheism in the aggregate. This makes it all the more ironic that public-facing atheists who speak so reverently of science tend to be the most vocal advocates of the faulty notion that rationality is a prime driver of atheism. They’ve got the science wrong.
Religion is no less an evolutionary product [...] Through the processes of genetic evolution, we have been endowed with minds capable of imagining gods, and through the processes of cultural evolution, we have evolved intricate structures of beliefs and norms that have helped propel our species to greater and greater cooperative heights. The seemingly bizarre religious rituals that many deride as irrational may in fact be cultural evolutionary tricks that help create cooperative societies.
To me, this intricate cultural evolutionary play is infinitely more fascinating and fulfilling than the shallow, wholesale dismissal of religion offered by vocal public atheists. And to appreciate it, all you need to do is open yourself up to the possibility that over the millennia, religions may have survived and thrived in part because they served an evolutionary purpose.
[...] everyone — including atheists, which I am — can have a more mature, scientifically literate, and fulfilling relationship with religion if we are open to the possibility that it doesn’t poison everything... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS (Will Gervais): We scientists are increasingly learning that the puzzle of faith cannot be solved without also solving the puzzle of atheism. And as we learn more and more about atheism and nonbelief, they are forcing us to rethink some of our bedrock assumptions about how both belief and disbelief work.
A commonly offered solution to the puzzle of faith is that religion just comes naturally as a sort of cognitive byproduct. A suite of specific mental adaptations helped our ancestors solve recurrent challenges, and these adaptations interact in such a way that religions are just good fits for how we think...
[...] “Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions — hardly the easiest ideology to propagate.”
This notion that religion comes naturally has proven influential within science and has also attracted surprising support from New Atheist cheerleaders (perhaps because it situates their own rationality and cleverness as a key ingredient in their atheism)...
[...] Atheism is heavily stigmatized, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. For example, my lab has studies in which we describe a villain engaging in some sort of immoral action — they kick a puppy, or dabble in cannibalism, or experiment with incest. We then subtly gauge participants’ intuitions about the perpetrator.
In study after study, our respondents intuitively assume that people doing immoral deeds like these don’t believe in gods. In one study, we described [...] a full-blown serial killer ... Participants from 13 countries, including even atheist participants in some highly secular countries, intuited that the murderer cannot believe in god(s).
Not only do people readily infer atheism from described immorality, it turns out that they also read immorality into atheism.
[...] How about the other major claim about atheism made by the byproduct account: Does atheism require cognitive effort? Anecdotally, public atheists posit that intelligence, rationality, and science (all effortful cognitive endeavors) are the root cause of their own atheism...
Around 2009 or 2010, Ara Norenzayan and I sought to scientifically test the idea that atheism is underpinned by effortful cognitive reflection. In an initial study, we found [...] seemingly solid evidence to vindicate their central claim that atheism was all about rationality!
But the plot thickened. Rigorous follow-up studies repeatedly have been unable to produce similar results to our initial experiments. I have now accepted that the experiments in our initial Science paper were fatally flawed, the results no more than false positives. Beyond the experimental failures to replicate, the correlation between rational thinking and atheism turns out to be both weak and fickle across cultures.
Even in the U.S., my team found in a large and nationally representative sample that effortful cognitive reflection doesn’t at all predict atheism among people strongly exposed to religion as kids. [...] There is little scientific reason to believe that rationality and science are key causal contributors to atheism in the aggregate. This makes it all the more ironic that public-facing atheists who speak so reverently of science tend to be the most vocal advocates of the faulty notion that rationality is a prime driver of atheism. They’ve got the science wrong.
Religion is no less an evolutionary product [...] Through the processes of genetic evolution, we have been endowed with minds capable of imagining gods, and through the processes of cultural evolution, we have evolved intricate structures of beliefs and norms that have helped propel our species to greater and greater cooperative heights. The seemingly bizarre religious rituals that many deride as irrational may in fact be cultural evolutionary tricks that help create cooperative societies.
To me, this intricate cultural evolutionary play is infinitely more fascinating and fulfilling than the shallow, wholesale dismissal of religion offered by vocal public atheists. And to appreciate it, all you need to do is open yourself up to the possibility that over the millennia, religions may have survived and thrived in part because they served an evolutionary purpose.
[...] everyone — including atheists, which I am — can have a more mature, scientifically literate, and fulfilling relationship with religion if we are open to the possibility that it doesn’t poison everything... (MORE - missing details)