Apr 8, 2018 06:02 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 8, 2018 06:06 PM by C C.)
What are the psychological effects of losing your religion?
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/06/wha...-religion/
EXCERPT: For many, their religion is a core part of their identity, the meaning they find in life, and their social world. It seems likely that changing this crucial aspect of themselves will have significant psychological consequences. A devout person would probably predict these will be unwelcome – increased emotional distress, isolation and waywardness. A firm atheist, on the other hand, might see the potential positives – perhaps the “deconvert” will grow in open-mindedness and thrive thanks to their newfound free thinking and spiritual freedom. A new study in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality is among the first to investigate this question systematically and over time. The findings, which are focused on Protestant Christians, paint a complex picture. At least for this group, there is no single pattern of changes associated with losing or changing one’s religious faith, and the predictions of both the devout person and the atheist are, to some extent, accurate.
MORE: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/06/wha...-religion/
Atheists who bring logic to the Easter story are missing the point
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ith-belief
EXCERPT: . . . Those of us who make determined efforts to understand and debate with religious believers might be too polite to admit it, but we often feel just as baffled. The laziest way to try to cross this credulity gap is to shrug our shoulders and accept that people are often crazy, stupid or both. [...] What atheists often forget is that many – perhaps most – religious believers are less than completely convinced anyway. Many of them are fully aware of the dissonance between what their faith and their rational mind tell them. Religion offers many tools to help manage this. [...]
The Easter story thus ends up rather like quantum theory: if you find it easy to believe, you haven’t understood it. Illogicality is a design feature, not a design flaw. Anyone surprised that people manage to sustain this dissonance all their lives hasn’t been paying enough attention to what psychology has taught us about our capacities to assert contradictions. What we call our “selves” are far less unified and coherent than common sense suggests. When we say “a part of me” believes one thing and another part something else, we are being more literal than we think....
MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ith-belief
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/06/wha...-religion/
EXCERPT: For many, their religion is a core part of their identity, the meaning they find in life, and their social world. It seems likely that changing this crucial aspect of themselves will have significant psychological consequences. A devout person would probably predict these will be unwelcome – increased emotional distress, isolation and waywardness. A firm atheist, on the other hand, might see the potential positives – perhaps the “deconvert” will grow in open-mindedness and thrive thanks to their newfound free thinking and spiritual freedom. A new study in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality is among the first to investigate this question systematically and over time. The findings, which are focused on Protestant Christians, paint a complex picture. At least for this group, there is no single pattern of changes associated with losing or changing one’s religious faith, and the predictions of both the devout person and the atheist are, to some extent, accurate.
MORE: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/04/06/wha...-religion/
Atheists who bring logic to the Easter story are missing the point
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ith-belief
EXCERPT: . . . Those of us who make determined efforts to understand and debate with religious believers might be too polite to admit it, but we often feel just as baffled. The laziest way to try to cross this credulity gap is to shrug our shoulders and accept that people are often crazy, stupid or both. [...] What atheists often forget is that many – perhaps most – religious believers are less than completely convinced anyway. Many of them are fully aware of the dissonance between what their faith and their rational mind tell them. Religion offers many tools to help manage this. [...]
The Easter story thus ends up rather like quantum theory: if you find it easy to believe, you haven’t understood it. Illogicality is a design feature, not a design flaw. Anyone surprised that people manage to sustain this dissonance all their lives hasn’t been paying enough attention to what psychology has taught us about our capacities to assert contradictions. What we call our “selves” are far less unified and coherent than common sense suggests. When we say “a part of me” believes one thing and another part something else, we are being more literal than we think....
MORE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...ith-belief
