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Born atheist?

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BWM
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Re: Born atheist?

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I don't think Athiests are born, I think bullies are born. It's easy to point and laugh at religion, and say; ''you actually believe in all that crap?'' I don't believe in it either, but over the years I've seen a few people turn to the church when they were at their lowest. At the time I thought they were hypocrites, using the church as a crutch when it suited them. But know I think it was better they turned to the church than to drink, drugs, or suicide. But more to the point; If it wasn't Atheism it'd be something else, the born whinger would still be whinging and attacking something or somebody else like an internet troll, ie that's what they were born to do, it's a personality trait. Most of us can catch ourselves doing it, and make an effort to control ourselves. As the saying goes: ''Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain. And most fools do''.
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Re: Born atheist?

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First answer was right the first time: born clean slate, anything else is pushed in and learned. Sorry, kids are not born Christians, or any other religion. Religion is an invention of man.
carolinedelussey
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Re: Born atheist?

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Sorry, it has to be said: how can people who read be so ignorant? I mean, have you heard yourselves? I just got here and I'm amazed... Haha, good luck with literature!
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Re: Born atheist?

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People need to bake complexity into the elegant to support their preferred beliefs.
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geo

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Re: Born atheist?

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carolinedelussey wrote:First answer was right the first time: born clean slate, anything else is pushed in and learned. Sorry, kids are not born Christians, or any other religion. Religion is an invention of man.
You might want to read through the posts here more carefully. What many of us have said is that while religion is a human invention, the minds of humans have evolved over eons of time to believe in "God" or higher being(s). Likewise, we are cognitively wired for language and social interaction and countless other traits as well, so that the concept of "blank slate"—Tabula rasas—has been shown to be more or less a myth. Stephen Pinker wrote a pretty good book on this subject: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.

There's also been much said about the words "theism" and "atheism" and what those words actually mean. It's important to discuss such semantics to avoid talking past one another or coming to snap judgments. Good luck and welcome to BookTalk!
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Re: Born atheist?

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I read the Blank Slate around 2007...so I do not remember the details, but did Pinker actually state that we are evolved to believe in "God or other higher beings' or was it more that the brain contains certain structures that promote certain types of human behaviors? I don't recall a strong statement that a belief in any supernatural being is part of the the brain. Have heard of belief engines and pattern recognition gone wrong.. Etc.

The Blank Slate as Rousseau proposed perhaps meant a total absence of anything...and I feel that is debunked. But blank slate as to specific beliefs is still valid.

My biggest takeaway from the Slate is that it's a bit of both. I have the book right on my shelf... I will brief through again at some point. It was a worthy read.
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Re: Born atheist?

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Mr. P wrote:I read the Blank Slate around 2007...so I do not remember the details, but did Pinker actually state that we are evolved to believe in "God or other higher beings' or was it more that the brain contains certain structures that promote certain types of human behaviors? I don't recall a strong statement that a belief in any supernatural being is part of the the brain. Have heard of belief engines and pattern recognition gone wrong.. Etc.
I didn't mean to imply that Pinker said we are primed for religious belief, per se, only to comment on his thesis about the blank slate. But it’s well known that we are primed to see agency in the world, and that this agency often manifests itself in religious beliefs.

See scholarly articles about Hyperactive Agency Detection

I think you are correct that we are blank slates in some respects. But more and more the evidence shows how heredity determines many human traits, though the environment still plays a role as well.

I found this passage on pg. 375 of Pinker's book:
“”All traits are heritable” is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Concrete behavioral traits that patently depend on content provided by the home or culture are, of course, not heritable at all; which language you speak, which religion you worship in, which political party you belong to. But behavioral traits that reflect the underlying talents and temperaments are heritable: how proficient with language you are, how religious, how liberal or conservative. General intelligence is heritable, and so are the five major ways in which personality can vary … openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion-introversion, antagonism-agreeableness, and neuroticism. And traits that are surprisingly specific turn out to be heritable, too, such as dependence on nicotine or alcohol, number of hours of television watched, and likelihood of divorcing.”
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Re: Born atheist?

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geo wrote:I didn't mean to imply that Pinker said we are primed for religious belief, per se, only to comment on his thesis about the blank slate. But it’s well known that we are primed to see agency in the world, and that this agency often manifests itself in religious beliefs.
OK gotcha. Yes and I have read the same thing as well. We do see agency, because that's what we know instinctively. To put it simply: Someone creates or deigns something. So if something seems designed, and it's too big for humans... Well there's yer God!

I absolutely trust the science behind there being structure in the brain. Basic structures that give us an operating system. And systems may differ. But I do also believe that nurture can Trump nature.

Slate is a wonderful book.
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Re: Born atheist?

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BWM wrote:I don't think Athiests are born, I think bullies are born.
Yes, I think this is a good follow up to the distinction DB Roy makes, between concepts and emotional reactions. In practice I don't think there is a sharp divide between the two, but there do seem to be tilts to what kinds of emotional orientations will "take" with a given person. Some people are inherently suspicious, and will always pick up on threats more readily than others, for example. But the particulars of what will be considered threatening are likely to be influenced by the culture of their family and community.

Even such seemingly biologically-based characteristics as schizophrenia seem to be more likely under stressful and disorganized conditions, or dramatic lurching to extremes in home life. I suspect bullying, based in aggression but also narcissism, is similarly a mix of biological predisposition and shaping by experience. It should not be surprising if a tendency to emphasize evidence is both biological and cultural in origin.
BWM wrote: It's easy to point and laugh at religion, and say; ''you actually believe in all that crap?'' I don't believe in it either,
I think most people operate without a carefully considered set of intellectual structures such as one would be taught in college. As a result, when they do sometimes think about big questions, like "Does the universe operate with a plan or goal?" or "Am I facing this tribulation because of something I did?" they are likely to arrive at conclusions that fit their personality using narratives that are part of their culture. And when narratives have evolved to shape practice in specific ways (no sex before marriage, couples remain faithful for the sake of the kids, or whatever) then people are likely to respond to those narratives in terms of their sense of function.

It's a relatively new phenomenon to judge the meta-narratives based on evidence. Of course such things went on with Socrates and Abelard and Confucius, but now we have large bodies of evidence that impact what narratives can be considered credible. It is difficult to get underneath the evidence and believability questions to deeper questions of how the narratives fit with personality types and what the narratives lead to as practices.

Most progressive Christians (or Theological Modernists, to be more precise in relation to the question) like myself tend to take the "implications of the narratives" much more seriously than the "believability of the narratives". So, for example, the principle that we are Children of God is not examined for evidence to support or refute it, it is evaluated based on whether it fosters a community of mutual support and whether it gives dignity to human rights. It isn't quite the same as a humanistic value system, but it is compatible with one.
BWM wrote: but over the years I've seen a few people turn to the church when they were at their lowest. At the time I thought they were hypocrites, using the church as a crutch when it suited them. But know I think it was better they turned to the church than to drink, drugs, or suicide. But more to the point; If it wasn't Atheism it'd be something else, the born whinger would still be whinging and attacking something or somebody else like an internet troll, ie that's what they were born to do, it's a personality trait. Most of us can catch ourselves doing it, and make an effort to control ourselves. As the saying goes: ''Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain. And most fools do''.
There's an on-going examination over at the blog "Experimental Theology" as to the connections between meaning and religion. The blogger, a psych prof, has identified three dimensions (from his readings) of meaning in life, which interact and reinforce but are reasonably distinct:
1. Purpose (do we have a sense of what is important to do),
2. Coherence (can we make sense of events, feelings and decisions) and
3. Significance (do we have a sense that what we do matters).
He puts forward the thesis that a materialistic worldview tends to frame these matters empirically and to offer a minimum of guidance as to values. As a result, coherence depends on fitting whatever issue is in question into an intellectual framework based on evidence, for example, but such structures make no claims to be able to fit one's inner storm of emotions into the overall worldview. There's a lot to recommend that kind of "top down" basis for coherence, not least of which is that the people who think that way tend to be even-tempered and moderate. But if someone is trapped in whirlpools of discouragement and self-sabotage, a sense that life is coherent and intelligible because we know a lot about how it works may not be accessible. For example, it may actively trigger feelings of inferiority just to hear explanations from that outlook. So it may be very helpful to hear that "you are important because God cares about you," or even "what you choose to do matters to your eternal fate."

Religion is way better than drugs at providing purpose, in the sense of things to do that will build inner strength and provide rewards for good choices. It's way better than a lot of things people turn to for relief from the irritations and frustrations of life. I think I agree with the blogger that a lot of our modern problems, such as the enormous jump in mental illness among young people in the last 10 years, can be traced to losing the thread of a narrative that weaves together purpose, coherence and personal significance in a way that works. Since religion tends to change only very slowly, it may be too late for a Christianity that does not reject LGBTQ people, condemn divorcees, etc., to also offer a narrative that appeals to people needing structure in their lives, but we progressives are striving for just such a result.
BWM
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Re: Born atheist?

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There is another side to this question that I didn't give thought to when I posted; that being born an Atheist in a brain chemistry sense is obviously nonsense, but what if you're born the child of a famous extremely outspoken Atheist and are brought up in a household where the subject is openly discussed and debated on a regular basis. I suppose a person with this upbringing might at some point consider themselves to have been a ''born Atheist''.
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