Is being an Atheist genetic? "I did not choose to be an Atheist" article...

I'm not sure I agree, but seems like a topic worth discussion.

"I never chose to be an atheist, and I hardly think I'm unique among atheists in this regard. I suspect that most atheists did not chose to be atheists. So when a Christian asks me some version of their "what if you're wrong" question, I often point out that this question assumes I have a choice in what I believe about their "god." I do not accept this assumption. I could not simply start believing because I thought there might be something in it for me. Belief does not work this way."

"I try to explain to evangelists that I do not in fact “choose” atheism. Instead, atheism is the only possible position I can have given my present state of knowledge. I can no more “choose” to just believe in the existence of a god than I can “choose” to just believe that the computer on my desk doesn’t exist."

http://www.atheistrev.com/2011/11/i-did-not-choose-to-be-atheist.html


"Disbelief Is Not a Choice
Nature, nurture and your beliefs about gods
Published on September 12, 2011 by Dave Niose in Our Humanity, Naturally"

"If more individuals today are religious skeptics than in centuries past, that is mainly because accumulated knowledge has inclined more people toward such doubt. As Dawkins himself has said, it would have been harder to be an atheist hundreds of years ago, when so many mysteries about the universe had not been answered. Though skepticism has always existed (the history of religious skepticism is covered wonderfully in Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History), the scientific discoveries of the last few hundred years have filled in so many gaps that the idea of a Grand Designer with some kind of special affection for humans seems more implausible than ever to many."

...

"Thus, while sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, we should realize that neither are one's sincerely held beliefs about divinities. One can hide or misrepresent one's real beliefs, but one cannot change those beliefs on command. Still, we should also recognize that the biological aspects of secularity are not directly analogous to the biological nature of sexual orientation. Whereas a thirteenth-century Dawkins would most likely have been a theist, a thirteenth-century Elton John no doubt still would have been gay."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201109/disbelief-is-not-choice

If so, you have been brainwashed.

The more elaborate the lie, the more the damage.

me to read..........Neither of them served in the military.

It was before WW II, when they were of age to serve, I was born between wartime, until Vietnam


Then I had to say I was not in favor of any war, around 20 years old.

The people of war favoritism at my local draft board didn't agree, but then Nixon did some sort of lottery, and all my complaints of war in my town got buried because my number was too high.

I don't know if that make sense to anyone under 30 now, it didn't make sense to me either.......

It's not the same thing as genetic predisposition or alignment, as with homosexuality.

It's just that I couldn't suddenly decide to believe in a god, because I just don't. If I tried to, I'd be pretending. I tell people who give me that "Wouldn't it be better to believe and be wrong" cliche that THEY don't believe, either, because if they did, they wouldn't be able to rationalize. If you can suggest to someone else that they choose a belief, then you won't convince me ever that you actually believe what you've chosen, because you don't understand the basic requirement of belief.

own.

I'm not an Atheist......because of my genes, other than ability to think logically.

Seeing 30-50 % of Americans NOT able to think logically about faith and religion, I'm not surprised that being Atheist has SOMETHING to do with genes, some of us American faithful believers just don't choose to think logically. That might be as genetic as NOT choosing to sleep with a partner of the same sex. I don't know. I have NO problem with heterosexuals, but I have a problem with heterosexuals who insist every one else must be the same. Do you get the point, Gay is fine with me, as is people who can go beyond common thinking, and allow for the possibility that there is no god. I'm one of those.

I'm expecting lots of responses to this, claiming I have just insulted lots of people, accusing them of an inability to think with logic. Let's see if I am right.

I don't think logic has anything to do with whether a person believes in gods or doesn't. I know atheists who are atheists because they were raised that way, or for emotional reasons, or who reject religious beliefs without really thinking logically about them. I know believers who are very logical. No one would doubt that Thomas Aquinas had one of the most logical minds in history, and Anselm of Bec's "Proslogian" is a very logical proof of god, to anyone who can actually follow it.

Whether a person is born logical or chooses later to be logical... that's another topic. :)

that there are a few standards for such choices, one of them being ability to think logically.

Another being the ability and courage to withstand criticism for NOT thinking in conformity.

I respect and admire both of those abilities.

I'm sure you do too!

Sorry if my reasoning is too abstruse, or convoluted for reasonable folks, I sometimes mix too many metaphors with too many sarcastic comments upon the true believers who believe out of fear of not believing.

I remember my mom reading me the story of Adam and Eve and laughing. She had a very serious look on her face. I asked her if she really believed that and she said of course. I was five. I never brought up religion with her again.

I have since spent a lot of time reading about different religions and respect others beliefs. I just don't share them and honestly never have. Maybe I'm broken or missing some chemical reaction in my brain that will allow belief?

I would still be believing in Santa Claus as a real event in my life at 5........

heck, it was 7 and my mother had to coax me into logical thought about Santa Claus before I stopped believing

I think, as me being the youngest of 5, she was sick of 25 years of Santa Claus believer kids.

Heck, she was probably SICK of kids by the time I came around, but finally able to deal with me without fantasy as she was 45 and I was 7

I always wanted a big family. But two is enough in this crazy economy. :)

Have they identified the gene?

disability?

Interesting some would think rational analytical skills would arise from a defective gene!

but having *a* gene for sickle cell anaemia is actually good for you: it leads to relative immunity to malaria. It is when you inherit *two* genes for sickle cell anaemia that you develop serious illness. That is probably why the disease is so common: having *one* gene for it confers an advantage.

It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that, in psychological areas as well, some genes have good consequences when inherited from only one parent, but cause disability or illness when inherited in a larger dose from both parents. That being said, I am sure that there is no single gene that causes religion, or atheism. Or for that matter 'superior rational thought' - though intelligence does seem to be linked to a complex combination of multiple genes plus the environment.

a measure of the quality or usefulness of a person?

I don't think there's a 'gene for atheism' or a 'gene for religion'; but some people are doubtless more predisposed than others to religious emotions. Also, social and family influences play a crucial role. Indeed, although a 13th-century Dawkins would probably have been a theist, at least one 19th-century Dawkins was not, at a time when theism was the norm. The 'Balliol Rhymes' (1880) were verses produced by students at Balliol College, Oxford about their seniors and contemporaries; and they inclide the verse:

Positivists ever talk in
Such an epic style as Dawkins.
God is not, and Man is all.
Spell Him with a capital.


And yes, this 19th century Balliol undergraduate Clinton Dawkins was a relative of the current Dawkins: brother of his great-great-grandfather, I think.

Some atheists are, like me, the children of atheists and/or live in a society where atheism is common. Some came to their atheism by being exposed to several different religions and seeing the contradictions between them. And some simply found it impossible to believe in the religion with which they were surrounded.

I agree that atheism is usually not something that is chosen. For instance, I would sometimes quite like to believe in an afterlife, and in a benevolent power controlling my life for my good. I just find myself unable to do so.

Religion certainly isn't.

But everybody is born an atheist, and it's certainly not a choice.

... learned how to exclude non-facts, I could not unlearn them. The idea that gods are entirely human fabrications was the inescapable conclusion. I could not pretend I had not realized that.

If that was the case, then certainly it would be genetic. However, The only way that it can be stated that people are atheists at birth is to qualify the term "atheist" to fit the situation. There is absolute no objective proof of this being the case, and we do know that when isolated primitive tribes are observed, they display an awareness of the supernatural, which would open the possibility that there is an a priori knowledge of some "higher power" present at birth.

Citation?

of course, he's not talking about babies born with "an awareness of the supernatural", he's talking about adults.

All any fact like that proves is that human beings often develop a system of beliefs, (a faith) to explain those questions for which they cannot find a "science" or a logical answer. Those "awarenesses" often reference fire, thunder, earth shaking, volcanoes, floods, etc., as being somehow related to the "supernatural".

Most Native Americans had such belief systems, but Christians called them unsophisticated "savages" and insisted upon "converting" them to Christianity. It happens in Africa, even today.

"awareness of the supernatural" infers that it actually exists and can be observed.

"The supernatural" is one of those amorphous phrases in English and in many other languages. It can refer to an imagined entity, like a god, or a group of gods, or it can refer to all those phenomena that go unexplained under a "science" of natural laws.

Thunderstorms can be "supernatural events" to people who have no grasp of meteorology.

So, anyone with no sophistication in the discipline of science can experience an awareness of a "supernatural event" whenever it rains or snows.

Citation?

Oh, I know

NEVER!

Just claim whatever you want, and insist upon others to "prove" you wrong.

SURE, that's about as "scientific" as witchcraft!

makes that leap of faith to say that because primative tribes have developed their own lore and "super-natural" explanations of things they failed to understand in a scientific way, how does this DISPROVE babies being born without a faith in a deity?

begin if the tribes had always been isolated?

in one's imagination.

And can you prove your assertion?

And unicorns, don't forget the purple unicorns.

Now that's a wise choice. If I can't see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or touch it, then it doesn't exist.

IOW, nothing exists outside of this box. So hard to believe that not everyone would think that way!

cough! hrrump! cough!

Education is a vaccine.

Quit stalling.

Or can't you?

Not normal.

Are you ceding the point or obfuscating?

assert their positions, irrational as they are, and ask others to prove the negative of their position as some sort of assertion that their position HAS TO BE true, since no evidence of the opposite can be demonstrated.


Like this example:

I believe in pink fairies and unicorns, prove to me none has ever been seen anywhere ! Thus my belief must be "true"!

That kind of mental gymnastics is rather disgusting, and, really, quite insincere and disingenuous and childishly distracting from adult discussions.

You've figured it out already, and you haven't even been here a month.

but I HAVE been alive longer than most here, and know when I see a snake oil salesman, or when I see someone I should have a legitimate debate about our divergent views of the world we both live in.

The snake oil salesmen, get the door shut in their face really quickly. The other folks, who can actually respect my position and have some logical reasoning skills, get invited in for tea.

It is a very common claim here on DU that people are born atheists. I've got 3 choices: 1. list all tribes that have been encountered throughout human history, which of course is impossible. 2. present a random cross section of remote tribes around the world. Or 3. Ask how many tribes are atheist.

The claim that people are born atheists comes from DU atheists, like yourself. Burden is now on you.

Man, quit dragging those goalposts around, you're tearing up the field.

Who's going to pay for this?

Using your own logic, prove that they are NOT born that way!

Of course, I'm being as facetious as anyone on the believers' side is being.


So I actually have "evidence". In a random sample conducted by Pew Research, not one single baby born could answer the question "Is there a god?"

Several cries and fusses were heard, several coo's and some babbling was also mentioned as valid responses.

But NOT ONE BABY answered "YES, THERE IS A GOD".

It must be noted.
Some babies refused to participate in this survey, choosing a bottle or their own mother's nipple, or sleep as a way avoiding the question.

brian surgeons, authors of Shakespearean sonnets and plays, founders of democratic governments, computer engineers, space explorers, symphony composers, or mega church pastors?

Do you realize how silly and irrational your challenge is?

He does realize how silly and irrational it is, just like his original claim.

He's just trying derail the thread.

Apparently he thinks he's winning when he does that.


Winning...


----Wait, Charlie? Is that you?

growing up.

Charlie Sheen, the poster boy for total losers, somehow people pay to see him?

I hope he recovers from his addictions and illnesses.

Charlie, I mean.

The Woo Woo Creed LIVES!

Now that I find quite silly. No proof ever offered up. Only vacuous reasoning.

You cannot. Your final defense?

All children are born Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, or Bahai, or Buddhist, or Shinto..............


Take ... your ... pick

People in general seek causes for what happens. If people are isolated from the rest of the world and its knowledge base, they're unlikely to find scientific causes. However, as far as I know, isolated hunter-gatherer groups also don't tend to believe in the sort of Gods or organized religions that are common to more complex societies. They tend to ascribe godlike powers to the Sun/ animals/ other natural objects/ a combination of these, and often also believe in ghosts and spirits. The worship of natural objects; ancestor worship; non-theistic spiritualism are not unique to hunter-gatherer groups, but also all occur in many more modern societies, and a significant number of self-described atheists believe in ghosts and other forms of spiritualism.

So the beliefs of small isolated societies probably tend to have little in common with *either* modern atheism *or* what's usually thought of as modern religion, at any rate the Abrahamic religions.

question?

Those that constantly assert that love, hate, psychopathology, even dreams and Santa Claus or "imagination" is some sort of
actual "knowledge", handed us as "other ways of knowing", kind of weak and insincere arguments, in my opinion.


IF there is, among all cultures, a kind of "awareness of the supernatural", why is "awareness" not of the very same "supernatural"?

Simple: different people in different place, experiencing life and nature in different ways use their own "imaginations" to come up with whatever explanation they need to come up with to answer their children's questions, lest the child come up with his/her OWN explanation from his/her own "imagination". As always, in the challenges of raising human children, it's the struggle for power and control over one's children, acted out upon a scale where parents must maintain control, even over the "not-understood" events of life.

Rip VanWinkle's gods playing with bowling balls to explain thunder is not much different than answering the question of why someone had to die with the explanation "God called her home to be with him". Both are senseless fantasy, but both bring answers to the unexplained events with metaphor and "imagination".

;)

"...unlike the empiricists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge is independent of the content of experience; moreover, unlike the rationalists, Kant thinks that a priori knowledge, in its pure form, that is without the admixture of any empirical content, is knowledge limited to the deduction of the conditions of possible experience. These a priori, or transcendental conditions, are seated in one's cognitive faculties, and are not provided by experience in general or any experience in particular. Kant nominated and explored the possibility of a transcendental logic with which to consider the deduction of the a priori in its pure form."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori#Immanuel_Kant

http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/5f.htm

"supernatural force" came down and taught them slightly different "supernatural" explanations of natural phenomena?

is where is that "higher power" located?

Inside their heads or out?

inside your head?

The real question is the method as to how it got there...


Through "sound and fury signifying NOTHING" (as Shakespeare said), or through an honest pursuit of understanding all aspects of the truth and the reality of what is outside of yourself in the world at large?

What's the point of amassing all that data and recombining it into something new? You may believe we are just vessels for the replication of DNA and all our efforts are just efforts to make more that look like us, but the vast overwhelming majority of the people who have ever lived would disagree with you. Surely that merits further study. The scientific method may provide those answers, but it's gotten a late start.

The study of all that "other stuff" has been going on since we've been here. I don't expect the scientific method to replace art, literature, poetry, music and all the rest any time soon.

Learning that you have no idea of what the essence of a lifetime is all about, nor what science has to do with art, literature, music, to you it's all a game


Glad I discovered the shallowness of your boat on these waters. Don't stick around when the storms of intellectual challenges come about, you're not properly prepared, and your boat is kind of flimsy.

:rofl:

why would claim I am in a boat? Or are my ideas in a boat? Do you think you could design an experiment to prove that?

Most people call that a literary device. I don't think I've ever seen such passion about rationality.

Come now, you don't want people to think you made it up, do you?

answers from scholarly writers, and primary sources.

But I will give you a few, just to show something (perhaps NOT what the believer group wants to see)

This phenomenon has been well studied in sociology, and psychology.

"Much of this behavior is rooted in ignorance. Because we have a need to ease our miseries, calm our fears, band together to compete with other groups, and generally understand the cause and purpose of life, we are receptive to ideas that satisfy these needs. As a consequence, we are overwhelmed with opposing dogma and rituals as religions compete for followers, financial support, and power. The path that should have led to clarity instead has led to other cells in the spiritual prison block. A clear view of reality has been distorted by multiple religions, sects, schools, creeds, and cults. A true understanding of reality has been lost in needless complexities, theatrics, and exploitation.
We praise distant mythological deities as we exploit our neighbors. We dream of the “hereafter” as we destroy the “here.” Convinced that we are the exceptions that will be saved in an afterlife, we ignore our responsibility for saving ourselves in this life. We are willing, even anxious, to take giant leaps of faith, but refuse to take even small steps toward sound reason and common sense. We elevate fictional stories of gods and creation, fabricated by ourselves, to the status of divinely inspired dogma, freeze them in texts, and upon these shaky foundations build and perpetuate religious institutions."

...

"Many otherwise intelligent people are reluctant to engage in open conversations on religion. We find it difficult to remain dispassionate and rational. Religious beliefs and ideas are life-long habits, coveted addictions. These are very personal and highly charged issues. When they are challenged, even politely, our responses are emotional and defensive. We are cautioned not to speak about religion. It is a shunned subject that everyone knows ignites easily."

http://www.sevenwords.org/primitive-belief/

"NEW BOOK: Will Humanity Survive? Evolving Beyond Short-term Thinking and Antiquated Religious Beliefs is available..."

....

"We're born with a belief in the supernatural, says scientist"

"The mind is programmed to see coincidences as significant and to think that inanimate objects have minds.
"We see faces wherever we look, whether in the clouds or on Mars," he said. "We think that cars are vindictive and computers nasty when they don't behave properly." Prof Hood has studied attachment objects — blankets, soft toys and so on — which children are unwilling to part with even if they are promised a copy.
"They are frightened the integrity of the object will be violated," he said.
............
"We may all recognise the fantastical nature of ghosts, fairies, and wizards in the world of Harry Potter, but other, equally magical beliefs are so common that most adults assume that supernatural phenomena — those that cannot be explained by natural laws — are real."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1528051/Were-born-with-a-belief-in-the-supernatural-says-scientist.html

Lots of good stuff in there, thank you.

also this:



Channeling Carl Sagan...

and "preaching" out there that doesn't talk about one religious belief structure over any other. Rather it talks about how we integrate our rational minds with the highest ideals and aspirations of any religion, per-se.


One need not adopt or be "adopted" by a religion after birth in order to explore and contribute to the world around us, and to hold some questions as simply unable to be answered, or answered only in a singular way for ourselves alone.

There is no need to join a big marching band in order to make one's own music.

Fascinating.

was challenged by the concept of "imagination" existing in all advanced human beings, that didn't come up with a "Christian" view of everything, and sort of got bummed out that "supernatural" is so close to "superstition".

There's sort of a pattern wherein folks who preach here about how evil Atheistic perspectives of the world are, seem to be so unable to do basic research to back up their assertions about the "other ways of knowing" or the universal phenomena of the concept of the "supernatural".

There is no new knowledge to be revealed, no new definitions, no new insults, no new fallacies, no new excuses, nothing original at all.

No sport in it anymore.

I'm only here because I have a crushed foot and can't work with my horses, such a beautiful day, too...sigh

And because of the excellent company.

Belated welcome to The Arena. :hi:

any religion, that one must be instructed in a faith by their families and communities. The same is true of table manners, yet we do not say that eating with one's hands is genetic.

Sorry, try harder to make one.

she's one of us. :hi:

Religions not only tell you HOW to eat, they tell you WHAT to eat, what NOT to eat, when to eat, what to do before eating,

Table manners tell you efficient ways of holding forks and knives and spoons and which foods to eat before which foods in order to get maximum caloric and vitiminic benefit from the act of eating.

Religion tries to starve the eater to death and then make him/her feel happy that a tasty scrap of bread was thrown their way.

And echoing BMUS, I say "down boy."

without religion, atheism would need to be genetic. Though really, his attempted subtextual jab was that any non-believer who asserts that babies are born without religion is an idiot just for making the claim. I was just pointing out that religion is not native to the human brain, but is taught like many other aspects of an infant's particular culture.

I initially thought about using bigotry in the place of table manners in that initial post (ala South Pacific's "You've Got to be Carefully Taught"), but decided against the negative comparison. Around these parts, such a thing tends to lead to pointless flamewars, ala "You think religion is like racism? You're a horrible militant atheist fundamentalist!" :eyes:

rather pointless.

I'd rather this not be here anymore. It was foolish to post this here. Only people who don't understand what the point is, that we are NOT born with a religion, are making reasonable posts.

Let's ask that this thread be locked.

This kind of debate happens all over DU, (have you been to the gungeon or i/p forum? this place is like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood compared to them :scared: ).
I refer to it as "sharpening our claws" so that we're ready to fight conservative christian republicans/tea partiers.

I've seen atheists become believers and believers become atheists in part because of the posts in this forum.

If it makes people think, it's all worth it.

Ignore those who choose to be obtuse and want only to disrupt.

I don't recall trying to hurt your feelings. Well, maybe one post but I think any fair reading will show I was provoked.

This has actually been a rather benign thread. I'm not particularly interested in going back through it but I expect the bulk of the vitriol has been provided by you.

Whoever said we were? That is a rather ridiculous idea.

are not genetic. Religious belief is learned. Atheism is automatic since nobody believes in a god until they are told about the god. Then after they learn of multiple gods through the years they make a decision, usually though indoctrination, about which of these gods to believe is real. To say someone is born Catholic, for example, is insane. They are made catholic through no choice of their own.
We are born with the ability to question and learn of our surroundings, religion comes in and stalls it for many people and instead of questioning their surroundings religious mental laziness takes hold and they just figure they have all the answers now because of the bible and that's that.