Is atheism/theism a choice?

[msrisotto]

Someone I follow on twitter posted this picture along with the line "atheism is not a choice"

I guess the point of it is that once upon a time (and to this day), unexplainable things were 'explained' as being acts of god. Now we know a lot more, science has investigated many of these things and increasingly, 'god' is out of the picture.

But i'm not sure this is the reason I don't believe in 'god'. I was indoctrinated brought up to be christian and can't remember actually believing any of it. I outed myself as atheist around the age of 12. Was that because I knew scientific theories? Or was it just because I didn't have that faith feeling? It wasn't a choice for me anyway. I just didn't believe. I have often thought how it must be reassuring to have faith of an afterlife, particularly when people close to me have died....but I don't. I can't make myself.

Is it a coincidence that scientists are generally atheist? Do they lack faith and go looking for answers in science? Or did an interest in science give them explanations that eliminated rational evidence of a god?

Is faith or lack of, a choice for you?

Active atheism i.e. believing in God's non-existence is a choice
No, I disagree. I don't choose to not believe in god any more than I choose not to believe in unicorns. There is no evidence for the existence of either, beyond some old story books.
Atheism is the default position, it's not a choice. People are taught religions, before they are old enough to understand, they must be atheists.

How can you prove there is no God?
The onus is on the religions to prove that there is.
It is impossible to prove god doesn't exist, just like it is impossible to prove that fairies don't exists. It seems that none of the gods are able to prove their own existence.

I was lucky to not hav religion and was kept out of religious worship as a small child so I had nothing to reject. However, I was aware of it from as young as six so clearly, despite all the efforts to keep me religious free (ie as I was born) there was still an awareness of it and so then a rejection.

I hugely resent that my son will have to reject something that he never even had and am considering withdrawing him from worship in school.

I don't think it's a choice, no. When I was younger, I desperately wanted to have a faith. I went to church for a few years, prayed regularly, read the bible, even got myself baptised. But deep down, I don't think I ever really believed. I tried, but eventually I realised that wanting to believe wasn't the same thing as actually believing, so I decided to stop kidding myself.

If you have to make a choice, then I guess you're agnostic because you don't really know either way.

David - got a recent up to date research paper supporting that, rather than a paper churning out the old (now discarded) beliefs?

"If you have to make a choice, then I guess you're agnostic because you don't really know either way."

I am an atheist- the chance of there being a god is the same as the chance of pink pixies living under my sofa.

Yes you are right that I don't really know that not to be true but the probability is the same.

There is no evidence of god so I accept that he does not exist.

For those who believe it is not a choice, do you judge those whose "non choice" differs from your "non choice"? (IYSWIM)

Puco, plenty of 20th and 21st century scientists were/are religious. The idea that science and religion are incompatible is incorrect.

SBGA, I have to ask because I might have misunderstood. Did you mean that evolution is an old (now discarded) belief?

For me, the issue with faith is not science. I can see some difficulties, but it doesn't make faith impossible to me. For me what makes faith impossible is the suffering of the innocent. Not suffering caused by man, which fits the faith theory fine; but suffering such as that of my child and many other children I know, born with a nasty disability which is genetic, not caused by any act of man, but fully part of the creation of all things by god.

When I talk with religious ppl about the paradox (how can a good god who created the universe allow this type of suffering) I am given a number of very feeble answers. We discuss them, and we almost always end up with "well, in your shoes I would probably feel the same".

This reply has the potential to make me very angry indeed, bevause it is a version of "I'm all right, Jack": the suffering of my own child would disprove god but the suffering of yours is remote enough that I can put it out of my mind.

The only way I can retain any respect for ppl of faith is to recognise that faith is probably involuntary: they don't have a choice. They are either hardwired to believe (we know there is a neurological element in faith; religious visions are associated with the same region of the brain where we observe the effects of epilepsy) or they have been socially conditioned to do so. Stuck in that position, they are doing the best they can do, to resolve the paradox.

I have to believe that, because otherwise I find it so incredibly hurtful, that ppl can confront the reality of suffering such as my child has, and they don't care enough to hold their god properly to account for it.

Good points beast- I agree completely.

"If you have to make a choice, then I guess you're agnostic because you don't really know either way."

the only reason people have to make a choice is because the ridiculous idea of a god/gods has been introduced in the first place. We all start of without religion.

We all start off without religion.

I think the interesting thing is that this seems not to be true.

We can see that through the ages there has been a need to posit some superior being. Going right back to early mountain gods, worship to ensure harvest, sacrifrice to some god who is more powerful than the opposition's god. Early tribal allegiance and fear creating the need to identify the winning side and join it. Miserable and unfair lives creating the wish for later payback. Loss of people we love creating the wish that it isn't true and we will see them again.

We can also observe in neuroscience the existence of visions caused by a number of things- we can now induce them very reliably if we want to. And there are other hallucogenic factors, such as diet (ergot is a classic, said to account for visions of witches flying) and schizophrenia, which gives a very convincing fit (pun not intended but actually now it's there, quite funny) for some of the mystic experiences reported by early "holy men and women".

Now if you are religious you will say that the huge numbers of religions across the world and across time are evidence that god has always spoken to man (and that your own faith represents the right and proper end point of man finding the true god, rather as evolution was "designed" to come up with the existing form of homo sapiens as its perfect outcome).

if you are not, you will say that the reason ppl keep believing in god is that it is obvious why you would want to. We all would love to fool ourselves into thinking these things. But that doesn't make it true: it just explains why the delusion survives.

And that's before you get started on the social pressure created by men who gain enormous power and prestige from religion. Even without that, I think the human psyche tends to want to invent gods.

what I mean is - when we come into the world as creaming babies we are not religious at all. I was raised without religion and have never created any personal gods for myself.

I was kept out of assemblies and can only really remember religion becoming an issue when I started secondary school and got told off by my RE teacher for 'refusing to write the lord's prayer' in my RE book at the start of term. She couldn't get her head around the idea that I didn't know the lord's prayer.

What people did years ago when they couldn't understand why it rained, what thunder was and so on is more understandable than what we do now which is to start feeding our kids a lie at a very young age which cannot be supported by any scientific fact.

It's stupid and I really hate the idea that my son has already been exposed to this kind of ridiculous notion when he's not even 4 yet.

I know- but I think what is interesting is that screaming babies may already have in them the tendency to invent gods.

You and me, not. But many ppl do. I find it depressing, but actually not as depressing as thinking that ppl turn to religion in a rational way having thought about it.

My kids are all grown up now and went to state C of E schools at primary level. DS1 went on to a secondary that became increasingly religious with a change of head teacher. Happy to say that he has always chosen atheism and actually rather enjoyed being the school iconoclast.

I'm sure it's true that we have an inbuilt tendency to invent gods. To explain things we don't understand and to 'make things right'. The first part though should no longer apply. I was talking to someone this morning about this and she said "but now if you don't know what causes something you just look it up on wikipedia" and it's true isn't it. Even when it's something we don't know the answer to yet we feel sure some scientist will work it out one day.

We're no longer ignorant savages imagining that the thunder is something that's angry at us so if we had a way to bring up a generation without hearing about gods I don't think there'd be a reason to invent them.

The second part is harder. When you know you have a bad life and there's little hope of it improving then you may want to believe that one day you'll be in a place where no one is hungry and everyone can have a harp or a sackful of virgins.

Believing in heaven is like playing the lottery. It makes you feel there's a chance things might get better.

religion is the opium of the people. Karl Marx the drug of choice of everyman to get him through his crap days. absolutely.

but its not just about having a sackful of virgins these days. I'ts about feeling that you, personally, matter; that your life is not a futile round of solving self-referential problems that wouldn't exist if you didn't exist. Also about feeling that someone cares.

And in some cases about belonging to the in-crowd, being important in a select chosen society.

I think that to be a scientist and religious requires some sort of cognitive dissonance. To require strong evidence on one hand and be willing to make a leap of faith on the other is quite separate.

However I'm not sure how many people really lack faith because of science, compared to things like not being able to reconcile belief and suffering.

Increasingly I find the arguments for faith very self-centred compared with the arguments for atheism. ppl who debate with me about suffering always end by saying (apart from, in your shoes, etc, see above) "but I couldn't live without my faith" meaning, that they, personally, need to feel loved and endowed with significance beyond what they can create in their own right.

they do not feel the anger and indignation on behalf of others that I feel. I think they are too willing to be bought off by weak arguments on the suffering issue, because in the end, they can't bear not to believe.

and pico I think it may depend on the science. A theoretical physicist, for instance, is used to having working hypotheses for which there can be no evidence, but you go on indirect observed data and bascially say, "x must be true because if it isn't, the whole theory of relativity falls down". Dark matter is a classic. So is the Higgs Boson.

perhaps if your whole subject is used to the concept of a major unknowable hypothesis at the heart of what you do, that leap is easier.

Back:- no, it's good you clarified with me, I was saying that once upon a time the ape-to-man icon illustration of a knuckle-dragging ape evolving through a series of imaginary transitional forms into modern man has appeared so many times in so many places that the picture has evolved into the proof. Darwin himself stated categorically that our descent is from apes. More recently it was changed to a common descent eater than man comes from apes as depicted in the well known drawings.

SBGA, Ah I'm with you now. I suppose it's possible that the simplistic images gave that impression.

It made me wonder though if Darwin had ever said we were descended from apes so I went to look for a quote. I looked for sites where they hate Darwin because if there was anything to criticise they'd have found it. I have yet to find any evidence that he had said it at all. Only that we descended from a common ancestor. He also said 'probably' and 'perhaps' a lot.

This is the nearest I found which one place claims is proof.

"In the sixth chapter of his Descent, titled On the Affinities and Geneology of Man, Darwin wrote: "There can, consequently, hardly be a doubt that man is an off-shoot from the Old World simian stem; and that under a genealogical point of view he must be classified with the catarhine [Old World monkeys] division . . . But a naturalist, would undoubtedly have ranked as an ape or a monkey, an ancient form which possessed many characters common to the catarhine and platyrhine monkeys, other characters in an intermediate condition, and some few, perhaps, distinct from those now found in either group. And as man from a genealogical point of view belongs to the catarhine or Old World stock, we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated"

Yes, it was the bishop who said we were descended from apes. He was trying to misrepresent Darwin in order to score a point.

Account from the Natural History Museum website:

Tensions climaxed at a debate on June 30 1860, at a scientific meeting held at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce, was due to speak against Darwins views. A powerful figure, the rumour was that Wilberforce was going to smash Darwin. Nearly 1,000 people crowded into the museum to witness the stand-off.

Darwin was not well enough to attend, so a close friend, the eminent scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, volunteered to debate in his place. Huxley was an impressive public speaker who had vigorously defended Darwins views many times and had earned the nickname Darwins bulldog.

As Bishop Wilberforce finished delivering his opening address, he enquired of Huxley, Is it on your grandmothers or grandfathers side that you are descended from an ape? Huxley responded by clearly outlining all the evidence supporting Darwins theory. He then turned to the bishop and said, I would rather be descended from an ape than a man who uses his great faculties and influence for the purpose of ridicule.

Pico, quite a few religious scientists have spoken and written about their scientific knowledge and religious beliefs complementing eachother. For them there is no cognitive dissonance.

I often wonder when this idea of religious belief being incompatible with being a scientist came about and why it is so often repeated when the evidence clearly shows that this is not the case.

Of course the scientists themselves don't think it's cognitive dissonance, but from the non-religious perspective there is a lot of flawed logic in there that is pretty incompatible logical processes such as science.

The existence of religious scientists doesn't actually tell us that science and religion are compatible, just that some scientists believe that they are.