Monkeysphere

[The Meromorph]

I was speculating on this last night, and thinking that it's easier to understand the rise of religiosity in the context of a society where death is a regular part of life. I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that some form of communal religious practice is a natural offshoot of those circumstances.



Which got me to thinking.... maybe atheism is a natural offshoot of a society in which death is hidden and usually only occurs under predictable circumstances (end of life, after battle with a long-term terminal illness rather than a short battle with a communicable disease, etc).

It leans a little heavily on the 'no atheists in a foxhole' line of thinking, but that doesn't mean is necessarily a false conclusion.

With respect, I disagree with every part of every statement in your post... 
In particular, I even more strongly disagree with the last sentence. 'No atheists in foxholes' is manifestly untrue, self-serving, arrogant beyond acceptability, insulting to truly religious people, insulting to atheists, and invalidates any conclusion drawn from it.
I have talked with family members who have been under fire in foxholes, and avow the statement is nonsense.
I, myself, although never having been in an actual foxhole, have faced what seemed to be imminent death three times. On none of those occasions did religiosity enter into my head or heart.

You are still my respected and beloved Sibling...     

[Griffin NoName]

I, myself, although never having been in an actual foxhole, have faced what seemed to be imminent death three times. On none of those occasions did religiosity enter into my head or heart.

I am with you on this one.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I was speculating on this last night, and thinking that it's easier to understand the rise of religiosity in the context of a society where death is a regular part of life. I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that some form of communal religious practice is a natural offshoot of those circumstances.



Which got me to thinking.... maybe atheism is a natural offshoot of a society in which death is hidden and usually only occurs under predictable circumstances (end of life, after battle with a long-term terminal illness rather than a short battle with a communicable disease, etc).

It leans a little heavily on the 'no atheists in a foxhole' line of thinking, but that doesn't mean is necessarily a false conclusion.

I find I cannot agree here.  Respectfully.    

I think atheism is a natural consequence of information density:  once sufficient information becomes easily available to people, sooner or later, they realize that religion is based on woo (essential untruth), and the only consequences of that, is basic atheism (no belief in woo).

But that sometimes leaves a kind of "ritualistic gap" in the lives of some folk, so they will create something to fill that with.  Secular Humanism is one such. Universal Unitarianism is another.   Being abducted by space-aliens is yet another one.

As for atheists in a foxhole?  I know of many such-- atheists who serve, that is.   And I've followed closely the deaths of several noted atheists too-- none have fallen back on superstition at the Nth minute, in spite of predictions by woo-sellers (religious) to the contrary.

Religion is an offshoot of our curiosity-- and nothing more than that.  When information is insufficient to explain observations?  Religion all too often steps up and offers up woo to "fill in" the informational gaps.

Alas, if it only ended there?  We'd all be better off-- but it doesn't.  

Once religion becomes entrenched, certain members of the Haves group begin to twist it into chains, to keep the masses under their lock-and-key.

Have I given this subject a lot of thought?  

You betcha.  

(edited for clarity)  

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

-- SNIP --

With respect, I disagree with every part of every statement in your post... 
In particular, I even more strongly disagree with the last sentence. 'No atheists in foxholes' is manifestly untrue, self-serving, arrogant beyond acceptability, insulting to truly religious people, insulting to atheists, and invalidates any conclusion drawn from it.
I have talked with family members who have been under fire in foxholes, and avow the statement is nonsense.
I, myself, although never having been in an actual foxhole, have faced what seemed to be imminent death three times. On none of those occasions did religiosity enter into my head or heart.

You are still my respected and beloved Sibling...     

Well stated, and I agree with you fully here.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I, myself, although never having been in an actual foxhole, have faced what seemed to be imminent death three times. On none of those occasions did religiosity enter into my head or heart.

I am with you on this one.

[Aggie]

  I completely agree.

I do stick by my original line of reasoning, and disclaimer (if not my grammar  ):

It leans a little heavily on the 'no atheists in a foxhole' line of thinking, but that doesn't mean is necessarily a false conclusion.

....which is to say I'm not happy of the similarities between my argument and the concept of 'no atheists in a foxhole', and aware that the connection between the visibility/prevalence of death with religiosity could suggest that I'm barking up that tree.  

On a related note, I wasn't facing imminent death, but I was in a minor emergency situation this week (swamped my kayak in the middle of a large lake and had to swim for shore towing the boat) and I certainly wasn't calling out to God. I did use my air-horn to call out to a nearby boater when I was ~200 m from shore, as I was starting to get tired and a bit hypothermic by that point.  Any other emergency situation I've been in tends to be similar...  I've been aware of the danger and the situation, and at some level panicked, but functionally quite calm and able to just keep doing what it takes to survive (or take care of the person who's having the emergency).


In any case, the point I was trying to draw was that there are cultural and sociological reasons for certain ideas regarding the divine to ascend or descend in a society, and there are certainly cultural and sociological reasons for atheism picking up momentum in our current society. Bob has explained some of those reasons better than I have, but I do stand my assertion that it's 'easier' to be atheist in a society where death usually comes late in life with a reasonable amount of notice given beforehand.  

I'm making no statement regarding the validity of superstition, religiosity or atheism here, just that the prevalence of (visible) atheists is a function of cultural factors.  There have always been those few brave contrarians willing to stand up and assert that There Is No God, but as Bob points out, at this point in time it's a valid and rational viewpoint.  At other places and times in history where the workings of the physical world were less clear, atheism was often be considered to be an utterly irrational position according to the knowledge of the day.


_{I apologize for too-often forgetting that it's not easy being atheist in places where religulous woo-sellers are loudly and actively railing against it, and twisting religious affiliation into a political tool.  It's not a social issue in my world; overly religious people are a minority here and there's no stigma attached to being atheist.}

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Cultures are what they are-- and we are the sums of what we were raised in.  Too true.

I suspect some of us in the US are a bit "gun shy" with regards to overt religiosity being force-fed to us on a daily basis.   

I'm glad you explained a bit more what you meant and it's clear I misunderstood what you said earlier, due to my own cultural-biases.     I'm glad we (here at TF) continue the conversation in a deliberately-polite style, such that the misunderstands can be cleared up (or at least lessened somewhat). 

If only such polite give-and-take could happen out in the "wilds" of a mixed religious/not-religious settings.  Alas, it's most difficult to do that-- even amid seemingly like-minded groups, we see a great deal of #*^)(# behavior.... meh.

I suspect that's why I'm still posting on this site after all these years.. in direct contrast to other sites I've since drifted away from.   My most recent site-leaving was Topix-- haven't posted there all summer.   Good for me, I says-- I've run my course (5 years) and enough is enough.   I was starting to repeat the same things over and over, and saw it as imminently pointless.

But here, we [at toadfish] still manage to come up with new and interesting things to talk about.

[Griffin NoName]

I am sad that you found yourself repeating at Topix; it always seemed to be a good place.

Re. new and interesting things, there must always be such or the world would be smaller.

[Aggie]

 

_{I apologize for too-often forgetting that it's not easy being atheist in places where religulous woo-sellers are loudly and actively railing against it, and twisting religious affiliation into a political tool.   It's not a social issue in my world; overly religious people are a minority here and there's no stigma attached to being atheist.}

^should read overtly 

[Roland Deschain]

Good point, Aggie.  The more "primitive" cultures do seem more in touch with their feelings and recognize the mortality of life.

You have to be careful of the "Noble Savage" line of reasoning here, but I believe that this is essentially correct. The closer we feel to death as a populace, the more religious people are likely to get. What is also relevant is that we were all once like this, and as our consciousness developed, we needed to understand the world around us to a greater degree, as the more primitive parts of our brain were still there for us, not only keeping us from harm, but also alerting us to it with increasing rapidity.

We as a species started anthropomorphising our world, most likely starting out with something akin to animism, but also including the rocks, the earth, and the waters of the world. We saw associations where there were none, such as in the behaviour of members of our primitive societies and natural disasters, and as the tools weren't available to us to investigate the reasons behind them, we again turned to those areas of our brains that helped us survive before, adding easy to understand explanations for something so very traumatic. The short explanation is that it was comforting, and in a world so fraught with danger, especially with a species with the level of sentience our ancestors had, psychologically it was a natural thing for us to do. That's not to mention the ideas being a great way to control the behaviour of a populace, and hence keeping the local shaman in control.

Once these ideas began to spread throughout the human population, they took hold, and strongly. The roots of our burgeoning religiosity, which were probably reasonably well-established long before we left the African continent, helped ease our passage around the world, explaining so much of what we saw and allowing us to survive quite easily, or relatively so. The also kept us coherent as a society, no matter the number of people within each group.

It hasn't really been that long since increasing numbers of us have started thinking beyond that, maybe 10 thousand years at the most, with the invention of writing most likely one of the major causes of that. The ability to record information ensured that it would change far less often than the previously oral histories our species were used to, although it didn't mean it wouldn't ever change, as is obvious from the history of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. It also ensured knowledge could be passed on more efficiently from generation to generation. Unfortunately, the ignorant - whether wilfully or manipulatively so, or through lack of access to knowledge - continued the superstitions of our past, and the idea was so comforting and powerful, it survived into the present day. Lack of access to information, as in most of the population being pretty illiterate and not travelling much, helped keep the majority ignorant.

This is essentially the information/knowledge hypothesis posited above. Slowly but surely, science increases our knowledge of this world and the universe that surrounds it. Where once existed pinholes in the heavens for the fire to shine through now exist immensely large balls of hydrogen and helium, burning away for what seems to us like an eternity. As I said above, the roots of this are in the beginning of writing, but i'd say also in agriculture, as we were suddenly able to settle down in far greater numbers.

Knowledge is addictive, as the internet shows us so succinctly, and our thirst for understanding equally so, even if it's shallow, such as that sought out on celebrities. We're all subject to this whether we like it or not, as that natural curiosity appears to be one of the genetic legacies that ultimately led us out of the trees, and into the savannah and beyond. If we look at any of the great cultures and civilisations of the past, especially those we have many written records for, we begin to question not only the world around us, but also the fundamental tenets we had grown up with. The great Greek philosophers were one such group, thinking on anything and everything they could, and the same happened in Rome before its fall.

This is not to say that there is always pride before a fall, as in us abandoning the old gods to worship the new ones of science and reason, but to say that without a more homogeneous understanding of the world, those civilisations were more apt to fall to the more barbarous ones around them, which is why we need to be careful of any fanaticism which ignores the simple and elegant truths that nature and science provide to us if we but ask the right questions.

This is why it always amuses me when I see ignorant religious people using that which was made by doctrines anathema to their religion, or seemingly so. Fundies on the internet is a bit of a laugh, but it is testament to the principle of doublethink that they can do so without the slightest hint of irony. The PC (or Mac) they use, the software that enables them to use it, and the platform on which they are able to communicate; all of these came from the minds of those who have rejected the old superstitions, from atheists and agnostics. The laws that protect them were made in spite of what their religious texts say, and many times in direct contradiction of them, yet they laud them as if it were a religious virtue that was doing so. The medicine that keeps them alive is an abomination before some of their gods, and at the least is taking away the determinism suggested by an omniscient deity.

The main problem is that we are hard-wired to have some philosophy to believe in and hold on to, and the danger inherent in rising disbelief is in what that previous belief is replaced with. We can laugh at the UFO nuts, at the conspiracy theorists, at the psychic healers, and the spiritualists, but what they seek is the same as that which we all seek: understanding in a world gone mad.

------------------------------------------

In spite of that (or maybe because of it) Tulsa became a spot-on-the-map largely in part due to it's having an airport back in the 20's, and being near the edge of flying-range for most of the metal birds airborne in those days.

I suppose these days, everywhere's 24 hours from Tulsa...

[Aggie]

The main problem is that we are hard-wired to have some philosophy to believe in and hold on to, and the danger inherent in rising disbelief is in what that previous belief is replaced with. We can laugh at the UFO nuts, at the conspiracy theorists, at the psychic healers, and the spiritualists, but what they seek is the same as that which we all seek: understanding in a world gone mad.

Ayuh.  I've personally found that pure scientific rationalism and the de-facto atheism that goes with it (in the absence of other beliefs) to be deficient in providing understanding, which is why I consider myself post-atheist and purposefully work with the irrational / transrational at times. There are a lot of neural processes and subroutines that run below the level of consciousness that aren't easily placated by reason alone, IMHO. YMMV.

[Roland Deschain]

Ayuh.  I've personally found that pure scientific rationalism and the de-facto atheism that goes with it (in the absence of other beliefs) to be deficient in providing understanding, which is why I consider myself post-atheist and purposefully work with the irrational / transrational at times. There are a lot of neural processes and subroutines that run below the level of consciousness that aren't easily placated by reason alone, IMHO. YMMV.

There is no dogma in [pure] atheism other than the stated lack of belief there in any god, whereas in agnosticism there is none at all, with the agnostic atheist, which is what I officially identify as, coming somewhere inbetween. It is the absence that is the worst part, which is why humanism exists as a movement, as it neatly fills that need for a personal doctrine without the need to remove the rationality and evidence-based reasoning. This gap can also be filled with something else, such as a passion for astronomy, say, or a thirst for understanding our existence in a naturalistic way.

No matter how much we may want the irrational and the supernatural to exist, the simple fact is that they probably don't, not as we understand them, and to fill that god-shaped gap with something just as irrational is to do a disservice to the reason we never believed or stopped believing in the first place.

[pieces o nine]

             

I've been revisiting random books in my theology/heresy section, and followed Hitchens [god is not great ] with Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy [The Jesus Mysteries ].  The first time I read gnostic texts I was a happily lapsed college student with no intention of ever returning to Church. I was completely bewildered by concepts such as barbelo and the personification of Sophia -- it all seemed like some weird "drop into a blender and push frappe" version of Egyptian texts and Buddhism. I purchased the Freke and Gandy book as a deliberate counter to the orthodoxy I was resisting when going through a deaconate 'discernment' program many years later.

I've read a carpload on religion & spirituality from the gamut of time and cultures and this re-read "made sense" -- in the sense that I had a much better mental picture of what was happening in the Semitic, Greek and Roman worlds when Christianity was hatching. I read most of it accepting their arguments that literalism overwhelmed and replaced gnosticsm, as they meshed well with reasoned comments and assessments I've read by an assortment of different writers, coming from a range of positions and world views. Also, because I can see much the same thing happening with the Religious Right attempting to overwhelm and replace every other option in my own country and lifetime, using the same techniques and the same arguments employed by apologists in the 2nd through 4th centuries. So yeah, I mostly enjoyed the book and found myself thinking that the world would be a much better place if these barbelo and Sophia people had win the day.  

At the same time, I found myself being jolted into complete, irritated dismissal of their work by frequent unsupported assertions which made absolutely no sense. (Mostly of the "There is a KNOWING Beyond Knowledge" ilk.) In the past, these kinds of assertions would either have gone unnoticed, or else I would have made a sincere effort to embrace them as part of becoming more, like, spiritual.    

I don't know if I will ever reach the point when I can say that I don't believe in anything outside the measurable, material world. At the same time, I'm quite sympathetic to that viewpoint and much prefer reading atheist commentaries to my still-favorite Heretical authors. I was sad to *not* be in Denver this past weekend, as AronRa and Matt Dillahunty (amongst others, and better known to USians, I'm guessing) were speaking, and I was quite sorry to miss hearing them live.

Living in a Red area of a Red state has had a profound influence on my views -- I was always comfortable with cafeteria spirituality when living in more liberal areas. Now that I am confronted -- in the most unexpected ways -- on a regular basis with what True Religion looks like, I find myself drifting steadily towards unbelief. It takes more effort to resist the culture and continue my education in this environment, but with the Web as a ready resource there is more incentive to continue that education.

All this is going the long way to say that I agree with the concept that education relieves the need for superstition and guesswork that fuels Religion.

The challenge, I think, is how to handle the [need] addressed by activities that so easily turn into Religion or Orthodox State: marking life milestones; encouraging and honoring reflection and introspection (ok - not that one so much in Western religion!); and perceiving a [value] to life beyond cold, heartless bean counting.


[edited fer speelingk!]

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

... SNIP ...
The challenge, I think, is how to handle the [need] addressed by activities that so easily turn into Religion or Orthodox State: marking life milestones; encouraging and honoring reflection and introspection (ok - not that one so much in Western religion!); and perceiving a [value] to life beyond cold, heartless bean counting.

I agree with your conclusions in your earlier bits, no need to repeat.  I'd like to comment on your last paragraph a bit.

According to the materialists I've read, the universe is exactly what you said, which I've put in red for emphasis above.

The Universe has no sentience (as far as we can perceive or measure), and indeed doesn't care if we lowly humans even exist, let alone survive.   Or so it appears, even upon close (and far) inspection.

I was first confronted with the "uncaring" or "caviler attitude"¹ of the very fundamentals of reality, when I read a short story back in 8th or 9th grade or so:  The Cold Equations..   The summary is a very good description of the story, which can be found in it's entirety here.

But, having both free will and self-awareness?  We can go right ahead and create our own Cosmic Meaning of Life².

And that, to me, is even more cool than if we were ants who discovered the glass wall and who/what was beyond it.

For if the Universe really did have Cosmic Rules that Judged Humanity, we would necessarily be locked into whatever those were, irregardless of our own merits and/or weaknesses-- rendering anything (and everything) we humans did as ultimately meaningless.   And why not?  Faced with actual Cosmic Rules?  Our mere mortal thoughts and ideas would be no more noteworthy than a chalk drawing created on an ice-sheet during a summer heatwave...

... but since we cannot seem to find any Cosmic Rules of any kind?  We get to supply our own.

And that, I think, makes it all the more interesting.

It's as Significant-with-a-capital-S as we may like, too.


________________

¹ I realize these are also a personification of the Universe too.  It's what we humans do best:  we personificate everything. 

² The Universe and Everything. 

[Swatopluk]

As some obscure American writer of the last century put it

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
   
   H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Griffin NoName]

But here, we [at toadfish] still manage to come up with new and interesting things to talk about.

I've been mulling this over again. I wonder if it is because we have such splendid topic drift? Or partly that. Discussions can evolve without being hemmed in by sticking to one central core topic.


^ what Swato quoted.