Oh dear. You're misapplying that 100th monkey term, which originated from a failed hypothesis about unified fields affecting actions continents away from one another. "Monkey see, monkey do" might be another simian trope we can invoke that is more applicable here.
You also encounter a horse & cart problem with your logic. Are we following a trend, or is the trend a response to the information being presented to young adults? It's probably impossible to extricate those to say which one it is for sure.
Not sure why you're trying to establish which is more "natural." What do you even mean by that?
I still think you're ignoring the biology here, though. Even if we're not born into belief, there's strong evidence to suggest we have a tendency toward it.
I think the difference here might just be our cultural context... Me being from Canada and you from a more religious part of America.
Though, I'm not so much talking about having faith challenged so much as having an integral idea about what their faith means. Maybe I'm not explaining it well, but like, it would be the difference between someone who lurks around livescience.com or something like that versus someone who has a proper understanding of scientific methods. Also, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say most of the atheists I've talked to are overly enlightened or anything like that.
its not so much that "theism" is more natural, but that there would be a benefit to those animals that saw some form of agency in random events, then, with the human capacity for language and very abstract knowledge, that bias is exploited.
Challenging, justifying or changing your spiritual stance as an adult sounds like learning a second language as an adult, and in doing so gaining a perhaps greater understanding of the grammar, nuances and evolution of that language than the native speakers often possess themselves.
But when theism claims that "god did it" at every turn that seems to be opposite to encouraging people to imagine what the real mechanics of the universe were.
I think its not about romanticism and imagination, but human desperation, isolation and the terror of death.
Also its a pretty handy way of manipulating en masse.
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Last edited by Sadako of Girth on Jan 24th, 2012 at 09:44 AM
I thought Theism is just the notion of dieties. Or a force. No correct answer just theories.
Woops my bad.
Is there such thing as a faith where its members just believe in a entity or force out there undiscovered and shun all the books, rules, regulations and superstitions of a particular institution?
I used to think Theosophy was that. But discovered it was just another cult.
Neo Satanism looked like a bunch of performing realists who just wanted to bring down organised Religion, but they turned out to be a bunch of NeoNazis.
I'm not afraid of death being just being a corpse in the ground. I don't need people to tell me how to be a good person. But I have a big imagination and reckon there should be something more out there.
And I agree these institutions are mearly cults giving hope en masse.
Or tribal leaders creating perfect little soldiers for their cause.
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Last edited by the ninjak on Jan 24th, 2012 at 10:10 AM
1. It may be (though I doubt it), but we are hardly privy to other creatures' intimate thoughts (how the hell would I know what a silverback is contemplating when it be chillin' in the jungle?). Mostly they seemed concerned with understanding/negotiating the concrete world.
2. Because theism requires a certain level of abstract thinking / metaconsciousness which animals do not possess, at least not to a sufficient level. Often, a big stretch of cause-n-effect is involved.
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That's laughably narrow-sighted. I'd argue that seeing the world in this way, and seeing religion/non-religion in this way, is a profound lack of imagination.
We're going in circles. I had an answer to this a while back. Chances are, no one's at the cognitive level to need to rationalize the world around them in the manner that leads to religious thought.
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I'd say art, in some forms, provides or gives answers to these questions as well, perhaps in less absolute terms.
I also think sciences give answers to certain aspects of these questions, but only in as far as it can substantiate them. Which I personally find to be an advantage.
I do think that theism often gives answers that are very relatable, especially in ages (or in people) where there's little true understanding of the world around.
I guess I'd agree that, because of that, a shuffle would likely lead to some sorts of theism again. Whether it is necessarily as popular as it has gotten in our world, I don't know, I think another philosophical or spiritual non-theistic belief system with ambitions to convert and conquer could just as well dominate, like Abrahamic religions have in this world.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Yes, but so is actively choosing atheism.
I think inimalist addressed the difference well in his initial post. Embracing the philosophy of theism or atheism is different from just being those things coincidentally.
Furthermore, with atheism, there's the complicating factor that it doesn't just mean actively believing that there is no god, but also the passive fact of not believing in God, for example cause you never thought about it or were not exposed to it.
I'm not sure whether it is that interesting to discuss animals being atheist, as they seem to be atheist in the same way a stone is atheist.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
I say this cause I think one could possibly make a semantic argument that only philosophy answers the questions of "why am I here" and "what happens after I die" because we define everything that answers these questions as "philosophy".
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Jan 24th, 2012 04:24 AM
