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1rrp
The Science of Superstition
According to a piece in The Atlantic, it seems that science shows that atheism is skin deep; that what their conscious mind declares is not what their unconscious mind truly believes.
Even atheists seem to fear a higher power. A study published last year found that self-identified nonbelievers began to sweat when reading aloud sentences asking God to do terrible things (“I dare God to make my parents drown”). Not only that, they stressed out just as much as believers did.
According to a piece in The Atlantic, it seems that science shows that atheism is skin deep; that what their conscious mind declares is not what their unconscious mind truly believes.
Even atheists seem to fear a higher power. A study published last year found that self-identified nonbelievers began to sweat when reading aloud sentences asking God to do terrible things (“I dare God to make my parents drown”). Not only that, they stressed out just as much as believers did.
2theoria
Interesting interpretation of the article. What I find striking is that it associates religious beliefs with magical thinking.
3rrp
You say that as though you think "magical thinking" is a bad thing. Again from the article
"Magical thinking ... appears to be a side effect of normal, socially adaptive thinking."
It's natural. It's normal. It's socially adaptive.
"Magical thinking ... appears to be a side effect of normal, socially adaptive thinking."
It's natural. It's normal. It's socially adaptive.
4rrp
Here is another article by the same author, which explains in a little more depth.
To be totally 'unmagical' is very unhealthy," says Peter Brugger, head of neuropsychology at University Hospital Zurich. He has data, for example, strongly linking lack of magical ideation to anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. "Students who are 'not magical' don't typically enjoy going to parties and so on," he says.
The author's book is The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.
To be totally 'unmagical' is very unhealthy," says Peter Brugger, head of neuropsychology at University Hospital Zurich. He has data, for example, strongly linking lack of magical ideation to anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. "Students who are 'not magical' don't typically enjoy going to parties and so on," he says.
The author's book is The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.
5Jarandel
Black cats are less adopted out of animal refuges vs other coat colors even though you'd be hard pressed to find a corresponding portion of the population to tell you in the face that black cats are evil / unlucky / less friendly / etc...
Which they are not, or if you believe that they are I can't really do anything for you I guess.
What does it prove ? That debunked crap still hanging in the back seat of peoples' minds guides behaviors to some extent as if it was fact. Which doesn't make it real or desireable.
Which they are not, or if you believe that they are I can't really do anything for you I guess.
What does it prove ? That debunked crap still hanging in the back seat of peoples' minds guides behaviors to some extent as if it was fact. Which doesn't make it real or desireable.
6rrp
But are there really two minds, a back seat and a front seat, or is there just one mind? You make some decisions unconsciously, but even when you think you are making a rational conscious decision, you can't be sure that you are not being influenced by the unconscious. It's all one seamless process. You don't know things, you have beliefs. There are no facts only opinions. And maybe "magical thinking" is an adaptive trait that helps humans navigate the world -- is a good thing.
7paradoxosalpha
>1 rrp:
These study results are neither counter-intuitive, nor particularly supportive of the hypothesis suggested. Invoking the violence of a superhuman power is likely to create agitation no matter how imaginary that power might be.
I have emotional responses when reading novels that I know to be entirely fictional, and not because I have an "unconscious belief" in the reality of the events being described.
In fact, one actual stressor for the atheist (conscious or unconscious) could be social tension and opprobrium they have had to endure for their atheism, recalled by the explicit association of the denied deity with violent reprisal.
These study results are neither counter-intuitive, nor particularly supportive of the hypothesis suggested. Invoking the violence of a superhuman power is likely to create agitation no matter how imaginary that power might be.
I have emotional responses when reading novels that I know to be entirely fictional, and not because I have an "unconscious belief" in the reality of the events being described.
In fact, one actual stressor for the atheist (conscious or unconscious) could be social tension and opprobrium they have had to endure for their atheism, recalled by the explicit association of the denied deity with violent reprisal.
8Jarandel
>6 rrp: "There are no facts only opinions."
Let's descontruct that shall we ?
1. "I do not accept scientific discourse and experiments as facts".
2. "I thereby decree that they are a matter of opinion".
3. "Let's hack the weapons of political correctness and borrow for my own ends their discourse that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Never mind that this courtesy is in fact a matter of politeness and living together, and letting people believe whatever as long as they don't actively harm or excessively interfere with each other, not truth".
4. "I am as entitled to my opinion that the earth is flat as other people are entitled to their opinion that it is round. If I'm entitled to it, it's TRUE, right ?"
Hmm. No ? Climb a builing near the sea and high enough to see the curvature of the horizon ?
Let's descontruct that shall we ?
1. "I do not accept scientific discourse and experiments as facts".
2. "I thereby decree that they are a matter of opinion".
3. "Let's hack the weapons of political correctness and borrow for my own ends their discourse that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Never mind that this courtesy is in fact a matter of politeness and living together, and letting people believe whatever as long as they don't actively harm or excessively interfere with each other, not truth".
4. "I am as entitled to my opinion that the earth is flat as other people are entitled to their opinion that it is round. If I'm entitled to it, it's TRUE, right ?"
Hmm. No ? Climb a builing near the sea and high enough to see the curvature of the horizon ?
9rrp
>7 paradoxosalpha:
I agree that the sort of psychology experiment mentioned are open to many interpretations and explanations; I guess which one you accept is a matter of opinion.
But I think they did make some effort to get some information. You mention having an emotional response to reading a novel. As I understand it, reading fiction involves an active suspension of disbelief. Are you suggesting that the participants the study were also making an active suspension of disbelief, even though they weren't reading fiction? And why would the response be the same in the set of participants who claimed to believe in God to those who did not?
I agree that the sort of psychology experiment mentioned are open to many interpretations and explanations; I guess which one you accept is a matter of opinion.
But I think they did make some effort to get some information. You mention having an emotional response to reading a novel. As I understand it, reading fiction involves an active suspension of disbelief. Are you suggesting that the participants the study were also making an active suspension of disbelief, even though they weren't reading fiction? And why would the response be the same in the set of participants who claimed to believe in God to those who did not?
10rrp
>8 Jarandel: "There are no facts only opinions" was a quote from everybody's favorite atheist. And maybe a better rejoinder would be, "is that a fact?".
I believe the world is flat. I also believe the world is round. And so do you. It all depends on the context. (I believe someone once proved that Kansas was indeed flatter than a pancake.)
But even if I were a member of the Flat Earth Society, I would have a right in a democratic society to express my opinions and attempt to have my government take account of my opinions. That's how democracies work.
I believe the world is flat. I also believe the world is round. And so do you. It all depends on the context. (I believe someone once proved that Kansas was indeed flatter than a pancake.)
But even if I were a member of the Flat Earth Society, I would have a right in a democratic society to express my opinions and attempt to have my government take account of my opinions. That's how democracies work.
12paradoxosalpha
>9 rrp: As I understand it, reading fiction involves an active suspension of disbelief.
That is a popular psychological theory to which I do not subscribe. And no, I'm not saying that the atheist study subjects were a) engaged in a process directly comparable to what I do when reading a novel, or b) "actively suspending disbelief." The remark about my reading was simply a disproving counter-instance to the idea that one must attribute objective reality to a phenomenon in order to have an emotional response to its representation.
(For a primer on the origins, domains, and criticisms of "suspension of disbelief," see the Wikipedia lemma under that title.)
That is a popular psychological theory to which I do not subscribe. And no, I'm not saying that the atheist study subjects were a) engaged in a process directly comparable to what I do when reading a novel, or b) "actively suspending disbelief." The remark about my reading was simply a disproving counter-instance to the idea that one must attribute objective reality to a phenomenon in order to have an emotional response to its representation.
(For a primer on the origins, domains, and criticisms of "suspension of disbelief," see the Wikipedia lemma under that title.)
13theoria
What the creative writer does, according to Freud, is to overcome the reader’s repulsion towards fantasy.
"However, when the creative writer plays his games for us or tells us what we are inclined to explain as his personal daydreams, we feel a great deal of pleasure, deriving no doubt form many confluent sources. How the writer achieves this is his most intimate secret: the true ars poetica lies in the technique by which he overcomes our repulsion, which certainly has to do with the barriers that arise between each single ego and the others. We can make a guess at two of the means used by this technique: the writer tones down the character of the egoistic daydream by modifying and disguising it, and bribes us with the purely formal – that is aesthetic – bonus of pleasure, which is offered to us so that greater pleasure may be released from more profound psychical sources, is called an incentive bonus or fore-pleasure. In my opinion, all the aesthetic pleasure that a creative writer gives us is in the nature of a fore-pleasure, and the real enjoyment of the literary work derives from the relaxation of tensions in our minds. Maybe this effect is due in no small measure to the fact that the writer enables us, from now on, to enjoy our fantasies without shame or self-reproach." “The creative writer and daydreaming,” The Uncanny, 33
Behind this argument are claims Freud makes about how unconscious wishes are expressed in distorted form in parapraxes, dreams, and memory. Of particular importance is the idea that wishes can’t be expressed directly and that (in dreams) the “dream-work” works over the wish, presenting the wish to us in a “safe” form, much as a dissident writer, who — in a repressive political regime that employs an official censor — writes a fairytale of chickens defeating foxes, which permits her readers to experience a type of (fantasized) fore-pleasure that substitutes for the real, but forbidden pleasure of overthrowing the regime in reality.
"However, when the creative writer plays his games for us or tells us what we are inclined to explain as his personal daydreams, we feel a great deal of pleasure, deriving no doubt form many confluent sources. How the writer achieves this is his most intimate secret: the true ars poetica lies in the technique by which he overcomes our repulsion, which certainly has to do with the barriers that arise between each single ego and the others. We can make a guess at two of the means used by this technique: the writer tones down the character of the egoistic daydream by modifying and disguising it, and bribes us with the purely formal – that is aesthetic – bonus of pleasure, which is offered to us so that greater pleasure may be released from more profound psychical sources, is called an incentive bonus or fore-pleasure. In my opinion, all the aesthetic pleasure that a creative writer gives us is in the nature of a fore-pleasure, and the real enjoyment of the literary work derives from the relaxation of tensions in our minds. Maybe this effect is due in no small measure to the fact that the writer enables us, from now on, to enjoy our fantasies without shame or self-reproach." “The creative writer and daydreaming,” The Uncanny, 33
Behind this argument are claims Freud makes about how unconscious wishes are expressed in distorted form in parapraxes, dreams, and memory. Of particular importance is the idea that wishes can’t be expressed directly and that (in dreams) the “dream-work” works over the wish, presenting the wish to us in a “safe” form, much as a dissident writer, who — in a repressive political regime that employs an official censor — writes a fairytale of chickens defeating foxes, which permits her readers to experience a type of (fantasized) fore-pleasure that substitutes for the real, but forbidden pleasure of overthrowing the regime in reality.
14prosfilaes
It's a very superficial cite; surely the next logical question would be to ask both atheists and theists to read aloud statements like "I offer my children to Lamashtu".
15rrp
>12 paradoxosalpha:
a disproving counter-instance to the idea that one must attribute objective reality to a phenomenon in order to have an emotional response to its representation
Except there is a very important distinction. In the case of the experiment, the participants were not passive but active. They were the ones saying the lines; they weren't reading them or listening to them. It was more like taking a lie detector test than responding to a horror movie.
That is a popular psychological theory to which I do not subscribe.
That's interesting. In my experience, there are some works of fiction that I can "suspend disbelief", and therefore enjoy them, and others where I cannot. Take for example the films of Wes Anderson. I know others love them, but I just cannot get over their artificial presentation; I haven't made it through one yet. But I enjoy many science fiction stories, even if the "science" stretches the plausible to its limits. Another good example is Life of Pi. There, for me, the author tried too hard to make me "suspend disbelief", which irritated me immensely, and I found the whole thing so implausible I threw the book across the room.
a disproving counter-instance to the idea that one must attribute objective reality to a phenomenon in order to have an emotional response to its representation
Except there is a very important distinction. In the case of the experiment, the participants were not passive but active. They were the ones saying the lines; they weren't reading them or listening to them. It was more like taking a lie detector test than responding to a horror movie.
That is a popular psychological theory to which I do not subscribe.
That's interesting. In my experience, there are some works of fiction that I can "suspend disbelief", and therefore enjoy them, and others where I cannot. Take for example the films of Wes Anderson. I know others love them, but I just cannot get over their artificial presentation; I haven't made it through one yet. But I enjoy many science fiction stories, even if the "science" stretches the plausible to its limits. Another good example is Life of Pi. There, for me, the author tried too hard to make me "suspend disbelief", which irritated me immensely, and I found the whole thing so implausible I threw the book across the room.
