Religion
Related: About this forumFinnish study finds that atheists might not be as "atheist" as they think they are when daring God
By Dakota O'Leary
On April 27, 2013 At 10:14 pm
When it comes to belief in God, a Finnish study by Marjaana Lindeman and Bethany Heywood et. Al., published in the peer reviewed International Journal for the Psychology of Religion suggests that atheists might not be the unbelievers they think they are when it comes to daring God to do terrible things to themselves or others close to themin other words, atheists may be closet believers.
The study measured emotional responses through skin conductance, and it was found that atheists experienced the same level of emotional discomfort that believers did when saying statements that dared God to cause harm to themselves or others close to them. The study participants (atheists and believers) were chosen by answering an ad placed by the researchers in Skepsis (a Finnish skeptics society), and also from the People's Bible Society. The participants were divided into two groups as follows from the study:
In the first study, reading the provocations addressed to God increased atheists' emotional arousal more than reading neutral statements about such things as sleep and weather. Second, God statements resulted in equal tension among atheists as reading the offensive statements (e.g., It's okay to kick a puppy in the face). Third, this same pattern of results was obtained for religious individuals. The results indicate that compared to their conviction and responses on the self-report measure, atheists' implicit reactions to the God statements were more similar to the reactions of religious individuals.
http://www.goddiscussion.com/109300/finnish-study-finds-that-atheists-might-not-be-as-atheist-as-they-think-they-are-when-daring-god-to-do-terrible-things/
The study:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508619.2013.771991
Yeah. They got us. The jig is up.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)haikugal
(6,476 posts)and stepping on cracks...it's all superstition. Tempting 'the fates' etc. Does that qualify as belief?
unblock
(51,974 posts)edhopper
(33,208 posts)am I immune to unconscious or reflexive response to superstition? No.
Can I react to things I don't believe in? Yes.
But then I can use reason an logic to understand that these things I react to are not real.
Atheists are not automatons, we understand, better than many believers, how much human psychology can shape how we behave.
So rather than a Gotcha study, this confirms for me what I have felt. And by no means changes the convictions of atheists.
LostOne4Ever
(9,267 posts)So many things wrong with this.
First, you can divide atheists into two groups. The first group includes atheists that simply lack a belief in any god(s). In other words, they neither believe nor disbelieve in any gods. The other group actively believe there is no god. The first group would be less than thrilled about making a statement calling. The study only defines atheism as those who reject belief in god.
Think about it like this. You have never heard of
You neither believe or disbelieve in him. Would reading a statement daring this person to kill you and your entire family make you uncomfortable?
Or how about you actively believe chain letters are full of crap. This does not mean you might get not get distressed on getting one.
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Lindemann et. Al. concluded that the most provocative and simplest explanation for the findings is that "atheism may lack cognitive depth in that in line with Bering's (2006, 2010) argument, atheists explicit beliefs may differ from the implicit reactions that exist outside of conscious awareness. In other words, one may intellectually think that they do not believe in God, but the head doesn't necessarily connect to the heart and that belief may be present without conscious awareness of it.
Something that takes an small paragraph to explain is NOT the simplest explanation.
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Moreover, the study noted that "Hunsberger and Altemeyer (2006) surveyed American atheists and found that 71 76% of them had once believed in God." Thus, prior belief may be influencing them to a certain degree.
Sounds more like Pavlovian conditioning to me if thats the case. Thats different than being a subconscious believer.
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However, atheists may have found using the word God stressful also because others, possibly their friends and family, do take God seriously and believe in his ability to affect the world. Third, although the participants did not rate the idea of God as the reason for the unpleasantness of the statements, appealing to God may nevertheless have been absurd or aversive to atheists, leading to a dissonance-related affect. Fourth, it is possible that although atheists did not currently believe in God, they may have been influenced by their own previous beliefs.
These seem more likely than the first reason AND SIMPLER than the above statement.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)If God exists, may he strike me down
...
See. Nothing happened... wait, I've got a crick in one of my knees... wait, it went away.
Let's try again...
If God exists, may He strike YOU down!
...
No casualties Ralph?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Wish he was still with us.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)He DID strike him down!
Maybe being atheists, and on top of being revolted by the made up actions of made up gods, they don't want to wish harm, imagined or real, to anybody.
What does the study have to say about religionists who spend 90% of their waking hours not even remotely concerned about god or what he expects of them. Or religionists who don't wait for a god to dispense justice or wisdom but take control of the situation themselves? Closeted atheists?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)But I would not be surprised if he is God's top comedian.
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)And "who" caused that? Huh? Huh???
(you do realize I'm being facetious, right?)
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)I really do miss him. My favorite atheist!
dimbear
(6,271 posts)ear and pull the trigger without any harm at all. The fact that you don't proves the gun actually is loaded.
Right? Or maybe that you think it might possibly be loaded and you're not insane?
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts)..it's all in the *wishing someone i care about ill part* imo. that by itself drowns 'god' out. doesn't matter if the god is loaded or not.
goldent
(1,582 posts)or "no atheists in foxholes?" Both seem to apply.
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts)human beings have emotions. we have emotional attachments. ask someone to 'wish ill' on someone they love and the noise from the basic cognitive dissonance will drown out any meaningful measurements one might want to take. everyone is going to react more or less the same to that stimuli.. which is what the experiment found (go figure).
the hidden variable in this case is sitting right next to the egg on these scholars' faces.
goldent
(1,582 posts)Daffy Duck to see if there was any difference (i.e. whether God gets a bigger reaction). Maybe they are milking the funding and are holding this back for their next paper
StrayKat
(570 posts)"I dare God. . ." to "I dare Santa Claus. . ."
Heywood (2010) conducted a study similar to the one described here, in which an analysis of vocal cues was performed to detect whether atheists experienced increased levels of emotional arousal when daring God to do terrible things. Both atheists and theists spoke with lower levels of intensity on God statements than on offensive statements or statements in which they dared Santa Claus instead of God, indicating that the God statements were more emotionally arousing.
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts)there's a simpler explanation. someone asks me to say something nasty about one of my kids, experiment or no, and they damn-well better pay me like a lobbyist.
uh.. duh.. cognitive dissonance.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)From GoodReads:
He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at.
From HJKeen.net:
"Gods didnt mind atheists, if they were deep, hot, fiery atheists like Simony, who spend their whole life not believing, spend their whole life hating gods for not existing. That sort of atheism was a rock. It was nearly belief . . ."
..................................................................................................................
Gods? said Xeno. We dont bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods.
There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.
Except for Blind Io the Thunder God, Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.
....................................................................................................................
"Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
Yes. Yes, of course.
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG. "
.........................................................................................................................
Will you go to hell if you have a drop of spirit? he said.
So it seems, said Simony, absently. Then he noticed the flask. Oh, you mean alcohol?
.......................................................................................................................
"The captain frowned. Its a funny thing, he said, but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?
A bit of a poser, that, agreed the mate. I spose it makes up for em . . . enjoying themselves all the time when theyre alive, too? He looked puzzled. Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious."
muriel_volestrangler
(101,154 posts)Were they brought up to believe, or have they never believed in 'God'? You could also test another supernatural being - eg a ghost, or a deity from a quite different religion - with both the atheists and believers.
dimbear
(6,271 posts)the often terribly violent nature of the ghosts. Those tales must have roots way back to Viking times.
They don't have the polite English lumber room type of ghosts.
Bad Thoughts
(2,514 posts)Perhaps there is an natural revulsion to the desire to see harm to others that has nothing to do with one's specific beliefs.