Beginning of Atheistic Thinking?

[A Y323]

Hello everyone. I've often wondered when atheistic thinking (that is, the belief that neither our God nor any other god exists) really became a widely accepted concept.

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but I bring it up because I just recently came across someone who said this: "I think not believing in any specific god is the natural thing any of us would have done if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us."

Everything I've learned (which admittedly is not much) tells me this is just completely wrong.

What do you guys think?

[jlay]

Not sure what year. But I'm pretty sure it was on April 1st.


Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Psalm 14:1

[A Y323]

I'm not really looking for the exact year. I'm just curious when/why atheism became so popular.

I'm thinking along the lines of this verse:
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

And I'm pretty sure that if you discovered a tribe in the middle of nowhere that's always been completely cut off from society, that tribe is much more likely to worship something like a sun god or a spirit of the forest or whatever. They're not likely to be atheist. Maybe I'm wrong about that? Of course now-a-days it's gotta be pretty hard to find completely cut off tribes like that.

[Silvertusk]

To be honest - I think it might stem from people deciding to want to do things for themselves and not bow down to an Authority that they can't see. I really think it all comes down to selfishness.

[Byblos]

To be honest - I think it might stem from people deciding to want to do things for themselves and not bow down to an Authority that they can't see. I really think it all comes down to selfishness.

Otherwise know as the god complex.

[A Y323]

Thanks for the comments. I just realized this question might be harder to answer than I thought. In many early governments (Greeks and Romans for example), rejecting or criticizing the established religion was punishable by death. So people wouldn't have been openly atheist, which could make it pretty hard to trace.

Anyways, how would you have responded to the quote in my original post? I guess that's what I'm really looking for.

[DannyM]

Thanks for the comments. I just realized this question might be harder to answer than I thought. In many early governments (Greeks and Romans for example), rejecting or criticizing the established religion was punishable by death. So people wouldn't have been openly atheist, which could make it pretty hard to trace.

Anyways, how would you have responded to the quote in my original post? I guess that's what I'm really looking for.

Classical Greek atheism, form the term atheistos, meant anyone who denied the traditional religion of the Athenian establishment. To deny the existence of the gods was a punishable offence in Greek society. One of the great ironies is that the first Christians were called "atheists" by pagan critics.

Sorry if this has been discussed elsewhere, but I bring it up because I just recently came across someone who said this: "I think not believing in any specific god is the natural thing any of us would have done if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us."

I think believing in God is the most natural thing any of us would have done if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us.

Which statement holds more weight? Well, when dealing with the sceptic you'll find that they base their rhetoric on nothing much more than their own subjective bias. When we look into history, however, the story which emerges is usually somewhat different.

"The religious impulse, the quest for meaning that transcends the restricted space of empirical existence in this world, has been a perennial feature of humanity."
Sociologist Peter Berger, The Desecularisation of the World: resurgent religion and World politics.

Humanity has always looked for meaning, spiritual meaning that transcends strict empiricism and the illusion of pure reason. Contrary to your quote, which has a whiff of Dawkins about it, humanity has always been on such a quest. Whoever made that remark is swerving all the studies which have been done in this area.

[A Y323]

Thanks Danny.

Humanity has always looked for meaning, spiritual meaning that transcends strict empiricism and the illusion of pure reason. Contrary to your quote, which has a whiff of Dawkins about it, humanity has always been on such a quest.

I agree, and it seems pretty obvious to me even with the little study of history that I've done. So I'm curious why "life has no meaning" has (somewhat recently) become an acceptable answer to a lot of people.

[touchingcloth]

Humanity has always looked for meaning, spiritual meaning that transcends strict empiricism and the illusion of pure reason. Contrary to your quote, which has a whiff of Dawkins about it, humanity has always been on such a quest. Whoever made that remark is swerving all the studies which have been done in this area.

Have there been any studies done in this area, though?

The statement that the default position is to not believe in any gods "if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us" is pretty unsupportable as far as I can tell. A child is, what, 5 or so years old before they become reasonably cognizant and able to talk meaningfully about the world around them? A study would need to either a) be tightly enough controlled that for 5 or so years a child came in to no contact (either explicitly or implicitly or even inferentially) with any mention of the concepts of theism, deism, etc. or b) be conducted on a child who had been raised away from any form of contact with humans and human society.

There are problems with both types of study - for a) there are logistical and ethical constraints, and for b) there is the problem that children raised without human contact have hugely stunted mental development...

[DannyM]

Have there been any studies done in this area, though?

Sure. Modern anthropology is pretty vast in this area.
Thomoko Masuzawa, In Search of Dreamtime: The quest for the Origin of Religion
Peter Berger, The Desecularisation of the World: resurgent religion and World Politics
Robert Carroll, When Prophecy Failed: Cognitive Dissonance in the Prophetic Traditions of the Old Testament.

If you'd like more, Tc just say.

The statement that the default position is to not believe in any gods "if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us" is pretty unsupportable as far as I can tell. A child is, what, 5 or so years old before they become reasonably cognizant and able to talk meaningfully about the world around them? A study would need to either a) be tightly enough controlled that for 5 or so years a child came in to no contact (either explicitly or implicitly or even inferentially) with any mention of the concepts of theism, deism, etc. or b) be conducted on a child who had been raised away from any form of contact with humans and human society.

The statement with no empirical weight whatsoever is the former. Like I say, human studies are vast in this area, largely as a result of the crass definitions from past, empirical-lite studies.

There are problems with both types of study - for a) there are logistical and ethical constraints, and for b) there is the problem that children raised without human contact have hugely stunted mental development...

Can you elaborate on this please TC?

[touchingcloth]

There are problems with both types of study - for a) there are logistical and ethical constraints, and for b) there is the problem that children raised without human contact have hugely stunted mental development...

Can you elaborate on this please TC?

Sure thing.

So - to substantiate a statement like "...not believing in any specific god is the natural thing any of us would have done if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us" (i.e. to figure out what the "default" behaviour is) with a study, you'd need a very well controlled study on children where, from birth, they had had zero chance to pick up either explicitly or implicitly any cultural ideas about religion...agreed?

The problem is that if you were to attempt to perform such a study by, say, taking a group of newborns and removing any explicit or implicit ways that they could pick up on cultural ideas on religion...then you would have the logistical problem of controlling the experiences of those newborns for as many years as it took for you to be able to quiz them in a meaningful way about their views on theism/deism etc.

And the problem with trying to conduct a study by finding a sample of children who had never been exposed to any cultural ideas about religion is that, as far as I can tell, the only such group that exists would be so-called feral children who had been raised by animals rather than other humans. Aside from being very very few and far between, children raised in this manner also show exceptionally limited development in terms of their behaviour and language abilties (meaning you'd probably be unable to get little sense out of them)...

To cut a long story short, I'm not aware of any study that would be able to substantiate any position on what the default behaviour of people would be with no parental/societal input.

[DannyM]

So - to substantiate a statement like "...not believing in any specific god is the natural thing any of us would have done if our parents and/or society did not present the concept in front of us" (i.e. to figure out what the "default" behaviour is) with a study, you'd need a very well controlled study on children where, from birth, they had had zero chance to pick up either explicitly or implicitly any cultural ideas about religion...agreed?

I agree up to a point. We need to remember that there have been studies into human behaviour and culture which have focused on isolated peoples/tribes. I think to a certain extent we can rule out any parental influence when you consider such isolation, although this is still a little ambiguous.

The problem is that if you were to attempt to perform such a study by, say, taking a group of newborns and removing any explicit or implicit ways that they could pick up on cultural ideas on religion...then you would have the logistical problem of controlling the experiences of those newborns for as many years as it took for you to be able to quiz them in a meaningful way about their views on theism/deism etc.

Impossible? Certainly immoral. This is why anthropologists and sociologists have done indepth studies into the human behavioural tendencies towards religion, culture and spirituality. I think your idea/proposal would be an interesting study, to put it mildly. I'd sure feel sorry for the children involved, but the study itself would be intriguing.

And the problem with trying to conduct a study by finding a sample of children who had never been exposed to any cultural ideas about religion is that, as far as I can tell, the only such group that exists would be so-called feral children who had been raised by animals rather than other humans. Aside from being very very few and far between, children raised in this manner also show exceptionally limited development in terms of their behaviour and language abilties (meaning you'd probably be unable to get little sense out of them)...
To cut a long story short, I'm not aware of any study that would be able to substantiate any position on what the default behaviour of people would be with no parental/societal input.

In terms of this kind of extreme, I'm sure you're right. I guess the next best thing is what we currently have. Going back to the quote produced by "Y 323"... When all human behavioural studies to date have shown humanity to yearn for a meaning which transcends the empirical arena, then I think we can safely disregard such a statement as wishful thinking on behalf of the atheist. Having checked myself with your intervention, I'm still pretty certain that, with the extent of empirical studies we DO have, we can safely infer that the statement is at best erroneous.

[DannyM]

Thanks Danny.

Humanity has always looked for meaning, spiritual meaning that transcends strict empiricism and the illusion of pure reason. Contrary to your quote, which has a whiff of Dawkins about it, humanity has always been on such a quest.

I agree, and it seems pretty obvious to me even with the little study of history that I've done. So I'm curious why "life has no meaning" has (somewhat recently) become an acceptable answer to a lot of people.

I think we can put this down to some wishful thinking

[touchingcloth]

The problem is that if you were to attempt to perform such a study by, say, taking a group of newborns and removing any explicit or implicit ways that they could pick up on cultural ideas on religion...then you would have the logistical problem of controlling the experiences of those newborns for as many years as it took for you to be able to quiz them in a meaningful way about their views on theism/deism etc.

Impossible? Certainly immoral. This is why anthropologists and sociologists have done indepth studies into the human behavioural tendencies towards religion, culture and spirituality. I think your idea/proposal would be an interesting study, to put it mildly. I'd sure feel sorry for the children involved, but the study itself would be intriguing.

Yep - that's what I meant about the ethical constraints on doing such a study.

I'm still pretty certain that, with the extent of empirical studies we DO have, we can safely infer that the statement is at best erroneous.

If the statement was something along the lines of "the default position of isolated groups and tribes is a lack of belief in supernatural entities" then I'd certainly agree with you that studies in anthropology provide enough evidence to make a strong case for that statement being erroneous.

But seeing as the statement is more along the lines of "the default position of individuals without input from others" I wouldn't say it is erroneous so much as it is unsubstantiated and, with the current available evidence, without any means of substantiation...

[DannyM]

But seeing as the statement is more along the lines of "the default position of individuals without input from others" I wouldn't say it is erroneous so much as it is unsubstantiated and, with the current available evidence, without any means of substantiation...

Yes, I concede that "unsubstantiated" would be the more reasonable conclusion.