Atheists and Irrationality

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

From WSJ

Look Who's Irrational Now
By MOLLIE ZIEGLER HEMINGWAY


"You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god," comedian and atheist Bill Maher said earlier this year on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."

On the "Saturday Night Live" season debut last week, homeschooling families were portrayed as fundamentalists with bad haircuts who fear biology. Actor Matt Damon recently disparaged Sarah Palin by referring to a transparently fake email that claimed she believed that dinosaurs were Satan's lizards. And according to prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, traditional religious belief is "dangerously irrational." From Hollywood to the academy, nonbelievers are convinced that a decline in traditional religious belief would lead to a smarter, more scientifically literate and even more civilized populace.

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won't create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that's not a conclusion to take on faith -- it's what the empirical data tell us.

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

This is not a new finding. In his 1983 book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener," skeptic and science writer Martin Gardner cited the decline of traditional religious belief among the better educated as one of the causes for an increase in pseudoscience, cults and superstition. He referenced a 1980 study published in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer that showed irreligious college students to be by far the most likely to embrace paranormal beliefs, while born-again Christian college students were the least likely.

Surprisingly, while increased church attendance and membership in a conservative denomination has a powerful negative effect on paranormal beliefs, higher education doesn't. Two years ago two professors published another study in Skeptical Inquirer showing that, while less than one-quarter of college freshmen surveyed expressed a general belief in such superstitions as ghosts, psychic healing, haunted houses, demonic possession, clairvoyance and witches, the figure jumped to 31% of college seniors and 34% of graduate students.

We can't even count on self-described atheists to be strict rationalists. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's monumental "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.

On Oct. 3, Mr. Maher debuts "Religulous," his documentary that attacks religious belief. He talks to Hasidic scholars, Jews for Jesus, Muslims, polygamists, Satanists, creationists, and even Rael -- prophet of the Raelians -- before telling viewers: "The plain fact is religion must die for man to live."

But it turns out that the late-night comic is no icon of rationality himself. In fact, he is a fervent advocate of pseudoscience. The night before his performance on Conan O'Brien, Mr. Maher told David Letterman -- a quintuple bypass survivor -- to stop taking the pills that his doctor had prescribed for him. He proudly stated that he didn't accept Western medicine. On his HBO show in 2005, Mr. Maher said: "I don't believe in vaccination. . . . Another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur [germ] theory." He has told CNN's Larry King that he won't take aspirin because he believes it is lethal and that he doesn't even believe the Salk vaccine eradicated polio.

Anti-religionists such as Mr. Maher bring to mind the assertion of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown character that all atheists, secularists, humanists and rationalists are susceptible to superstition: "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are."

Painfully slanted article, yes, but both from some of my experience and other things I've read this phenomenon isn't entirely to be discounted. After all, I've seen plenty of people who can rail against religion, the Moon Landings, and 'Statism' in one breath.It seems irrationality is endemic to the Human Condition.

Discuss at your leisure.

[Singular Intellect]

So basically what the article is saying is that when people are not clinging to religious garbage that teaches belief in anything else as a sin, people will tend to cling to other types of garbage beliefs.

Colour me shocked!

[Kanastrous]

Although on the Caesar's-wife principle, if you are going to go high-profile gunning for the religious idiots, better not to leave yourself - and by extension, the philosophy for which you advocate - hanging out in the wind with stupidity like vaccines don't work and ignore your physician's prescriptions for your condition.

[Darth Wong]

The article assumes that "atheist = not Judeo-Christian", when in reality there are a shitload of various belief systems out there which are not Judeo-Christian but are not atheist either. If someone doesn't believe in the Bible but does believe in some other wacko belief such as demons and spirit possession, he's no atheist.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Duh. Science. Except no substitutes.

[Kuroneko]

Or rather, except all substitutes?

We can't even count on self-described atheists to be strict rationalists. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's monumental "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" that was issued in June, 21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.

This is very curious. Perhaps some religions lacking actual gods can be counted as atheistic (although then the implicatures of this article are without merit), but the original survey seems to indicate that 6% of atheists also believe in a personal God. Under what notion of "atheist" are they operating, and is this a fault of the survey or an indication that Americans cannot be counted to accurately "self-describe" their beliefs?

[Covenant]

It's the fault of both. The survey has the responsibility to make sure they're actually testing for what they say they're testing for, so they were clearly bungling it by asking people to self identify instead of "Do you believe in any kind of diety or supernatural force?" as a checkbox option to catch people who are just identifying improperly.

And it's also the fault of the morons who perpetuate the idea that athiest means "I am frustrated at god for the moment and am going to be petulent to him."

[Knife]

Conventional Morality, per Kohlberg, will always have lots of people looking for someone to give them rules in which to follow. Religion is just the crutch of the right size for most people like this, so if it isn't Christianity it will most likely be another. Doesn't mean Christianity is any more or less bullshit than the rest.

[Darth Wong]

The incompetence of the study's authors (or perhaps more likely, their deliberate agenda) is made pretty obvious when they reveal that 21% of atheists believe in "either a personal God or an impersonal force". It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to point out that it's completely absurd to call yourself an atheist while believing in God.

[Covenant]

Baylor, being a private Baptist university, is of less use than the Pew poll, if you ask me. Their assumption that Megachurches aren't as immersive as a small Church, and the subsequent shattering of that assumption, underlines an actual disconnect from things that someone on the outside doesn't have. We all know those are crucibles of insanity--it's suprising the Baylor staff would think they would be detaching. Plus, the WSJ article is wrong--the atheists are identified as not believing in god. The actual survey says:

In both the 2005 and 2007 Baylor Religion Surveys, researchers found than 11 percent of the national sample reported they had "no religion." Although nearly a third of the "no religion" group are atheists who reject "anything beyond the physical world," the Baylor Religion Survey found that two-thirds of the "no religion" group expressed some belief in God and many of those are not "irreligious" but are merely "unchurched" (Ch. 17, "The Irreligious: Simply Unchurched-Not Atheists"). Delving into the actual religiousness of those who report having no religion, the Baylor Survey found that a majority of Americans who claim to be irreligious pray (and 32 percent pray often), around a third of them profess belief in Satan, hell and demons, and around half believe in angels and ghosts.

What the WSJ does that not even Baylor does is throw all 'unchurched' wishy-washy "I dunno" people into the atheism chart. That's just stupid. Not that Baylor is exactly dragging in the brilliant deductions with gems like this:

Among other interesting findings on paranormal or occult beliefs: People who have read The Purpose-Driven Life or any book in the Left Behind series are less likely to believe in the occult and paranormal, while those who have read any book on dianetics or The Da Vinci Code are more likely to believe.

Why is bigfoot, the chance of extraterrestrial life, or other such examples mentioned elsewhere less likely than divine intervention to get you a pay raise? I would like to know the reasons for this lack of paragarbage belief amongst the religious, because I don't see much to back it up, especially since what's more accurate is that the religious are likely to attribute the effects of a ouija board to demons instead of ghosts like the spiritualists would. The anti-elite bent is also frustrating, as not all education is equal. Being a business major doesn't grant you insight into the ideomotor effect, but I don't believe anyone has ever asserted that any education is going to make faith weaker. Ah well.

I would still assert that while spiritualism and pseudoscience are just flavors of magical thought, they also are easier to debunk and they have one foot in reality. Belief in bigfoot is one grounded in the idea that there could be a great ape population in America, which is something you can research and make claims about. That's a far cry from believing in faith healings.

[Rye]

I think it's pretty funny when a definition of atheist can include "a person who believes in a personal god". Fuck me sideways, I find it abhorrent enough when agnostics lecture me about how atheism means "you are stating absolutely there are no gods," now there's theists telling me that atheists believe in gods?

As for prayer, that's probably been either indoctrinated in, or a case of Skinner's superstitious pigeons; I mean, I will fully admit it's irrational, but even I plead with the traffic light gods on my way to work and try not to "tempt fate".

And the article is stupid. Paranormal/alien visitation etc beliefs all share the exact same epistemological foundation, faith, as religion. Religion teaches us it is virtuous to believe in such paranormal bullfuckery, and it has reduced concepts like the "mundane" (worldly) to "boring." Antireligious, pro-rationalist scorn and argumentation will only lead to crazy beliefs when and if people are inconsistent in their analysis, they don't directly tell you that it's okay to drink poison and handle snakes.

[Frank Hipper]

Call me one of those irrational atheists, but the instant I saw that Baylor was behind this, I ignored it.

[The Vortex Empire]

21% of self-proclaimed atheists believe in either a personal God or an impersonal force. Ten percent of atheists pray at least weekly and 12% believe in heaven.

If you believe in God and pray to him, you're not an atheist.

[Sriad]

"...it's what the empirical data tell us."

Meh article about a plainly biased study reeking of the poo-stained fingers of happy WSG owner Rupert Murdoch, but I applaud the correct pluralistic use of "data".

[Sriad]

"...it's what the empirical data tell us."

Meh article about a plainly biased study reeking of the poo-stained fingers of happy WSG owner Rupert Murdoch, but I applaud the correct pluralistic use of "data".

That's right, the Wall Street Gounal. I win at abbreviation.

[Panzer Grenadier]

Thats why I've never really liked Mahr. He seems to be one of those atheists that has come to atheism because it is the opposite of the what the Republican party thinks, not because careful application of critical thinking and rationalism has brought him to it.

For me atheism is nothing more than the ultimate conclusion of a rational and skeptical view of the universe.

[Plekhanov]

"What Americans Really Believe," a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

The Gallup Organization, under contract to Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion, asked American adults a series of questions to gauge credulity. Do dreams foretell the future? Did ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis exist? Can places be haunted? Is it possible to communicate with the dead? Will creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster someday be discovered by science?

The answers were added up to create an index of belief in occult and the paranormal. While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

It's hardly surprising that people who belong to hardline Xian groups which strongly disprove of 'unchristian' aspects of the paranormal are less likely to admit a belief in them than people who don't.

I remember having to attend my grandparents hard-line protestant church and the pastor ranting on about how horoscopes and fortune telling were tools of satan. Even at my parents more moderate church I didstintly remember at least one sermon on why horoscopes were unchristian. As such you'd fully expect members of those congregations to have low levels of belief in the 'paranormal' even though they obviously believed a great deal of more socially approved batshit insane stuff.

Even among Christians, there were disparities. While 36% of those belonging to the United Church of Christ, Sen. Barack Obama's former denomination, expressed strong beliefs in the paranormal, only 14% of those belonging to the Assemblies of God, Sarah Palin's former denomination, did. In fact, the more traditional and evangelical the respondent, the less likely he was to believe in, for instance, the possibility of communicating with people who are dead.

And believing that a magic man who lives in the sky created the universe answers prayers and so forth isn't 'paranormal' how exactly?

The whole article is built around the totally unjustified assumption that paranormal and superstitious beliefs aren't 'superstitious' if they happen to be mainstream Christian beliefs.

As for beliefs in superstitions other than those common in Christianity rising as Christianity declines that's only to be expected but atleast those superstitions aren't organised into powerful political blocks or protected by the absurd social conventions about the need to 'respect religious beliefs' that mainstream religions enjoy which make unconventional superstitions easier for sceptics to take on.

[Illuminatus Primus]

The incompetence of the study's authors (or perhaps more likely, their deliberate agenda) is made pretty obvious when they reveal that 21% of atheists believe in "either a personal God or an impersonal force". It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to point out that it's completely absurd to call yourself an atheist while believing in God.

Some surprise. Its from the Welfare Alley...I mean...Wall Street Journal, recently turned into Murdoch's print-anything right-wing-apologist rag.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Not to mention, it is stupid but not as stupid to believe in ghosts that the Earth is literally 10,000 years old because your book and pastor said so. God, what an axe-grinding asshole. Even if it was equivalent, what are we supposed to take away? Give up on criticizing or pointing out stupidity because its prevalent and exists in many forms?

[Vendetta]

It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to point out that it's completely absurd to call yourself an atheist while believing in God.

Whilst I wouldn't let the authors of this particular study off the hook due to the clearly visible agenda behind their writings, it is quite possible to be an irrational loony and not believe in any gods.

There are plenty of atheists who believe in, for example, UFOs visiting earth, that homeopathy works, or in chi and other general woo woo nonsense. The fact that they are idiots doesn't mean they aren't atheists, just that they've found a different outlet for their tendency for willing self deception than the religious idiots.

[Wicked Pilot]

While 31% of people who never worship expressed strong belief in these things, only 8% of people who attend a house of worship more than once a week did.

So in other words 31% of 'people who never worship' believe in bullshit, and 100% of 'people who attend a house of worship' do. So if you attend a house of worship you're over three times more likely to be irrational. Thanks WSJ for providing us this vast revelation.

[Darth Wong]

It's not a "no true Scotsman" fallacy to point out that it's completely absurd to call yourself an atheist while believing in God.

Whilst I wouldn't let the authors of this particular study off the hook due to the clearly visible agenda behind their writings, it is quite possible to be an irrational loony and not believe in any gods.

There are plenty of atheists who believe in, for example, UFOs visiting earth, that homeopathy works, or in chi and other general woo woo nonsense. The fact that they are idiots doesn't mean they aren't atheists, just that they've found a different outlet for their tendency for willing self deception than the religious idiots.

That does not refute what I said. In fact, it does not even vaguely address it in any way, unless you think the word "God" is a stand-in for "anything which doesn't make sense". I am pointing out the obvious dishonesty of the study, in which people are considered atheists even if they believe in God.

[Durandal]

10% of self-proclaimed Christians do not believe that Jesus Christ exited or was the son of god and instead pray to Baal.

How ridiculous does that sound?

[Kanastrous]

Ridiculous enough that I am just dying, to see your source.

[Darth Wong]

Ummm, he wasn't being serious. He's making fun of the absurdity of saying someone is an atheist when he believes in God.