[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
An interesting thought exercise:
What would actually change the mind of an atheist, or a believer? [/quote]
Very interesting exercise - and an important one. I think such a radical paradigm shift is accomplished on a very deep interpersonal level. It is not simply done on a message board. The purpose of message boards are to provide food for though (IMO).
Also, despite appearances to the contrary, I hold my worldview loosely. It may appear that I am very solidly in my camp, but that is only because I believe that when discussing/debating one should attempt to put forth the very best defense one can. Unfortunately doing so involves an element of passion.
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
I’ve said it before; I’m fairly convinced that there is a fundamental difference in the way an atheist and a believer process information. I don’t know if this difference is surmountable, or at which point in life it is surmountable. The obvious choice would be that belief or lack thereof could be conditioned in childhood… but, taking myself as an example, this is not necessarily true. I grew up in an extremely fundamentalist church… [/quote]
I’m not sure about this. I was very dogmatic and niave when I was a believer. By believer, I don’t mean simply a Christian. I used to believe that aliens were abducting people (among other things). In fact, I was so convinced that I joined MUFON as a teenager.
When I was introduced to skepticism I used those tools and my belief in abductions fell away. I developed a habit of compartmentalization, which kept my religious beliefs separate from other beliefs. I was in college and thinking about getting a divinity degree when I came across a website that took my religious beliefs and performed a 180 on them. The claims made by the website were ridiculous - at the time I found them believable and that startled me. After a few hours of looking into it, I could reasonably say that the claims of the website were false.
However, the damage was done. My compartmentalization of my religion was no more. I had to know whether it was true or not. What followed were months of prayer, reading, and discussion. In the end I could no longer hold onto my beliefs.
[quote]swoleupinya wrote:
Of course, it could be that an extremely fundamentalist church is poor conditioning for someone like me. And, we are just talking about a sample size of one. I can extrapolate that out to include most of the atheists or believers I know, but again we are not dealing with any viable sample size.
A correlative example would be how England’s school system has managed to eliminate the gap in math scores between the sexes, without lowering those of men. They’ve overcome what was once considered a genetic pre-disposition with effective teaching. [/quote]
You know, I disagreed with you initially, but I think I was looking at what you were saying differently. I say this because I do agree that environment heavily ‘seeds’ one towards a certain disposition. My family is/was religious and I used to go to church all the time. Up until the introduction to skepticism, I simply didn’t question whether or not it was true.
What I would question were things like whether I was worthy of God’s love and all that. Looking back, I’m have trouble filling those old shoes of faith. That’s one thing I don’t think that some believers understand. Which is why Pascal’s wager is so piss-poor.
Even if I thought it were a rational bet, I couldn’t force myself to believe in something that I don’t believe exists. It’s like asking someone to believe that Santa Claus exists. I’m not trying to be inflammatory, but if I just told you to believe in Santa or - even more absurdly - that you did, deep down, believe in Santa and you were just denying your belief - you would think I was crazy.
Yet some theists claim this about atheists.
