Of course they do.
The human brain has evolved to be superstitious. It is a survival mechanism.
There’s a big difference between basic superstition and a super conciousness.
True free will requires an amount of knowledge most people are unwilling, if they are even able, to acquire. It also requires a strong sense of self and the willingness/courage to accept being wrong. Most people want their biases affirmed and to defer their sense of morality to an outside authority.
People believe in invisible agents. There is the unseen hand behind everything. It’s why many are susceptible to conspiracy theories. A classic example is, you are walking in a field of tall grass in the savanna. You hear a noise in the grass: is it the wind or a predator? You run away as if it were a predator but you don’t know for sure. If you are wrong, you live. If you are right, you live. If you don’t run and it’s the wind, you live but if it is a predator, you are a meal. Apply this to our primitive ancestors: which ones were most likely to procreate?
This isn’t an example of superstition. There’s nothing supernatural about it. At its core it’s essentially weighing the probability of danger and the risk/reward of both sets of actions.
As you said, running is simply the logical choice considering the scenario
It’s a root of superstition. It’s the ability to put a mind behind actions where we don’t actually see who are behind them.
But, his atheism has nothing to do with it, I am sure.
Which tenant of atheism was he following with this action again? I haven’t been to my local atheist meeting in forever
DO you know what a right is?
If your religion says you can kill your daughter if she dishonors the family, does freedom of religion allow it? Or does her right to live (an unalienable right according to the Founders) carry more weight?
Or more to the point: what does it have to do with anything?
It doesn’t. This is just Pat attempting to pivot away from claiming atheists have a legal right to discriminate on religious grounds ala the recent SCOTUS case despite not having a religion or any such rules to cite.
It is a Christian virtue to never admit you are wrong.
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Is this the first time you ever thought about these things?
It is fundamental that your rights can not infringe on another persons rights. Nether right is above the other, But your religion can not take a life. Life being another right
I was talking more about a theory that there is a kind of evolved paranoia that keeps down the rate of anti-social behaviors and therefore self selects over the course of evolution. People also have tendencies to converse with themselves sometimes with feelings of inspiration, and people tend to ask questions about their higher purpose which is something that could be seen to inspire species success, and seems to be absent in non-human animals.
Don’t have an issue with literally any of that. Seems pretty easy to get behind. Absolutely not reliant on any form of religious viewpoint, although I freely admit religion pushes the social aspect much more as a basic survival mechanism of the concept.
Did you read what you wrote? If you cannot take a life for religious reasons then the right to life is indeed above religious rights.
I disagree (mildly). I think that rights are weighed to determine which one should have priority in a certain situation. In some cases it is courts or society that weighs them and in other cases we tend to use the categorical imperative (IF right x was valued above y in all situations whether it was to my benefit or harm, would it be OK). The right to not be discriminated against in employment is weighed against the right to free association, and society asks which one can be tolerated more.
There IS though a concept in law of “natural” rights and derived rights. The right to defend oneself versus the right to vote in a fair election.
OK, coming full circle though, I was previously just asserting that if that theory I described above was true, then an athiest is “actively” using rational knowledge to see through the “illusion”, so it’s not a passive belief system, it’s an act of being skeptical of our innate evolutionary psychology.