Is it free will that renders intelligent people atheistic?

Great Debates
1

This article claims that Man is naturally a religious animal. Religion is an instinct that has enabled human beings to survive and thrive. However, the higher the intelligence of a person the lower the chances that this person should believe in the divine. “Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people because they are able to rise above the natural instinct to believe in a god or gods,” the article says.

What I wonder is the following: if Man is religious be default and intelligent people tend to reject religion, does it mean they choose to embrace atheism? Is it free will that renders intelligent people atheistic?

2

If man reject religion/theism what’s left is atheism. IOW, I don’t think it’s an embrace of the latter as much as a rejection of the former.

3

Even if there is free will (I don’t think there is), I don’t think the rejection of religion would be convincing evidence of it. That humans in general may be predisposed to religion through some biological imperative does not mean that there can’t be an opposite “instinct”. Some people have an “instinct” to wander and explore, while others have an “instinct” to stick close to home and stay out of trouble. Both are operating not through “will”, but their programming. There’s no reason to think that people who lack the “religion” instinct" are operating without their own programming. And there’s no reason to think that the “non-believing” instinct couldn’t confer some evolutionary benefit.

4

Whatever free will is or isn’t it still applies to embracing theism or atheism. We make choices.

5

Do we? Or do we create the illusion of making choices as a side effect of our mental processes?

6

It feels like free will to me and I cannot think of an objective way to prove otherwise, therefore I shall continue to act as if I have agency.

7

And either way, it still applies to both belief and/or nonbelief.

Anyway, an inherent superiority to “overcoming the natural state”, and for that matter what is the “natural state”, are not truths self-evident.

8

That article is an enormous pantload, starting from the very first sentence. And I say that as an atheist.

9

Religion came about from humans trying to understand a world that they could not comprehend.

Fire for instance.

A leader, or story teller would explain that ‘god’ created fire, and the story would be repeated again and again.

Now we understand fire. But many people still hang onto the old stories for comfort, and as an excuse to not educate themselves.

10

Which pretty much applies to every article about evolutionary psychology. It can be a fun game to play, but it’s never (or nearly never) what can accurately be called science, since it can’t (or almost never can) be tested.

11

To continue.

As I understand, Free Will is the opposite of Fate. Can we decide our own future.

I do believe in Karma. But not in the supernatural sense. I think that if you do good, good things will be more likely to come to you. Do good for a neighbor, or anyone really, and that person might know someone, that knows someone that knows someone.

Karma is the Kevin Bacon of religion.

12

We still don’t comprehend the world. We comprehend pieces of it, maybe, but the vastness of a modern PhD’s ignorance is no less than that of a shaman sitting in a cave. If anything, the difference is that the modern PhD has a greater realization of just how vast his ignorance is.

And it’s really difficult to assess just how religious people are, since there’s not much you can go on but self-reporting, and different people mean different things by “religious”. For instance, you probably wouldn’t have a difficult time finding Unitarian Universalists who consider themselves non-religious, and who just go to the weekly meetings for fellowship and socialization. But there are probably nearly as many Catholics who go to Mass for the same reasons (or even, who don’t go to Mass at all), and yet who are likely to call themselves religious.

13

Exactly. Atheism isn’t a thing that can be embraced.

It isn’t even a thing. It’s a lack of a thing.

The only reason we even have a name for it and think of it as a concept is because for most of history it’s been the position of a very small minority of the population (or at least a position that only a very small minority would admit to).

People who don’t believe in fairies aren’t known as “afairiests”.

14

There are no atheist earthworms.

15

There are studies that show that somewhere between the ages of 4 and 9 we move from purpose-driven explanations to more “natural” explanations. For example, a 5 year old might think that a puddle of water exists for animals to have something to drink, an older child will say that it is due to water accumulating in a low spot.

My personal theory is that it is human nature to never fully give up this purpose-driven worldview. Those with higher intelligence may be more apt to fight against the instinct.

16

Also, what may seem like an instinct to be religious may actually be an instinct to go along with the social norm. Maybe there is an evolutionary advantage to having individuals in a population all adhere to the same party line, and it just so happens that until recently the party line has been religion.

It may be that highly intelligent people are low in agreeableness and that people who score high in agreeableness are less likely to admit to their non-belief…out of the fear that they will look bad in the eyes of others.

If we fast forward a thousand years from now, we might find our future counterparts wondering if the religious are the ones who are the bucking their “natural” tendency to seek empirical knowledge and reject fairy tales.

17

Whew. The article referenced in the opening post, certainly is a mess, with almost all of the very worst aspects of modern day reporting exemplified in the one short piece.

Lots of vague labels used, as though they have meaning (“scientific study”, “theory”, “instinct”, etc) , while the body of the text itself, reveals that they don’t. At least, they don’t have the meanings that they ARE REQUIRED BY DISCIPLINED SCIENCE, to have, in order to be used in the manner that they are.

In my extensive studies of human history, AND of my own development from the time I was about six months old, I can affirm that there is ZERO evidence of any "instinct for religion."  The example someone gave above of a child constructing a religious-like explanation for why puddles exist, doesn't match anything factual that I read or directly experienced.   I myself recall directly, what conclusions I came to about what I observed as an infant, and it never even crossed my mind that anything magic was involved, or that anything remotely similar to "puddles exist to give animals a place to drink."  The closest I could come to that, was that I clearly remember making the mistake of believing that whatever I saw BIG people do, was done by them on purpose, and for a good reason.  And that had zero to do with an "instinct for religion,"  it was simply that I knew that I did things for my own reasons, and since they were (so far as I could tell) the same kind of animal I was, they probably did too.

So. No. There is no “instinct for religion.” And no. I have seen no evidence that “atheists are smarter than theists.” I have seen plenty of examples to the contrary in fact. Yes, I am an atheist. Yes, I am smarter than SOME theists I know. I am also smarter than some atheists I know.

The article also shows the common flaws with modern journalism, in that the conclusions it draws, are not supported by any of the evidence it presents which the author THINKS supports the claims.

So enough already. It’s bunk.

18

Yeah, that article is bunk.

Recently I saw a Ted talk from a British quantitative social scientist that reported that the secularization of modern developed nations is happening and he makes the point that the decline of religion is not going to be reversible. The numbers show that the effect of modernization is reducing the influence of religion even in the USA.

The process will be slow because the change is generational in nature, but it is going on.

Related to the issue here what the scientist reports is that one important reason for the decline of religion and why it will continue to decline, is not free will but one result of modernization. It generally gives the people more opportunities or choices to have fulfilling lives now rather than waiting or hoping for an afterlife to get it.

19

Exactly. Whatever the definition of free will is we do make choices. Even if there is an underlying influence we appear to be making a selection, there’s no consistency in the way this happens to indicate otherwise. People can change their minds, freely or not,

20

It appears to me that there may be an instinct for religion in human beings. Humans tend to fear the unknown and to personify the source of their fear. It looks like an innate pattern of behavior in response to certain stimuli.

I respect everyone’s educated opinion and your posts radiate education, but when it comes to a particular field of study, such as people’s religiosity, I would rather trust the word of a specialist. Mircea Eliade considers that the sacred isn’t just a stage of consciousness, but one of its structural components. My own observations of the human nature seem to confirm this claim. And I don’t think it is a matter of confirmation bias because I’m not a religious person.