I confess, I completely forgot I had initially posted on this topic. It has been an interesting read, and I am surprised there are some dopers actually believe the climate change and moonwalk is a hoax.
It seems willful ignorance is a better description than selective ignorance. I’ll try using that for future reference.
Apart from the discussion on climate change and moonwalk with the willfully ignorant dopers, I found it interesting that there was also discussion about atheism and the definition thereof. Personally, I could easily just lump the religious believers into the ‘willfully ignorant’ category, but I know it’s not as simple as that. Where the moonwalk, and climate change deniers willfully chose to ignore scientific facts that prove it to be real, there is a cultural and patriarchal pressure that keep people believing in a supernatural being. Not to mention the brainwashing for those raised in a specific religion endured as a child while growing up. I rarely, bring up religion in discussions, because it’s often a lost cause. If it does come up in discussion, it’s if someone else brings it up, especially if they then also proselytize. As the topic has been brought up, allow me to put my thoughts in on the subject.
I’m of the same opinion as Voyager, atheism is not a religion, it’s the complete lack thereof. I do get irritated when people try to tell me, atheism is a form of belief when it is exactly not that. Just by the English language alone, it can be proven. Unless it starts a sentence, the word atheism or atheist is never capitalized. Because it’s not a belief or religion. So you Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and all else, belong to a religion and as it is named, it requires a capital letter. If atheism was a belief, where is the capital A?
As for the argument that even though there is no evidence of God, there is also no evidence there isn’t a God, I beg to differ. It’s been scientifically proven that God and gods in all it’s forms were created by man’s fertile imagination, and you have biologists, archaeologists, neuro-psychologists and anthropologists to thank for the evidence. And it is cumulative evidence.
From biologists, we have the Theory of Evolution, an important factor, and if you have trouble accepting evolution as fact, then this would be lost on you. From an evolutionary standpoint, we know we evolved into humans. Our closest living cousins are the chimpanzees and bonobos with which we shared a common ancestor a few million years ago. It is most likely that our common ancestor was probably a lot more chimp-like than human. So the brain would likely have been more like a chimp’s if not less evolved. So, ask yourself, would a chimp even understand the concept of an afterlife? Of course not. There is evidence of motherly attachment to offspring, which shows some emotional behavior. Who hasn’t seen a nature show where a primate mother clings on to a dead baby. Heart wrenching for sure, but eventually, the mother discards the carcass. They don’t bury their dead. They may be highly intelligent compared to other animals, but not intelligent enough to form philosophical or conceptual thought. So, why would our ancient ancestor be different?
So we can deduce that the human brain evolved to become intelligent, intelligent enough to form philosophical and conceptual thought.
Archaeologists have discovered how early man buried their dead with care and varying ceremony, they have also discovered that some of our evolutionary ancestors may have done the same. We also know that Neanderthals from whom humans did not evolve, were very intelligent and did bury their dead. Humans and Neanderthals coexisted, and they shared a common ancestor about 500,000 years ago. It is scientifically agreed that the split happened when a group of our common ancestors left Africa and evolved into Neanderthals who spread across Europe and Asia where as our own ancestors remained in Africa and evolved into us Homo Sapiens. The point is, it seems the concept of an afterlife, probably began in a human ancestral species less than a million years ago. Further, the concept of an afterlife brings on the concept of a creator, which brings us to the next group of scientists.
Neurologists and to some extent psychologists have shown that the development of the human brain from childhood to adulthood goes through stages in learning. A child’s brain is wide open as it absorbs and learns language and senses. It is also open to rules and ideas that the parents teach them, and this comes from an urgent need to understand and identify threats and danger in the wild. Things like, don’t walk too close to the water’s edge as there may be crocodile’s. Obviously an advantage to keep children out of harm’s way, but it unfortunately allows a child’s brain to be cluttered by nonsense such as God. As for how the concept of God came about, it was simply ignorance and imagination. Humans have a natural curiosity for knowledge, but where an answer is not found, it is a common and easy step to fill the gaps with superstition. Early man didn’t have the means or ability to learn what the stars were or why the sun rises and sets. The human mind craved/needed an answer, and when there was no explanation available, imagination provided the explanation. Imagination also provided healthy fodder to superstition, and the concept of spirits emerged, where hunters would pray or offer some token to the spirits for a good hunt. You still find spiritual concepts in modern religions like Taoism and Shintoism. Eventually, the spirits turned into gods and so on. To this day, we can give a pretty good estimate when every God or gods were created by man. As for the anthropologists, they confirm the above by studying superstition in primitive tribes.
To conclude, my concept of God is that it was created by man and I have presented my evidence above. If you have to claim there is no evidence there isn’t a God, then allow me to provide the evidence: Without human superstition and imagination, there is no God.
Margaret Thatcher: