this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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The fact that some people start as atheists and later become religious demonstrates there has to be more reasons than just that.
You are correct. However, relatively there are a tiny amount of them and their reasons are not good reasons.
Almost always, they are in a vulnerable state and at that time have also been exposed to some kind of religious indoctrination specifically tailored to take advantage of that.
It's easy to see this from the perspective of brainwashing techniques used by cults. Religion just has more developed techniques for longevity.
We all do. It takes effort to instill beliefs and usually greater effort to change them. Education is the most common inoculation.
Your understanding of their reasoning comes from a fundamental assumption that your choice is the correct choice for every person. They willingly made the wrong decision, therefore they must have been manipulated into doing so.
Many people do just become religious without outside influence. On a large scale, every society will create its own version of religion without fail. Clearly, they have something to gain psychologically by doing so.
While religious indoctrination obviously exists and obviously is a problem, it doesn't discount the actual benefits that religion seems to have, and by extension the reasoning with which some people become religious.
When I said "start", it was in reference to the process of changing your religious identity, not your life as a whole.
My understanding comes from many years of direct study and experience. As such, you'll find that I don't apply what I say to all people, or "every person." I stand by what I said and painting it as absolutes is arguing in bad faith.
When it comes to beliefs which are very important to people, we aren't usually going out of our way to believe things that aren't true. What's different with the religious is that they tend not to be rigorous in adjusting their beliefs when there is little to no evidence to support them.
While this is common with humans over all sorts of things, it's particularly common with deeply held beliefs. There's many reasons for this, but religion is a very refined method of influencing human belief. Much of it is designed to steer away from questioning it, and also to reinforce it.
With this in mind, it's easy to see why it's not so much a choice, but for those few we are discussing, we could say that it's just something that happened.
As for the benefits, psychological or social, etc. I don't discount them at all. What I do say, however, is that none of them require religion. Any and all benefits attributed to religion can be achieved without it, and very often they are.
When humans are born, they only acquire a religious identity if it is impressed on them. If they acquire it after childhood, it's usually due to the reasons I've outlined.
This I agree with. Looking back, you were more careful than I thought you were to specify you were not talking in absolutes.
I will however double down that you are still making a fundamental assumption that your option is the correct one, and you make it more clear by arguing that all benefits of religion are possible without religion. If all benefits of religion can be attained without risking the detriment, then religion is the worse option by far.
However, thinking of this made me realize I'm just making the opposite assumption. Just like you, I've constructed a strongly held belief about religion based on my life experiences, which are entirely anecdotal and effectively meaningless.
How would you even get evidence that most people are manipulated into becoming religious? How would you get evidence that most people don't? How would you get evidence that religion does or doesn't benefit people? How would you even define benefit in the first place?
This argument is meaningless.
Well, thank you for that.
However, I'm not making an assumption. I'm merely pointing out that if religion isn't necessary for the implied benefits, then why use that method? The fact is that no one uses blind faith as the basis for anything else important to them.
I don't have a strongly held belief regarding the existence of any gods. When presented with the assertion that they do exist, the lack of good evidence means that I remain unconvinced. I'm open to good evidence.
In the case of manipulation, as you call it, religious indoctrination from birth by family, community and peers is well documented. I'm surprised you're not aware of this.
As for the assessment of benefits, there's a great deal of research into what people do with their lives and why. We know a lot about these motivations and there are clear lines to known conclusions. It's largely psychology.
There is nothing to suggest we need religion for any of the benefits that religious people say they obtain from it, or that they demonstrate through their actions.
I hope this makes things clear but feel free to ask if not.
The strongly held belief I'm referring to isn't a belief in a god or lack thereof, its a belief that religion is a net negative for society.
To say I'm not aware of this is again to argue in bad faith. I have mentioned myself that religious indoctrination of course still exists, and is a problem.
Yes there is research into how religion affects society, but it isn't very useful for this purpose for multiple reasons. There is no instance of a society without religion, so the difference between a religious and non-religious society can't be studied. There can be no consensus on what is beneficial and what isn't, as morality itself isn't objective.
There is not and there never will be definitive evidence as to whether or not religion is beneficial for society.
There is also nothing to suggest the opposite, because this can't really be determined. You would have to so create a set of all the benefits religious people claim to get, which in and of itself would be a monumental task. Then, you would have to demonstrate that nonreligious people can achieve all of the exact same benefits.
This is why I've come to the conclusion that this argument is pointless, and neither of us know anything beyond our personal experience.
Ok but you are ascribing this to my making of an assumption, which I am not.
And yet you asked for evidence and method, for which there is an awful lot. Which leads me to -
We aren't talking about whole societies, just individuals. This can be studied very effectively.
We aren't talking about consensus, again it's only individuals, which can be effectively studied.
These benefits are those claimed by the religious themselves, not whole societies.
As I've said, we've been doing this for a long time and have vast data from many people. Social activity and personal motivation are well studied and include the religious.
Again, this is well studied with mountains of good evidence. It's what I meant when I said I'm surprised you're not aware of it.
You're welcome to your view, but I disagree. Don't feel you need to continue, but I'm happy to if you want.
Never personally met an atheist that had found religion or heard about one, other than in American evangelical stories, but I've met a few non-religions people who have later in life found religion. Although I live in a quite atheaistic country, so there is a lack of peer pressure or need to talk about such things.
Well congratulations, now you have. It isn't quite as rare as you might think.
Everyone is everything in the internetz.
What about the internet makes this easier to lie about? I could tell you the same thing to your face and you still couldn't fact check it.
They aren't calling you a liar, they're saying they never met someone like that in person.
They are drawing that distinction for a reason. They literally said everyone is everything on the internet. I don't how else you could possibly read that.
I read "everyone is everything on the internet" meaning you can always find someone who is anything, because the internet is just so big and diverse. Not as calling you a liar. Maybe I'm wrong, don't want to put words in their mouth. But that's how I read it.
Maybe you're right, that sounds possible. I would think if that's their intention they wouldn't have written that "everyone" is everything, and would instead say "someone" or something to that effect. At that point I'm probably just overanalyzing though.
That was more a comment on obfuscation of the net. In internet you can just trow adjectives together and somebody will raise their hand, but you can never be sure if they are just putting on a role.
That makes more sense to me. Although, I would contend that people in real life can also just put on a role to varying degrees of success depending on the exact circumstances. Presumably when you said "personally" though, you meant people you already knew well enough to verify their claims to some extent.