Atheism as a psychological phenomenon. (page 3)

BurnTheShips

I see this situation as very similar.

What situation?

BTS

Elsewhere

Another major reason for my wanting to become an atheist...

I didn't want to be an Atheist. I was born an atheist.

From my earliest memories I never "got" the idea of "god". It has always been foreign to me.

BurnTheShips

I didn't want to be an Atheist. I was born an atheist.

Well, in that case I can say that I was born a-scientist. Only after I learned did I understand and accept science. My little baby's brain would not have grasped science, or religion at birth. So no, none of us is born anything, or not anything, when it comes to ideas. An idea (which is always a negation of its opposite) had to be implanted by the environment my psyche developed in.

BTS

Homerovah the Almighty

Its important to acknowledge and realize the fact that atheism weakens the power and perhaps the money off the hands of the religionists that are trying to

obtain and hold on to that power that they have acquired, atheism nullifies that power and deems those individuals redundant .

One ideology offers power and perhaps money , the other offers absolutely nothing at all

AllTimeJeff

This is deep. I have to digest this before commenting on specifics.

However, let me bring out, what seem to me to be, common sense generalizations:

There are thiests who believe the way they do for purely emotional, reactionary reasons.
There are athiests who believe the way they do for purely emotional, reactionary reasons.
There are thiests who believe the way they do after a large amount of soul searching and deep thought.
There are athiests who believe the way they do after a large amount of soul searching and deep thought.

I put it this way because while it is helpful to have a paper written like this about athiests, (which I can see raise some valid points) I think I would also be remiss to point out that generalizations are helpful as an overview.

It is good for all of us to realize that there are powerful, individual reasons why people take such strong stands on their points of view. For example, while I still do not consider myself a thiest, I have reversed a point of view I had when I first left JW's. That is that "all thiests are weak minded people who believe in god purely as a crutch, for no good reason." I have backed way off on that.

I think it important that we not view the other side of the arguement as a danger, but as something to be understood.

What I am concerned about with this paper is the following: It reduces the reasons one is an athiest to a purely irrational, emotional decision, much the same way that I judged all thiests.

I look forward to commenting on this soon.

BurnTheShips

That was excellent AllTimeJeff.

BTS

hamilcarr

How would we call those born without the notion of God and without an environment that stimulates such a belief?

Atheists?

BurnTheShips

How would we call those born without the notion of God and without an environment that stimulates such a belief?

Presumably there was once a time in the distant past where our biological ancestors had no belief.

From whence did it come without environmental stimulation?

Are dogs, cats and cattle atheists? How about a flatworm?

BTS

hamilcarr

Presumably there was once a time in the distant past where our biological ancestors had no belief.
From whence did it come without environmental stimulation?
Are dogs, cats and cattle atheists? How about a flatworm?

Definitely not a psychological phenomenon, methinks.

Narkissos

I confess I only skimmed through both articles (the condescending tone of which sounds a bit surreal, if not comical, to the average European reader) but I couldn't help noticing the absence of Jacques Lacan from the psychoanalytical paradigm which Vitz displays.

Lacan was, by any common religious definition, an atheist. Yet, (Catholic) theology played an important part in his theoretical construction, where the "Father" figure, or the "Father's Name," occupies a central position as the unspeakable reference for the "symbolical order", the key to "the meaning of meaning" as it were. For example, he describes clinical psychosis as "forclusion (i.e. complete and absolute exclusion) of the Father's Name". In that sense, he would provocatively assert that nobody (except in the case of psychosis, even religious psychosis) is actually an atheist, or (as he once put it) that only theologians are atheists -- inasmuch as theology is the only type of discourse that implies, and requires, a distance from "God" as its "object". But Lacan's "God," or "Father," is a placeholder to which the speaking subject of relates out of symbolical necessity -- neither "something" (an object) or "someone" (a subject) "out there".

From this perspective, it is amusing to see that the "psychoanalysis of atheism" parallels many of Lacan's insights, although carefully avoiding the central one: namely, that our genuine relationship to the "Father" is neither imaginary (as in "belief") nor real (as in "experience") but symbolical (i.e., coextensive to the use of language, for religious "believers" and "unbelievers" alike). This kind of (Freudian?) suppression is worth an analysis of its own...

Atheism as a psychological phenomenon.

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