The Placebo Effect

For when someone starts talking about miraculous cures  . . . .

Stephen Pinker in conversation

"All the parts of the world that don't have violence don't have news cameras pointing at them."

The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity

Why religion causes brain damage.

Freud puts his finger on it . . .

Religion - the crux . . .

From Andy Thomson's talk: "Why we believe in God (s)."

Why we believe in God(s)

An excellent talk by psychiatrist Dr. Andy Thomson

"We are risen apes- not fallen angels."

"If you understand the psychology of a Big Mac meal you understand the psychology  of religion."

"Half of all 4 year-olds have imaginary friends."

"We are on the threshold of a comprehensive cognitive neuroscience of religious belief."

Faith requires self-delusion

The following is an extract from: "Why We Believe in god(s): A Concise Guide to the Science Of Faith." The author is psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson, JR., MD.

“The human ability for self-deception is crucial to religious belief. If many believers could see their own minds more clearly, they would see that self-deception plays a role in their acceptance of faith.

Maybe there are ONLY atheists in foxholes. If the faithful truly and fully believe in a protective deity, why would they dive into a foxhole to protect themselves from the bullets whizzing by? A part of their brains knows damn well that if they do not protect themselves, the bullets will hardly discriminate between those who claim faith and those who reject it. They may say and think they believe, but their instinctive actions expose the lie.

Why do the faithful buy health insurance? House insurance? Most people live their lives as if there is no god. We stop at red lights, we put our children in car seats, and we act responsibly to protect our safety and the safely of those we love.

If a person is religious, he is an atheist in relation to others’ gods and the gods of history. He also will almost invariably live as an atheist in relation to his own worshipped deity.

We expect others to live as atheists too. We want them to stop at red lights and not assume we drive under divine protection. We in the West have become so used to religious people NOT really, truly, and fully believing what they say they  believe that we are startled when, as on 9/11, we encounter people who really do believe their religion and put their beliefs into murderous practice.”

Quote of the Day

“Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.” ~ Sigmund Freud

Prayer can make things worse

The next time some faithhead offers to pray for you best be on the safe side and try and convince them not to. The scientific study summarised here demonstrates that: if you don't know that they are praying for you it doesn't make any difference; but if you do know they are, it can actually make things worse.  True this has only been investigated for patients recovering from a cardiac bypass, and one can find oneself the subject of offers of prayer for all kinds of reasons, but why take any chances. . . .?

God and Disaster

by A C Grayling on Richard Dawkins.net

One thinks with sorrow of the hundreds of thousands whose lives have been horrendously lost or affected by the great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which will put a black mark against this year 2011 in the annals, coming so soon after the earthquake that hit Christchurch in New Zealand. The events are almost certainly linked tectonically, reminding us of the vast forces of nature that are normal for the planet itself but inimical to human life, especially when lived dangerously close to the jigsaw cracks of the earth’s surface.

Someone told me that there were to be special prayers in their local church for the people of Japan. This well-intentioned and fundamentally kindly proceeding nevertheless shows how absurd, in the literal sense of this term, are religious belief and practice. When I saw the television footage of people going to church in Christchurch after the tragic quake there, the following thoughts pressed.

Read more.

Why Atheism will replace religon

"Atheists are heavily concentrated in economically developed countries, particularly the social democracies of Europe. In underdeveloped countries, there are virtually no atheists. Atheism is thus a peculiarly modern phenomenon. Why do modern conditions produce atheism?"

From "Psychology Today". Read article.

The Brain Creates Religion

Please note. Be patient, the above video takes about 30 secs to load.
For transcription see:-The Brain Creates Religion | Lionel Tiger | Big Think

The allure of religion

Part of the allure of religion is that it suppresses one's perception of one's own ignorance.

It's a scary world out there, and it was even scarier back when religions arose. Back then it was virtually impossible to acquire knowledge of anything, without a lot of work, and/or access to information, all of which was not readily available, much less capable of being obtained. 

So having a book handed to you with the explanation that it contains everything you need to know is very comforting, allowing you to believe that you are far more in control of your scary world than you would be otherwise. It's delusional, but for most people not being hit by lightning, or succumbing to infectious diseases, or being killed by natural disasters, there is no reason to believe otherwise. And those exceptions, well, they can be rationalized away too, simply by referring to this book.

With such a handy dandy guide to life, you really don't need to even think about or acknowledge your real ignorance.

Life might still be a bitch, but at least you feel good about yourself.

See also:  "The Dunning-Kruger Effect."

(The above has been slightly adapted from a comment on "Debunking Christianity" by "The Spanish Inquistor". I thought it needed a wider circulation.) 

Why atheists have higher IQ's

Atheists are probably more intelligent than religious people because they benefit from many social conditions that happen to be correlated with loss of religious belief. When one looks at this phenomenon from the point of view of comparisons between countries, it is not hard to figure out possible reasons that more intelligent countries have more atheists as Richard Lynn (2009) reported.

From an article in Psychology Today by Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber, the author of Why Parents Matter and The Science of Romance, among other books.

Read more.