TomboyMom

My latest issue of Skeptic magazine tells me that:
- 30% of adult americans believe that UFOs are space vehicles from other civilizations
- 60% believe in ESP
- 40% think astrology is scientific
- only about 53% believe that humans evolved from earlier species of animals. (This is reported as a positive finding, as it is the first time that a majority of americans reported believing in evolution.)

I'm sure there are many reasons for this, including human nature and poor science teaching in the public schools and universities. However, could it be that since the majority of Americans are raised as theists, we are trained from an early age to believe outrageous things without any scientific evidence, as long as they are presented by authority figures? And so are especially susceptible to believing other silly things? I'm hypothesizing that an early training in theism leads to a general openness to believing non-religious things without any evidence to back them up. In other words, that theism leads to gullibility. Thoughts?

Rene

Ensign Steve

Rene, I am in the minority to be sure, but my personal upbrining does not fit into your model.

I was brought up atheist, as was my mom. But (big but) my mom was and IS very superstitious. I was brought up to have an "open mind" about things like psychic powers, haunted houses, UFO's, astrology, etc. It wasn't until college and critical thinking and logic and all that that I learned how to analyze supernatural events and seek the truth behind them. I am completely skeptical now.

I think the desire to know how things work, but the inability to explain them, exists whether one believes in god or not. Some people might attribute those unexplainable things to a god or gods. An atheist (basic definition: someone who does not believe in a god or gods) might still attribute those things to the supernatural, if they were not educated to believe otherwise.

Jen

Edited to add: The moral of my story is, gullibility exists. Theism or not.

Muad'Dib

I tend to agree in this particular example, but I am a little more cautious about laying all blame for credulity at the feet of theism when in my opinion the problem is human rather than religious.

We can't possibly call every possible assumption into question and examine every presupposition and datum about our lives, because there's not enough time in our lives and we'd never get anything done if we tried. As a result, we generalize our observations to a set of principles and "fudge" things sometimes to make things fit. This usually works, and it keeps us from having to completely reevaluate our worldview every time we learn a new fact. This "fudging" is, IMO, what leads to credulity with respect to things that are convenient for our set of assumptions. Theists are generally more credulous about supernatural happenings; I, on the other hand, would probably be biased toward accepting a very flawed critique of someone's UFO testimony.

I'm not saying at all that it is impossible to examine things honestly. Rather, I'm saying that it's impossible to do so 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We often need to act faster than we can think.

We may laugh at people who believe in a literal 6000-year-old universe because their family and friends do, but really, people who believe evolution only because scientists say so are doing the same kind of thing--it's just that their authority figures are different. Just because we reject some authority figures and accept others as generally reliable doesn't mean that we can delegate our own thinking to others, IMHO.

What's my point? I think we need to call theists on their fudging of facts, and at the same time I think we need to be very careful not to do the same ourselves. Rejecting religion isn't the same as rejecting the tendency to error inherent in our humanity.

Theophage

I think you've got that backward.

Human beings are inherently gullible/superstitious simply because the side effect of lazy pattern recognition is recognizing patterns that aren't really there. (That's what our brains do; pattern recognition and symbolic encoding).

Theism is simply one more manefestation of this very human foible.

Undercurrent

Theist preachers don't teach, only gullibility. They also teach an extreme level of skepticism towards other belief systems. I know that quite a few fundamentalist sects see new-agey beliefs as anathema. The quacks don't like competition.

Ensign Steve

Well, that's because that new agey stuff is satanic devil worship. Duh!

*ducks!*

dunadan

I would say that they are indeed not skeptical towards other beliefs, but espouse that other religions/cults/whatever are valid, but inspired by demons, devils, or other evil spirits. If they were truly skeptical of miraculous claims of others' religion, it might lead their own followers to be skeptical of their own beliefs. In a way they feed off of each other, each chasing the 'demons' they see in the other.

Lobstrosity

I very much agree, dunadan. It seems like many religions will accept the most outrageous claims but simply call them "satan's work" or some other equivalent. This keeps out the skepticism and still serves to keep followers from being lured away. I think this is why so many theists hate atheists more than theists of other religions. The very skepticism of atheism threatens their whole belief structure, and they rightly perceive that as a danger.

emotional

I've been combing a fundaChristian site called Diakrisis Ministries:

http://www.diakrisis.org

Its main focus is on New Age (Neo-Gnosticism): trance states, altered states of consciousness, magick, visualisation, witchcraft, the whole paganistic lot. The depressing thing here is that Alan Morrison, the author, does not deny the reality of the New Age flim-flam; he just attributes it all to Satan and his demons. That is, he opposes the occult not because it's occult, but for his own occult reasons (Jesus, the Bible etc).

MaximusDementis

Does this mean that there is no Santa Claus? My first authority figures told me there is a Santa Claus.:boohoo: