PLEASE NOTE: This is a discussion thread, not a debate thread. State your views. Provide your reasons for them. Ask respectful questions of other posters. Even compare and contrast your views with other positions purely for the sake of clarification. BUT DO NOT ATTEMPT TO PROVE OTHER POSITIONS FALSE OR WRONG! Moreover, please report to the Mods any posts that engage in debate, or attempt to.
INTRODUCTION:
How often have you heard this, or things similar to this:
"Atheists hate authority, and God is the ultimate authority. Hence, atheists are atheists because they hate God."
Or, how often have you heard this, or things similar to this:
"Theists are gullible and obedient. They will swallow anything from a person who is in a position of authority over them. That's why they believe in God. Someone they respected told them to."
Ridiculous as it might sound at first, such pop notions of nonbelievers and believers might actually have a spec of truth to them. Of course, finding the truth in them is like panning for gold. You must work your butt off shifting through a ton of gravel to find a nugget of gold.
Moreover, if there is indeed a bit of truth to the pop notions, it seems to only apply to a specific kind of person, and not just everyone. The kind of person who goes through life more curious about the 'Big Questions', than the 'little ones'.
He or she prefers thinking about the possible existence of god, the meaning of life, the nature of love, and the fall selection of women's lingerie, rather than prefers thinking about which jobs are the most lucrative, what kind of house they want, whether its time for a new car, or where their missing teens are at two in the morning ("They'll make it back, honey. Don't you worry. Just as soon as they flatten their debit cards").
But if there is indeed a nugget of truth to be found in the popular myths, BS, and lies about believers and nonbelievers, then what is that nugget?
TWO INSTINCTUAL STYLES OF LEARNING AND THINKING:
I am going to guess the nugget of truth is somewhere to be found in the two most important instinctual styles of learning we humans are born with. Imitation and play. I laid out the meaning of the two styles in another thread that I posted earlier today. Here's the OP of that thread:
Sunstone the Handsome said:Play is one of at least two instinctive ways that humans learn. The other way is imitation. Both ways of learning seem to be deeply rooted in our genes. Children never need to be taught to play nor taught to imitate. The behaviors come instinctively to them. During both play and imitation, children acquire skills they will need later on in life. In short, they learn.
However, play and imitation are not merely ways we humans acquire skills, they are also ways we humans acquire information and views. That is, data, facts, opinions, perspectives, and even some of our morals and values. This becomes apparent when one considers that rote learning can seen as a form of imitation, and creative (imaginative) thinking and critical thinking can be seen as forms of play.
To be a bit more precise, there are many forms of play, but the one we want to focus on here is the game of "let's pretend". That's what we call the game when children do it. When adults do it, we more often call it asking 'what if' questions. A childhood game of "Let's pretend I'm T-Rex and you're the infinitely annoying Stephanie Morrison, and I'm stomping towards your house..." easily morphs within only a few years into, "What if I saved the beautiful and charming Stephanie Morrison from a T-Rex attack? Would she at last notice I even exist?" 'Let's pretend' and 'what if' are very similar to each other. And they encourage both creative thinking and critical thinking.
Imitation, by its very nature is an excellent way to pass along cultural traits with very little change or modification. Especially in the form of rote learning, imitation actively avoids any changes to the information and views passed from one person to another by its means. But by those very facts, imitation discourages discovery, innovation, creative thinking, and critical thinking.
Essentially, imitation can be fairly described as "in-the-box thinking" while play can be fairly described as "Beyond-the-box thinking". Quite obviously, God and Darwin intended us to use both.
Dozens of scientific studies have shown that some people perform best in well-structured environments while others perform best in less-structure environments. Those preferences extend to education and thinking.
Some kids learn best when they are placed in well-organized classrooms and taught according to plans and schedules. Other kids are quite the opposite. They learn best when they allowed to roam and wander at will from one topic to another. Such kids might begin wondering why the sky is blue. That will lead them into wanting to know about the visible spectrum. From there they might suddenly branch off in almost any direction.
Get those two groups of kids mixed up, and neither group does well. The free range kids can't stand a well-structured environment. The organized kids become lost and demotivated in a free range environment. Madness to put them in the same classroom! Madness!
(I myself was a free-range kid forced to endure well-structured classrooms due to nothing else being available in my schools. I spent my school days bristling at my teachers, refusing to pay attention to anything in class, and cracking wickedly funny jokes to disrupt the classroom. Then I would go home, hide out in my basement chemistry lab, and stick my nose in every book I could find like I was a bee and my books were honey. By middle school, I was the best-read kid in my class. I had no idea what was wrong with me, and was often ashamed of my compulsive behavior, but I later found out my behavior was typical of free-range boys in well-structured classrooms. Free-range girls rebel too, only in different ways.)
IMPRESSIVE AND ENGAGING CONCLUSION:
It seems possible to me that some believers (but not all believers) really are in a very special sense believers to some significant extent because they prefer learning well-structured and packaged beliefs such as many religions provide in the form of sacred texts, authoritative clergy and teachers, etc.
It furthermore seems possible to me that some nonbelievers (but not all nonbelievers) really are in a very special sense nonbelievers to some significant extent because they prefer leaning in an unstructured and exploratory manner that shuns well-structured and packaged beliefs.
As a rough rule of thumb, I mean. Not as a black and white, either/or, firmly fixed distinction.
Comments?
______________________________