Today there are approximately 7.7 billion people living on our planet. Almost 6 billion of them consider themselves to be one of the existing religions, which means that 84% of the world population believes in one God or another. And from the point of view of how we sapiens evolved, this is quite natural. But not classifying oneself as a member of any of the existing religions in the world, on the contrary, raises questions. A graduate student at the University of Victoria in New Zealand named Joseph Langston was looking for answers to questions about when and for what reasons people become atheists. His study, published in the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior in 2021, involved five thousand people who did not affiliate themselves with any existing faith. The results obtained during the study showed that people, as a rule, lose faith at a young age for two reasons: if the parents are devout but do not attend church, or, on the contrary, the parents are religious, but only in words. In this article we will talk about how and why people become atheists.
Researchers have recently often wondered why some people become atheists.
What is religion for?
As he writes in his book “Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity,” historian Yuval Noah Harari, religion is a system of human norms and values based on belief in a higher, superhuman order. At the same time, the most famous religions in the world - such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism - combine signs of universality and missionaryism and, as far as scientists know, began to appear only at the turn of our era. The emergence of universal religions, according to Harari, is one of the key factors in the unification of humanity.
In turn, neuroendocrinologist and professor at Stanford University Robert Sapolsky notes that religions arise because they contribute to the general cooperation and resilience of people in a group. However, it cannot be ruled out that the invention of deities is a by-product of the activity of a socially oriented brain. The author of the book “The God Delusion,” evolutionary biologist and popularizer of science Richard Dawkins, agrees with this assumption. Arguing about the causes of religiosity, he puts forward the following hypothesis:
“Natural selection favored the survival of children whose brains were predisposed to trust the opinions of their parents and tribal elders. Such trusting obedience helps to survive. However, the flip side of trusting obedience is mindless gullibility.”
Meanwhile, the last three centuries are often called the era of secularization, as religions gradually lost their importance.
According to this assumption, an inevitable by-product of religion is vulnerability to infection by thought viruses. Indeed, our brains are incredibly vulnerable to a variety of thinking errors and cognitive distortions. I talked more about where cognitive distortions come from and why people believe in the supernatural in this article.
In general, speaking about religion, it is important to understand that it reflects the values of the culture in which it arose and was accepted, and is extremely successful in transmitting these values further. As he writes in his book “The Biology of Good and Evil. How Science Explains Our Actions" Robert Sapolsky, "Religion rewards both the best and the worst in us. And religion is very complicated.”
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Why do people become atheists?
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I come out with a proposal to first understand where faith in God comes to us from. And she comes to us in childhood, usually from her parents. As usual, believing children are born to believing parents. More precisely, they are not born like that, but 99 percent of them become like that. However, as young people age, they often lose faith. The reason lies on the surface and is quite simple. They pray and ask God for something, sometimes even sincerely, but their requests are never fulfilled. Naturally, in such a situation there is no smell of faith.
Of course, faith is an extremely broad concept. A person, becoming an adult, while having brains in his skull, will still someday think about his purpose, and will still understand one day that even if we descended from the ciliate slipper, it certainly could not have come from Nothing. That is, in any case, there is a higher intelligence that created the planets and living creatures on them. But, fortunately for atheists, such logic does not seem to include belief in a classical (humanoid) God.
Why do people become atheists? After all, among this caste of the population there are many former believers, so to speak, with experience. I will say right away that those people who condemn God and the Bible and say that they hate God are not atheists. Because to hate does not mean to deny. An atheist is a person who does not believe in God. Atheism is not a popular uprising against God, it is not a group of enemies of believers. They're just unbelievers, that's all. Of course, there are people who previously believed with terrible strength, but having received nothing from their faith, they stopped believing in God. They just didn't need it anymore. It may be a little blasphemous for comparison, but it’s the same as throwing out an old wardrobe, because there’s no point in it.
People who become atheists after years of faith do not become non-believers overnight. In fact, faith and religion, in addition to going to church and rituals, have psychological blocks of enormous power. Belief in God is a very strong habit and a certain lifestyle. When a person becomes an atheist, the process of transition to another life takes an enormous amount of time.
All people are initially atheists. Let's think, if a child is not told about God at all from childhood, he will not be a believer, right? And the fact that there are many gods and every nation has its own, despite the fact that we are all ordinary people, clearly does not speak in favor of the existence of God. Many religions and movements generally contradict each other; moreover, it must be said frankly that religions were generally invented to control the masses. And many people one fine day realize that from a practical point of view, religion gives them absolutely nothing, but only takes away. After all, no religion explains the most complex issues of life.
I will not talk about the attitude towards the Orthodox or any other church. Each person decides for himself whether to be a believer or not. I believe that faith should benefit us, faith should bring happiness and joy. If the opposite happens, then it is better to remain an atheist, or to believe in a person, for example. Or into yourself.
Psychology
Another argument in favor of not believing in God is the following position.
The whole point is that religion, from childhood, shapes a person’s thinking in a certain way so that he is convenient for management. Anyone who believes is afraid of his natural needs, afraid of everything around him. He doesn’t value his life because he believes in the next one, which means he won’t fight for anything in this one. All this also turns beliefs into convenient means of manipulation for those in power.
Those who act on the principle “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him” put fear at the forefront of their lives. A person thinks the same way in all spheres of life, and begins to act one way or another, fearing the boss and other people in power. Such a person will not become strong, he will not be able to become a threat to power. Just as someone who constantly repents and looks for his sins and defects in everything will not become one. He is humility, which is so convenient for those who want to live beautifully in this life. The whole system is built on using others in a way that they don't understand.
Is church about good?
At all times, there were people who subjected loved ones to death for their beliefs when it was necessary for those who had power. They were killed because they were once convinced to believe in one or another god.
People believed in idols, and killed each other in the course of someone's struggle for power. They believed in the gods, and continued to rob, frame and start wars with thousands of victims. Today, those who call themselves Christians continue to kill their own kind. There are wars going on right now in all parts of the globe.
And all this was often approved by the Church. This is because history is not about religion, it is about power. To those who go to kill and die, religion says that this is honorable. Nobody sees the honor, but people are convinced of anything. To those who live their lives in utter poverty and hopelessness, the Church says that this is not a real life, then there will be another, where they will be rewarded for their torment. No one sees retribution and another life, but again, people can be convinced of anything.
In addition, from the Middle Ages to the present day, the Church has been the richest structure, which always receives funds from people. How?
Manipulation is carried out on a person’s main fears. Every Christian knows that if he does not keep the commandments and does not pray in churches, then eternal torment awaits him. And this dogma is instilled in many people from childhood and becomes the cause of strong fear, which turns out to be stronger than the person’s logic. This is where the search engine queries “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him” come from. According to official data, in this one month, 83 people typed this phrase into one of the search engines.
Hypocrisy
The argument of a person who does not believe in God against religion often sounds like this: “doing good out of fear of punishment is hypocrisy.” The Bible clearly states that those who do not act in a certain way will be punished. One popular view on this point points to a paradox in the concept of Christianity. Namely, that God monitors actions and sends people to hell, where they will spend their entire eternal life in terrible torment, but at the same time he loves them. Reading the Bible, people begin to not believe in God because they do not feel his love. This process occurs after familiarization with the “Old Testament” to a greater extent.
This leads to another common position: “I don’t believe in God, because he couldn’t be so cruel.” After all, the Bible states that God is an ideal entity.
How did religion appear?
Thus, it was proven that the history of man is much older than any religion. People created it as part of culture and modified it throughout their existence. Many religions appeared, lived for several thousand years, and then died. Each cultural layer in human history believed in something different. Completely different beliefs were created in their place. Whatever anyone wants, Christianity plays the same role. Each religion remains with a person as long as he needs, and after centuries, perhaps a dozen of them, it turns out to be extinct and passed on to descendants as part of the history of semi-wild ancestors. Just as people now study the gods of Ancient Greece, in whom those people sacredly believed for millennia, so in the future I will study modern religions. There is nothing left of those gods except myths, and for millions of people they were their whole life, someone shed blood and gave their lives for them.
Intermediate position
Someone doesn’t believe in God, but prays not to slide down. This is often done by psychologists who are confident that beliefs are necessary for a person to survive. They point out that it is religious ideas that explain to a person what he cannot understand and what he fears. Death is an unknown that frightens. And faith eases this fear, making it clear what will be waiting there. Therefore, psychologists often do not believe or deny God. This helps them live a happier life.
The following grammatically incorrect query “I don’t believe in God, but I hear his whisper” was also found on the World Wide Web. It should be noted that it has been officially proven that convincing yourself that there is communication with supernatural beings, and clearly hearing voices in your head means being mentally ill. Someone begins to believe that in this way he communicates with God. But the opposite proves that this syndrome is easily treated with drugs that cure schizophrenia. Only a psychiatrist can select them.
Bottom line
As a result, the confrontation between the 2 camps ended with the fact that the fact that these people had beliefs was recognized when the data that appeared could no longer be denied. It is now reliably known that the Neanderthal, an ancient species of man who lived a hundred thousand years before the modern one, had religious ideas.
With the discovery of numerous strange human bones, declared to be the remains of an extinct species, the question arose: “How does this find reconcile with the belief that God created man in his own “image and likeness?” After all, the discovered type of creature was a primitive form of a person who had speech, but also transitional features from a monkey, which significantly distinguished him from modern Homo sapiens. Some of the scientists who did not believe in God rejoiced with the discovery of evidence that humans descended from apes and not from God, while the other part was confused.
In 1861, after the first skeleton of a special type of Homo neanderthalensis was discovered and described by King, the authoritative professor Rudolf Virchow expressed the idea that the remains belonged to a person who suffered from rickets and then from gout. This explained the obvious deformation of his bones.
However, the argument was soon defeated when, in 1887, several more remains of exactly the same type were found in a cave near Spi in Belgium by Marcel de Puid and Jean Frapon. Near them, primitive tools were found with the bones of long-extinct animals - mammoths, cave bears. If these people also suffered from rickets, it was tens of thousands of years ago, when the climate on Earth was completely different. With the discovery of several finds, it became clear that there would be too many patients. After careful research and a number of new discoveries, it was proven that a hundred thousand years ago in Europe there lived people who differed from us in features that, in their anatomical characteristics, were closer to animals than to humans.
It was a triumph for supporters of the natural origin of man. How could an ape-like Neanderthal also be the “image of god”? If not, then the person now living has no relation to God.
In addition, even if we admit that there was no tribe on the planet that served as a transitional stage between the absence of any faith and the creation of religion, it is impossible to seriously assert that a separate, more primitive species of the discovered types of man could have faith. Their brains were small, they had no families, no property, they were guided by the needs to warm themselves and prolong the race. Obviously, the brain simply did not have the ability to reach such a high abstraction as religion. They didn't need her.
History of the adoption of faith
It is reliably known how in Rus' Prince Vladimir chose a new faith for the country. The chronicles of that time indicated how he sent messengers to different countries. Everyone had to study the tenets of religions in neighboring countries - Islam, Buddhism and Christianity. All this was done to choose the most beneficial religion for Rus'.
The choice of belief did not decide his spiritual question, but the one that gave specific advantages in power. So, he used Christianity to unite with the then powerful Byzantium. Religion was an instrument of power.
Believers' reaction
Adherents of the biblical picture of the world ignored the discovery of these remains and tried to deny their significance in evolution, saying that these were only a people who lived a couple of thousand years ago in Europe, and the bones of ancient animals turned out to be near them by chance. A number of others argued that they were apes similar to humans. The position of believers was also precarious due to the fact that, according to the Bible, the world was created just 5000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. And it made absolutely no mention of the evolution and development of the human species. More and more people did not want to believe in God.
