Atheists and Agnostics Also Frequently Believe in the Supernatural, Study Shows | Hacker News Reader

Atheists and Agnostics Also Frequently Believe in the Supernatural, Study Shows

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26 pointsrendall52 comments

Not too surprising. Nothing necessarily says 'disbelieves in God/gods' means 'is a rationalist/sceptic'.

And nowadays, it seems like a growing number of people are simply not believing in the narratives provided by organised religions and churches, while still maintaining beliefs about other supernatural concepts like reincarnation, ghosts, an afterlife, etc.

In some sense, it feels like a bit of a pagan resurgence in some parts, with more people being open to the supernatural while still not believing in religion in the traditional sense.

You also have to take cultural and linguistic differences into account. In my experience, Japanese people tend use terms like "atheist" and "non-religious" less in the sense of a personal system of belief, and more in the sense of "not being a member of a formal, established religious institution."

I've had variations of the following conversation with several Japanese people:

  Q: Are you religious?
  A: No I don't have any religion.
  Q: Oh, I see. By the way, what did you do on New Year's Day this year?
  A: I went to the neighborhood shrine to pray, like I always do!

Even in among native English speakers the usage is not consistent. I know people who believe in a spirit world where their dead family members hear their prayers, and they do not describe themselves as religious, because they associate religion with a shared dogma and belief in one or more superhuman deities. I guess most people don't describe themselves "religious" unless there is some organized religion that they are able to identify as the source of their beliefs.

Then there are people who say, "I'm not religious -- I have a relationship with God"

I wonder, given the rising popularity of atheism, how many of the people described in the study fall under the unthinking atheist, in the same way someone raised by Christians or in Christian peer-groups can easily become Christian without conscience thought? It stands to reason that as it gains in popularity, atheism would appear more like the general population. I feel like the ‘convinced, dogmatic atheists’ is a group that's become the minority.

I bet you’re right. I find a lot of people that take a position with just a cursory overview, and that never go deep to see what that position really implies. It’s hard work and takes time.

"Dogmatic atheist"? I would laugh, but a Google search suggests that people do believe such a thing exists. Are they just talking about outspoken atheists who are openly critical of religion?

I would assume that to be the case - when I think of the term I think of "The Four Horsemen" - Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet, & Harris.

Indeed. Christopher Hitchens called himself not just an atheist, but an "anti-theist."

There is certainly a brand of atheist who is really only the flipside of a fundamentalist. One reads scripture literally in order to find it infallible, the other reads scripture literally in order to find it impossible.

I don't really like that definition too much, it feels a little off. It feels almost like the tolerance/intolerance debate, in a way.

But I get it. I choose not to call myself an atheist, since it seems to have connotations beyond the simple definition. If asked for a label, I call myself ignostic. It has the upside of being easily mistaken for agnostic, therefore it sails under the radar when the topic of religion comes up. So I can be accurate without getting into what amounts to a political debate.

I just seems like a misunderstanding of the term "atheist" to apply the word "dogma" to it, or liken it to fundamentalism. There's no authority structure or writings to be dogmatic about…

On the other hand, maybe they don't believe in any god, but do believe in the supernatural - they would still technically qualify as atheists.

You are being downvoted because people have problems separating the two since they've been so tightly coupled for millennia at least in western civilization.

But you are right, nothing in "atheism" prohibits someone believe there is an afterlife, or ghosts, or reincarnation, etc. Atheism just means you don't believe in gods; with a little imagination an afterlife can still exist without any overlords.

Totally true - If someone felt the evidence wasn't strong enough for a creator, but there was for ghosts, that'd be totally logical. It seems unlikely, but totally possible.

There’s an argument to be made that court enforced public atheism violates the establishment clause.

Perhaps, but it's impossible to judge the merit of said argument since you failed to make it.

I don't know what you mean by "court enforced public atheism." The right to express your religious views is protected in the United States by the 1st Amendment. And on the contrary, U.S. currency reads "In God we trust."

Only if you redefine atheism to mean theism, as in "they believe in atheism! Can't you see?"

Atheism is a positive belief system. It actively asserts special gnosis of God’s nonexistence which effectively makes it a particularly bare-boned form of Protestantism.

Agnosticism on the other hand isn’t a religion, it’s just intellectual humility or maybe just laziness.

See, you’ve redefine it.

If you assert “gnosis” then you are not talking about belief you are talking about knowledge. Gnostics claim to know there is a god, Agnostics claim they do not know if there are gods.

But I’m an Atheist. Why? Because I do not BELIEVE there are gods. I have not made any claims. I have not asserted anything. I simply find all the arguments in favor of gods lacking.

Atheism IS NOT a positive belief system, but simply the rejection of one.

> Atheism is a positive belief system. It actively asserts special gnosis of God’s nonexistence which effectively makes it a particularly bare-boned form of Protestantism.

Asserting the nonexistence of something is not asserting special knowledge of something's nonexistence. Atheism isn't a Platonic Beard[1].

On a more practical level: if Protestants and atheists don't find their views mutually intelligible, there probably isn't any really meaningful sense in which one is a "bare-boned form" of the other.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_beard

Atheism is just a-theism, not-theism. If you are not a theist ("i believe in a god or gods"), you are an atheist.

You can be atheist and agnostic - most atheists are.

I'm sorry, but that's just incorrect.

Atheists are people who assert "I do not believe in God" and not, "I believe there is no God." It can not be otherwise, because the opposite makes no logical sense. Which God would the correct one to "believe against"? There are infinite Gods that one must equally disbelieve. Not believing in Zeus, Jupiter, Odin, Ra, Yahveh, and the flying spaghetti monster does not require any evidence at all, it's merely the default position which any rational person must take.

Atheists merely believe in one God less than believers.

I appreciate the sophistry, but it just doesn't accurately describe the empirical reality. Western atheists are observably interested in the nonexistence of the biblical God. As you correctly note, none of them define themselves by, say, disbelief in Trimurti. I doubt they even think about it.

Furthermore, every atheist I encounter actually asserts something like "I do not believe in God, because there is no God." After all "I do not believe in God, because there is a God" is irrational and, given the consequences of disbelief if God is as described in western tradition, exceedingly foolish. Atheism is only a rational belief if God is known to not exist. Otherwise it's no different than not believing in climate change or dinosaurs.

And in any event a transcendent creator God (first cause, etc) isn't anything at all like the easter bunny, comic book superheroes, or bad fictional characters.

Atheists are well aware of the distinction, I can assure you. A statement like "I do not believe in God because there is no God" proves absolutely nothing. I could tell you "I do not believe in pink unicorns because there are no pink unicorns" and you would not take it as a statement of faith, just as the obvious truth. Such a truth is also obvious about the Judeo-Muslim-Christian God to atheists: there is no evidence of God, and in particular, there is no evidence whatsoever of Yahweh.

As a side note, the strange idea that Yahweh is the only "possible" God is taken as granted by religious people, but it makes really little sense to those who came to disbelief through a philosophical journey. A lot of atheists will tell you that the specificity problem is one of the most convincing reasons not to believe in God.

> As a side note, the strange idea that Yahweh is the only "possible" God is taken as granted by religious people,

It's really not, especially by most people who follow non-Yahwistic religions. But even those who personally believe in Yahweh who pose arguments for the existence of a god often do so for a god of a far less defined nature; belief in the existence of a god (however that term is defined) and belief that the god that exists has, in addition to those traits which are reviewed as inherently defining being a god, also has the other traits classically identified with some particular image of Yahweh are often coinciding but distinguishable beliefs.

You ought to put some more effort into understanding the millennia of thought that has gone into the topic before making sophomoric errors.

You've unintentionally acknowledged my original point with your obsession on the nonexistence of the biblical God. Why aren't you going on about your lack of belief in Susano-o?

What you fail to understand is that there are those who have come to a belief in a transcendental creator God in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical necessity. Granted, the particulars of the incarnation are a matter of testimony. Setting that aside though, the logical argument for the necessity of a creator God is no different than the logical argument that we live in a "simulation."

> who have come to a belief in a transcendental creator God in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical necessity

Care to unpack that for me? Are you arguing for a "God", or a Prime Mover? I think they are very distinct - people attribute certain anthropomorphized qualities to a "God". I don't find an argument that there must being a prime mover particularly compelling, and if there were such a thing, I would very much doubt that it would represent any sort of deity as we define it - if anything I'd expect it to be energy and chaos. I'd just like to know which side of this argument you're going with.

See "He Is There And He Is Not Silent" by Francis Schaeffer.

However, be aware that this book is more a sketch or outline of an argument, not detailed at every step. You're going to have to do a lot of thinking about various points to decide whether you agree with his argument.

You're also going to have to pay careful attention to his definitions of words, specifically his distinction between rationality and rationalism.

Taking a weak sketch of an argument and then filling in what you want to see seems to me to be a realization of one's own desires, and not a convincing argument in and of itself. I've no interest in reading a Christian Apologists attempt to find a way to rationalize out a creator - if I'm going to be convinced of such a thing, I expect there to be convincing, obvious, evidence, and not to end up at the end of a metaphysical cul-de-sac and to have to "God" my way out of it.

I never said it was weak. It's not. I said that you're going to have to think through whether the "but what about"s that you come up with really counter his point, because he's not going to address every "what about" that exists.

> What you fail to understand is that there are those who have come to a belief in a transcendental creator God in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical necessity.

And what you fail to understand is that there are those who have come to a disbelief in a transcendental creator in a philosophical journey, because it's a logical impossibility.

> You ought to put some more effort into understanding the millennia of thought that has gone into the topic before making sophomoric errors.

The arrogance is simply astounding.

> because it's a logical impossibility.

Really? Why don't you share your theorem?

We know that the existence of God can be found logically, because Gödel wrote a formal proof.

> The arrogance is simply astounding.

Indeed, I'm impressed by your self-awareness.

> We know that the existence of God can be found logically, because Gödel wrote a formal proof.

This, of course, is why if you look online there are no refutations of said proof.

I would suggest you're being incredibly pedantic - formal logic being a place far removed from the logic to which they were referring. It seems roughly analogous to me that just because mathematically infinity exists doesn't mean it must exist as physical property.

I didn’t see any logic, informal or otherwise. God doesn’t exist because I don’t want Him to isn’t any kind of argument at all.

You're right - that's not a terribly well thought out argument. They should have said:

"I don't believe in any deities existence as such a claim would require extraordinary evidence. Not only have we been provided no extraordinary evidence, we have been provided no evidence at all, save possibly the very existence of creation itself, but we can safely reject the argument that a creator deity exists because creation exists due to the innate problem with first causes arguments - if you assume that everything must have a first cause, that first cause can't have had one, thus there isn't an innate requirement for a first cause, making first causes an argument against themselves. There being no evidence provided, therefore I can safely rejected the supposition that such a being would exist."

That would have made more sense.

Yes, that does make more sense. Of course I would counter that the universe and our existing in it came to be out of random mindless chaos is also an extraordinary claim.

I’d state it as there must be a singular uncaused cause on account of the tree of causality has to have a root. We call that uncaused root of causality God. The refutation requires that we accept that some events have causes and some don’t and oh well no idea to really know which is which. Since the entire scientific and engineering endeavor relies on events having causes, I find that conclusion philosophically unsatisfactory.

If we don't assume a beginning or end, then we end up with infinite time, with infinite variations, and with that it's a pretty much certainty that this would exist as it does, for this iteration.

Science and Engineering rely on cause and event largely in mathematical abstractions - if we draw the line out far enough "why is that real ball moving through space" the answer stretches all the way back to the big bang, and we lack the ability to see what came before. From what I understand of current science - the theory is that it was due to a big crunch, which was due to a big bang - infinite loops in an infinite cycle.

Again though, you're saying that the singular uncaused occurred just because - in a system that otherwise must have a cause and effect that MUST have had a cause and effect, unless you decide to draw a special case for it, where I can see no reason why you would. It's basically a special pleading to jam god into a hole of knowledge, just like we used to do with demons and witches before we understood the real nature of diseases.

> We know that the existence of God can be found logically, because Gödel wrote a formal proof.

And that is when the whole world converted overnight never to question dogma again, right? Wait, that didn't happen. Because is not posible to prove any god, let alone the overlord dictator that is, by your own "logic", making me type this words disregarding him/her.

If there are no gods, then I'm right. If there are gods and they are your kind of illogical creators that somehow do not need an explanation themselves, completely powerful and complex beyond imagination, yet simple enough to classify as "first movers", and caring enough to "die" for us but not before having a plan in-place to resurrect themselves, then leaving for some reason, he/she/it/they WANT ME to be an atheist, so I'm still right. Or are you going against your gods?

Anyway I'm done answering you. At least I hope you learned what an Atheist is and don't keep going around claiming that we are as bad as the rest because we also have "faith" in atheism! Sadly, I'm not holding my breath.

Godel's proof is just a formal logic version of Augustine proof, which has been disproven.

Here's the "proof": God is perfect, all perfect things must exist, therefore God exists

Which is easily refuted by observing that the statement merely shows that either a perfect God exists or it does not. The fact that one can posit a perfect God does not make it real. Even a kid can understand that.

No it's not. It's a formalization of St. Anselm's ontological argument. It's clear to me that you have no real interest in the subject, but on the off chance I'm wrong you can easily find both the medieval ontological argument and the modern formal one online.

In any event I think Gödel's proof is worth understanding simply as a nice example of modal logic and the power of formalisms. Anselm's informal attempt at a proof is famously unreadable.

I believe you're mistaking opting to not show favoritism to a particular theology for repression.

> the rising popularity of atheism

How can not-a-thing have rising popularity...

Same way "What's your favourite beer?" can have an answer of "I don't drink beer."

But that's beer being less popular...

I find the blog posts discussing the report more interesting than the report itself. Atheists/agnostics don't believe in gods (i.e. the ones you pray to that control the world and universe), but that doesn't mean they dismiss outright any possible supernatural belief. There are some outspoken atheists that will certainly take this position, but that's not the definition of an atheist.

Personally, I'm a non-believer (along with almost half of my country) but I still like the ideas behind some form of an afterlife or reincarnation. It's soothing (and harmless) to think that a deceased loved one's spirit may live on in some other form.

The original paper is better https://research.kent.ac.uk/understandingunbelief/wp-content...

Looking at the appendix, their sampling methodology has problems. The sample size for China is smaller than that of Japan, and for western countries 60%-75% of survey takers are male.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as the supernatural (it exceeds natural capabilities, imho), but while lots of people no longer have a fundamentalist belief in religion, it seems a fair number of people have in some sense replaced that with a somewhat fundamentalist belief in the capabilities and comprehensiveness of knowledge (versus theories) of science, free markets, human nature, and other things like that. And on a personal basis, a possibly overly confident view of the correctness of their beliefs about the beliefs (and underlying motivations) of other people.

I'm not sure either, but I kind of agree. I think it's the whole us vs them thing. Most people like to feel like they're on the right (correct, superior) side of whatever issue they decide divides them from the others.

Years ago they redefined the atheist demographic to contain those believing in supernatural phenomena or a higher power, in order to push the false narrative which says the number of atheists is increasing worldwide. Those who believe in the supernatural, deities or a higher power are falsely considered "atheist" to exaggerate the size of their demographic.

An interesting case is Buddhism which many would classify as a religion. It's main premise is that the universe works like a clock that runs on karma which isn't so much a judgment but rather a plain mechanism. There are gods but they basically have no interactions with life as we know it. So believes in the existence of gods that have no bearing, meaning no faith is placed in their doings.

Maybe we should call ourselves "occams" to be more specific.

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