Atheist Propagadna and Religious Experience

 

 

 

 

Perhaps nothing scares atheists like feelings. They scared to death of religious experience arguments. Nothing raises their hatred like talking about religious experiences. Daren Brown is some sort of British stage magician who has a new stage act supposedly inducing religious experiences. Atheists waste no time in arguing that this is proof that such experiences are just accidents that mean nothing. He states "I examined the Placebo effect and proved just how powerful fear and faith can be." Of course he assumes that because there is a psychological process that produces faith that then there's no object of faith beyond that process that has any real bearing on life. This is really no different than the one's who claim to stimulate parts of the brain to induce religoius experiences.

In calling it "placebo" he's trying to set up the suggestion that it's unreal, it's unnecessary, God is the great cosmic sugar pill. Then he totally ignores the nature of real placebo. It's only for medicine, there's no evidence that such suggestive keys can manipulate us apart from expectation. All the things that he does in relation to evoking the psychological process are manipulative means of setting up the association. Yet most religious experience of the sort called "mystical" is not expected. In about half the time it's experienced in childhood, and much of the time mystical experiences contradict the doctrine of the experincer. If it was a real placebo it should confirm expectations. Placebo work by expectation. They don't work by challenging expectations. Calling it a placebo is wrong and improper and it's probably only done to evoke the concept and prepare the atheist to inoculated against emotion by making her suspicious of religious feelings.

He sets up several incidents before the main show (the phony atheist conversion) that are intended to get across the idea that suggestion works powerfully and most such feelings as one associates with the supernatural are also just manipulation. He makes people feel afraid by putting them in a room alone after reading to them some satanic right supposedly form the eleventh century. People are turned on by a sense of dark mysterious and ancient.  He gave people a fake drug which is no more than a sugar pill and by getting them to believe in it I got them to make dramatic changes in their lives. Of course he doesn't follow them in their lives or do a longitudinal study to determine if the changes are really transformational (dramatic, positive, and long term). He has no real control and no real way of determining if he's given anyone a real experience. Empirical study has demonstrated that religious experience is real, that's transformational, and that there is a way to determine real experiences from phony ones. No there is no proof direly that it's caused by God but this can be argued successfully by paying attention to what can be proved and using it with logic. It is the M scale that provides us with that means of verification for religious experience and it's been validated by a half dozen studies around the world.

His psychological explanation for the process is typically convoluted and not well throughout. He does an experiment that shows people in private when not watched lie about their mistakes. The idea is tp show that there's a presence in the room no one cheats. If people are given a idea of supernatural presence they act more moral. It is asserted that there are evolutionary reasons why we developed the idea of a supernatural presence. Don't want to be outcast form the tribe so we can reproduce. divine presence would ensure the sense of being cought out. God is made up to make us be moral. In other words like Foucault's take on the Panopticon the prisoners are learning to watch themselves. The problem here is he's convoluted several different reasons in to one.

First of all, if we feel a sense of presence that in itself is reason to assume we feel it. It doesn't have to be the result of needing a moral campus and inviting an invisible God. the illustration itself shows cave men ostracize a guy because he lied. So the fact of how people treated each other would be the reason for moral behavior and the fear of being rejected by the tribe and not being allowed to make would be enforcement enough, why make up an internal watch dog to do the job as well? If one has not felt experiences one doesn't know what they are. why invent a psychological process to evoke them then try to explain them. The fact that one has had such experience itself the reason to believe in the reality of such experiences, then the need to explain it comes out of having the need. The idea of ancient cave men trying to produce a sophisticated psychological technique for evoking some experience they haven't had is ridiculous and if they had it, it has its own reality.If they had it prior to producing the process of evoking it then it is real.

 Brown is certain that the experience explained by psychology. He asserts that these kinds of experiences come from big religious rallies with hyper suggestibility but there's no basis for that assumption. He's not using M scale studies to determine what percentage of religious experience is privately induced and percentage comes out of the big hyper rallies. Here's a clue, with half coming in childhood they are not coming form big rallies.

Then he goes through an elaborate production to produce a fake conversion in an atheist woman. He dose this indirectly without mentioning God. He uses several techniques such as tapping his fingers while they talk about her father to make her associate emotions the sound of the tapping with feelings of fatherly love. In several ways he evokes feelings of powerful father figure to bring atheist to believe. Establishes rapport. learns about her father. The woman is unconsciously processing, core religious belief evoked that God has plan for us and pulls strings to help us. No direct mention of God was made the woman made the connection to God herself through feelings of the father figure (tap tap tap). Brown says things that imply a grand plan, talk about things going wrong for a reason. sense of awe and wonder. Talks about the stars and space, evokes being cherished with awe. The woman describes her experience as "all the love in the world had been thrown at me. I pushed it away by not letting it into my life." Now she sees it's so stupid and she sees through it.

He says "I feel douty bound to make sure you understand that the postive stuff you got through this is not religious belief." This is what he tells her latter after they brought back befoer the audiecne. She's already been debriefed. He says explicitly "it certainly didn't come form God." The result of this elaborate dog and pony show is that we are supposed to come away with the grand feeling religion has been totally exposed and deconstructed and unraveled we see close up who fake it is there's no need for it. Of course the Brit media is opporating from the assumption that atheism is the standard, the grounding for society, the status quoe. The Audience is pre slected to reflect this idea. So one's going to challenge it.

It is a dog and pony show, he has no longitudinal study, no double blind, no control, he has no scale to measure the nature, depth, or effect of experience. He has no theory of religious experience to play it off of. That is all very crucial without that he's proved nothing. He can't guarantee that what she experienced is even a religious experience. One clue to that question is she says nothing about undifferentiated unity. she didn't say that she felt an all pervasive presence. She felt there's a plan and a purpose and she's cared for but that doesn't prove that it's the same religious experience that W.T. Stace talked about (see my link above on M scale).

The real problem is without a control there's no way to know if he isn't just evoking the we are given by God to be able to find him. The fact that he's evoking some of them doesn't prove that they are merely a matter of manipulation. There was no guy tapping when I got saved. Any associations that were evoked alone in my living room had to be coincidental or accidental rather than arranged. To say that there's a psychological process that enables to internalize the value of belief in God is hardly a denunciation of the reality of validity of that process. So there is a psychological process and we can manipulate it. I also had a need for a father figure, and guess what, I had a father. Saying that having a psychosocial need disproves the reality of the solution is just foolish.

That's like saying you have proved that love is just a psychological trick becuase when you when you do  things to make them think they are loved they respond emotionally. He's giving all the ques that God would give us to guide into a relationship with him, thus they respond becuase it's put in them to respond. The only real test of the validity of such feelings is the long term change and production of positive experiences and behaviors resulting from it. Plenty of studies establish that this is the case with mystical experience. It's not been proved that it is the case with phony evoked experiences.

 Essentially there is a psychological process to conversion. it make sense that there would be becuase if God wants us to have  a personal relationship with him then there must be affects which would draw us into a psychological state that is conducive to that relationship. Those affects are not hard to find because we all know  about them, the they things that motivate us and turn us on. So he merely found them and induced them in cleaver ways.

oct 13

Atheist Social Science Menu

Atheist Social Sciences




Atheism not increasing in America: nov 2015New

The God Disproving Industry*NEW!*
A huge amount of studies done to disprove God they almost
always have crappie methodology

Who is actually self actualized, Atheists or Theists?New

Philosophy and History of Science Disprove Atheism New
Various articles on philosphy and history of scinece and how
they disproves or elucidate atheist ideology.


Is Belief in God Magical Thinking?
a clear exampe of the atheist illusion of technique applied
to "religious thought" and the falsehood of that appraoch.


Are Atheists Their Brother's Keepers?New
Saslow study indicates atheists give more and more motivated
by compassion than religious people. The study has problems.

Are Religious People at Risk for Depression?New
New study form Europe idicates Religous people there are
at higher risk for depression than in U.S. A huge body of
work shows not true.

Atheist Propaganda and Religious Experience
Con Man Darren Brown Fakes Religious Experience
arguing that if he can induce them they are not real.


 Atheist Inflation: Atheists Infalte Numbers
to Look More Popular
 constant refernce to atheism increasing are exaggerated

Zuckerman (Phil) and Paul an Introduction
the idea that increased education increases atheism and causes religious decline

(Phil) Zuckerman File parts 1-3.Includes new paper on history welfare state in Sweden


Nigel Barber's Study: Part 1 cross national test
of uncertainty hypothesis (the Cross Cultural Research Article)
the notion that religion is based upon fear of uncertainty and
declines with increase in income.

Barber part 2: Psychology Today Article
"The Human Beast."
Summarizing his Cross cultural article.


Are Christians More Likely to Go To Prison?
Some atheists argue Christians are 40x more likley but
I have proved their stats are fabricated. Page 2
page 3 A discussion about the question "did Swift fabricate
the Data. (Christians more likely to go to Prison)

Switching faiths in Prison is common according to Pew Sutdy

Study among Chaplains shows that people switch faiths,
Thus the no way to prove that the percentage of Chrsitians in
prison reflects the fate of Christians in society. In other words
many of them became Chrsitians in prison.
Religious Belief and IQ File (Atheist IQ scam)
Includes New Major IQ Study, (by Zuckerman)  
 Part 2 Zuckerman IQ study

Are Natural Scientists Smarter Than Believers? 


Religious belief of Professors Reflects that of General Population.
Taken across the board n all fields, the majority of professors are religious.

Atheist Propaganda On Prayer: Controlled Studies vs. Empirical Miracles
Not studies done by atheists, but atheist spin on prayer studies vs. Lourdes
miracles.

Prayer Study and Atheist Echo Chamber
atheists try to cast suspicion on Lourdes medical committee
their suspicions are disproved.

Center for Inquiry: Atheist Propaganda Machine
Propaganda Machine tries to pass itself off as a valid
research institute does bogus studies inflating the percentage
of atheists in America.

Half Scientists Believe in God.

Is Higher Religious Higher Self Esteem only a Measure of Cultural Norm?
Studies show that religious people have higher self esteem than non religious, but
new study implies this is only in countries where religion is valued.

More Improper Use of Survey Results by Atheists:

New Pew Study: Atheism not Increasing in World Population
every other month a new article comes out saying atheism is increaseing.
Now they make a big thing of the rise of the "nons" but atheism is not 
increasing. 

Are atheists increasing in world population?
Earlier from the one above, the one above is in asnwer to this.
This one warns of the bogus Gallup international.


No Rise In Atheism in America
Atheist claim atheism goes up to 19% but follow the data the truth is
they speaking of 19% of 5% of U.S. Media Hype in USA Today exaggerates
increase in unaffiliated and references old survey that puts atheism at 1.6% real 


American Belief in God in Decline? Half Don't believe with Certainty.
1/6/14. a new Harris poll is bothering people with this new scare that
atheism is increasing.

Social Science that supports validity
of Religious Belief.

 300 studies support Value of Religion


 

Are Athesits their Borther's Keeprs?

 



A Study supposedly shows that atheists are more motivated by compassion than are religious people. Atheists have used this in various ways to show that atheist can be moral, that relgion doesn't produce compassion and so on. The study is done by entitled "My Brother's Kepper: Compassion Predicts Generocity More Among Less Religious Individuals."[1] First published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, 00 (0) April (2012) 1-8. The Authors were Laura R. Saslow and Bob Willer, et al. It was published on line before print and can found in a pdf:

http://rifters.com/real/articles/MyBrothersKeeperCompassionPredictsGenerosityMoreAmongLessReligiousIndividuals.pdf

Abstract

Past research argues that religious commitments shape individuals’ prosocial sentiments, including their generosity and solidarity. But what drives the prosociality of less religious people? Three studies tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expec-

tations of prosociality, less religious individuals’ levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. In Study 1, religiosity moderated the relationship between trait compassion and prosocial behavior such that compassion was more critical to

the generosity of less religious people. In Study 2, a compassion induction increased generosity among less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. In Study 3, state feelings of compassion predicted increased generosity across a variety of

economic tasks for less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals. These results suggest that the prosociality of less religious individuals is driven to a greater extent by levels of compassion than is the prosociality of the more religious.[2]

 They want to know if religion makes people more pro-social does it make them more compassionate? If not then can non reiloigious people be more compassionate. They use giving money to charity as the benchmark and thus decide that non religious are more compassinate not because they give more money but becuase tehy have fewer motivations to do in addition to compassion. So they see non religous motivation as stripped away compassion is what's left but religous people more more than one motivation. Let's look at the methodology and results.

Methodology

Across three studies, we compared the influence of compassion

on prosocial tendencies among more and less religious

individuals. In Study 1, we examined whether religiosity would

moderate the relationship of trait compassion on prosocial

behavior. We hypothesized that trait compassion would be

more critical to the generosity of the less religious than the

more religious. In Study 2, we tested whether a compassion

induction (vs. a neutral video) would increase generosity

among less religious individuals, but not among more religious

individuals. In Study 3, we assessed if momentary feelings of

compassion would predict increased generosity across a variety

of economic tasks for less religious individuals but not more

religious individuals. By measuring and manipulating compas-

sion, and measuring various forms of generous tendencies and

behavior, across three studies we test our hypothesis that

compassion is more integral to the generosity of the less

religious versus the more religious[3]

 They used a scale: Items include,

"I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,When I see someone beingtaken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them, andOther people’s misfortunes do not usually disturb me a greatdeal" (reverse-scored). that' how they measure compassion.

Results

Study 1 yielded evidence in s

upport of our main hypothesis:

Religiosity moderated the relationship between compassion

and prosocial behavior such that the compassion-to-

prosociality link was stronger for less religious individuals than

it was for more religious individuals. Further, these results held

while controlling for gender, political orientation, and educa-

tional attainment—variables that might otherwise account for

our findings. In sum, these findings indicate that although com-

passion is associated with prosociality among both less reli-

gious and more religious individuals, this relationship

is particularlyrobust for less religious individ.[4]

That's the result for study 1 the others are similar.

Obviously there are definitional issues that need to be addressed. There is a methodological problem involving the nature of their definition of religion. how do they define religious? they say more religious are more conservative are they just saing religion = conservative thus not counting liberals as motivated?

Religiosity.

Participants indicated the strength of their

religious identity. The scale was recoded so that higher values

represent greater religiosity: 1 (no religion), 2 (not very strong religious identity), 3 (somewhat strongreligious identity), and 4(strong religious identity),M¼2.99,SD¼1.03. Single-item

measures of religiosity have been found to have sufficient

reliability and predictive validity in other work (Gorsuch &McFarland, 1972[5]

That's pretty shallow understanding of religious faith. That's going to be a problem for them. It's not just a matter of either you religious or you are not. There are levels of commitment. It's not too absurd or hard to to prove to assert that those are are more deeply convicted and who have had spiritual encounters would take the teachings more seriously and be willing to live by them. This has major import in two ways. First of all because it means that there's more involved than just feeling compassion and giving. Their major study says that non religious people have compassion as a motivator more so than religious people. That doesn't prove that religious people are less compassionate. It means that religious people might have three or four motives for giving and compassion might not be the main one (like doctrine or teaching might be more important). Non religious people will have mainly just that, compasion. This is the way the study has been understood by critics. "That doesn't mean highly religious people don't give, according to the research to be published in the July 2012 issue of the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. But compassion seems to drive religious people's charitable feelings less than it other groups."[6] One of the study co-author's says:

"Overall, we find that for less religious people, the strength of their emotional connection to another person is critical to whether they will help that person or not," study co-author and University of California, Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer said in a statement. "The more religious, on the other hand, may ground their generosity less in emotion, and more in other factors such as doctrine, a communal identity, or reputational concerns."[7]

In other words it's not that the religious people are less compassionate but that they may not use compassion as the top of lexically ordered value system they go by.

The other reason knowing the depth of commitment matters is because "religious" covers a lot of ground. It includes people who don't feel the love and those who do. If you don't examine them in separate groups the averages will probably be dragged down by the less committed group. Like having bad students brings down the class average. There is a lot of evidence that those who experience the real spiritual side of their faiths are more giving and have more social consciousness than those who don't. Andrew Newberg says the kind of faith is what make the difference in terms of the result of faith upon the subject.

h+: In your new book, How God Changes Your Brain, you argue that religious fundamentalism can actually be good for you. How do you figure?
AN: It really depends on the nature of the belief. Fundamentalism, per se, isn’t bad or good. It all depends on the nature of one’s beliefs. We’ve found that if one’s beliefs are positive and loving and compassionate that can have a very profound effect on one’s health and happiness. But the opposite is true. If you believe in a punishing god, or if that fundamentalism preaches hate and anger — then the effects are going to be bad. Anxiety levels will go up, a stress response can occur, and like any stressor, if that continues for long enough, it’s going to impact health outcomes in a negative way. The real point is that what we believe has a very direct effect on the quality of our lives and we need to remember that.[8]

Two major studies of mystical experience found that those experienced the form of spirituality known as "mystical" or "peak" experience tended to have increased sense of social consciousness and became more giving. These studies are by Greely and Wuthnow.

Other positive consequences of religious experience include being less authoritarian and racist, less materialistic and status conscious, and showing more social concern and more self-assurance (Greeley 1975, Wuthnow 1978). In fact, it is in large part because of such consequences that scholars continue to acknowledge the importance of the experiential dimension of religion, even if not many study it.[9]

There are some studies that show religious people either have a high level of pro social behavior and/or generosity and compassion.John Lieff reports higher moral development among mystics.[10]
It's important to understand that just doing the two hours a week in chruch and hearing that we should love and be good to people is not enough to change one into a Mother Teresa. Those who have had actual spiritual encounter with the divine have been changed. They will always be the minority and so the average is drug down. There studies form scholarly sources that show not only giving and compassoin assocaited with religious belief but pro social behavior in general. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion finds:

An important discrepancy seems to exist between self-reports and laboratory studies regarding prosociality among religious people. Some have even suggested that this involves moral hypocrisy on the part of religious people. However, the assumption of the four studies reported here is that the impact of religiousness on prosociality is limited but exists, and does not reflect self-delusion. In Study 1 (N= 106), religious young adults tended not to use indirect aggression in dealing with hypothetical daily hassles. In Study 2 (N= 105), female students' religiosity was associated with willingness to help close targets in hypothetical situations but the effect was not extended to unknown targets. In Studies 3 (N= 315, 105 triads) and 4 (N= 274, 109 targets), religious targets not only reported high altruistic behavior and empathy, but were also perceived as such by peers (friends, siblings, or colleagues) in three out of four cases. Other results from the studies suggested that the prosociality of religious people is not an artifact of gender, social desirability bias, security in attachment, empathy, or honesty.[11]

One critique against the kind of study Saslow conduction with laboratory conditions is a study of  Israeli Jewish women Published by McGill University that seems to indicate the short comings of laboratory conditions. The study indicates that religious prompts have to be backed by real world ques that reinforce the religious training.

We may conclude based on the results that reports show higher charity and volunteering among the religious not because they are more altruistic, but rather because these individuals live in an environment that more often pressures them to give, in accordance with popular moral codes. As explained previously, worship rituals and holidays often contain cues to give money and time (Shapiro 1971; Bird 1982; Cascio 2003). Without exposure to customs designed in part to solicit donations, it is possible that the non-religious inclination to give often lies dormant.[12]

  Those findings might seem to be anti-religion as a force for giving, it must be pointed out the atheists would have the very same motive to exaggerate giving. They have social ques and a social movement (many tend to be politically liberal) that endorses compassion and giving. In those studies that involve self reporting there would be a motive to exaggerate one's on giving.


a study by Einlof in Sociology of Religion Quarterly consisting of life narrative interview from midlife in the United States "examine how religious values, ideas, and language motivate prosocial behaviors." This including giving and self Scarface and living up the teachings of Christ.

Using ratings from independent coders, statistically significant relationships were found between most of the themes and prosocial behaviors, particularly for respondents who engaged in multiple helping behaviors. In addition to documenting the relationship between religious ideas and values and helping behaviors, the study demonstrates how language mediates the relationship between the social and personal aspects of religion.[13]

Reader of this blog, Yonose, had a cogent criticism:

I saw the Brothers Keepers' study from the link. It is interesting nonetheless. If there's a positive correlation between compassion, empathy and prosocial behaviour, this would actually imply that, somehow, less religious people need to be fed of compassion more consecutively, to do any good deed with our human brethren, by applying constant sense data by stimuli and induction. All of the above seems to be correct. I don't see anything weird about that by now.As a consequence,This would also mean that less religious people are easier to be lied to with political propaganda e.g. like SOME extremist environmental alarmists.Where I believe the study is somehow flawed in context, is the linking of a positive correlation between prosocial behaviour and the making of good deeds per se as universal, because many people who love to be vocal about their lack of religiousness, just like to do good deeds in a preferential way: most probably they will help non-religious people only. Such behaviours have been demonstrated by themselves over and over.It is just overly simplistic to have a positive correlation with compassion, by induction, lack of religiosity, and then conflating such, with the actual making of good deeds to people. There is not a single trace in that study that confirms which types of people they had helped, whether religious or not.

This would also imply that the idea of correlating actual charity with lack of religiousness is not a universal statement, and that it is completely falsifiable, and in consequence, it is not possible to make a proof that "Atheists have more compassion than religious people".That's where I agree that there's a double standard with these types of Atheists.This is just reduced to a mere political game. Have these types of Atheists forgot about their intellectual roots??

These high integration states were also correlated with peak experiences including inner calm, maximum wakefulness, alertness, lack of fear, effortlessness, a sense of perfection, and a sense of being “high.” In an unusual finding these people also had higher moral development, better self-image, better sleep and a better reputation. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences#sthash.tr6LYxOk.dpuf

These high integration states were also correlated with peak experiences including inner calm, maximum wakefulness, alertness, lack of fear, effortlessness, a sense of perfection, and a sense of being “high.” In an unusual finding these people also had higher moral development, better self-image, better sleep and a better reputation. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences#sthash.tr6LYxOk.dpuf

I agree.

These high integration states were also correlated with peak experiences including inner calm, maximum wakefulness, alertness, lack of fear, effortlessness, a sense of perfection, and a sense of being “high.” In an unusual finding these people also had higher moral development, better self-image, better sleep and a better reputation. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences#sthash.tr6LYxOk.dpuf

soruces

These high integration states were also correlated with peak experiences including inner calm, maximum wakefulness, alertness, lack of fear, effortlessness, a sense of perfection, and a sense of being “high.” In an unusual finding these people also had higher moral development, better self-image, better sleep and a better reputation. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences#sthash.tr6LYxOk.dpuf

These high integration states were also correlated with peak experiences including inner calm, maximum wakefulness, alertness, lack of fear, effortlessness, a sense of perfection, and a sense of being “high.” In an unusual finding these people also had higher moral development, better self-image, better sleep and a better reputation. - See more at: http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences#sthash.tr6LYxOk.dpu

[1] Laura R. Saslow, Robb Willer, Mathrew Feinberg, Paul K Piff, Katharine Clark, Cacher Kelntner, and Srina R. Saturn."My Brother's Kepper: Compassion Predicts Generocity More Among Less Religious Individuals."Social Psychological and Personality Science (April 26, 2012) 1948550612444137
pdf: http://rifters.com/real/articles/MyBrothersKeeperCompassionPredictsGenerosityMoreAmongLessReligiousIndividuals.pdf
accessed 11/12/13

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Staff Writer, "Atheists More Motivated by Compassion Than the Faithful," Live Science. (May 1, 2012) online ressource
http://www.livescience.com/20005-atheists-motivated-compassion.html
accessed 11/12/13

[7] Ibid.

[8] Andrew Newberg quoted by Steve Kotler, "the Neurology of Spiritual Experience" h* sept. 2009
http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/09/16/neurology-spiritual-experience/
accessed 11/12/13

[9] Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, William H. Swatos, Jr. editor
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/exp.htm
accessed 11/12/13

[10] John Lieff, Searching for the Mind,Online resource.
 http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extraordinary-mental-states-5-spiritual-and-religious-experiences
accessed 11/12/13.

[11] Vassilis Saroglou, Isabelle Pichon, et al. "Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

Volume 44, Issue 3, , (September 2005), 323–348.

 Article first published online: 25 AUG 2005,DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00289.x

pdf: http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/psyreli/documents/2005.JSSR.pdf

[12] Salomon Israel and Maoz Brown, "Faith, Fellowship, and Philanthropy: Giving Rates as a Function of Religiosity among Israeli Jewish Women," McGill Sociological Review, Volume 3, February 2013, pp. 36-54.
On line versoin posted by McGill University: http://www.mcgill.ca/msr/volume3/article3

accessed 11/13/13.

[13]  Christopher J. Einolf. "The Link Between Religion and Helping Others: the Role of Values, Ideals, and Language." Sociology of Religion Quarterly Review  (2011) doi: 10.1093/socrel/srr017
first published online April 6, 2011. 

Is Belief in God Magical Thinking?

On Huff post there is an article by Matthew Hutson, author of The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking. The article is called "All Paths Lead to Magical Thinking." (Posted: 09/19/2013 8:32 pm).

In recent years, psychologists have come to understand religion and paranormal belief as resulting, in most people, from simple errors in reasoning. You believe in God or astrology or a purpose in life because you apply ideas about people -- that they have thoughts and intentions -- to the natural world. Some display this tendency more than others, but it's there in everyone, even atheistic heathens like me. What has not been clarified is exactly how the various cognitive biases interact to produce specific ideas about the supernatural -- until now.

He presents a tour de force in the form of a bunch of studies that supposedly prove that religious belief is magical thinking. "In the November 2013 issue of Cognition, Aiyana Willard and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia report on the relative influence of three cognitive tendencies on three types of supernatural belief, as well as the role of cultural influence." This study supposedly shows that "cognitive biases explain religious belief."

 several studies show that people who think more intuitively are also more susceptible to magical thinking. One intuition that's been proposed as a foundation for religious thought is Cartesian mind-body dualism, the idea that a mind can exist independently of a body. (See chapter 5 of my book The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, "The Soul Lives On.") This proposition allows for souls, ghosts, spirits, and gods, all made of disembodied mind-stuff. Explanations for dualism include belief in free will and the mutual inhibition of brain areas responsible for pondering feelings and physics.

Of cousre that doesn't say that any of these studies show that religious belief is magical thinking. Instead they present a possibility based upon the notion that more intuitive people are susceptible   to magical thinking. So that says "if you are not careful you  might do some magical thinking." Nor is there a link provided between being more intuitive and religious belief. Although I would not doubt that believers are more intuitive, but the lack of prevision of that link is telling.

This brings up a bait and switch that the Aiyana and Norenzayan study is pulling off. They discuss their methodology:

We used a path model to assess the extent to which several interacting cognitive tendencies, namely mentalizing, mind body dualism, teleological thinking, and anthropomorphism, as well as cultural exposure to religion, predict belief in God, paranormal beliefs and belief in life’s purpose. Our model, based on two independent samples (N = 492 and N = 920) found that the previously known relationship between mentalizing and belief is mediated by individual differences in dualism, and to a lesser extent by teleological thinking. Anthropomorphism was unrelated to religious belief, but was related to paranormal belief. Cultural exposure to religion (mostly Christianity) was negatively related to anthropomorphism, and was unrelated to any of the other cognitive tendencies. These patterns were robust for both men and women, and across at least two ethnic identifications. The data were most consistent with a path model suggesting that mentalizing comes first, which leads to dualism and teleology, which in turn lead to religious, paranormal, and life’s-purpose beliefs. Alternative theoretical models were tested but did not find empirical support.

Notice that anthropomorphism is not linked to religoius beilef but they are going to use it anyway because it's involved in belief. In fact all of these things are descriptions of various overlapping historical artifacts form religious thought because it goes back so far in human history. Most of them have not been disproved, none of them are magical thinking. What's the link bewteen teleology and magical thinking? Teleology means an end goal,  so religious thinking is teleological if and only if it assumes there's a creator who has a plan that's being fulfilled. Why is that in itself magical thinking? It's just logical if there is a creator. Has teleological thinking been proved to always be wrong? No, of course not and it's logical if there is a creator. So actually they are just begging the question. They are assuming there can't be a creator so therefore anything connected with belief must also be connected with magical thinking. This probably goes back to the biases of anti-clerical prejudice, that religion is superstition. So they start with the assumption religious beilef must be magical thinking because it's superstition, thus they just look for typical aspects of religious thought (many of which are connected to ancinet religious texts) and assume it's all magical thinking. No psychological link is provided that proves that teleological thinking is magical thinking.

When he says "several studies" he links back to his own website for the book 7 Laws of Magical Thinking (he uses the number 7 rather than writing "seven" seems infantile). So his article is just a rehash of his website. What are these studies what do they really show? Those are the ones that supposedly show that intuitive thinkers are apt to be suckers for magical thinking if they are not careful, but does it access the percentage of the time that they are not careful? Can't we still check the results by our own logic and empirical data?

One such satment in disclosing these "several studies:"

Psychologists who study the origins of religion say belief in God relies on several intuitions, including a teleological bias (the assumption that certain objects or event were designed intentionally) and Cartesian dualism (the belief that mind can exist independently of the body). So to become an atheist one must second-guess these automatic ways of thinking. And recently a number of studies have supported the idea that belief in God is influenced by cognitive style–how much of a second-guesser you are.

Why is teleology "intuitive" any more than it is logical? If God is what you believe in then is it not logical to assume God has a purpose in crating? it's not prove that necessarily intuitive. Not that they link intuitive thinking with magical thinking. His comment about Cartsteian thinking is ironic since major aspects of atheist thinking is also based upon Cartesian thinking. E.O. Wilson's world view is largley Cartesian and he produced evolutionary psychology which is important to atheist thinking.

One such  study: paper published last year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General by Amitai Shenhav studuents took cognitive reflection test and answered questions.Pleasevnote they used this testvin a way for which it was not intended, Look at the actual original study where the Cognitive reflection Test wasfirst used. Here's what it says thye purpose is:

“Cognitive Reflection Test” (CRT) as a simple measure of one type of cognitive ability. I will show that CRT scores are predictive of the types of choices that feature prominently in tests of decision-making theories, like expected utility theory and prospect theory. Indeed, the relation is sometimes so strong that the preferences themselves effectively function as expressions of cognitive ability—an empirical fact begging for a theoretical explanation. After introducing the CRT, I examine its relations with two important decisionmaking characteristics: time preference and risk preference. The CRT is then compared with other measures of cognitive ability or cognitive “style,” including the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT), the Need For Cognition scale (NFC) and selfreported SAT and ACT scores. The CRT exhibits considerable difference between men and women, and I discuss how this relates to sex differences in time and risk preferences. The final section discusses the interpretation of correlations between cognitive abilities and decision-making characteristics.[1]

This has to do with risk taking. It doesn't even say it meausres intative thinking but "different kinds of cognition." The difference is in levels of risk taking not intuition.

This is so telling he says "The number of intuitive (incorrect) responses they gave on the CRT was correlated with their belief in God and immortal souls," so in other words intuitive means "wrong." How could one possibly study the validity of intuitive thinking when one defines it as "wrong form the outset? Moreover, they are judging it wrong because it's connected to God, is that not also what makes it "intuitive?" They are just running around in circles demanding that what they believe has to be true and using their biases as the basis for proof. When we look at the actual tests on the study (see link above) we find that the real way they administer it (reported badly by Hustson) was to compare math answers arrived at intuitively with the persons individual belief in God. They compared believers answers to non believers answers. We are infer that the believers missed more. Actually that would mean that intuitive thinking does not correlate to belief in God and that the better intuitive thinking is done by non believers. Why? Because they got more math problems right by intuitive means. That would destroy their link from intuitive thinking to magical thinking. Wouldn't it also matter what one used intuitive sense for? Perhaps intuitive sense is better at God finding than at mathematics. What if that's what it was made for? Massimp Pigliucci sights research and argues that intuition is domaion specific. Some things lend themselves to it and some don't. [2]  

Moreover, both studies demonstrated that intuitive CRT responses predicted the degree to which individuals reported having strengthened their belief in God since childhood, but not their familial religiosity during childhood, suggesting a causal relationship between cognitive style and change in belief over time. Study 3 revealed such a causal relationship over the short term: Experimentally inducing a mindset that favors intuition over reflection increases self-reported belief in God. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)[3]

So in other words because they have some evidence that initiative thinking is part of the stronger religious belief that means that religious belief is produced by intuitive thinking which is mostly wrong and is magical thinking. There are a number of things wrong with that methodology. That's not the same as proving that religion itself is derived from intuitive thinking. That is not even investigating the logic that goes into it. Nor does it investigate the right answers in one's personal life that lead to believe, they don't even offer a theological measuring devices for such answers. Putting up a bunch of math problems is not valid. People don't arrive at belief by just saying "I sense that God is really there." There is a sense of God's presence that people  have and they are totally confusing that sense with 'intuitive' thinking,' they don't have it they don't know how it feels or works so they assume it's "intuitive." Moreover, the term "intuitive" can refer to different things. There's no link that the kind of intuitive thinking (guessing) about the math is the same kind done by religious thinkers.


 There's an article in N.Y. Times that illustrates scientific work depending upon and being  conformed by intuitive thinking. The article is a chapter form a book by Philip Lieberman, Eve Spoke, Human Language and Human Evolution.[4]  The book is based upon scholarly work.

Over the past thirty years my colleagues and I have studied monkeys, chimpanzees, infants, children, normal adults, dyslexic adults, elderly people, and patients suffering from Parkinson's disease and other types of brain damage. We have also examined the skulls of our fossil ancestors, comparing them with those of newborn infants and apes. The focus of these studies has been the puzzle surrounding human evolution. Why are we so different from other animals, although we are at the same time so similar?...In some deep, unconscious way we "know" that dogs, cats, chimpanzees, and other intelligent animals would be human if they could only talk. Intuitively we know that talking = thinking = being human. The studies discussed below show that this intuition is correct.

 This may upset young earth creationists, which I don't  mind doing, but it doesn't disrupt my Christian faith because I don't see evolution as a disruption. Nor does it disprove the existence of the soul because that depends upon answering the question "why is it we did evolve to talk and other animals did not? There are two points that refute Hutson's ideas: (1) not only does religious belief depend upon intuitive thinking of a kind (at certain points) but so does scinece as well. (2) this scientist thinks that the intuitive thinking is proved correct by the scinece. So intuitive thinking is not always wrong. Some studies backing this up have shown that the correct results of intuitive thinking, while not better than other forms of knowing, are not worse.[5]

 U.S. Navy reserach has yielded so much scientific data backing the notion that there is an intuitive sense that aids troops in battle that they started a program to teach troops how to be more intuitive.

 Research in human pattern recognition and decision-making suggest that there is a "sixth sense" through which humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them. Evidence is accumulating that this capability, known as intuition or intuitive decision making, enables the rapid detection of patterns in ambiguous, uncertain and time restricted information contexts, that it informs the decision making process and, most importantly, that it may not require domain expertise to be effective. These properties make intuition a strong candidate for further exploration as the basis for developing a new set of decision support training technologies.[6]

 Ivy Estabrook, program manager at the office of Naval Resarch, says, "There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence, combined with solid research efforts, that suggests intuition is a critical aspect of how we humans interact with our environment and how, ultimately, we make many of our decisions."[7]

 Published in Popular source Sarah Moore form Alberta School of Business and colleagues from Duke and Cornell have produced research that proves that the first choice one makes is often the right choice. [8] That certainly implies an intuitive choice. While Trisha Greenhalgh discusses research that shows that intution is a valuable aid in medical diagnosis and that it improves with critical thinking about the process.

Intuition is not unscientific. It is a highly creative process, fundamental to hypothesis generation in science. The experienced practitioner should generate and follow clinical hunches as well as (not instead of applying the deductive principles of evidence-based medicine. The educational research literature suggests that we can improve our intuitive powers through systematic critical reflection about intuitive judgements--for example, through creative writing and dialogue with professional colleagues. It is time to revive and celebrate clinical storytelling as a method for professional education and development.[9]

 Not only is it not unscientific, not only can it assist in medical care, but it there's a large body of literature that shows it can be improved. How can it be improved (meaning the answers are right) if it's no good and it never works and it's just magical thinking?


Summary

(1) None of the studies demonstrate a real link between intuitive thinking and religious belief. They make an unsupported assertion that teleology and other quasi religious ideas are intuitive thinking. The closest thing to a link is one study that shows that believe was strengthened apart form family tie, but that does rule out logic, empirical data, discussions with friends and individual thought.

(2) The studies that claim to link religious belief with magical thinking are doing a bait and switch whereby the substitute intuitive thinking. They don't bother to consider the venue or the domain but merely assume that if intuitive thinking is wrong for math then it must be wrong for all things. They assume intuitive = magical, probably because they think belief in God is magic or supernatural is magic. Then they assert that since intuitive thinking doesn't work in one domain it work in any domain. Since that tag that as religious thinking then religious thinking is wrong. They actually prove nothing at accept that they are biased against religion.

(3) A vast body of scientific research disproves the idea that intuition is always wrong and doesn't work. It's not only backed by science it's part of science. I give examples of scientific work that is based upon intuitive thinking. It's not more special and unique to religious thought than is logic. Nor is it always wrong. The scientific reserach shows it has it's place where it's right, that including not only some scientific work but also medicine.


sources


[1] Shane Frederick, "Cognative Reflection And Decision making," Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 19, Number 4—(Fall 2005)—Pages 25–42 prf http://cbdr.cmu.edu/seminar/Frederick.pdf accessed 11/3/15
[2]Massimo Pigliucci, Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to A More Meaningful Life , New York: Basic books, 2012.

Massimo Pigliucci (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmassimo piʎˈʎuttʃi]; born January 16, 1964) is the chair of the Department of Philosophy at CUNY-Lehman College.^[1] He is also the editor in chief for the journal Philosophy & Theory in Biology.^[2] He is an outspoken critic of creationism and advocate of science education.

[3] Shenhav, Amitai; Rand, David G.; Greene, Joshua D. "Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in God." abstract on line: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 141(3), (Aug 2012), 423-428 abstract on Apa Psychnet http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/141/3/423/  accessed 10/2/13.
[4] Philip Lieberman, "The Mice Talked at Midnight," except from Eve Spoke: Human Language and Human Evolution, New York: W.W. Norton, published in New York Times, on line http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lieberman-eve.html  accessed 10/2/13
[5]AJ Giannini, ME Barringer, MC Giannini, RH Loiselle. Lack of relationship between handedness and intuitive and intellectual (rationalistic) modes of information processing. Journal of General Psychology. 111:31-37 1984.
[6] Office of naval research Basic Research Challenge: Enhancing intuitive deicsion making.

Solicitation Number: 12-SN-0007

Agency: Department of the Navy
Office: Office of Naval Research
Location: ONR

  https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=be0a1ab47e05fe0f9c2bd0ffd5e40b1a&_cview=1
 accessed 10/2/13.
[7] Ivy Estabrook, uoted in Channing Joseph, "U.S. Program to Study How Troops Use Intuition," New York Times, Wednesday (Oct 2, 2013) story filed March 27, 2012, 5:09 pm on line
 http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/navy-program-to-study-how-troops-use-intuition/?_r=0
 accessed 10/2/13.
[8]Leon Watson ."why we are right to trust out gut intincts:Scientists discover First Decision is the Right One." Mail online updated 30 (August 2011)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031848/Why-right-trust-gut-instincts-Scientists-discover-decision-IS-right-one.html accessed 10/2/13
[9]Trisha Greenhalgh, "Intution and Evidence--Uneasy Bedfellows?" BJGP:British Journal of General Practice. 52, (478) May (2002) 395-400. On line article http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1314297/  accessed 10/2/13

Religigious belief of Professors Reflects That of General Populaiton

 

As we saw last time the IQ figures don't support the thesis. The studies that supported the thesis that atheists are more intelligent merer all (but one) done before 1969. There 6 that supported the thesis and 17 agaisnt it. The 17 were divided between showing religious people are smarter or no correlation. The Negative studies all had better designs and larger samples. There are many other reasons to expose the IQ scam as a lie and a farce and a, well, you know....scam.

First of all there are many experts and educators who are now even willing to question the idea that IQ is even a meaningful measurement of intelligence. This is actually quoted by an atheist who is questioning the findings. He get's it from Leadership University but the guy he's quoting is immanent in scinece (Fritz Schaffer):

First - In a lecture by Fritz Shafer from a website by Leadership University:http://www.leaderu.com/realri9501/bingbang2.html
and http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/edlead/9903/extpopham.h...
"Recent thinking among many leading educators suggests that there are various forms of intelligence, not just one (Gardner, 1994). A child who is born with less aptitude for dealing with quantitative or verbal tasks, therefore, might possess greater "interpersonal" or "intrapersonal" intelligence, but these latter abilities are not tested by these tests. For the kinds of items that are most commonly found on standardized achievement tests, children differ in their innate abilities to respond correctly. And some items on standardized achievement tests are aimed directly at measuring such intellectual ability."

Another atheist group that doesn't buy the ideology finds alternatives to IQ as a measure of intelligence. From atheist NEUS a community of non theists.

Dissatisfaction with traditional IQ tests has led to the development of alternative theories, all of which suggest that intelligence is the result of independent abilities that contribute to human performance. In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, which claims a broadening of the conventional definition of intelligence is needed, since, if intelligence is defined as the cognitive or mental capacity of an individual, this would logically include all forms of mental qualities, not simply the ones most transparent to standardized I.Q. tests. The categories of intelligences Gardner proposes are logical, linguistic, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, naturalist, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences.

Jean Piaget developed stages as an alternative to IQ after studying the nature of the wrong answers on items. The Model of hierarchical complexity was formed as an alternative to IQ. Performance on the items varying in hierarchical complexity from 0 to 14, is absolute, and does not require norms. Because the orders are content and context free, they can be used to measure performance in any domain, including the ones mention by Gardner and Goleman.

 All of their links go to Wikipedia.


He questions the issues about profession:

But I do like the implication of the recent "IQ Studies Show Christians Intellectually Inferior To Atheists" DU post that we must assume that scientist are the most intelligent people. It couldn't be that more materialistically inclined people go into science because they are attracted to the naturalistic thinking, the reductionism, and because it supports their ideological views? No of course not, scientists are just the only intelligent people! What about historians? What percentage of historians are believers? OR artists, poets, English professors, why can't they be intelligent? Because they don't control things and play with numbers! Because science is the atheist er zotz religion that protects him from God so naturally he thinks that the scientist is like a priest of his er zots religion! In reality of course scientists are not the only intelligent people, and it makes more sense that the more intelligent religious people would go into theology or something related. He doesn't even bother to study that, that would be a biased group (of course science isn't'!??). If he studied theologians I bet he would find the incidence of smart practitioners who believe in God going way way up! (Ibid)

He also points out what I have on my Doxa pages half of all Americans with advanced degrees in scinece are religious: "The scientific fraternity conducted a poll and found that on any given Sunday 46% of Ph.D. holders in science can be found in church. That compares with 47% for the general population (in Alan Lightman Origins: The Lives and World of Modern Cosmologists (Harvard University press, 1999)."

The intelligentsia (Professors) are  religious

Gallup surveys found show that "professors are almost as likely to express a belief in God as are Americans as a whole." (1997 N.Y. Times News Service). A more recent study that was much more in depth supports very similar conclusions. Neil Gross (Harvard) and Solon Simmons (George Mason)

 Minding the Campus

The study of 1500 college professors at twenty top institutions that grant bachelors degrees, conducted by Neil Gross (Harvard) and Solon Simmons (George Mason), did indeed find that a slight majority claims to be religious. The numbers, not listed in the Sun, showed that 35.7 percent say "I know God really exists and I have no doubt about it," while 16.9 percent reported "while I have my doubts, I feel I do believe in God." Atheists and agnostics accounted for 23.4 percent of professors reporting. The most heavily religious professors in the study teach accounting, followed by professors of elementary education, finance, marketing, art and criminal justice. The least religious professors were in biology, psychology, economics, political science and computer science. Research-oriented professors and faculty at elite institutions are significantly less religious than other academics. Only twenty percent of these academics "have no doubt that God exists." The implications for the larger culture of these findings are crucial. Professors who are the least religious and most hostile to religion are the ones most likely to be writing textbooks, articles and monographs, and the ones whose opinions are most sought after by the media. It is these ideas of irreligious professors that carry the most prestige among the punditocracy, dominate elite discourse, and filter down to the general public. Liberal arts professors are much less likely than accounting professors to believe in God. The liberal arts and social science professors are the ones who most often express opinions on religion and deal with issues involving religion and morality in the classroom.

The pie chart at the top is a graphic depicting the findings of that very study. The most heavily religious in the study were marketing and criminal justice, the least were biology, psychology and computer science. The atheist spread is a litter in elite research universities but still not that from 50-50. Of the elites who teach graduate students in elite research institutions about 36% atheist or agnostic,33% believe in God, 27% believe in a higher power of some kind. So when we take them all the believers together that's actually 60% not atheist, who are willing to believe in God in some sense.

 Don't think the really intellectual professors are all atheists and the business professors and athletics coaches are the theists. One of the major atheist philosophers affirms that his discipline has been taken over by theists.

The secularization of mainstream academia began to quickly unravel upon the publication of Plantinga’s influential book on realist theism, God and Other Minds, in 1967. It became apparent to the philosophical profession that this book displayed that realist theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original world-view. This book, followed seven years later by Plantinga’s even more impressive book, The Nature of Necessity, made it manifest that a realist theist was writing at the highest qualitative level of analytic philosophy, on the same playing field as Carnap, Russell, Moore, Grünbaum, and other naturalists. Realist theists, whom hitherto had segregated their academic lives from their private lives, increasingly came to believe (and came to be increasingly accepted or respected for believing) that arguing for realist theism in scholarly publications could no longer be justifiably regarded as engaging in an “academically unrespectable” scholarly pursuit.

Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most influenced by Plantinga’s writings, began to sweep through the philosophical community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. Although many theists do not work in the area of the philosophy of religion, so many of them do work in this area that there are now over five philosophy journals devoted to theism or the philosophy of religion, such as Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, Sophia, Philosophia Christi, etc. Philosophia Christi began in the late 1990s and already is overflowing with submissions from leading philosophers. Can you imagine a sizeable portion of the articles in contemporary physics journals suddenly presenting arguments that space and time are God’s sensorium (Newton’s view) or biology journals becoming filled with theories defending élan vital or a guiding intelligence? Of course, some professors in these other, non-philosophical, fields are theists; for example, a recent study indicated that seven percent of the top scientists are theists.[1] However, theists in other fields tend to compartmentalize their theistic beliefs from their scholarly work; they rarely assume and never argue for theism in their scholarly work. If they did, they would be committing academic suicide or, more exactly, their articles would quickly be rejected, requiring them to write secular articles if they wanted to be published. If a scientist did argue for theism in professional academic journals, such as Michael Behe in biology, the arguments are not published in scholarly journals in his field (e.g., biology), but in philosophy journals (e.g., Philosophy of Science and Philo, in Behe’s case). But in philosophy, it became, almost overnight, “academically respectable” to argue for theism, making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and talented theists entering academia today. A count would show that in Oxford University Press’ 2000–2001 catalogue, there are 96 recently published books on the philosophy of religion (94 advancing theism and 2 presenting “both sides”). By contrast, there are 28 books in this catalogue on the philosophy of language, 23 on epistemology (including religious epistemology, such as Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief), 14 on metaphysics, 61 books on the philosophy of mind, and 51 books on the philosophy of science.

And how have naturalist philosophers reacted to what some committed naturalists might consider as “the embarrassment” of belonging to the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field, considering themselves as no longer doing “philosophy of mind,” for example, but instead “cognitive science.” But the great majority of naturalist philosophers react by publicly ignoring the increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately disparaging theism, without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic philosophy of religion) and proceeding to work in their own area of specialization as if theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third of their field, did not exist. (The numbers “one-quarter” and “one-third” are not the result of any poll, but rather are the exceptionless, educated guesses of every atheist and theist philosophy professor I have asked [the answers varied between “one-quarter” and “one-third”]). Quickly, naturalists found themselves a mere bare majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the various disciplines of philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van Fraassen) to epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of naturalist philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but is due to the lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves. God is not “dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.(by Quentin Smith The Meta philosophy of NaturalismOriginally Published in: Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 4, Number 2).