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Do atheist have brain damage?

woodguard

Thinker
woodguard
Joined
Apr 9, 2003
Messages
169
There is some research showing that we are hardwired to believe in God.
Some evidence shows parts of the brain when stimulated, cause a religion experience.

99% of humans believe in God, that is normal.

So if you don’t believe in God then there is something wrong with your brain, you have a undiagnosed head injury ?

I think we need research into your brain, so we can repair you defected brains.
Until this is done, we should place you in a home. For you own safety.
:D :D ;)
 
There's also evidence that we're hard wired to be polyamorous (or at least serially monogomous) and yet religious people insist we be strickly monogomous (or keep harems like gorillas). What does that say about the missing pieces of theist brains?
 
Oh, so a little excercise in free will results in brain damage?

Just because some study says you're hardwired to do something, doesn't mean you have to. And I wonder who actually drew this conclusion from whatever percentage you got. 99% of all human beings is highly unlikely, especially since a recent religious survey said the percentage of atheists is a lot greater than 1%.
 
woodguard said:
There is some research showing that we are hardwired to believe in God.
Some evidence shows parts of the brain when stimulated, cause a religion experience.
Click to expand...

If by "religious experience" you mean hallucinations. You would be right.
99% of humans believe in God, that is normal.

So if you don’t believe in God then there is something wrong with your brain, you have a undiagnosed head injury ?
Click to expand...
Not only is that percentage incorrect, but you have no logical correlation between it and your second statement. Normal doesn't mean good. Who's to say 99% of people don't have brain damage and we are not the superior, undamaged percent?
I think we need research into your brain, so we can repair you defected brains.
Until this is done, we should place you in a home. For you own safety.
:D :D ;) [/B]
Click to expand...
Thankfully I realize that you are either brain damaged yourself, or this topic is a joke. Most likely the latter. Otherwise you might have made me angry. :D
 
In the field of memetics, perhaps this constitutes a refutation to the idea that a beneficial mutation is a contradiction in terms. :)
 
woodguard said:
There is some research showing that we are hardwired to believe in God.
Some evidence shows parts of the brain when stimulated, cause a religion experience.

99% of humans believe in God, that is normal.

So if you don’t believe in God then there is something wrong with your brain, you have a undiagnosed head injury ?

I think we need research into your brain, so we can repair you defected brains.
Until this is done, we should place you in a home. For you own safety.
:D :D ;)
Click to expand...

WOW... Okay, I'm suckered in. What "evidence" are you stating, and where did you get "99%"?

Let's be fair here. All humans have soemthing wrong with them, we are humans. That is a cheap shot with no proof and anyone could argue people who believe in God are trying to deal with death by assuming there is something beyond life without any objective evidence.

Afterall Christians don't have visions of Muhhamad or Buddha, they have it of their own conception of what they worship.
 
99 percent?

Wow you must not be able to do math. Especially seeing as China is predominantly an atheist-marxist country. And what religions it does have don't really contain a God. There's a good 20 percent already.

Makes me wonder who's really suffering from the brain damage.
 
"Some evidence shows parts of the brain when stimulated, cause a religion experience."
You´re talking about temporal lobes.

"So if you don’t believe in God then there is something wrong with your brain, you have a undiagnosed head injury ?"
Actually they are those with religious experiences who evidently have neurological&psychiatric disorders (of course this only refers to some)

This thread is either lame or a joke,it could be lame joke though.
 
I found a religious survey done in America in 2001. And only 80% responded as religious. Europe is less religious, and as DialecticMaterialist stated, China doesn't have much religion at all. Of course most of the third world countries that have low literacy rates have high rates of belief.
American Religious Identification Survey
1. Religious Identification Among American Adults
The first area of inquiry in ARIS 2001 concerns the response of American adults to the question: "What is your religion, if any?" This question generated more than a hundred different categories of response, which we classified into the sixty-five categories shown in Exhibit 1 below.
In 1990, ninety percent of the adult population identified with one or another religion group. In 2001, such identification has dropped to eighty-one percent. Those considering themselves to be Christians stood at 86% in 1990, but now only 77% do.
Click to expand...
 
Re: Re: Do atheist have brain damage?

Torment said:


If by "religious experience" you mean hallucinations. You would be right.
Click to expand...

Are you able to give any reasons whatsoever to suppose these experiences are hallucinations?
 
Re: Re: Re: Do atheist have brain damage?

Interesting Ian said:

Are you able to give any reasons whatsoever to suppose these experiences are hallucinations?
Click to expand...
Well, if Torment and Darwin are correct about the nature of the experience (I don't know since no one has sited a source yet), then the nature of the experience is an artificial one. In other words, it is created through artificial stimulation to the temporal lobes and not through devine intervention. So, the "religious" experience has a non-religious origin.

I don't know if that counts as a "hallucination", per se, but it is not a genuine religious experience. Of course, that leads to the question that if a religious experience can be simulated with the proper non-devine stimuli, how do we know that any religious experience isn't the result of a non-devine stimulous?
 
All society is a result of overcoming our hardwired impulses to kill those outside our clan, and take their stuff. I got into an argument yesterday with a guy I had never met before. I didn't try to hit him with my club. I guess I'm brain damaged.
 
CIA FACTBOOK

Christians 32.88% (of which Roman Catholics 17.39%, Protestants 5.62%, Orthodox 3.54%, Anglicans 1.31%),

Muslims 19.54%,

Hindus 13.34%,

Buddhists 5.92%,

Sikhs 0.38%,

Jews 0.24%,

other religions 12.6%,

non-religious 12.63%,

atheists 2.47% (2000 est.)

I am wrong again! Only 97.5 people believe in God.
 
Woodguard, you may not be brain-damaged, but your math sure stinks. And your knowledge of religions.

Can I call you Jedi Knight?

Hans
 
Re: Re: Re: Do atheist have brain damage?

Interesting Ian said:

Are you able to give any reasons whatsoever to suppose these experiences are hallucinations?
Click to expand...

Since he didn't name the exact study, I assume it is the one of the ones about people who see white lights, ect when stimulated.

These "studies" have come up often as evidence for religion.

As the other poster who responded said, a reaction to direct stimulation to the brain causing images to appear in your head hardly qualifies as a religious experience.

It also calls in to question why these are even considered religious experiences.

Maybe hallucination is the wrong word to describe it, but it certainly qualifies as a scientific reaction, not a religious one.

Anyways, if he was talking about some other studies he should post them, or else I'll just be forced to assume, for the moment, he was speaking of those ones.
 
woodguard said:
CIA FACTBOOK

Christians 32.88% (of which Roman Catholics 17.39%, Protestants 5.62%, Orthodox 3.54%, Anglicans 1.31%),

Muslims 19.54%,

Hindus 13.34%,

Buddhists 5.92%,

Sikhs 0.38%,

Jews 0.24%,

other religions 12.6%,

non-religious 12.63%,

atheists 2.47% (2000 est.)

I am wrong again! Only 97.5 people believe in God.
Click to expand...

Most, if not all, of the non-religious people don't believe in a god, and I'm sure some people in the other religions category don't. Buddhist don't believe in gods per se. So the actual number of people who believe in a god or gods according to your number is somewhere between 66% and 92%.
Of course, since you said 97.5% believe in God, rather than just a god or gods, we can rule out Hindus, Sikhs, and all other religions and non-religious people, so only 53% believe in God, according to your numbers.
Although Muslims and Christians might get upset if you say they worship the same god, so I guess that leaves only 33% of people believing in the Christian God.
 
woodguard said:
CIA FACTBOOK

Christians 32.88% (of which Roman Catholics 17.39%, Protestants 5.62%, Orthodox 3.54%, Anglicans 1.31%),

Muslims 19.54%,

Hindus 13.34%,

Buddhists 5.92%,

Sikhs 0.38%,

Jews 0.24%,

other religions 12.6%,

non-religious 12.63%,

atheists 2.47% (2000 est.)

I am wrong again! Only 97.5 people believe in God.
Click to expand...

Why are you assuming that "non-religious" implies a belief in God? What are you basing this assumption on?
 
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