Guest Post: Understanding the other side of the coin

GM is helping Godless Dad at work this week and will be posting guest posts until next week. If you want to see yours posted this week, click here to submit it. This is a guest post from Dan Green. Dan Green (Deconverted Man) has done lots of videos on the youtube. He loves informal logic and also lobsters. You can sub to him at: Deconverted Man.

If theism and atheism are just opposites of the same coin, I wonder what the side of the coin is like?

That pondering out of the way, I myself was once a Christian and have found that plenty of atheists, skeptics, agnostics or whatever label you want to put on have deconverted from a religion – although there are those who never were religious or never held a belief in God.

What I submit we must try to do is understand the “why” of people’s faith. When asked, people will answer all sorts of reasons, but that is subjective. What we need, if possible – is objective data.

We do know that biological evolution will produce a wide variety of brains.

We also know that we humans are pattern seeking animals (1 & 2)

So it should come as no surprise that humans will believe in God(s) of all sorts.

But – what if the person can not help but believe? What if their brain is wired in such a way they have no choice in the matter?

There might be such people, and of course if there are, it would stand to reason that there would also be people who could never believe in a God, due to how their brain functions.

So then we might wonder – is all this effort to educate, promote atheism, free thinking, science, logic, critical thinking, all just – a waste of effort?

Well, I would say, no. Because, there are plenty of humans like myself who did believe but had their minds changed by those who did not. The atheists on youtube back in “my day” when I was a Christian gave me questions that I could not answer. That made me think. That lead to a desire to research the matter of my faith, and of course, that lead to my skeptical stance.

No one can “know” what sort of person you are interacting with – and your focus is on the large audience not necessarily that one person. Toss out a wide net on the net and who knows what minds you might get.

Still, I think it is important we remind ourselves that those humans who believe might not have a choice in the matter, and that understanding might help us to talk to them and interact with them in more positive ways.

I benefited much from the positive atheists on youtube “back in my day” so I want to encourage that in you.

Best to you and yours, always.

1: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns/

2: http://matus1976.com/science/pattern_seeking/page1.htm

This was a guest post from Dan Green. Dan Green (Deconverted Man) has done lots of videos on the youtube. He loves informal logic and also lobsters. You can sub to him at: Deconverted Man. If you would like to be a guest blogger for godlessmom.com, please, click here.

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