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this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/study-finds-link-between-brain-damage-and-religious-fundamentalism/
I have had a couple concussions, and I am generally intolerant of religion as a whole, doesn’t sound like any of the study findings any research on people who weren’t religious to begin with. Unless I’m reading this wrong, which I could be you know, because of the concussions🤣🤣🤣
i think a stroke is more severe than minor concussions. IN A STROKe there actual death of brain cells in the stroke area.
A link doesn’t mean every single person did - maybe each concussion is rolling a die on the gullible idiot check and you got lucky.
Based on what the article said, your general intolerance of religion might be the very symptom they were referencing.
Their research doesn't suggest that damage to that particular area of the brain causes religious beliefs, but rather that it more or less locks you into your beliefs religious or otherwise.
The injured brain becomes less able to consider other viewpoints, so changing beliefs becomes less likely even when confronted with facts that disprove the belief.
That’s what I’m thinking, if I was already intolerant of religions, then this just made me even more intolerant of religions, it’s not that hard though to not believe in a magical sky daddy, I wish more people followed my lead
Right, it bears pointing out that atheism is in itself a faith, or at least its adherents treat it very much like one to the point that it might as well be one. For me it is the faith in the non-existance of a supreme being or deity.
It really bears pointing out that this is, in fact, not true.
If I walk up to you and tell you that I can turn lead into gold, and you ask me to prove it, only to have me rebut that telling you to prove I can't... Did you need "faith" to not believe me?
It doesn't require faith to NOT believe in something. It requires faith to accept religion which cannot be proven.
It does require faith when you’re disbelieving something that has as much proof of its existence as of its non existence. There is no conclusive proof against the existence of a supreme being, in fact like I said in another comment there is physical evidence of one if you observe the universe, which is that all of existence collective is god.
If you zoom into a human being there are millions of microorganisms and bacteria that inhabit us, and at that level of zoom they all look like they inhabit their own little planets, zoom in more and you start to see the very molecules that make us up. But you zoom out and see a person, zoom out and see a planet, then a galaxy, then clusters and so on. Who’s to say that if you looked at the universe from outside of it, it would not be the very body of another living organism?
I like this thought experiment and think about this a lot. However this does nothing to remotely indicate the existence of the Abrahamic god. People tell you with certainty that god exists and he's three persons and jesus rose from the dead yada yada. That's a complete fantasy derived from literally nothing.
No proof but still believe? Faith.
Not believing in something that has zero evidence requires no faith. I don't need faith to tell you Cthulu isn't real
Well atheism is not just denying the abrahamic god but the idea of any supreme being at all.
Atheism is not the idea of denying any gods, but rather not believing claims that they exist. This requires not faith, but by definition, the lack of it.
-Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson
I have a pet flying dragon that breathes fire and devours people I don't like. Do you believe me?
This isn’t as smart of an argument as you think it is.
And your reply wasn't one at all.
I wasn't arguing. I was giving you an analogy. What's the difference between not believing in a god and not believing in a pet dragon? Does one require faith and not the other? Why or why not? That's an argument.
If my argument is so easy and stupid, rip it apart. Condescension gets you nothing.
It’s a very bad faith (heh) argument to compare god to a mythological creature. I’m not arguing that the abrahamic god is real or that Zeus et al are real. I’m saying that as the thing that encompasses everything that exists, the universe, could be a god of sorts. Or the God if you want.
The argument is that atheists believe so much that god does not exist and become so hostile to the notion of religion itself that it behaves as a religion and becomes like a religion itself.
Perhaps the fault in communication here is that atheist mostly define gods as intelligent and willful entitities when there is nothing that suggests that other than the deities that we invented in our own image. But to say, conclusively that god does not exist, meaning that we know that the universe is without a doubt not a transcendental entity is just faith that god does not exist because you have no proof of that nor any way to prove it without looking at it from outside of it.
I think using the word “faith” here may need more explanation. Would you say you have faith that the tooth fairy, Santa, or the Easter Bunny does not exist?
I am an atheist so far as I can say that there is no intelligent deity that snapped its fingers and created the universe. But I cannot definitely conclude that the universe itself might not be the living body of a god. An atheist™️ would say that there is nothing transcendental about the universe itself, despite the proof of their very eyes that it is transcendental. If you’re not in awe at the sheer magnitude of the universe then maybe you’re too self centered to realize how truly insignificant we are in the greater universe.
An atheist would say that a god needs some kind of intelligence, but does the lack of intelligence and will makes a being less of a being? What do we make of plants and bacteria then?
I know the biblical god isn’t real. I know the Ancient pantheons are also not real. I don’t know that there is no such thing as a supreme transcendent being. But I think there’s enough prove to make an argument that there might be one.
Sounds like you are agnostic rather than atheist.
I’m not talking about it what i am, I am saying that atheist have as much proof of there being no supreme being as they have of there being one. There’s really no way to prove anything yet until we find a way (if there is one) to look at our universe from outside of it. We could literally be an atom in the balls of a weird fourth dimensional creature for all we know.
But their belief in the non existence of a god and their outright hostility towards anything that might suggest some kind of divinity makes them act as any other zealot would. So atheism works a lot like a religion, which was my argument.
Please forgive me for being confused.
I agree. I prefer to consider myself agnostic rather than atheist.
I'm really a dishonest agnostic since I can't really imagine a proof of deity that I wouldn't discount as a hallucination.
I did have a dream many years ago in which I woke up with absolute proof that God existed, but then I went back to sleep.
When I woke later, I couldn't remember what the proof was. If the proof was real, and God let me forget it, then he's an ass and he doesn't deserve my belief.
I think the problem is that most people think of god as non material. In my view m whatever you want to call god is a material thing and you are touching it right now. And there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence to prove that this isn’t true and most thought exercises will have you reach the conclusion that there is a high likelihood that we are indeed part of a bigger thing that could be defined as god.
I guess a big divide here is how you define god, for most people it’s this intelligent and willful being. But that’s just what a human, who fashions gods in his image, thinks a god is.
For me intelligence is not a requirement for supremacy. I believe the universe itself for all intents and purposes is god. It has no will and no intelligence but that doesn’t make it any less powerful.
It's an ideology. The problem with it, is that like any ideology. Many turn it into their identity. And if you attack or even dismiss the ideology, it is as if you've done it to them personally.
That said there's more clear evidence for atheism than there is for any other theist belief. But it does get tiresome to combat against constant fantastic and unprovable claims.
Do you realize that your anecdote is literally meaningless in the context of statistical analysis?
It was more of a question, but you kind of inserted yourself into my statement, so I’m not going to engage with you anymore. You can get your feelings hurt elsewhere
Dude started out by mentioning a couple of concussions and ended by stating he might not understand the research because of the concussions, so perhaps the answer is...maybe not.