THIS BLOG HAS MOVED AND HAS A NEW HOME PAGE.

June 11, 2011

Sources of religious belief

Jerry Coyne discusses an interesting article that suggests that religious faith in countries is positively correlated with insecurity, as measured by income inequality.

Another interesting article supports the idea that fear of death can lead to greater religious belief. This study does not strike me as very rigorous in how it was done but it is suggestive.

Trackbacks

Trackback URL for this entry is: http://blog.case.edu/singham/mt-tb.cgi/25184

Comments

These are a couple of reasons why I don't see atheism winning any time soon.

Religious scripture has been internally contradictory since written. One religion's scripture also contradicts another's.

Epicurus pointed out the logical fallacy of god thousands of years ago. There has never been physical evidence of god.

Yet, religiosity persisted.

The obvious, amazing fruits of science and technology over the last 200 years, hasn't done much to change religiosity in the U.S over that time. Even if every scientific gap were filled, it would just be claimed that everything was god's intention.

The internet, a huge resource of scientific and other information, should have caused a huge drop in religiousity over the last decade. But it didn't, because the reason for "goddidit" aren't based so much on information, but on emotion.

We are now seeing growing gaps in income inequality in the U.S. and fear of death won't go away anytime soon. Despair will be on the rise, as the U.S. loses it's place in the world.

There will be powerful emotional forces fighting the rational critical thinking approach of atheism.

I do hope I'm wrong, though.

Posted by healthphysicist on June 11, 2011 12:56 PM