Did the questionnaire account for belief in a Spinozan God-or-Nature?
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Hmm…LSD?
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There are 10 types of people who believe in God. Those who do and those who don’t.
(It’s a binary choice… Or maybe a hexidecimal one?)
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I am atheist, but I am just about to start going to my local UU church because I think it will be enriching and that I’ll find like-minded, interesting people to hang out with.
Also, as a way to say a giant fuck you to Donald Trump, the right, and all the assholes running and ruining our country.
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That’s pretty likely 
but local UU congregations differ. I have three in driving distance of my house, and I have definite preferences! (Although in my case the preferences have a lot to do with architecture - I like the people in all three.)
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I’m no more comfortable with the “intuitive/analytic” dichotomy than I am the “smart/stupid” one. Maybe credulousness is what’s really being tested here? The questions are designed to steer a credulous person – one who trusts the test administrator, and therefore, likely, one who trusts other authority figures – toward the answers that do not require deliberation or critical thought. If you’re the kind of person who generally believes what people in positions of authority tell you, and trusts their motivations, then there’s a high likelihood that you’ll both “fail” the test and believe in a deity.
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I should say, it’s a lot more like that than other disciplines in math and science, like, as I mentioned, biology.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, though it’s weird to see them described as “intuitive.” They’re answers that basically ignore the question…
In their grade school educations, you mean? I’d also see “college student” as indicating they’ve had basic algebra, so they have the intellectual toolset to answer those questions, if they actually thought about them. But that willingness to question I think might be the key - I had a friend teaching at a technical college where he had a number of students who had been home schooled for religious reasons. He said they were all terrible students, as all they had previously done was rote memorization and regurgitation of facts, no critical thinking skills at all. Written assignments were sometimes just collections of straight copied web texts, broken HTML and all.
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Dayum son,
Did you just bring a personal anecdote to a data fight?
Interestingly, If you read the 2012 article (which was way too many clicks away from the reportage), they did also show causation happening - in terms of, as the study paper was titled, “Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief”.
That’s not the same as “If you are superstitious, you are dumb”, but it is more like “If you think harder, you become less superstitious”.
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Answered all three questions correctly. I am a deist, spiritual but not religious and love science.
I think it’s important to consider the context and culture at work here. While it’s true thar religious communities do offer some opportunities to members, they also cut other members off from the same opportunities.
LGBTQ or female members of many congregations will not be offered the same oppertunities as straight male members. People from these groups along with those who transgress religious rules may instead experience a painful seperation from the community or some form of shunning.
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More religious than the “average”, the general public? I’d be interested in seeing the source.
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Ironically, I’m the Principal investigator of this: RePORT ⟩ RePORTER
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i figured it’d take at least half an hour. there’s setup time, maintenance, murphy’s law, and all the rest. things never work out as planned.
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I hope your report carefully defines the word “opioid” that is used heavily in the abstract. It seems to be an evolving term, that means different things depending on who is saying it.
I expect the political definition to be expanded to include aspirin (and possibly unpedigreed kittens) soon.
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I’m really not a philosopher, so I may be of limited help here. But if you’re interested in hearing some arguments I guess maybe look into humanism? I don’t consider myself particularly philosophically aligned (because I don’t know enough philosophy to speak intelligently on the matter) but most of my godless peers subscribe to that one.
I’m also told that, reputation aside, some of Nietzsche’s work is rather critical of nihilism though I haven’t read any Nietzsche, I’m going off a Great Courses DVD I inherited from a relative for that one, so… yeah, maybe I’m way off.
More broadly, I suppose that most of the atheists you mention, myself included, would agree with nihilism in that there is no inherent meaning to life, the universe, and everything, but would shy away from the label because it’s typically associated with the idea that because existence has no external meaning, it doesn’t come with intrinsic value.
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Yes!
Or the idea that because existence has no external meaning, then “everything sucks, man.”
If “nihilism” means the belief that life has no external value, then, sure. That’s me. But if I have to go on to say that nothing matters because we’re going to die anyway, then… no.
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I was mostly referring to secondary and whatever part of college each individual has finished.
Nearly exactly what i was getting at, although i would put it at willingness and tendency/training. Essentially, American education seems to prize
And this is a tendency that would be intensified in home-schooling environments as they are more likely to have materials that emphasize this kind of learning (because most American educational materials do) and instructors with little to no pedagogical training to compensate for the materials.
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I think a little bit like that.
We are not born with souls.
But it is our destiny to make’em
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I got all three, but only because I am the kind of person, who, upon being asked a question, immediately get suspicious that someone is trying to put one over on me.
So yes, correlates with religion 
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UU?
They do quite well for themselves (per capital.)
Edit: should’ve kept reading. My father was a UU minister, so I have a knack for sniffing out the tribe 
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