Is the atheist brain more evolved?

Originally posted by GreatTech
I certainly disagree with this for the earthlife and especially the afterlife. Michael Hart wrote a book on world history's 100 most influential people and 94 believed in God. Only 6 were atheists. The first atheist was ranked 35th (Thomas Edison).

well... could you give us a complete list? i can't really talk about said list without knowing just the 35th person on it. i bet i can name 6 influential atheists off the top of my head without using edison.. i'll include agnostics that leaned atheist

einstein
sagan
darwin
marx
nietzsche
lincoln
curie
asimov
armstrong, lance
lovecraft
hume

i went overboard and put 11
the problem is that intellectually fulfilled atheism didn't really begin until the works of darwin. it was impossible to understand how life came about before him without saying "goddunit"

Even if history's most influential people were 100% atheist and the national academy of sciences were 100% atheist, I would still believe in God.

alright... i don't understand why that's relavent. all you're saying is that you're completely close minded to the concept that you're wrong about this one irrational belief.

I'm amused every time I see this argument because it's really one-sided. Christians of course don't believe in evolution, so they wouldn't believe that either side was more evolved. Either way, you can't determine someone's religious preferences by a simple brain scan in a MRI machine. You would only know the answer if you asked someone. Therefore there is no physical difference between the two sides.

The whole concept of a brain being more evolved because of what you believe is completely ludicrous.

I believe that this post is pretty lame.



Now I believe that this is the best post ever.

Did my intelligence and brain change because of my change of thought?

No.

I'm very well ready in proving everyone wrong on this issue, because I own The Encyclopedia Of Psychology, and 30 others like it.

So many people create a thought than convince themselves that they just educated themselves on it.

Pretty rediculous if you ask me.

[edit on 10-5-2007 by MrMysticism]

Originally posted by MrMysticism
So many people create a thought than convince themselves that they just educated themselves on it. Pretty rediculous if you ask me.

I asked Dr. Dean Edell about this awhile back — Edell is an outspoken atheist and, supposedly, a hardcore scientist. Yes, he's just educated as an eye doctor, but he has the Number 1 rated medical radio show in syndication.

So, one night I heard Dr. Dean ranting about homeopathy and prayer and other home-brew remedies. He thinks it's all 100% bovine defecation. He thinks it's a scam. He says that there is no scientific evidence to support any of this ridiculous "faith healing."

So I called his show and was screened and waited about 30 minutes, and he finally took my call, and I simply asked If there's no scientific basis for faith healing, then why do modern doctors and research groups rely so heavily on placebo studies?

Placebos, for those of you who don't know, are harmless sugar-pills. In drug research, a group of volunteers take an experimental drug, while a control group takes a placebo that they think is an experimental drug. The results are always pretty amazing — the placebo group will have drug reactions and even improvement in their conditions... simply because they thought they were taking a revolutionary drug. We're taliking about biological responses in areas ranging from depression to cancer, based on a sugar pill and a lie.

Now, I think much of this has to do with tapping into Faith.

So, I asked Dr. Dean, what about the placebo effect? And he (or his screener) immediately hung up on me. I understand his reasoning — you can't carry on an effective atheistic, pure science rant with that pesky, illogical, but nonetheless REAL placebo hobgoblin throwing a monkey wrench into the works.

— Doc Velocity

[edit on 5/10/2007 by Doc Velocity]

No, I don't think athiests brains are more 'evolved' and yes, I am an athiest. I think you should all attempt to measure evolution by the measurable, rather than by something impossible to measure.

Now, this may seem a little odd, but think about it.

As a measure of evolution, consider that we are ALL (thiest and athiest alike) pretty much influenced by propaganda, especially in the form of advertising. This is probably the most fundemental form of propaganda and yet it is so successful in that it convinces us that we need this item or that item in such proportions that we make others rich by doing so. Each year there is some new fad like wine coolers, coffee making machines, and they sell millions of them, but do we really need them? The fact that they come and go would appear to suggest that we can live without them - and how many of these items are now stored at the back of a cupboard somewhere.

A true leap in evolution would be to develop a quality that can see through advertising and propaganda for what it is, but I don't see any measurable difference between theist and athiest on this front, do you?

The Winged Wombat

Doc Velocity,

The placebo effect is a measure of self-healing by 'tricking' the mind and body into attacking the problem. Many drugs do just the same thing.

This has no relevence to 'faith-healing' other than the fact that the positive effects obtained by some 'faith-healers' can be explained logically as a placebo effect. And if it works, then that's great, but it has no bearing whatsoever on a relion v no religion debate.

Perhaps your radio / TV doctor just wants to keep making money and only wants to talk to people who adore him!

The fact remains that quasi-medical procedures and practices are outside mainstream medicine. It has been said that even the president of the Royal College of Surgeons cannot get a practice that has no scientifically provable benefit accepted into mainstrem medicine, but that any practice that can be scientifically verified will automatically become part of mainstream medicine. The fact that some of the practices you mentioned are not part of mainstream medicine cannot be scientifically verified, and what success they might achieve is inconsistant and can be explained by the placebo effect.

The use of placebos in drug testing is to establish a measurable benefit from the drug - it is useless testing something without a reference point!

So I think you are confusing the use of placebos in testing with the 'placebo effect' - two entirely different things.

The Winged Wombat


[edit on 10/5/07 by The Winged Wombat]

Originally posted by The Winged Wombat
I think you are confusing the use of placebos in testing with the 'placebo effect' - two entirely different things.

No, not different things at all. Placebos are harmless sugar pills that frequently produce biologic response based on a lie. That's the essence of placebos and the placebo effect. It's all about the patient's ability to transform a lie into reality.

— Doc Velocity

I don't believe there are genetic differences between the brains of theists and non-theists. Rather, we are all conditioned as small children. Those who are conditioned to accept authority and who are taught the "truth" of whatever stories they are exposed to, have faith in them without proof. Those who are taught to question and observe for themselves tend to demand a demonstration of something's existence. As such, the former are usually theists and the latter usually agnostics, atheists, or non-theists.

I'm a non-theist because I can see no evidence in the physical world of any metaphysical force or being having any effect. As such, I don't see any relevance to including a god as a factor in my life or behavior. It's a non-issue.

Earlier posts improperly equated Communism with atheism. They should understand that economic systems, political systems, religious systems, and ethical systems are all separate. One can be a communist or a capitalist and be a theist or a non-theist equally easily. Similarly, one can be a theist or a non-theist and either ethical or unethical.

I agree with the logic of the poster who said he didn't care how many famous atheists one could list, he was still going to believe in god. I'm delighted that he has taken the first step in recognizing the critical thinking fallacies of "acceptance by popularity" and "belief by authority".

Occam

Doc Velocity,

If you want to call the body's ability to heal itself 'a lie' then that's fine with me. It doesn't take sugar coated pills for the body to heal itself either.

The body heals wounds and sometimes all many of ailments that one would not think possible, just as some drugs trigger natural responses within the body to fight some disease or ailment.

There is nothing 'religious' about the fact that under some circumstances the body will heal itself when one would reasonably not expect it to be able to. Just goes to show that we don't yet know everything about either human brain power or the human body.

Suffice to say that in some people, a belief that they are being cured is enough to trigger the body's natural defences to do the job. Whether that belief is a 'religioius' one or one based on the belief that that are getting the real drug during a testing session, or indeed willpower is irrelevent.

Certainly, if this process were better understood, we would probably do far less damage to ourselves with all the pills our doctors tell us we have to take!

To bring the placebo effect into a religion v non-religion debate, then you would have to prove that the effect is only demonstrated in 'the faithful', which is not the case. So I don't see any foundation for your belief that your radio doctor would not wish to discuss it, for it is scientifically documented and not an unreasonable result during tests.

Modern doctors to not do anything with 'placebo studies'. The use of a placebo in a test situation is to take out the 'placebo effect' from the results. If statistically, say one in 100 test subjects who receive the placebo, and improve their symptoms, then that factor must also be taken out of the group that receives the real drug. They are studying the drug or treatment, not the placebo.

The Winged Wombat.


[edit on 11/5/07 by The Winged Wombat]

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
No, not different things at all. Placebos are harmless sugar pills that frequently produce biologic response based on a lie. That's the essence of placebos and the placebo effect. It's all about the patient's ability to transform a lie into reality.

— Doc Velocity

You have an interesting way of putting it, but it is more correct to say that placebo effects are a function of expectancy, beliefs, and desires. If you have an expectancy that a treatment will produce effects, it might well produce some effect (whether it has an active ingredient or not). Thus in medicine, treatments are required to produce effects greater than these psychologically-based effects. Hence the reason for blinded trials.

So they don't transform a lie into reality, they transform their expectancy and desires into a real physiological effect. It's an example of cognition having an effect on physiology, pretty well-established in psychology by now (hence CBT etc).

So, if you toddle along to a faith healer and you really believe that their treatment may have an effect, it actually might have some effect. Doesn't really give faith-healing per se any validity as a treatment above its placebo effect. But if I want a real effective treatment, medicine is the best bet, as you have both the possibility of general psychological expectancy and a true condition-related physiological effect.

[edit on 11-5-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by The Winged Wombat
To bring the placebo effect into a religion v non-religion debate, then you would have to prove that the effect is only demonstrated in 'the faithful', which is not the case. So I don't see any foundation for your belief that your radio doctor would not wish to discuss it, for it is scientifically documented and not an unreasonable result during tests.

Quite right, I took the thread off-topic into a discussion of Faith, from which I digressed to the placebo effect. But I'm not saying that only the faithful demonstrate biologic responses to placebos. I don't know how you arrived at that assumption. What I'm suggesting is that the same neurologic processes that trigger the placebo effect may be involved in the Faith effect, and that it's probably one and the same effect. A natural phenomenon. Whether the catalyst is a sugar pill or a rabbit's foot or a spiritual vision or a magic incantation, it's obvious that we possess the ability to heal ourselves and do who-knows-what-else.

As this pertains to the topic at hand, I think it would be very unfortunate for atheists to choose to close their minds to something as phenomenal as the Faith effect before we even understand its mechanism, and it would be the height of arrogance (and ignorance) for atheists to think of themselves as evolutionarily superior before we fully understand such phenomena. I mean, those who refute Faith may actually be on the path to an evolutionary dead-end.

— Doc Velocity

Originally posted by Doc Velocity
As this pertains to the topic at hand, I think it would be very unfortunate for atheists to choose to close their minds to something as phenomenal as the Faith effect before we even understand its mechanism, and it would be the height of arrogance (and ignorance) for atheists to think of themselves as evolutionarily superior before we fully understand such phenomena. I mean, those who refute Faith may actually be on the path to an evolutionary dead-end.

— Doc Velocity

While I cant speak for all atheists, I think most of us actually have FAITH in something - just not in any supernatural deity. I know we cant know everything so I have faith in certain things, I have faith in life existing elsewhere for example.

But I can definately understand your faith effect, its like someone being totally convinced in aliens, ghosts, being elvis, napoleon or even the son of god.


G

Originally posted by shihulud
While I cant speak for all atheists, I think most of us actually have FAITH in something -

well, i'll throw my two cents in:
i have faith in my friends

but.. that's because i know them. so that's not exactly faith in anything more than consistency in my friends.

Click here for more information.

Is the atheist brain more evolved?

Only the ego.

Well, the libido also---it's why they have fewer kids.

Seriously. Who never actually studied evolutionary theory? The idea of "more evolved" is ludicrous! Evolutionary theory doesn't posit a "ladder" of progressive advancement, as if population genetics were a sort of civil service exam.

Organisms aren't "more evolved." Only more specialized.

For what it's worth, fruit flies have more chromosomes than humans. Does this make them "more evolved?" Or merely more specialized?