Daily Archives: April 20, 2022

You are a member of a very peculiar species. Of all our quirks, the human religious impulse may be our most distinctive one. We build skyscrapers? Big deal, bowerbirds construct ornate decorative nests and they have brains the size of almonds. We live in really big societies? Great, so do ants, whose brains are even tinier. We can do math problems? Wonderful, but so can slime molds, and they dont even have brains!

Where humans often appear unique in some regard, a closer look usually shows us to be a mere outlier, rather than a genuine exception. This does not seem to be the case for religion. Most people who have ever lived believe in some sort of god; they are as certain of their gods as of their breath. But not a single organism outside our immediate evolutionary lineage has ever contemplated the existence of a god. Think about that for a moment: as far as we know, every single sentient being in the universe that has ever believed in a god is a member of our odd little species, and almost every member of our species has believed in a god. To scientists interested in evolution and human nature, religion is a puzzle that screams to be solved.

On closer inspection, religion is not an evolutionary puzzle so much as two evolutionary puzzles. First is the puzzle of faith: the puzzle of how Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens alone came to be a religious species. Second, there is the puzzle of atheism: how disbelief in gods can exist within an otherwise religious species. If belief in god(s) is truly an evolved human universal, how is it that millions or maybe billions of people today dont believe in any? How can a defining feature of our species (which religion most definitely is!) not be a defining feature of our entire species?

We scientists are increasingly learning that the puzzle of faith cannot be solved without also solving the puzzle of atheism. And as we learn more and more about atheism and nonbelief, they are forcing us to rethink some of our bedrock assumptions about how both belief and disbelief work.

A commonly offered solution to the puzzle of faith is that religion just comes naturally as a sort of cognitive byproduct. A suite of specific mental adaptations helped our ancestors solve recurrent challenges, and these adaptations interact in such a way that religions are just good fits for how we think. We are born believers, per the title of a recent book. Religion comes so intuitively and naturally, per this cognitive byproduct view, that atheism is a rare exception and must require cognitive effort to be sustained. In the words of Pascal Boyer, penned in a prominent summary:

Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions hardly the easiest ideology to propagate.

This notion that religion comes naturally has proven influential within science and has also attracted surprising support from New Atheist cheerleaders (perhaps because it situates their own rationality and cleverness as a key ingredient in their atheism). But just how rare is atheism?

Within the U.S., about 2-3% of people explicitly identify as atheists. But, to show up as a nonbeliever in polls like this, respondents both have to disbelieve in a god and also be comfortable voicing these doubts to a random pollster. Thats not a given. Atheism is heavily stigmatized, not just in the U.S. but worldwide.

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For example, my lab has studies in which we describe a villain engaging in some sort of immoral action they kick a puppy, or dabble in cannibalism, or experiment with incest. We then subtly gauge participants intuitions about the perpetrator. In study after study, our respondents intuitively assume that people doing immoral deeds like these dont believe in gods. In one study, we described a villain who tortures animals as a child before turning into a full-blown serial killer as an adult, with dismembered bodies buried in the basement. Participants from 13 countries, including even atheist participants in some highly secular countries, intuited that the murderer cannot believe in god(s).

Not only do people readily infer atheism from described immorality, it turns out that they also read immorality into atheism. In a project with Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi and Steph McKee at the University of Virginia, we used a clever experiment to see how people mentally represent atheists. Think of the experiment as a fancy computer task that acts as a police sketch artist, pulling an image from our participants minds. Hundreds of people in the U.S. did this task for us, and these images are the results: one is what they spontaneously think about atheists, the other a spontaneous mental image of a believer. Can you guess which is which?

A separate group of participants, viewing these faces, felt that the atheist composite face (the second one, if it wasnt clear) was less religious than the other face. But even more than that, they rated the atheist face as less moral, less trustworthy, and more generally hostile and unpleasant.

Results like these people inferring that serial killers dont believe in God, or assuming that atheism leaves an indelible stamp of immorality even on peoples faces are the context in which polls of atheist prevalence exist. Poll respondents might be motivated to conceal their atheism, which would systematically downwardly bias our estimates of global atheist prevalence.

In 2018, Maxine Najle and I estimated how many atheists there are in the U.S. using a task that lets people indirectly indicate their atheism to us, without them having to say it. Using this sneaky indirect measurement technique, our best estimate is that 26% of American adults do not believe in god(s) more than twice as many as Gallup and Pew estimated at the time. If this underreporting is not unique to the U.S., this means that we have probably been vastly undercounting atheists worldwide.As it turns out, atheism probably isnt all that rare.

How about the other major claim about atheism made by the byproduct account: Does atheism require cognitive effort? Anecdotally, public atheists posit that intelligence, rationality, and science (all effortful cognitive endeavors) are the root cause of their own atheism. A classic example here would be Richard Dawkins, who credits early reading of Darwin for his atheism, and whose public rhetoric tries to use science as a wedge to drive people from their faith.

Around 2009 or 2010, Ara Norenzayan and I sought to scientifically test the idea that atheism is underpinned by effortful cognitive reflection. In an initial study, we found a correlation whereby folks who are better able to reflectively override their hunches reported being less religious. We also had a bunch of experiments in which we found that people nudged to think more rationally also tended to report lower levels of religious belief. Our eventual paper was accepted for publication in the journal Science, and two other research teams independently published similar studies in other outlets. Our papers attracted widespread news coverage and were widely praised by the New Atheist set. Here was seemingly solid evidence to vindicate their central claim that atheism was all about rationality!

But the plot thickened. Rigorous follow-up studies repeatedly have been unable to produce similar results to our initial experiments. I have now accepted that the experiments in our initial Science paper were fatally flawed, the results no more than false positives. Beyond the experimental failures to replicate, the correlation between rational thinking and atheism turns out to be both weak and fickle across cultures.

Even in the U.S., my team found in a large and nationally representative sample that effortful cognitive reflection doesnt at all predict atheism among people strongly exposed to religion as kids. The very dynamic posited by New Atheists of churchbound kids using science and rationality to free themselves from faiths shackles could not be found in the most rigorous exploration to date. There is little scientific reason to believe that rationality and science are key causal contributors to atheism in the aggregate. This makes it all the more ironic that public-facing atheists who speak so reverently of science tend to be the most vocal advocates of the faulty notion that rationality is a prime driver of atheism. Theyve got the science wrong.

Religion is no less an evolutionary product than is a raptor or a ribosome, worthy of the same scientific awe. Through the processes of genetic evolution, we have been endowed with minds capable of imagining gods, and through the processes of cultural evolution, we have evolved intricate structures of beliefs and norms that have helped propel our species to greater and greater cooperative heights. The seemingly bizarre religious rituals that many deride as irrational may in fact be cultural evolutionary tricks that help create cooperative societies.

To me, this intricate cultural evolutionary play is infinitely more fascinating and fulfilling than the shallow, wholesale dismissal of religion offered by vocal public atheists. And to appreciate it, all you need to do is open yourself up to the possibility that over the millennia, religions may have survived and thrived in part because they served an evolutionary purpose. Of course, atheists need not subscribe to a given religious faith to appreciate it; one neednt accept or praise something simply because it was useful in cultural evolution. But everyone including atheists, which I am can have a more mature, scientifically literate, and fulfilling relationship with religion if we are open to the possibility that it doesnt poison everything.

Read more:

Atheism is not as rare or as rational as you think - Big Think

Is Pemphero Mphande the latter days Biblical Saul who converted into a believer and became Paul? Pemphero, a self confessed atheist, has now dumped his atheism beliefs following a prophecy that his days on earth are numbered.

Mr Mphande who claimed to have been an atheist since 2012 is fasting and praying to God to spare his life.

I have argued with hundreds of people, been in public debates, written tens of articles on atheism and theism- its always the same arguments or analogies from believers, said Pemphero on Twitter on 14 January in 2020.

However, since the prophecy that the socialite made public on 17 April 2022, Pemphero has been praying unceasingly. He has even visited pastors and prophets for intercession.

The prophecy from a mysterious woman that Pemphero shared on his Facebook page claims that he would die this coming Friday.

I dreamt you were on a stretcher in a hospital and doctors were rushing you to the theatre. You had alot of blood on you. Then some moments I was reading a newspaper and it said Pemphero Mphande no more dated Friday, 22 April. I woke up and I have been praying for you, reads a post on his Facebook page.

Since then, Mr Mphande an atheist, has converted into a belieber just like Paul. But who wouldnt?

As we give power to the lord and confess that death is not our potion, I invite you all to special prayers for Pemphero at Word of Faith Temple International this evening at 5:30pm reads his recent post, asking people to join him in prayers.

However, there are others who believe that Pemphero, the latter days Paul, is performing a stunt.

Pemphero Mphande wapempha omutsatira amuthandize kupemphera chifukwa mayi wina walota iye atamwalira

See more here:

Pemphero Mphande quits atheism over death prophecy: Prays to God to spare his life - Malawi24

Rev. David Wilson Rogers| Carlsbad Current-Argus

Today is Easter SundayIt is a day filled with memories of empty tombs, shouts of He is risen! worshipful parents, family gatherings, searching for hidden treasures, and time-honored traditions which many people love. For all the beauty, memory, pageantry, and tradition surrounding the day, it is important that Christians take a moment and put the day in perspective.

Arguably, Easter is the heart of the Christian faith. Without the Empty Tomb, Jesus is nothing more than a miracle-working, inspirational-preaching, radical Jewish martyr. Christs triumph over death marks the fundamental premise of Christianity. Far from being a simple miracle of resurrectionwhich, in-and-of-itself is incredibly significantthe resurrection is a fundamental premise of why Christianity matters.

Easter reminds us that even though our human mortality is something none of us can escape in this life, our inevitable death and the death of those whom we love, has no ultimate claim on our eternal relevance. The Psalmist in Psalm 146 states that the ambitions of people fade into oblivion when they breathe their last. Yet the miracle of Easter reminds us that death has no permanence. Resurrection not only matters, but it also defines the critical significance of the Christian life.

In the early decades of the United States of America, two ideologically opposed debaters famously debated the merits of Christian faith versus the increasing popularity of Atheism. Acknowledging the rational relevance of the Atheists argument that God does not exist and that the Christian claim on everlasting life was meaningless, the Christian in this debate asked the Atheist a question. Assuming you are right and I am wrong, what will happen to you and I when we die? the Christian asked. Everything that we are would cease to exist, the Atheist confidently answered. Understandably so. Now, may I also ask, if I am right, what would happen to you and I when we die? Respectfully, the Atheist answered that if Christian doctrine were actually correct, the Christian would have everlasting life and the Atheists future would likely be oblivion at best, and eternal condemnation at worst. In response to the Atheists confident answer, the Christian then challenged the Atheist with the their mutually established assumption that if one was to wager on the future knowing that if Atheism is correct and everyone ends up in the same place or that if Christianity was right, the Atheist would absolutely lose, the only safe bet would be on Christianity.

Easter reminds us thatright or wrongChristians have a degree of hope that non-Christians do not have. That is not to say that God does not save people who have not ascribed to the doctrinal decrees of the Church. Certainty Christs compassionate judgment evaluates the heart and not ones religious practices. Yet, the miracle of the resurrection reminds the world that there is more to this life than the finite years by which ones biological existence is present on the planet we call Earth. We are fundamentally spiritual beings that may live beyond biology and know a reality defined in love.

It is that love that ultimately defines the reality of Easter. Johns gospel famously reminds Christians that God loved the world so much that Christ was sent to the Earth that Gods love may be manifest through Jesus. The Resurrection celebrated at Easter is fundamental proof that Gods love is our shared hope that we are all more than our momentary life, our biological existence on this planet, or our religious doctrinal beliefs. We are spiritual beings who can live and love today and beyond this life into an eternity defined by Gods love.

Continued here:

Easter is the perfect time to reflect on God's love - Carlsbad Current Argus

OPINION:

The U.S. Supreme Court is due to hear at the end of this month a widely reported case of a high school football coach who was forced from his job after he refused an administrative order to stop praying on the field at the end of games.

The crime of praying. In America? In a nation founded on a quest for religious freedom, forged on the principles of the Judeo-Christian belief system and both rooted in and raised to a state of exceptionalism on a concept of individual rights coming from God, not government is there really such a thing as a crime of praying?

This is how far America has strayed from its foundations.

This is how far the secularist, humanist, atheist loons of the left have managed to transform the society from rugged individualism, based on God-given liberties, into obedient collectivism, driven by government commands.

Joseph Kennedy began his coaching position in 2008 at Bremerton High School in Washington. He began offering prayers post-game for players and coaches alike at a midfield point where they would voluntarily gather, shake hands, and in a spirit of commonality, give thanks for the competition, for the safety of players, for sportsmanlike conduct and so forth.

Nobody minded.

Nobody complained.

Then school administrators caught wind of what he was doing and sent him a stern warning about policy that said staff couldnt encourage students to engage in religious activity that is to say, then pinheaded bureaucrats in the district ran like frightened sheep from the possibility that someone might sue, so they knee-jerked and intimidated the coach into stifling his prayers. Yes, knee-jerked. They couldve rallied behind the coach; they couldve stood tall on the principles of free speech, free assembly, freedom of worship, freedom in America or just common sense: The prayers, after all, were voluntary. Vol.Un.Tear.Ee.

But in bureauspeak the language, obviously, of these Washington school administrators the logic goes like this: Christians are so much easier to shut up than, say, an angry atheist who might come along and make a call to the, oh, say, Freedom From Religion Foundation or to the, hmm, perhaps, American Civil Liberties Union, and then join forces and launch a lawsuit that will entangle the school in legal battles, in costly legal battles, in expensive, ugly, well-publicized legal battles for months and even years to come. School administrators hate that. School administrators will do whatever it takes to avoid these scenarios.

So they go the path of perceived least resistance.

They expect that Christians wont fight. They expect that Christians will go quietly into that good night. They expect that Christians will do the Christian thing and bow quietly to the authorities in the government the authorities, after all, that the Bible teaches were put in place by God. What Would Jesus Do, and all that good stuff.

Christians dont fight.

Atheists, on the other hand, do.

That logic? Thats been pretty much the battlefield in America for years now.

And heres the thing: Thats why Americas been facing so much peril from the left in recent years. That logic has worked in bureaucrats favor. Bureaucrats have expected Christians, by and large, to stifle and stay quiet and go away because Christians, by and large, with few exceptions, have done just that.

America has come to the point where the path of least resistance has become the one that gives atheists more power and authority than Christians, than Bible believers, than those of faith.

In a country built on God-given, that wont do.

This Supreme Court case is the eye of Americas storm. If justices rule one way, its the underscore and recognition of all thats great about America of all that America is of all that keeps this country rooted in freedom. If justices rule another way, its the end of all that America is of all that makes America, America. Think about it.

But think about this, also. Either way, the fact that this case is at the highest court in the land is a clanging bell for believers.

If freedom to worship is a human right, if freedom of religious worship is a constitutional right, if America is a country where rights come from God the right of a coach to pray on public school grounds does not even belong in the hands of the court, of any court, to debate. The government should not even have a say.

Once upon a time, we all agreed. Now we dont. And that is making all the difference.

Cheryl Chumley can be reached atcchumley@washingtontimes.comor on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast Bold and Blunt byclicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter byclicking HERE. Her latest book, Socialists Dont Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall, is available byclickingHERE.

Excerpt from:

America must fight for the right to pray, no matter what the Supreme Court says - Washington Times

On April 8, 1966, the pictureless front cover of TimeMagazineasked a bold and direct question: Is God Dead? This was just two days before Easter Sunday, and in the decades that followed, it became increasingly common for anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-Bible essays to be featured in various secular publications at this time of year.

Now, in keeping with this anti-God attitude during this sacred season, an April 15 op-ed piece for TheNew York Times was headlined, In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.

How deeply sensitive for the Times to post this anti-God essay on the day which is both Good Friday on the Christian calendar and the first day of Passover on the Jewish calendar! What a nice touch, editorial department! You have really outdone yourselves this year. (And a special shoutout to Liana Finck for her graphic, depicting God as an angry, Godzilla-like giant, marching through the city with terror on his mind.)

The author of this op-ed is Shalom Auslander, who was raised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Monsey, NY, before losing his faith. But even as an 8-year-old boy, he was troubled by aspects of the Passover narrative in which God poured out his plagues on the Egyptians.

Thats because it was not just Pharaoh and his soldiers that were afflicted. Instead, Egyptians young and old, innocent and guilty, suffered locusts and frogs, hail and darkness, beasts running wild and water becoming blood. Mothers nursing their babies, the rabbi explained, found their breast milk had turned to blood. (For the record, the Bible says nothing about milk turning into blood, let alone breast milk. But this is what Auslander remembers hearing as a boy from his rabbis.)

As for Pharaohs hardness of heart toward God and Israel, how was that his fault, since God was the one hardening him?

As for God smiting the firstborn sons of Egypt meaning, the firstborn of people and of cattle what could be more barbaric than that?

If he were mortal, Auslander opines, the God of Jews, Christians and Muslims would be dragged to The Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate him. We implore our children to be like him.

Really now, what were we thinking?

He continues, Perhaps now, as missiles rain down and the dead are discovered in mass graves, is a good time to stop emulating this hateful God. Perhaps we can stop extolling his brutality. Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God to be as unlike him as possible.

And then, having kicked God out of our lives, we should throw our doors open to strangers. To people who arent our own. To the terrifying them, to the evil others, those people who seem so different from us, those we think are our enemies or who think us theirs, but who, if they sat down around the table with us, wed no doubt find despise the pharaohs of this world as much as we do, and who dream of the same d----d thing as us all:

Peace.

Having followed the stories of former, ultra-Orthodox Jews, I do understand how they can be so resentful of their upbringing that they throw out the baby with the bathwater, unable to separate human traditions from the God of the Bible.

In this case, however, Auslander would counter that it is the God of the Bible whom he so opposes and rejects. We need to be liberated from Him!

But if there is no God and we are simply the products of an unguided evolutionary process (rather than being created by God in His image), there would be no such thing as justice. Or goodness. Or absolute morality.

As C.S. Lewis reflected on his mindset as an atheist, My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?

He continued, Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality namely my idea of justice was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark.Darkwould be without meaning.

Auslanders moral outrage actually undercuts, rather than supports, his whole argument against God.

He also seems to ignore the massive revelation of Gods patience and kindness and longsuffering and compassion found throughout the Bible and how He sternly judges those who take advantage of the orphan, the widow, the needy, and the stranger. Is the Lord really that schizophrenic, slaughtering the innocent with glee one moment and then grieving over the suffering of orphans the next? The Scriptures even declare that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but desires rather that they repent and live (see Ezekiel 18).

Even apparent injustices like the hardening of Pharaohs heart disappear upon closer examination of the Hebrew text. (For my video on this, see here.)

And what of the Lords ongoing mercy and compassion towards us? Do any of us with a recognition of the failings of our own heart dare to rail against God? Would any of us dare to stand before Him on judgment day and say, Give me exactly what I deserve?

Not only so, but for the Christian, the fullest revelation of God is found in the cross, where His own Son voluntarily died a shameful, agonizing, death to spare us from final judgment. In the words of philosopher John Kreeft, We sinned for no reason but an incomprehensible lack of love, and He saved us for no reason but an incomprehensible excess of love.

It is my prayer for Mr. Auslander (and others who share his sentiments) that they will personally encounter the boundless love of the heavenly Father. Once we truly come to know Him in a personal and intimate way, even if we dont get answers to all our questions, we will get the thing Auslander is after: peace peace with God, peace with ourselves, and peace with one another.

As for TimeMagazine, just 5 years after that infamous 1966 cover (with the lead article declaring that God was, in fact, dead), circumstances compelled Time to put out a very different cover story. So it was on June 21, 1971, that Times cover announced, The Jesus Revolution.

I came to faith that very year as a heroin-shooting, LSD-using, 16-year-old, Jewish, hippie rock drummer, one of the countless thousands like me around the world. God was anything but dead!

I sense that He is about to reveal Himself afresh today. The story might even make it to the front page of the New York Times! Be assured that He is not going away.

(If you are struggling with some of the questions raised by Auslander, I have written two books you might find helpful. See here and here.)

Dr. Michael Brown(www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicatedLine of Fireradio program. His latest book isRevival Or We Die: A Great Awakening Is Our Only Hope.Connect with him onFacebook,Twitter, orYouTube.

Originally posted here:

From Times 'Is God dead?' in 1966 to The New York Times call to 'Give Up God' today - The Christian Post