It’s not enough to find a meaningful cause. These monkeys want to look in the stars and see their lives’ purpose described in explicit detail. They expect to comb through ancient writings and suddenly discover an edict reading “the meaning of life is to collect as many paperclips as possible” and then happily go about their lives as imperfect, yet fulfilled paperclip maximizers.
It seems likely that people really do have a biological (not memetic) god or authority figure-shaped hole in their lives (on top of naturally making way too many Type II errors, not seeing why ‘goddidit’ isn’t an explanation, et cetera), probably weakest in modern hunter gatherer tribes and strongest in regions with a long uninterrupted systems of agriculture (5,000 years or so). (See The 10,000 Year Explosion.) This lets me sympathize with theists a little more: there are evolutionary reasons to be really frickin’ scared of an empty universe with no easy instructions to follow.
Added: As far as I can tell this comment was pretty off-the-mark, even by armchair theorizing standards. See prase’s reply and my reply to prase’s reply below.
It seems likely that people really do have a biological (not memetic) god or authority figure-shaped hole in their lives
Is the hole really biological? I was raised in an atheist family and never took religion as a serious possibility. It may be the reason that the phrases “meaning of life” and “purpose of life” were almost incomprehensible to me. Any suggestions that “meaning of life is X” I have interpreted as “you shouldn’t just enjoy your life, since you must do X”, and I have always felt quite strong negative emotions when the topic was discussed (which wasn’t too often, fortunately).
Of course, my anecdote doesn’t disprove the general existence of a biological god-shaped hole, but it would be good to investigate how much atheists who are not interested in philosophy really consider the question of “meaning of life” as meaningful or important.
Is the hole really biological? I was raised in an atheist family and never took religion as a serious possibility.
Forgive me for asking a personal question, and of course please feel free to refuse to answer should you be so inclined, but are you by any chance Czech? I’m asking because I see here a potential instance of some cultural differences I find extremely interesting, and before elaborating, I’d like to see if my guess might be correct.
Yes, I am Czech. Could you elaborate on the cultural differences you have in mind? Is it really possible to guess person’s ethnicity from the attitude towards “purpose of life”, or did you use other available heuristics to guess?
It’s a very complex topic, but to put it as succinctly as possible, the key difference is between self-declared atheists who truly appear as such, and those who insist on their atheism, but various quasi-religious elements are nevertheless clearly discernible in their lives and worldviews (to the point where I would dispute whether it makes sense to exclude them from the general definition of “religion”).
Overall, my impression is that among the atheists found in North America, those of the latter kind are far more frequent and prominent compared to the post-Communist Eastern Europe, with Western Europe being somewhere in-between, but closer to North America. (Of course, these large geographical regions contain parts of greatly different religiosity, but what I write tends to be true for the local atheists found there regardless of their percentage in the local population.) Why this is so, and what exact quasi-religious elements are commonly seen among different sorts of self-declared non-religious people, are complex and fascinating questions, which are however difficult to discuss because they touch on many ideologically sensitive issues.
When I read people’s writings on all sorts of issues, I can usually discern the two types of atheists pretty quickly and reliably, and based on your comments I’ve read in this thread and elsewhere, you do seem to belong to the true sort like you declare. Assuming you’re writing from somewhere in Europe or the Anglosphere, as most people here are, this by itself places a significant probability on you being Eastern European, and more specifically from one of the less religious EE states, like Hungary, Czech Republic, or various former Soviet republics (as opposed to much more religious places like Poland or Croatia). Considering that your username is the word for “piglet” in several (but not all) Slavic languages, one of which is Czech, this seemed like a high-probability guess. Also, some additional evidence is that your English is excellent but still a little bit Slavic-souding, and your writing has a slight and vague quality typical of Central Europe that is very hard to explain. (By the way, if you’re curious, I’m Croatian.)
Overall, my impression is that among the atheists found in North America, those of the latter kind are far more frequent and prominent compared to the post-Communist Eastern Europe
This is probably in agreement with my anecdotal experience, but I haven’t realised it explicitly before. What I can think about at the moment is the webpage Daylight Atheism, whose author had spent a lot of time defending the concept of atheist spirituality (e.g. here), and there was usually surprisingly little opposition in the comments.
your username is the word for “piglet” in several (but not all) Slavic languages, one of which is Czech
It means simply “pig” in Czech.
(By the way, if you’re curious, I’m Croatian.)
My original idea was that you were Russian, and after reading your previous comment, I have put a non-negligible probability to you being Czech too; hence, my nationality-predicting abilities are visibly inferior to yours.
your English is excellent but still a little bit Slavic-souding
Can you identify some specific instances of Slavic sounding structures in my writing? It could help me to eliminate them.
This is probably in agreement with my anecdotal experience, but I haven’t realised it explicitly before. What I can think about at the moment is the webpage Daylight Atheism, whose author had spent a lot of time defending the concept of atheist spirituality (e.g. here), and there was usually surprisingly little opposition in the comments.
I don’t have in mind only such overt manifestations of quasi-religiosity, but also the way many people find beliefs and causes that technically don’t involve any supernatural elements, yet nevertheless become objects of mystical reverence in their lives, and are altogether impervious to any rational discussion. In many cases, I would argue that such beliefs effectively involve postulating the existence of metaphysical entities which, while not anthropomorphic, are no less imaginary than the deities postulated by various traditional religions. (One philosopher who made some original and radical inquiries along these lines was Max Stirner.) But this is a really difficult and controversial topic.
Can you identify some specific instances of Slavic sounding structures in my writing? It could help me to eliminate them.
One thing that’s almost impossibly difficult for Slavic speakers is the use of articles, and you sometimes drop them in a quite Slavic-sounding way (I still do it occasionally too). However, these are just small and occasional things; your English is at a near-native level, and very well written overall. (Also, I should note that I probably notice this sort of thing more than a typical reader because I have a hobbyist interest in linguistics.)
Why do you think that is? Longer history of atheism?
I do think that “converts” (either to a religion or to atheism) think differently than people who were raised in their current belief system. If you’re childhood was religious, then you’ll associate religion with childhood and your parents, either negatively (“religion is childish”) or positively (“religion is comforting.”)
I suppose the history of atheism, measured by many reasonable criteria, is actually longer in North America than in Eastern Europe. Yes, the atheism was state sponsored for 40-50 years in Eastern European countries (70 years in the Soviet union), but it was often imposed on thoroughly religious societies. Practically all intellectual innovations were coming from the West.
Some possible (not experimentally tested and probably false) causes of the differences in atheists’ thinking:
1) The communist ideology has used “atheism” and “materialism” practically interchangeably. The latter term has connotations which put it into opposition to all “purpose of life” questions, which are usually associated with idealism (in Marxist terminology, idealism and materialism are two disjoint complementary types of worldview). Therefore, people who consider questions of “purpose of life” important aren’t comfortable with calling themselves atheists in former communist countries.
2) The word “atheist” is sometimes used as an insult in the US (rarely so in Czech republic, I have no idea about rest of Eastern Europe). The US atheists have adopted the term in order to signal their opposition to organised religion, however they have to compensate the associated negative feeling of being perceived as immoral, and they compensate it by frequent thinking about ethics, morality and purpose of life.
3) There were several intellectuals in the West who identified themselves as atheists and set the standard for atheist philosophy, where questions about purpose of life are meaningful. (Somebody who knows the writings of e.g. Bertrand Russell better than me should tell whether this isn’t sheer nonsense. I can’t think about any instance of famous self-proclaimed atheist writing about purpose of life.) On the contrary, Eastern Europe lacks any credible atheist intellectual tradition.
4) The word atheism has simply a sligthly different meaning on different sides of the Iron curtain. The difference has evolved rather randomly, without any specific cause.
Unfortunately I can provide no means of testing the above claims.
Well, as I said, that question is very hard to answer not only because it’s complex and involves many concepts that aren’t amenable to a no-nonsense scientific approach, but also because any sensible answer must include ideologically sensitive claims. History of ideas is a fascinating subject, but also an extraordinarily difficult one.
I don’t have anything like a complete and plausible theory that would answer your question, but one thing of which I am certain is that such a theory should start with re-examining the standard notion of “religion,” which I believe has outlived its usefulness in the modern world, and is nowadays creating more confusion than insight. But getting even just into that topic means opening enormous cans of worms.
Hm, I’m one of those always-been-atheists who’s also always been interested in the whole ‘purpose of life’ thing. Now that I think about it though, most of the people my age (teenagers) who I talk to (say, 15 people out of 20) have the same attitude as the one you express in your comment: basically, not really caring about religions or gods (or barely nominally caring) and when prompted with philosophical questions quickly exclaiming that they just want to live life and have fun. Updating on this evidence and taking into account that memetic explanations should trump biological ones in the first place, my hypothesis was probably heavily skewed towards a careless genetic explanation based off a pet theory. Interesting biases to have uncovered. Thanks!
I’m one of those always-been-atheists who’s also always been interested in the whole ‘purpose of life’ thing.
Do you remember how did you get interested in it? Did the question appear spontaneously to you, or did you acquire it from reading and then find it interesting? And in what age approximately? (I hope you don’t find the questions too personal, however it’s always interesting to find people with different intuitions.)
It seems likely that people really do have a biological (not memetic) god or authority figure-shaped hole in their lives
Is the hole really biological?
I think we are biologically primed to treat our parents as authority figures. What sort of hole gets left as we grow to adulthood, just what it is that we use to replace our parents—that is something influenced both individually (marital status) and culturally.
Not all human cultures include a triple-omni God, so far as I know. Some have gods, possibly with a remote Creator behind them that (I think) doesn’t generally interact with people.
I’m tentative about metaphysics, not just because I haven’t studied religions in detail, but because it’s not easy to get at the background beliefs of people from your own culture when you’re talking with them, so I assume that there’s going to be much more guesswork about people from more distant cultures or when there’s only texts and art to make deductions from.
Even if the triple-omni God had to be invented, the popularity of religions which include one suggests that there’s a strong want for one even if it isn’t a biological need.
Maybe it is only a desire for perfection and inability to cope with infinities, not particularly concerned with god? All scales have something at the top, and for goodness, power and wisdom, the top rank is occupied by god, by coincidence. You know, the logic of Aquinas’ fourth argument.
Even if the triple-omni God had to be invented, the popularity of religions which include one suggests that there’s a strong want for one even if it isn’t a biological need.
I have a strange tautological feeling from the statement, which I am probably not able to formulate precisely at the moment, but let me try. If the need isn’t biological, then it had to be memetic, which may, or may not depend on religion. Since not all cultures have invented an omnimax god, the memetic structure which creates the need is probably dependent on having the omnigod religion, or alternatively said, it is the religion itself. So, your statement in principle reduces to “omnimax-god religions are self-propagating/memetically successful”, which is a statement about the religions, not about the mind itself. If it had to be interpreted as a statement about the mind, then one could say “the mind is vulnerable to special type of religions”, but doesn’t that postulate a biological need, if any?
(I apologise for being a nitpicking theologist-like sophist here, but sometimes I can’t resist. I still haven’t decided whether a notion of a non-biological god-shaped hole makes even sense, so I want to start discussion which can clarify it a bit.)
No apology needed. If what I’m saying seems vague, it may be because it is vague.
I’m not sure what counts as a biological need. Do people have a television-shaped hole?
The whole thing is very weird for me, possibly because I don’t have a God-shaped hole.
I’ve just been reading somewhat by people who hate a great deal of what the Catholic Church is doing, but they’re still Catholics because they can’t imagine being anything else. And these are smart people.
I don’t think the human psyche has a “god-shaped hole”, but I do think there are a bunch of other things people need which religions provide, including weekly community gatherings (services), an inducement to concretely specify desires (prayer), a person to talk to about sensitive topics confidentially (confession), and a moral framework. All of these can be had elsewhere, but lacking any one of these is a big deal and non-religious people often end up missing one.
A very important (and often overlooked) one is a setting in which it is socially acceptable to express strong positive emotions and very high levels of enthusiasm.
It seems likely that people really do have a biological (not memetic) god or authority figure-shaped hole in their lives (on top of naturally making way too many Type II errors, not seeing why ‘goddidit’ isn’t an explanation, et cetera), probably weakest in modern hunter gatherer tribes and strongest in regions with a long uninterrupted systems of agriculture (5,000 years or so). (See The 10,000 Year Explosion.) This lets me sympathize with theists a little more: there are evolutionary reasons to be really frickin’ scared of an empty universe with no easy instructions to follow.
Added: As far as I can tell this comment was pretty off-the-mark, even by armchair theorizing standards. See prase’s reply and my reply to prase’s reply below.
Is the hole really biological? I was raised in an atheist family and never took religion as a serious possibility. It may be the reason that the phrases “meaning of life” and “purpose of life” were almost incomprehensible to me. Any suggestions that “meaning of life is X” I have interpreted as “you shouldn’t just enjoy your life, since you must do X”, and I have always felt quite strong negative emotions when the topic was discussed (which wasn’t too often, fortunately).
Of course, my anecdote doesn’t disprove the general existence of a biological god-shaped hole, but it would be good to investigate how much atheists who are not interested in philosophy really consider the question of “meaning of life” as meaningful or important.
prase:
Forgive me for asking a personal question, and of course please feel free to refuse to answer should you be so inclined, but are you by any chance Czech? I’m asking because I see here a potential instance of some cultural differences I find extremely interesting, and before elaborating, I’d like to see if my guess might be correct.
Yes, I am Czech. Could you elaborate on the cultural differences you have in mind? Is it really possible to guess person’s ethnicity from the attitude towards “purpose of life”, or did you use other available heuristics to guess?
It’s a very complex topic, but to put it as succinctly as possible, the key difference is between self-declared atheists who truly appear as such, and those who insist on their atheism, but various quasi-religious elements are nevertheless clearly discernible in their lives and worldviews (to the point where I would dispute whether it makes sense to exclude them from the general definition of “religion”).
Overall, my impression is that among the atheists found in North America, those of the latter kind are far more frequent and prominent compared to the post-Communist Eastern Europe, with Western Europe being somewhere in-between, but closer to North America. (Of course, these large geographical regions contain parts of greatly different religiosity, but what I write tends to be true for the local atheists found there regardless of their percentage in the local population.) Why this is so, and what exact quasi-religious elements are commonly seen among different sorts of self-declared non-religious people, are complex and fascinating questions, which are however difficult to discuss because they touch on many ideologically sensitive issues.
When I read people’s writings on all sorts of issues, I can usually discern the two types of atheists pretty quickly and reliably, and based on your comments I’ve read in this thread and elsewhere, you do seem to belong to the true sort like you declare. Assuming you’re writing from somewhere in Europe or the Anglosphere, as most people here are, this by itself places a significant probability on you being Eastern European, and more specifically from one of the less religious EE states, like Hungary, Czech Republic, or various former Soviet republics (as opposed to much more religious places like Poland or Croatia). Considering that your username is the word for “piglet” in several (but not all) Slavic languages, one of which is Czech, this seemed like a high-probability guess. Also, some additional evidence is that your English is excellent but still a little bit Slavic-souding, and your writing has a slight and vague quality typical of Central Europe that is very hard to explain. (By the way, if you’re curious, I’m Croatian.)
Voted up for the sheer awesome deduction tree. Almost Sherlock-holmes-ish, though some insider knowledge is involved.
This is probably in agreement with my anecdotal experience, but I haven’t realised it explicitly before. What I can think about at the moment is the webpage Daylight Atheism, whose author had spent a lot of time defending the concept of atheist spirituality (e.g. here), and there was usually surprisingly little opposition in the comments.
It means simply “pig” in Czech.
My original idea was that you were Russian, and after reading your previous comment, I have put a non-negligible probability to you being Czech too; hence, my nationality-predicting abilities are visibly inferior to yours.
Can you identify some specific instances of Slavic sounding structures in my writing? It could help me to eliminate them.
prase:
I don’t have in mind only such overt manifestations of quasi-religiosity, but also the way many people find beliefs and causes that technically don’t involve any supernatural elements, yet nevertheless become objects of mystical reverence in their lives, and are altogether impervious to any rational discussion. In many cases, I would argue that such beliefs effectively involve postulating the existence of metaphysical entities which, while not anthropomorphic, are no less imaginary than the deities postulated by various traditional religions. (One philosopher who made some original and radical inquiries along these lines was Max Stirner.) But this is a really difficult and controversial topic.
One thing that’s almost impossibly difficult for Slavic speakers is the use of articles, and you sometimes drop them in a quite Slavic-sounding way (I still do it occasionally too). However, these are just small and occasional things; your English is at a near-native level, and very well written overall. (Also, I should note that I probably notice this sort of thing more than a typical reader because I have a hobbyist interest in linguistics.)
Why do you think that is? Longer history of atheism?
I do think that “converts” (either to a religion or to atheism) think differently than people who were raised in their current belief system. If you’re childhood was religious, then you’ll associate religion with childhood and your parents, either negatively (“religion is childish”) or positively (“religion is comforting.”)
I suppose the history of atheism, measured by many reasonable criteria, is actually longer in North America than in Eastern Europe. Yes, the atheism was state sponsored for 40-50 years in Eastern European countries (70 years in the Soviet union), but it was often imposed on thoroughly religious societies. Practically all intellectual innovations were coming from the West.
Some possible (not experimentally tested and probably false) causes of the differences in atheists’ thinking:
1) The communist ideology has used “atheism” and “materialism” practically interchangeably. The latter term has connotations which put it into opposition to all “purpose of life” questions, which are usually associated with idealism (in Marxist terminology, idealism and materialism are two disjoint complementary types of worldview). Therefore, people who consider questions of “purpose of life” important aren’t comfortable with calling themselves atheists in former communist countries.
2) The word “atheist” is sometimes used as an insult in the US (rarely so in Czech republic, I have no idea about rest of Eastern Europe). The US atheists have adopted the term in order to signal their opposition to organised religion, however they have to compensate the associated negative feeling of being perceived as immoral, and they compensate it by frequent thinking about ethics, morality and purpose of life.
3) There were several intellectuals in the West who identified themselves as atheists and set the standard for atheist philosophy, where questions about purpose of life are meaningful. (Somebody who knows the writings of e.g. Bertrand Russell better than me should tell whether this isn’t sheer nonsense. I can’t think about any instance of famous self-proclaimed atheist writing about purpose of life.) On the contrary, Eastern Europe lacks any credible atheist intellectual tradition.
4) The word atheism has simply a sligthly different meaning on different sides of the Iron curtain. The difference has evolved rather randomly, without any specific cause.
Unfortunately I can provide no means of testing the above claims.
SarahC:
Well, as I said, that question is very hard to answer not only because it’s complex and involves many concepts that aren’t amenable to a no-nonsense scientific approach, but also because any sensible answer must include ideologically sensitive claims. History of ideas is a fascinating subject, but also an extraordinarily difficult one.
I don’t have anything like a complete and plausible theory that would answer your question, but one thing of which I am certain is that such a theory should start with re-examining the standard notion of “religion,” which I believe has outlived its usefulness in the modern world, and is nowadays creating more confusion than insight. But getting even just into that topic means opening enormous cans of worms.
Hm, I’m one of those always-been-atheists who’s also always been interested in the whole ‘purpose of life’ thing. Now that I think about it though, most of the people my age (teenagers) who I talk to (say, 15 people out of 20) have the same attitude as the one you express in your comment: basically, not really caring about religions or gods (or barely nominally caring) and when prompted with philosophical questions quickly exclaiming that they just want to live life and have fun. Updating on this evidence and taking into account that memetic explanations should trump biological ones in the first place, my hypothesis was probably heavily skewed towards a careless genetic explanation based off a pet theory. Interesting biases to have uncovered. Thanks!
Do you remember how did you get interested in it? Did the question appear spontaneously to you, or did you acquire it from reading and then find it interesting? And in what age approximately? (I hope you don’t find the questions too personal, however it’s always interesting to find people with different intuitions.)
I think we are biologically primed to treat our parents as authority figures. What sort of hole gets left as we grow to adulthood, just what it is that we use to replace our parents—that is something influenced both individually (marital status) and culturally.
Not all human cultures include a triple-omni God, so far as I know. Some have gods, possibly with a remote Creator behind them that (I think) doesn’t generally interact with people.
I’m tentative about metaphysics, not just because I haven’t studied religions in detail, but because it’s not easy to get at the background beliefs of people from your own culture when you’re talking with them, so I assume that there’s going to be much more guesswork about people from more distant cultures or when there’s only texts and art to make deductions from.
Even if the triple-omni God had to be invented, the popularity of religions which include one suggests that there’s a strong want for one even if it isn’t a biological need.
Maybe it is only a desire for perfection and inability to cope with infinities, not particularly concerned with god? All scales have something at the top, and for goodness, power and wisdom, the top rank is occupied by god, by coincidence. You know, the logic of Aquinas’ fourth argument.
I have a strange tautological feeling from the statement, which I am probably not able to formulate precisely at the moment, but let me try. If the need isn’t biological, then it had to be memetic, which may, or may not depend on religion. Since not all cultures have invented an omnimax god, the memetic structure which creates the need is probably dependent on having the omnigod religion, or alternatively said, it is the religion itself. So, your statement in principle reduces to “omnimax-god religions are self-propagating/memetically successful”, which is a statement about the religions, not about the mind itself. If it had to be interpreted as a statement about the mind, then one could say “the mind is vulnerable to special type of religions”, but doesn’t that postulate a biological need, if any?
(I apologise for being a nitpicking theologist-like sophist here, but sometimes I can’t resist. I still haven’t decided whether a notion of a non-biological god-shaped hole makes even sense, so I want to start discussion which can clarify it a bit.)
No apology needed. If what I’m saying seems vague, it may be because it is vague.
I’m not sure what counts as a biological need. Do people have a television-shaped hole?
The whole thing is very weird for me, possibly because I don’t have a God-shaped hole.
I’ve just been reading somewhat by people who hate a great deal of what the Catholic Church is doing, but they’re still Catholics because they can’t imagine being anything else. And these are smart people.
Perhaps they do. But more likely the adoption of the “God-hole” term is a mistake. Adoption of concepts made by theists is a mistake relatively often.
I don’t think the human psyche has a “god-shaped hole”, but I do think there are a bunch of other things people need which religions provide, including weekly community gatherings (services), an inducement to concretely specify desires (prayer), a person to talk to about sensitive topics confidentially (confession), and a moral framework. All of these can be had elsewhere, but lacking any one of these is a big deal and non-religious people often end up missing one.
The way I’ve seen it phrased here before is that people do not have a god-shaped hole, rather they have a hole-shaped god.
A very important (and often overlooked) one is a setting in which it is socially acceptable to express strong positive emotions and very high levels of enthusiasm.