I’ve heard several stories in the last few months of former theists becoming atheists after reading The God Delusion or similar Four-Horsemen tract. This conflicts with my prior model of those books being mostly paper applause lights that couldn’t possibly change anyone’s mind.
Insofar as atheism seems like super-low-hanging fruit on the tree of increased sanity, having an accurate model for what gets people to take a bite might be useful.
Has anyone done any research on what makes former believers drop religion? More generally, any common triggers that lead people to try to get more sane?
I can tell you what triggered me becoming an atheist.
I was reading a lot of Isaac Asimov books, including the non-fiction ones. I gained respect for him. After learning he was an atheist, it started being a possibility I considered. From there, I was able to figure out which possibility was right on my own.
This seems to be a trend. I never seriously worried about animals until joining felicifia.org where a lot of people do. I never seriously considered that wild animals’ lives aren’t worth living until I found out some of the people on there do. I think it’s a lot harder to seriously consider an idea if nobody you respect holds it. Just knowing that a good portion of the population is atheist isn’t enough. Once you know one person, it doesn’t matter how many people hold the opposite opinion. You are now capable of considering it.
I didn’t think unfriendly AI was a serious risk until I came here, but that might have been more about the arguments. I figured that an AI could just be programmed to do what you tell it to and nothing more (and from there can be given Asimov-style laws). It wasn’t until I learned more about the nature of intelligence that I realized that that is not likely going to be easy. Intelligence is inherently goal-based, and it will maximize whatever utility function you give it.
Theism isn’t about god. It has also social and therefore strong emotional consequences. If I stop being a theist, does it mean I will lose my friends, my family will become more cold to me, and I will lose an access to world’s most wide social networks?
In such case the new required information isn’t a disproved miracle or an essay on Occam’s razor. That has zero impact on the social consequences. It’s more important to get an evidence that there is a lot of atheists, they can be happy, and some of them are considered very cool even outside of atheist circles. (And after having this evidence, somehow, the essays about Occam’s razor become more convincing.)
Or let’s look at it from the opposite side: Even the most stupid demostrations of faith send the message that it is socially accepted to be religious; that after joining a religion you will never be alone. Religion is so widespread not because the priests are extra cool or extra intelligent. It’s because they are extra visible and extra audacious: they have no problem declaring that everyone who disagrees with them is stupid and evil and will go to hell (or some more polite version of this, which still gets the message across) -- and our brains perceive that as a demonstration of social power, and it triggers our instinct to join the winning side.
Complaining about Dawkins that he is too audacious, too impolite, and seems too certain—that is complaining that he is using the winning strategy. Certainly he would be more palatable to his opponents if he chose a losing strategy instead, like most atheists are socially conditioned to do. He should be extra humble and mumble in a silent voice “we can never know for sure...” until some cocksure priest goes around and says “shut up you idiot, I am sure, my followers are sure, and you will burn in hell” and then all believers will clap their hands about this demonstration of power. Well, Dawkins is smart enough to refuse to play this game, probably because he understands the rules.
(There is a different topic about whether this approach is optimal for epistemic rationality. Probably it isn’t. But it simply means that in the middle of a battle it is not the best moment to read your textbooks; you do that in the safety of your home. Religious people are motivated to be wrong—before that motivation is gone, they are likely to be harmed by the atheists’ expressions of humility.)
Under the usual convention that “reply to” means “disagree with”, it certainly does. :D
Although the “some of them are considered very cool even outside of atheist circles” part was inspired by you mentioning Asimov. (Only the remaining 99% aren’t.)
My original question was basically asking for evidence for your hypothesis (religion is mostly a social motivated-reasoning thing, and the best way to fix it is to demonstrate (over)confidence and social acceptance) or alternative hypothesis. It sounds plausible, but I don’t think anyone has actually tried to check with any degree of rigor.
Found a book: Deconversion: Qualitative and Quantitative Results from Cross-Cultural Research in Germany and the United States of America. It’s recent (2011) and seems to be the best research on the subject available right now. Does anyone have access to a copy?
There’s a PDF (legal, even!) here, linked next to “download”.
See also their website/theologie/forschung/religionsforschung/forschung/streib/dekonversion/), which is probably more digestible.
Well, this is anecdata, but when I was an atheist, I found God Delusion frustrating and not worth handing to my Christian friends, since it attacked lowest common denominator Christianity a lot, and my friends tended to be nerdy Thomists. Plus, I find a lot of Four Horseman stuff frustrating because they rarely construct something of their own to defend (though I understand the sense of urgency to knock people out of their current worldview—if you find it abhorrent enough—and let them land where they may).
Has anyone done any research on what makes former believers drop religion?
I recently came across this, from the theist perspective (i.e. they tracked down people who had left and interviewed them, with the hope to prevent that in the future), and I remember it hinged mostly on social factors. (The enthusiastic youth pastor quits, and is replaced by someone that doesn’t know the Bible as well, etc.)
I’m sure there are some people who deconverted because of reading those books- but it’s likely that they also would have deconverted if they moved from Town A to Town B, for example, so that doesn’t seem like a terribly effective way to reach everyone.
I think another thing to remember here is sampling bias. The actual conversion/deconversion probably mostly is the end point of a lengthy intellectual process. People far along that process probably aren’t very representative of people not going through it and it would be much more interesting what gets the process started.
To add some more anecdata, my reaction to that style of argumentation was almost diametrically opposed. I suspect this is fairly common on both sides of the divide, but not being convinced by some specific argument just isn’t such a catchy story, so you would hear it less.
I’ve heard several stories in the last few months of former theists becoming atheists after reading The God Delusion or similar Four-Horsemen tract. This conflicts with my prior model of those books being mostly paper applause lights that couldn’t possibly change anyone’s mind.
Insofar as atheism seems like super-low-hanging fruit on the tree of increased sanity, having an accurate model for what gets people to take a bite might be useful.
Has anyone done any research on what makes former believers drop religion? More generally, any common triggers that lead people to try to get more sane?
Edit: Found a book: Deconversion: Qualitative and Quantitative Results from Cross-Cultural Research in Germany and the United States of America. It’s recent (2011) and seems to be the best research on the subject available right now. Does anyone have access to a copy?
I can tell you what triggered me becoming an atheist.
I was reading a lot of Isaac Asimov books, including the non-fiction ones. I gained respect for him. After learning he was an atheist, it started being a possibility I considered. From there, I was able to figure out which possibility was right on my own.
This seems to be a trend. I never seriously worried about animals until joining felicifia.org where a lot of people do. I never seriously considered that wild animals’ lives aren’t worth living until I found out some of the people on there do. I think it’s a lot harder to seriously consider an idea if nobody you respect holds it. Just knowing that a good portion of the population is atheist isn’t enough. Once you know one person, it doesn’t matter how many people hold the opposite opinion. You are now capable of considering it.
I didn’t think unfriendly AI was a serious risk until I came here, but that might have been more about the arguments. I figured that an AI could just be programmed to do what you tell it to and nothing more (and from there can be given Asimov-style laws). It wasn’t until I learned more about the nature of intelligence that I realized that that is not likely going to be easy. Intelligence is inherently goal-based, and it will maximize whatever utility function you give it.
Theism isn’t about god. It has also social and therefore strong emotional consequences. If I stop being a theist, does it mean I will lose my friends, my family will become more cold to me, and I will lose an access to world’s most wide social networks?
In such case the new required information isn’t a disproved miracle or an essay on Occam’s razor. That has zero impact on the social consequences. It’s more important to get an evidence that there is a lot of atheists, they can be happy, and some of them are considered very cool even outside of atheist circles. (And after having this evidence, somehow, the essays about Occam’s razor become more convincing.)
Or let’s look at it from the opposite side: Even the most stupid demostrations of faith send the message that it is socially accepted to be religious; that after joining a religion you will never be alone. Religion is so widespread not because the priests are extra cool or extra intelligent. It’s because they are extra visible and extra audacious: they have no problem declaring that everyone who disagrees with them is stupid and evil and will go to hell (or some more polite version of this, which still gets the message across) -- and our brains perceive that as a demonstration of social power, and it triggers our instinct to join the winning side.
Complaining about Dawkins that he is too audacious, too impolite, and seems too certain—that is complaining that he is using the winning strategy. Certainly he would be more palatable to his opponents if he chose a losing strategy instead, like most atheists are socially conditioned to do. He should be extra humble and mumble in a silent voice “we can never know for sure...” until some cocksure priest goes around and says “shut up you idiot, I am sure, my followers are sure, and you will burn in hell” and then all believers will clap their hands about this demonstration of power. Well, Dawkins is smart enough to refuse to play this game, probably because he understands the rules.
(There is a different topic about whether this approach is optimal for epistemic rationality. Probably it isn’t. But it simply means that in the middle of a battle it is not the best moment to read your textbooks; you do that in the safety of your home. Religious people are motivated to be wrong—before that motivation is gone, they are likely to be harmed by the atheists’ expressions of humility.)
That looks like more of a reply to the parent comment than to mine.
Under the usual convention that “reply to” means “disagree with”, it certainly does. :D
Although the “some of them are considered very cool even outside of atheist circles” part was inspired by you mentioning Asimov. (Only the remaining 99% aren’t.)
My original question was basically asking for evidence for your hypothesis (religion is mostly a social motivated-reasoning thing, and the best way to fix it is to demonstrate (over)confidence and social acceptance) or alternative hypothesis. It sounds plausible, but I don’t think anyone has actually tried to check with any degree of rigor.
There’s a PDF (legal, even!) here, linked next to “download”.
See also their website/theologie/forschung/religionsforschung/forschung/streib/dekonversion/), which is probably more digestible.
Well, this is anecdata, but when I was an atheist, I found God Delusion frustrating and not worth handing to my Christian friends, since it attacked lowest common denominator Christianity a lot, and my friends tended to be nerdy Thomists. Plus, I find a lot of Four Horseman stuff frustrating because they rarely construct something of their own to defend (though I understand the sense of urgency to knock people out of their current worldview—if you find it abhorrent enough—and let them land where they may).
You say “when I was an atheist”. Running into ex-atheists is a rare thing, especially here—may I ask what changed your mind?
I recently came across this, from the theist perspective (i.e. they tracked down people who had left and interviewed them, with the hope to prevent that in the future), and I remember it hinged mostly on social factors. (The enthusiastic youth pastor quits, and is replaced by someone that doesn’t know the Bible as well, etc.)
I’m sure there are some people who deconverted because of reading those books- but it’s likely that they also would have deconverted if they moved from Town A to Town B, for example, so that doesn’t seem like a terribly effective way to reach everyone.
I think another thing to remember here is sampling bias. The actual conversion/deconversion probably mostly is the end point of a lengthy intellectual process. People far along that process probably aren’t very representative of people not going through it and it would be much more interesting what gets the process started.
To add some more anecdata, my reaction to that style of argumentation was almost diametrically opposed. I suspect this is fairly common on both sides of the divide, but not being convinced by some specific argument just isn’t such a catchy story, so you would hear it less.