I thought I'd get one more post in at least, as TTHRIC. In no particular order:
I am distrustful of the author's ability to overcome his own bias. He tells us that
he thinks Phil was surprised at the linking of two events ("he
seemed surprised", rather than "he
was surprised" or "he
expressed surprise"). Nitty, perhaps? Ironic that I am performing amateur psych on the author's own amateur psych? Sure
But he gave no particular reason to accept this assessment beyond his feelings, and honestly that was the way the whole article came across. I think it was on his own web site that he mentioned that the results of the study will be released when it is complete, so perhaps we will get some actual data then.
Speaking of the two 'linked' events, remember Phil was asked when he first thought of himself as an atheist, not when he first started to doubt his faith. I have never held any religious beliefs so I can only refer to testimony from others, but I think it is common for the process to take some time, and rarely will someone consider themselves an atheist almost immediately. If so, wouldn't it be fair to say that Phil had been examining his doubts somewhat in advance of the change in Church leadership, making it a red herring?
re: emotional decision-making, can you give me an example of making a good decision that was based on emotion? To contrast, I might compare "I don't think my gf is cheating on me, because we love each other / she wouldn't do that to me / etc" is a poor decision based on emotion, vs "I don't think my gf is cheating on me because she never leaves the house without me / is too busy / etc" is a better decision that is not based on emotion. There's got to be better examples than that, but I am so surprised you think emotional decisions are, if not better than, then at least as good as more rational decision making, that I must be misunderstanding what you mean. I think there has been quite a lot of misunderstandings ITT, your final comment just went to highlight it: I asked what topics you found most interesting, you answered "Religion is a net -ve". And yet, since we are talking about this Atlantic article, and you had expressed how interesting you found it, and I had also stated I found it dis-interesting, I thought it was obvious that I was asking which topic in the Atlantic article you found the most interesting!
You don't have to continue this if you're done with this thread, it is getting a bit tedious.