Not necessarily. The article claims they said "There is no evidence for god" (or the like) when asked "What were your reasons for becoming atheist", and gave a personal story involving much emotional turmoil when asked "What led you to become an atheist." If the article is to be believed, they also didn't notice any incongruity/disconnect/whateveryouwannacallit between those two accounts.

Also, all I claimed was that the sentence, as given in the piece, suggests the former reading. Otherwise, neither the "for" nor the "but" make much sense. Is there a counter other than "but that'd be absurd" that I missed?

Maybe I'm missing something, but the bolded does not appear anywhere in the article. As far as I can see, this two-stage questioning process is entirely your own creation.

I think it also captures my reading that the kids mostly started listing exclusively rational reasons and the emotional reasons were given or inferred later. This also comports with the story of Phil. If Phil had explicitly stated that he had "ONLY rational reasons" it is strange that he didn't make some justification when the emotional component was suggested. On my view his nonchalance makes perfect sense.

I didn't say it was a "two-step questioning process." I thought I made it clear that if anything is two-part, it's the perspective - one the self-reported reasons of those being interviewed, one the conjectured (additional) reasons that became apparent through their testimony.

So we're suddenly talking about a transcript? It's not even clear that an emotional component was verbally suggested. All that the article reports is the question "that was around the time Jim was fired."

This entire discussion is taking a turn to the silly. The text states some things. You are perfectly entitled to hold that what the text appears to state would be absurd and that it therefore must mean something else.

Me, not finding that a terribly presuasive argument, remain mildly interested in the text as it is written.

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.

I doubt you'll find many inquiring believers who have not, at one point or other, questioned their faith. I eventually got sick of all the worrying and simply decided to make Tuesday my doubt day.

A very trivial example: Oh, that orange looks delicious! *munch munch*

I'm not sure I'm necessarily thinking that emotional decisions are better, but I'm fairly certain that IF I make a purely emotional decision about something very drastic and life-changing, I'll be very capable of finding many persuasive rationalizations afterwards.
On top of that, I do think that our emotions and our reasoning can both be in sync (meaning that when I decide against something on a 'bad feeling', it usually turns out that bad feeling was justified for good reasons) and relate to different "areas".

Where is the emotional element in this decision? A tasty-looking orange is one you recollect from how previous oranges have looked / tasted (it was ripe), just as a rancid-looking orange would turn out to be disgusting (it was rotten) .

If an emotional decision could not be rationalized later, but you come up with a rational but opposite conclusion, would you change your decision (assuming it was still possible), or would you stay with the original emotional one? The answer to this clearly indicates which we consider the better decision making method.

I don't have any links, but I seem to recall hearing about how so-called intuition might be better explained by subconscious cues we weren't aware of at the time. If something 'feels' wrong, we might have picked up on some data that would explain why.

Anyway, nothing more to add, but I am genuinely surprised at your views on the value of emotion in decision making.

The emotional element is that I think "Yummy", rather than "Bluergh!!" (I'll get back to that)

Well, here you're essentially asking: "If you could chose between an emotional, yet irrational action and a rational, yet possibly unemotional action - which would you chose?" I don't think this is a reasonable question to decide the value of emotional decision making on, as we as human beings conceptualize our continued existence as one of self-identity (it was me being that kid, not it's me being that adult and we're the same person) and this self-identity is maintained by creating a (mostly) rational self-narrative. So asking "would you rather be irrational" at some point ceases to be a rational question.
And again - I'm not saying that emotional decisions are better or even that they are of same value - and certainly not in every situation (It would be silly to claim that it's equally legit for Obama to decide on a drone strike by simply emotional or rational decision-finding).

Sure, but then you're simply begging the question - then ALL decisions end up being "rational", we might just not know why. That may be what brain science ends up telling us, but I'd argue it flies in the face of our introspection and that therefore the distinction in every-day life is meaningful to maintain.

This goes back to the oranges. Of course I can analyze my emotional "yum" as some kind of comparison with similar shaped/smelling objects etc. etc. but it seems quite obvious that this is not what's "consciously happening" when I see an orange and think I should eat it. Probably it's what my brain is doing on some lower level - that doesn't mean that "I'm" doing it.

There is a multibillion dollar group of people whose entire job revolves around having us make decisions based on emotions. Many of them can be found on Madison Ave.

If this is too cryptic, Ill be direct and say that the whole advertising business is built on making supposedly rational consumers get certain emotions that make them act in accordance with their product presented.

The is even more apparent during the end of an election cycle.

I would even say that it is rare that we make purely rational decisions as humans. I think that we are more apt to make purely emotional ones but that those are almost as rare. I think that probably most of our decisions are a mix of the two in different degrees... but that's just my gut feeling.

Emotion is clearly stronger than rationality when both are part of a decision to be made, and that is why advertising and marketing techniques try to tap into that side of us. I don't anyone would disagree with that, but nor is it controversial to say that highly rational decisions are more likely to be 'successful' than highly emotional decisions.

While this is quite a trek off-topic, it is still relevant to RGT as there are examples of certain types of apologists giving advice about proselytizing in the form of "you need to find a way to bypass their intellect". I'm not suggesting that these are the kind of apologists you would support, but they are still very popular.

PS I disagree strongly about the orange, the "mmmm" reaction is very clearly our memory recalling the delicious oranges we have eaten in the past, and that is the reason we have that positive emotional reaction. But I don't disagree with the general point that if we are unaware of the hidden rational reasons for some decision, we can't really say how meaningful that is to us at the time the decision is made. It reminds me of the studies that show our subconscious has already made a decision in advance of us consciously picking one of several options.

But you forget some of the problems America has had lately in politics.

Even though there is a high rational for increasing gun regulation, registration, and prohibition of certain kinds of people from owning them, we still dont have strong or comprehensive gun control.

In universal healthcare, the most rational system given was the Single Payer system where everything was centralized yet it was shot down by "Death Panels".

These have all been MAJOR issues in recent years, ones where you would think and hope that reason would win out because they are just that important... but it hasn't

In fact, the rationality I see isn't pure reason but is more like a justified emotional response. Or as Colbert has coined the idea: "truthyness".

So what is it about the atheist that automatically makes his conclusions about the Hereafter free from emotional roots? How is it that they have managed to get past the tenancies of the rest of the world?

Do you consider the accumulation of past experiences of pleasure that are associated with oranges to be rational, emotional, or neither?

If your answer is anything but rational, would it be fair to say that your enjoyment of oranges is not rationally grounded, hence your "mmmm" reaction is similarly not rationally grounded?

These ares just the last flaps of a topic talked to death...

I don't think so. My past experiences and recollections cause me to go "Yummy!" (rather than, say, "Pretty!"). The emotional reaction causes that I go either of the two in the first place.

The orange example is rather trivial, there's no downside to it (but perhaps "disagree strongly" is not what I meant). Smoking might be a better example, for someone that really enjoys smoking but is also aware of the dangers. There would be emotional and rational ideas going into the decision to keep smoking, but the balance probably changes significantly when they are craving a cigarette (addiction adds a curve-ball to this example making it less clear cut), when they are enjoying one, or when they are reading some health literature, etc.

Gun control / regulation is a timely example, emotions run high on both sides of the argument. Bans on assault weapons, scary-looking, "who needs such a powerful weapon", and so on - compare that with the frequency that such weapons are involved in incidents which I believe it is very low = irrational / emotional arguments. It goes both ways of course, a common one being that the 2nd amendment is "sacred" and as such is beyond being reviewed or re-amended, which is also a bad argument.

Duco, you asked what it was about atheists that made them different? It's a valid question. Perhaps some have managed to put aside their emotions for this particular belief, that doesn't mean that they do that consistently in other areas. I'm sure some atheists have come to their position through emotional arguments. I don't really know how to answer the question, I am the less common (in the US) always-been-atheist, and cannot recall emotion being of any significance to my decision making re: religion. Let's also recognise that the % of self-identified atheists is still very low, perhaps the more rational-oriented atheists are simply a rarity at this point in history. Let's also recognise that leaving religion will be fraught with emotion, and its much easier for someone like me to attach so little emotion to it.

The bolded sounds just like a lot of the people in the churches that Ive grown up in except you would replace atheist with christian. Its not strange to think about, but some people have come to their worldviews not just through their own rationality but because that's what they've always had. If you always have looked and acted in the world a certain way you will continue to do so in an almost automatic fashion until something, abruptly, makes you consider something else. Im not saying necessarily that you haven't thought of these and it would be shortsighted to say that just because you grew up a certain way of seeing the world doesn't mean you automatically take it blindly. Though, as long as their view works for them, I think most people do and only minority actually challenge themselves to vet whatever view they hold.

I guess what Im trying to say is that just because you have always thought (or brought up to think) a certain way, doesn't necessarily mean you have come to its conclusion rationally. It doesn't necessarily mean it hasn't... but it's nothing to assume considering how lazy thinkers we humans are (me especially).

Id suggest here that as humans we have a strong will to live and the idea of a hereafter is generally a pleasant one. Emotionally there is an appeal to such a concept but its far more likely to be rational thought that makes you discard it rather than emotional.

I would guess his point was to raise doubts about the pure/predominant rationality of atheist reasoning: "Rationality I see isn't pure reason but is more like a justified emotional response" - which, if true, would mean that atheist rationality is either a special kind of rationality (Ha, you'd like that, wouldn't you!? ) or is the same kind of garbled mix that we usually use.