Appendix A. Summary List of Factors Reinforcing the Local Religion
Condensed, reorganized list of items detailed in Chapters 3 and 4
Personal factors (acquired early)
1 traditionalists and lovers of ceremony, conservative personality
2 loyalty to parents and their early training
3 love of authority, including bible engendered authority; a need to follow a father-figure leader
4 aversion to admitting mistakes, aversion to admitting ignorance (related to 1)
5 conservative politics
6 loyalty to local community and close relatives
7 conformity, society and training driven shame of being an atheist
8 loyalty to religious spouse
9 acquired perception that religious people and Republicans are more wholesome – confounding liberalism with Democratic Party confounded with poverty and its acts of desperation that drive people to crime and drugs, free sex, STDs, abortions
10 wealth of church and its supporters, aversion to poverty
11 disgust with nakedness and sex, leading easily to disgust with the idea of abortion; disgust for human copulation, lesbianism, homosexual activities aversion to sex out of wedlock in the missionary position; confounded these with aversion to liberality, accentuated by Christian doctrine and practice
12 learned aversion to the word “atheist”
13 aversion to change; difficulty of changing whole family
14 fear of wild, amoral world without religion
The big questions
15 fear of death (pain, loss of health and mobility, loss of dignity)
16 horribleness of the dying process (related to 15, 17)
17 does death means the end of friendships and cherished relationships?
18 frustration of not seeing what happens next (related to 15, 17)
19 where did mankind, plants, and other animals come from? the creation (literal bible’s narrative) or evolution (modern science)? The Bible agrees with my intuition
20 why do people seem to be special and above the other animals?
21 I have a sense of individuality, a sense of self, an awareness center with an ego. I’m important beyond other animals. I think abstract thoughts, love, have motions, sings songs but also I’m the pilots the sometimes clumsy and untidy animal contained in the same crowded body as I, the pilot. It feels like I need to live forever. What I see is the only movie in town, hence the only movie. I must have a part that goes on, a special essence of my individual weaknesses and strengths, and I’ll call that a soul
22 what is the nature of my soul? I feel it always existed, although I first became aware of it in early childhood, and it will always exist even after I die, which itself seems impossible and unthinkable (related to 21)
23 death is unacceptable because of the emptiness, disappearance of sense of self, fear of the loss of one’s own soul (related to 15, 17, 21)
24 is my great grandpa’s soul still around, available, or affecting local life on earth in some way?
25 why is there extreme poverty in the world, thinking of the poorest third-world people?
26 why are there evil people who purposely harm other innocent people?
27 are there bad entities such as devils and angels?
28 are there gods with intelligence and supernatural power?
29 is there absolute evil and absolute good?
30 what is morality? Is it well specified in religious scriptures? Which ones?
31 how could I accept the world as it is without the cushion or crutch of faith?
Human quirks, lack of curiosity, lack of intelligence
32 tribalism, love for or comfort from being in an exclusive club, community bonding
33 refusal to consider themselves an animal, a mammal, an ape, a primate
34 people who are convinced they are too stupid to learn and argue for science; or don’t have the time, can’t be bothered, other things seem more important, don’t see increasing credulity as a threat, require a scaffolding, even if false or outlandishly stupid scaffolding, more important than truth
35 laziness, science is too complicated and therefore prefer the simplicity of publicized populist narrative over evidence-supported scientific theories
36 winning an old argument is more important than arriving at truth, win-lose people (not win-win people)
37 compartmentalization (being reasonable every day except Sunday). So what if science proves Bible wrong? morals through God; forces and motion through science, non-overlapping magisteria is a subset of compartmentalization
Affected by propaganda (of church, parents, relatives)
38 multifront Christian nationalist disinformation and propaganda war
39 pro church propaganda driven by church tithing (money) and zealotry
40 relentless propaganda from religious institutions and devout parents instilling religious habits
41 religion is the only way to get good morality; a priori equating morality with a religion (especially the religion of one’s parents), a god, major prophets, scriptures, anointed highly revered priests and imams
42 belief in the belief of God (related to 9)
43 bible warnings against mingling with nonbelievers, freethinkers
44 disciples of an evangelist or a conversion experience
45 media propaganda, made up stories, trolling, and disinformation programs (related to 60, 64)
46 anti-science because it contradicts bible and religions and their highly revered teachings
47 purposeful fostering of ignorance and populism in the masses (related to 38, 49, 51, 52)
48 aversion to everything new science turns up that conflicts with traditional beliefs
49 culture war by wealthy conservative institutions like Discovery Institute, focus on the family, moral majority, evangelical institutions including The Discovery Institute, Center for Science and Culture, the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, American Family News Network, Breitbart, , FOX News, One World Now, the Murdock Corporation; Answers in Genesis, the NRA, Hillsdale College, with preconceived axes to grind
50 Christian advocacy organizations
51 the science of disinformation and framing lies for popular consumption (Breitbart, FOX News, Russia)
52 being attracted by loud biased, conservative or religious outlets for news (the Internet, Focus on the Family, Breitbart, FOX News, Facebook, You Tube.), and falling into listening to only one side and not comparing to unbiased other sources, allowing themselves to be brainwashed, especially to people who are secretly unsure about the important questions often wrongly answered by scripture and its supporters
53 selectively emphasizing certain perceived lessons from the bible (such as no abortion, illegality of homosexual, nonexistence of transsexuals and gender dysphoria)
Anarchy and contrarian leanings
54 human stubbornness, inordinate pride in stubbornness
55 aversion to learning, e.g., new scientific knowledge, knowledge of experts, suspicion of sources of knowledge, e.g., books, documentaries, often stoked by the church community, who seem to want to bury their heads in the sand.
56 conspiracy theories supporter, paranoid/cynical personality (recently greatly amplified by social media)
57 suspicious of intellectuals, aversion to college-grad elites and their “pompous” theories
58 conmen, liars, and fraud
59 contrary people, anarchists, anti-institution or antigovernmental people (related to 60).
60 dissatisfaction stoked by loud or constant media reinforcement can radicalize people into damaging society, often with the help of religious conversion or increased devoutness and listening to radical people and ideologies.
61 similar to 60 plus excess testosterone, a natural cause, especially prevalent in young males without much constructive to do
62 sociopaths
63 people who like fantasy, new age spiritualism, new-paganism, witchery, going against the grain
64 recent amplification of uncivil, divisive ideas by social media and its capitalistic unregulated, amoral drivers for algorithm design
Pathologies, blatant disregard for biological imperatives
65 martyrdom misclassified as a good thing in culture: martyrdom rewards the martyr in religious war
66 pathological need for following the ways of the ancients (related to AA)
67 escaping from society, monks, nuns, hermits, cults
Use of force or threats
68 coercion or physical force by government and its laws
69 laws or culture that enforce ancient, barbaric enforcement, retribution scriptures or methods such as sharia law
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So in this list there are 69 possible forces driving average people toward religious thinking. The result is a huge bias toward religion even for the most thoughtful and reasonable person. The reality is people in society don’t have the time or patience to independently discuss or answer even a fraction of the above list. Therefore, many of them are attracted to what they feel the majority or loudest talking of family and friends (a parochial viewpoint) believe. Many are affected by a largely intuitive feeling. Highly analytical or literal people are more likely to consider the religion-or-reason debate carefully, weighing and consciously filtering answers to these questions as they come up in life.
Pearls of Atheism 