Corrected by Reflection
The De-anthropomorphized Mindset of Atheism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22199Keywords:
Atheism, Anthropomorphism, Cognitive Science of ReligionAbstract
Cognitive by-product theorists suggest that the ability to accept religious and supernatural belief is a by-product of humans’ evolved propensity to over-attribute agency to non-human entities such as animals and objects. It is argued that this phenomenon facilitates and underpins belief in gods and supernatural beings. With this in mind, how then is non belief and atheism explained? The present study aimed to explore atheism from the perspective of by-product theory, examining differences in Anthropomorphizing (attributing human qualities to non human entities) in a population of atheists compared to a sample from a general population. One hundred and twenty-three participants recruited from a general population for a study on beliefs and thirty-six participants were recruited via an atheist organization completed the study. Results showed lower use of non-animal agency anthropomorphic concepts was linked to lower religiosity, and that the atheist recruited participants showed the least endorsement of anthropomorphic concepts than the general population sample. The implications of this finding are discussed with respect to the nature of atheism and the role of de-anthropomorphizing in the adoption of an atheist belief position.
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Baruss, I. and Moore, R. J. 1992. “Measurement of Beliefs About Consciousness and Reality.” Psychological Reports 71: 59–64. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1992.71.1.59
Bering, J. 2010. “Atheism is Only Skin Deep: Geertz and Markússon Rely Mistakenly on Sociodemographic Data as Meaningful Indicators of Underlying Cognition.” Religion 40(3): 166–168.
Boyer, P. 2001. Religion Explained. London, UK: Vintage.
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., Wilson, A. L., LoTempio, E. and Beit-Hallahmi, B. 2011. “Exploring the Atheist Personality: Well-being, Awe, and Magical Thinking in Atheists, Buddhists, and Christians.” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14(7): 659–672. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2010.509847
Csibra, G., Gergely, G., B??ró, S., Koos, O. and Brockbank, M. 1999. “Goal Attribution without Agency Cues: The Perception of ‘Pure Reason’ in Infancy.” Cognition 72(3): 237–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00039-6
Epley, N., Waytz, A. and Cacioppo, J. T. 2007. “On Seeing Human: A Three-factor Theory of Anthropomorphism.” Psychological Review 114(4): 864. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.864
Gervais, W. M. and Norenzayan, A. 2012. “Like a Camera in the Sky? Thinking about God Increases Public Self-awareness and Socially Desirable Responding.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48(1): 298–302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.006
Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., Norenzayan, A. and Henrich, J. 2011. “The Cultural Transmission of Faith: Why Innate Intuitions are Necessary, but Insufficient, to Explain Religious Belief.” Religion 41(3): 389–410. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2011.604510
Guthrie, S. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Henrich, J. 2009. “The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and their Implications for Cultural Evolution.” Evolution and Human Behavior 30(4): 244–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.03.005
Hume, D. 1957. The Natural History of Religion. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Johnson, D. 2012. “What are Atheists For? Hypotheses on the Functions of Non-belief in the Evolution of Religion.” Religion, Brain & Behavior 2(1): 48–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2012.667948
Johnson, S. C. 2003. “Detecting Agents.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 358(1431): 549–559. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2002.1237
McCauley, R. N. 2000. The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science. In Explanation and cognition, edited by F. C. Keil and R. A. Vilson. 61–85. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Nietzsche, F. 1979. “On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense.” Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s, edited by Daniel Breazeale. 79–97. New York: Humanity Press.
Norenzayan, A. and Gervais, W. M. 2012. “The Origins of Religious Disbelief.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 17(1): 20–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.11.006
Norenzayan, A., Hansen, I. G. and Cady, J. 2008. “An Angry Volcano? Reminders of Death and Anthropomorphizing Nature.” Social Cognition 26(2): 190–197. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2008.26.2.190
Powell, R. and Clarke, S. 2012. “Religion as an Evolutionary Byproduct: A Critique of the Standard Model.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63: 457–486. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axr035
Premack, D. and Premack, A. J. 1997. “Infants Attribute Value to the Goal-directed Actions of Self-propelled Objects.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 9(6): 848–856. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.1997.9.6.848
Riekki, T., Lindeman, M., Aleneff, M., Halme, A. and Nuortimo, A. 2013. “Paranormal and Religious Believers are More Prone to Illusory Face Perception than Skeptics and Non-believers.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 27(2): 150–155. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2874
Riekki, T., Lindeman, M. and Raij, T. T. 2014. “Supernatural Believers Attribute More Intentions to Random Movement than Skeptics: An fMRI Study.” Social Neuroscience 9: 400–411.
Singer, J. L. and Kunzendorf, R. G. (2005). “Intelligence Correlates of Transcendent Beliefs: A Preliminary Study.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 24(3): 259–270. https://doi.org/10.2190/5H80-2PCY-02YB-F7HN
Spinoza, B. 2001. Theological-Political Treatise. Translated by Samuel Shirley. New York: Hackett.
Uhlmann, E. L., Poehlman, T. A. and Bargh, J. A. 2008. “Implicit Theism.” In Handbook of Motivation and Cognition Across Cultures, edited by R. Sorrentino and S. Yamaguche: 71–94. Amsterdam: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-373694-9.00004-0
Waytz, A., Cacioppo, J. and Epley, N. 2010. “Who sees Human? The Stability and Importance of Individual Differences in Anthropomorphism.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 5(3): 219–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610369336
Waytz, A., Heafner, J. and Epley, N. 2014. “The Mind in the Machine: Anthropomorphism Increases Trust in an Autonomous Vehicle.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 52: 113–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.01.005
Willard, A. K. and Norenzayan, A. 2013. “Cognitive Biases Explain Religious Belief, Paranormal Belief, and Belief in Life’s Purpose.” Cognition 129(2): 379–391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.07.016
Zuckerman, P. 2007. “Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Patterns.” In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Voloume 19, edited by M. Martin. Cambridge Companion to Philosophy. 47–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2008. Society Without God. New York: New York University Press.
———. 2010a. Atheism and secularity: Global expressions. Volume 2. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Zuckerman, P. 2010b. Atheism and Secularity: Issues, Concepts, and Definitions. Volume 1. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Published
2017-02-01
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Articles
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Equinox Publishing Ltd.
How to Cite
Talbot, E., & Wastell, C. A. (2017). Corrected by Reflection: The De-anthropomorphized Mindset of Atheism. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 3(2), 113-124. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22199
