What percentage of "athiesm" is genetic?

[iceaura]

Have you looked at the evidence?
“

"…[the study] shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology.

And belief in the Planetary Influences of traditional astrology greatly reduces the belief in the God of Abraham. Apparently there's a tradeoff, similar to that between cheddar and mozzarella cheese.

Which if established would greatly complicate the genetic study - investigators would be looking for a general "paranoid nonsense belief" gene, and their first chore would be defining membership in the class of believers.

But you were talking about atheists and UFOs - believers in UFOs are more prevalent in strongly theistic communities, in the US, for some reason.

As most atheists are people who once believed in something and then switched to atheism due to having no compelling evidence of a God,

Only in majority theistic communities. There are places in China, to pick one, where the opposite holds.

Do people without language think?

Children deaf from birth in cultures without sign language appear to be thinking humans as adults - despite having no language.

 

[lightgigantic]

Children deaf from birth in cultures without sign language appear to be thinking humans as adults - despite having no language.

an absence of conduit metaphors does not equal an absence of language.

 

[iceaura]

an absence of conduit metaphors does not equal an absence of language.

An absence of language does equal an absence of language.

Deaf people in illiterate cultures commonly have no language. Nevertheless, they think.

And of course even in cultures with language translating certain thoughts into that language is a famously difficult task - try communicating, in language, the operations of the gear shift on a bicycle. Or the difference between two remembered smells. Easy enough to think - hard to translate into words.

 

[lightgigantic]

An absence of language does equal an absence of language.

Deaf people in illiterate cultures commonly have no language. Nevertheless, they think.

hence the suggestion that a more accurate term for your bit in bold is "conduit metaphor" - or means of expression and comprehension.

And of course even in cultures with language translating certain thoughts into that language is a famously difficult task - try communicating, in language, the operations of the gear shift on a bicycle. Or the difference between two remembered smells. Easy enough to think - hard to translate into words.

Even more so when you take the shift to a different species.
When it was first posited that bees have language it was almost a heresy to scientific norms of the day.

If you want to suggest that thinking can occur without language, you would have to provide an example of thinking without schema.

IOW the very nature of forming a concept about environment requires a language of sorts. In short, things like pain, pleasure etc form a universal language to anything with consciousness. Technical issues arise with the conduit metaphors (ie means of expressing such concepts or interpreting it from others)

 

[iceaura]

If you want to suggest that thinking can occur without language, you would have to provide an example of thinking without schema.

If you redefine "language" to include all organized mental representation, or "schema", then thought without language becomes impossible, of course.

So does color vision and perception of threat.

The usefulness of such a redefinition is obscure to me.

 

[lightgigantic]

If you redefine "language" to include all organized mental representation, or "schema", then thought without language becomes impossible, of course.

well that's the standard in a post Vygotsky/Piaget literacy education curriculum
:shrug:

So does color vision and perception of threat.

sure

The usefulness of such a redefinition is obscure to me.

It explains how and why a person can/ cannot develop metaphor conduits even when they are totally bereft of them.

IOW if you didn't have some sort of "language" in place, you would have nothing to get the ball rolling to the fully fledged sense of language as it is commonly coined.

 

[Enmos]

Unfortunately, yes.

Unfortunate.. ? Nah

 

[Enmos]

I agree.

Will we be shocked to find out it's much much higher than 20%? Perhaps S.A.M. has a 2% chance of being athiest whereas we have a 87% chance?

I wouldn't be shocked as much as I would be surprised

 

[Orleander]

As most atheists are people who once believed in something and then switched to atheism due to having no compelling evidence of a God, I'd say that it's not at all genetic. If it were genetic, then we'd have a rather constant number of atheistic people throughout history. That is not the case, however. There are more atheists now than ever before, which means that it's due to times-a-changing.

good post! :bravo:

 

[Orleander]

... Children deaf from birth in cultures without sign language appear to be thinking humans as adults - despite having no language.

My Mom has been deaf since birth and doesn't know sign language. She reads lips and talks quite well. Better than any deaf person I've ever heard. Mainly because she didn't have sign language to fall back on.

I had one idiot ask me if my Mom could read.

 

[iceaura]

well that's the standard in a post Vygotsky/Piaget literacy education curriculum

I'm sure there is some reason for extending the word "language" to include all forms of organized mental representation, but it renders the question as asked in this thread meaningless - can you think without mental representation? Well, no, but that's not what the question was.

IOW if you didn't have some sort of "language" in place, you would have nothing to get the ball rolling to the fully fledged sense of language as it is commonly coined.

So? We don't call the precursors of feathers "feathers", we don't call skin and eyeball tissue by the same name because the one has to be "in place" for the other to form.

Now you need a word for what we used to call "language" - the stuff with arbitrary code and grammatical structure, use for communication between two different mental entities. Has one been invented?

If it were genetic, then we'd have a rather constant number of atheistic people throughout history. That is not the case, however. There are more atheists now than ever before, which means that it's due to times-a-changing.
”

good post!

Do you suppose its accurate? That there are more atheistic people - percentage, we assume - than ever before?

Theistic religion is problematical stuff in non-agricultural people - there's a real question how prevalent it is, or was. There was a time when few humans were agricultural. The rise of the great known theistic religions and the rise of domesticated plants and herd animals, agriculture, were coincident in time and place - outside those times and places, for most of human history and human culture and down to the present era, the evidence for widespread cultural theistic belief is sketchy at best - and definition dependent, in any case. Ghosts? Elves? Tree spirits? Animal spirits? River spirits? Thunder spirits? Sky spirits?

 

[lightgigantic]

I'm sure there is some reason for extending the word "language" to include all forms of organized mental representation, but it renders the question as asked in this thread meaningless - can you think without mental representation? Well, no, but that's not what the question was.

On the contrary, if you approached someone who has been specially trained to teach language (especially K-6 or students with special needs) and made the statement "Deaf people in illiterate cultures commonly have no language." they would quickly comprehend that you have no in depth experience on the subject.

Namely because they understand that there is an inherent connection between "thinking" and "language". Anyone who thinks has language. And as a further point, one's ability to use language plays a direct role in one's ability to think. IOW far from being mutually exclusive, they are symbiotic.

Now you need a word for what we used to call "language" - the stuff with arbitrary code and grammatical structure, use for communication between two different mental entities. Has one been invented?

There are several paradigms for unpacking "language".

As you indicate, "grammar", etc is one

 

[iceaura]

Namely because they understand that there is an inherent connection between "thinking" and "language". Anyone who thinks has language.

If you say so. I await your word for what we used to call "language" - the stuff that requires great skill and ability to bring into correspondence with thought, that is not commonly possessed by deaf people in illiterate cultures, that must needs be translated at great expense and trouble even between people who are thinking very similar and interconvertible thoughts, and so forth.

The stuff whose fundamental role is in communication between mental entities, rather than representation within them.

 

[lightgigantic]

If you say so. I await your word for what we used to call "language"

as previously indicated, even you are capable of unpacking it.

- the stuff that requires great skill and ability to bring into correspondence with thought, that is not commonly possessed by deaf people in illiterate cultures, that must needs be translated at great expense and trouble even between people who are thinking very similar and interconvertible thoughts, and so forth.

The point is that you are way off mark when you determine language and thinking to be mutually exclusive.

 

[iceaura]

The point is that you are way off mark when you determine language and thinking to be mutually exclusive.

I did nothing of the kind.

If you say so. I await your word for what we used to call "language"
”
as previously indicated, even you are capable of unpacking it.

We used to have a word, "language", that referred to certain structures of communication between mental entities, especially people. If that word is to be used for mental representation in general, including mental events which are not communicable between entities and not structured in that manner, we are in need of a word for the old meaning.

Do you have any suggestions?