Finally, I can respond to your post, and I apologize for the delay.
I'm curious, why would I want to rethink my comments about invisibility? I'm not being antagonistic- I'm just wondering why I would want to rethink a perfectly logical framework that also happens to fit my experience. Did you imagine I hadn't already taken in to account everything we've already talked about? I suspect this may be the 25th time I've talked about this on SI(and I may be seriously underestimating.)
Denying the existence of God based on his invisibility is a sophomoric argument, IMO, so I thought you hadn't given it much thought.
The god spot is real. It can be scientifically replicated.
The God spot is a fascinating discovery, and I find it actually rather faith affirming. You, I assume, consider it evidence that the mind created God rather than the other way around. I'm going to assume further that you and I would agree that this neural network actually proves nothing except it's own existence. It neither proves nor disproves God's existence.
To consider it evidence that the mind created God rather than the other way around, one has to go back to the naturalist argument that man is a product solely of evolution. And in your link, one of the writers hypothesized that the God spot evolved out of the need for human societies to take care of each other in a civilized way. Now this is where I'm stuck and part ways from you. I haven't really studied evolutionary theory in an academic way so I don't know the operating laws of the process much beyond natural selection and adaptability to the environment.
But I've always thought it was a purposeful, even logical, process, so my immediate reaction was to think it odd that mankind would evolve such a complex solution in order to civilize the behavior of the social group. It would seem to me that the solution would evolve differently. To evolve a part of the body that assumes there's something external to itself AND that that something is speaking to itself, seems so complex and even weird that I kind of laughed when I first saw that. It's like taking a long, convoluted way around instead of the direct highway....... a real intellectual stretch.
As far as it being replicated, I think you just mean it can be triggered in experiments other than the 3 epileptics that were first studied? If so, I don't consider this germaine to how it actually came to be there. Like I said, the fact that it's there and 'lights up' when stimulated by prayer or religious words is wonderfully provocative. But did it evolve or is it a communication device installed by a higher being is the unanswered question. So to me, its existence doesn't prove anything.
It seems to me that the person who is really antagonistic is the person who says that kids from homes that aren't religious pose a threat to other kids.
Not an automatic threat. If my other statement is statistically true, then I guess one could say this group represents a pool of potentially dangerous behavior. Other variables would have to be present though to trigger the behavior. In fact, religious training might be viewed as the brakes....helping to keep the car from going out of control.
So your predictors of bad behavior might be ameliorated by the child having had some level of religious training.
but statistically speaking agnostics and atheists are probably not what you need to worry about.
Maybe, maybe not. This whole exchange began when you belittled people of faith with your comments about us having 'invisible friends'. In the subsequent back and forth, I heard a lot of thread commentary about religious folk trying to push their values on everybody else. This led to my comment that while I understand this is offensive to the non-religious, none of us lives alone.....the life we lead, which reflects our values and religions or lack of, impacts others around us. And I referenced the public schools where the behavior of some kids impacts teachers as well as children like mine.
So now we come to atheists as a group. To a religious like myself I certainly don't consider them intrinsically dangerous as long as they don't try to push their belief system on my children. So my question to you is is that a fair exchange? I don't try to push my views on other people's children and you, as an agnostic/atheist don't do that either. And we each agree that religion should be kept out of the schools?
In my experience, I don't think teachers from this group always do this, and it makes me angry. You might be interested in knowing that this is one reason people of a particular faith will form a religious high school in the first place. Since you are a teacher, I would be very curious if you've seen this around you and what you think the role of a teacher should be with regard to atheist beliefs being brought into the schools.
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