Are Atheists Immoral, Arrogant, and Angry? (Psychology of Atheism Part 3)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ธ.ค. 2022
- Psychology of Atheism Series:
Part 1: • Types of Atheists (Psy...
Part 2: • Is There An Atheist Pe...
Part 3: • Are Atheists Immoral, ...
Full PhD thesis:
wrap.warwick.ac.uk/76588/
Peer-Reviewed Journal Article:
Baker, Matthew J. (2015) Psychological type differences between churchgoers and church-leavers, Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 18:7, 622-634
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...
International Personality Item Pool:
ipip.ori.org/
CREDITS:
Charts & Narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz
Theme music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from incompetech.com
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Part 1: th-cam.com/video/UWhz3SXPWkg/w-d-xo.html
Part 2: th-cam.com/video/xejfuTNov7Y/w-d-xo.html
i think this was my favourite part yet.
you know what? you could probably publish these findings in a book. title it: "Dispelling The Myths About Atheists: What The Empirical Data Tells Us." or perhaps a more clickbaity title: "Bridging The Gap Between Theism And Atheism."
So in your survey, you have not examined neuroticism, which is one of the main personality traits. I understand that the Myers Briggs doesn't facilitate for this and you wanted to use it for neutrality reasons, but if I carried out this survey I would have probably used my own terminology for opposite ends of the scale to incorporate it into the Myers Briggs. Does surveying one's neuroticism really not make that much of a difference?
Overall great 3 videos. I've had a slight objection to the last bit of the first video (I left a comment) but as INTP person these videos pretty much describe my way from christianity to atheism. I want to add that I was for all intents and purposes an atheist several years before I managed to admit to myself that I was an atheist. I do feel a bit of resentment for that feeling but it is a feeling I developed after the fact (didn't have an effect on my deconversion).
How about a 4th option. Are they rational?
@@strider_hiryu850 I WOULD LOVE THE BOOK
He should make it way more scientific then the videos
"Atheists are angry at God" is my favourite logical fallacy
I always like being told I'm an atheist because I want to sin.
Like buddy, I don't believe in sin.
@iluvtacos1231 if we don't sin, Jesus died for nothing
@@idlando
Oh shit....poor J man
@@idlando But Jesus was God so he couldn't die...
That is because a lot of people DO become atheists when a beloved family member dies, or a pet, or a friend, or a spouse gets cancer. It is true; I have seen firm believers turn into atheists....so it is NOT a fallacy; I have seen it with my own eyes.
Small point but it comes up a lot. Someone angry at God is a theist. An atheist is not convinced of the existence of a God and therefore cannot be angry at one.
Exactly!
Agree, the other one that makes me laugh is if you do not believe in god you are a satinist. Hmm they are both fairy tales to me…
Right!!!!! Im tired of people calling me, a pagan witch, a satanist! I don't even believe in a Christian satan no or a god.
@@jennywiegand4501 I saw a chick track where a caricature of an atheist said "We don't believe in YOUR god! We worship the goddess of the moon!" I had a good cackle about that. It was so random.
@@jennywiegand4501 cus satanism is just code for anything that isn’t christianity. And is just one of those ploys to bully someone into Christianity (I say Christianity specifically cuz Satan is from Christianity, but this method is likely employed by other religions too, just w/ different beings)
i am immoral, arrogant and angry.
but that's not because i'm atheist
LOL. I just hate people. Religious affiliations or lack there of are independent variables.
@@clsanchez77 haha yea
What do you think of burger as an atheist?
@@ok-ol6wb i don't particularly care about burgers
Does this behaviour healthy? nothing to do with religion 🙄
Disclaimer - I have been an atheist for the past 7 years.
I wasn't angry when I became an atheist, but over the years, I have become angry and hurt. Why? My own parents criticised and abused me for being an atheist. They literally told me that I would become a failure for not believing in God.
They also blamed me whenever something bad happened and told me God was punishing the whole family because of my disbelief. They tried for 6 months to convince me to become religious again. Of course, that didn't work, and everyone kinda swept everything under a rug.
So yes, I am very angry with them and their religious beliefs.
It makes sense you would be angry with them due to that. That's really messed up of them. I'm sorry that happened to you.
Sadly this story isn't unique
It’s hysterical to me when my Christian friends and family say they will miss me when they are in heaven and I’m banished to hell 🔥😂
That has to do with your family and not other's faith.
I really really think you’re blowing smoke because at this point in our history less people consider themselves religious than ever before. Being religious actually will get you more hell from people than being non-religious
It's not often you hear a theist speak so "favorably" about atheists! Even if all you're doing is sharing what the data says.
Secular theists or not so religious people do that actually.
@@broz1488 How can you have this belief after watching this series?
@@ViguLiviu What is a "secular theist"?
@@broz1488 Hmm. I went to K-8 Catholic school for 9 years, I took a world religions class, and I watch lectures on the bible in my free time. I honestly believe I understand the bible far better than most Christians.
I'd like to talk to you more, but it honestly seems you have your mind completely made up.
@@broz1488 It doesn't take much reading in Leviticus to make it clear that the foundations of the Abrahamic religions have some serious flaws when it comes to explaining the natural world and how humans should live in it. Once I was able to make my own decisions, I managed to test and (based on the results of the tests) jettison the flotsam of my early religious training. I spent decades focused on other things and thus, would have been categorized as an implicit atheist. About a decade ago, I realized that I was continuously having to place my own beliefs aside for the theists in the crowd who couldn't fathom why anyone didn't believe as they believed. I finally decided that it was time to stand up and be counted as an explicit atheist.
My problem with the bible as a source of information is that it is so limited. Let me give some examples. There is no reference in the bible to the continents of Australia, North or South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Antarctica, Europe beyond the Mediterranean, or Asia farther than India (if that far). There are accounts of things that stretch modern credulity - the sun standing still so that a battle could be fought, the Red Sea parting and then closing on command, returning to life people who were clinically dead, extracting evil spirits from a man and putting them into a herd of swine who then ran into the water and drowned (what were they doing with pigs, anyway?), a worldwide flood within human existence, the creation story, ... the list goes on and on. There is not a single statement that challenges the knowledge available to normally intelligent people living at the times.
What would be an example of such a statement? How about: "The sun is a star and all stars are suns, but you won't be able to prove it to yourself until you understand light." Or, consider this: "Democritus is more-or-less right about atoms, but you won't be able to prove it until you understand light." Or even: "Here's how to build a wheelbarrow: ..."
My bet is that you don't know as much about what is actually in the bible as you think you do....
Something about writing that "believers are modest and reasonable" doesn't come across as modest to me 😂
This might be unintentional selection bias. When they talk to believers about their shared beliefs, believers will naturally come across as calm and open to discussion. When they talk to atheists about their differences, atheists will naturally come across as confrontational and close-minded. It's a silly belief to hold, but it could easily be the honest result of their lived experience.
In the repurposed words of Tywin Lannister, "Any man who must say 'I am modest' is not truly modest."
LOOK HOW MODEST I AM YOU ARROGANT FOOL!
@@raetekusu1 I don't quite follow what you're trying to mean? If what you're implying is that humans lies to themselves and think they are better than they really are while in reality we all suck major ass, i will agree.
@@rambling964
Do you actually have citations in MLA format to back your claim? And by extension including atheists and their interactions with & from Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hellenic Modern Koine Religion, Norse Post-Edda Religion, Orishism (Yoruba Indigenous Religion), Teotlism (Teotihuacán Indigenous Religion); etc.
btw: in my opinion, being moral because you fear godly punishment or expect godly reward is not actually that moral
Not a consequentialist then?
Couldn't have said it better
I understand where your coming from, me as a religious person personally though, would never use the reasons you listed as motivation for morality. For me I am motivated by love, which is accentuated by the broader perspective my faith has given me.
Exactly. It’s acting.
All virtue signalling is hidden guilt.
I was born into a Jewish family. My mother's side was essentially non-practising, while my father's side was more observant. However, as a child, we only ever attended synagogue on the high holy days, not routinely on the Sabbath or daily services. This changed about 2 years before my 13th birthday, the age at which Jewish boys have their Bar MItzvah and are considered to be adults and able to participate fully in Jewish religious life. Over this 2 year period, I was taken to the synagogue by my father every Sabbath and attended classes after school and on Sundays to learn to read and speak Hebrew (I never did!), study the Bible and learn the reading (from the Bible, in Hebrew, learned by rote) for my Bar Mitzvah ceremony. It was during this period, having been interested in science and technology from an early age and learning more at secondary school, plus learning more about Judaism and the hypocrisy and chicanery that my fellow Jews employed to circumvent the restrictions that religious practice imposed, that I decided the whole thing was a sham. A few months after my Bar Mitzvah, I stopped attending synagogue and essentially became an atheist, although I didn't know that's what I was at the time. I remain an atheist to this day, almost 60 years later, but that is now more firmly rooted in my scientific scepticism and deeper study of the Bible and the history of the ancient Middle East.
as a religious orthodox jew, that’s is completely understandable and reasonable, i hope you have a great day
I don't understand your logic, I really don't.
It's like people confuse : a) believing in a God ( *theism* ), b) practising a religion (religious) c) not liking your parents' religion.
If you didn't like being jewish, then why not try any other spirtualities, including Asian ones ?
Why throw the baby with the bathwater ? 🤨
@@goofygrandlouis6296
It's not the specific religion that's at issue, it's because ALL religions require you to believe in an all-powerful deity (or deities) who, by the nature ascribed to them by humans, is unknowable except by some profound spiritual experience. I reject that notion in its entirety. It's a mistake to think that atheists only eschew belief in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic god. Atheism is pantheist; we (or at least I) eschew belief in any and all gods.
Spiritualism also requires belief in some kind of "spirit", which also falls into the category of the unknowable and essentially untestable. That does not preclude a feeling of awe and inspiration when looking at nature and having some understanding of its complexity.
@@davidhyams2769 OK.... And why do you feel it is important for you to "test" things ?
I mean, I can understand you want to test your tires, but do you also test your family members' love ? Or do you take it at faith-based value ?
Anyway, here's my own logic :
a) the Universe has Order and Chaos. And out of Chaos, it is *impossible* to create Order (Entropy principle)
b) thus I don't believe in the BigBang, because you can't "make" a logical universe, out of random luck (luck would also have to be a concept "created" because why would luck exists on its own, in a vacuum ?)
c) That means that some *core of Order* must exist originally, aka.. *God*
d) From that core of Order spreads order (and harmony) thoughout the universe, as illustrated by universal equations
e) Then comes Life
f) Then comes Evolved Life, among which Humans
-- HERE IS THE LEAP OF FAITH (in my opinion) --
g) God cares (enough) for those evolved lifeforms, including Humans, and is willing to interact with them.
@@davidhyams2769I fully agree!
Regarding the father component: religion is traditionally passed down by family, if the sample of atheists consists of people who grew up religious but then left it makes perfect sense that their relationships with their families but become strained because of it. As such, a strained parents relationship would potentially be the consequence rather than the cause.
I spotted that issue too. Would suggest studying relationships with atheist with their atheist parents but probably harder (in the USA at least, probably fine in Scandinavian countries or even the UK) to get such subjects.
Yes, but you can see how it could go the other way too-- if someone has a poor relationship with their parents, it makes sense that they would be less likely to follow in their parents' footsteps regarding religion
I would suspect that "anger with father" among atheists is very bimodal- those with no religion in the family very positive, those with religion in the family very negative because of the hostile treatment many people get when the leave religion. The hostility then would not be to a father figure as such, but to an abusive figure who is the father.
@@prismarinestars7471 Not sure if that's true. Unless the people who do inherit religions are forced into it, nothing should change with less parental influence. In order to be of a faith, one only really has to be introduced to it. It doesn't require external maintenance once established, only changing by change of mind.
@@charlesunderwood6334 Anecdotally,,, I grew up with a christian mom and an atheist dad, and neither of them were particularly put off when I became a witch. I think any faith or lack thereof are essentially equal or irrelevant when it comes to how shitty the parents are going to act when they encounter a sense of "betrayal". I think cool people are going to be cool about it and vice versa, regardless of if it's faith, choice of career, choice of spouse, etc.
I really liked this as a follow-up, the terms of "agreeableness" and "conscientiousness" are unfortunately pretty loaded so it's nice to demonstrate how *not* to interpret your personality test results and to also back it up with data.
This series has been a great example of how to study a potentially sensitive subject with respect.
Great video. Thanks. As an atheist who was raised without religion, I am generally very happy, have high morals, a great relationship with my father, and am a truth seeker, hence I agree with your conclusions. I also have a love of history, and am interested in religion in general, so love your channel and your charts. The more I learn from an academic standpoint reinforces my atheist beliefs.
My children have not been raised with religion and are likely atheists too (their choice), however I am encouraging them to learn about the various world religions, and also learn about the bible from an academic standpoint. I have recently pointed them to your channel as an excellent source of thoroughly researched, unbiased information that is well communicated.
Thanks for all you do.
Those who believe these falicies have clearly little knowlage of the world. I mean imagine thinking that the entire čeh nation is angry arrogant and have poor family relations, anyone whos been to Čehija will say its much nicer than whatever super religios backwatter theyre form (ou jea, the worse the country the more people think religion is very important.)
Atheism and non-religious are not the same thing. As was said in the first episode, there are worldviews without belief in God.
Try saying that healthcare is not free or that you are against the welfare state and taxes in countries mentioned in this thread, you may no longer be burned at the stake but you are seen as a heretic. Look at how people reacted to those who disagreed with the "science" during the disease, if the believers of science had been given free rein they would have burned the "deniers"
Democracy is a kind of dictatorship.
I'm an atheist and I have a very good relationship with my father. I grew up in a Catholic household, was baptised and confirmed as a Catholic, though I had never really believed in God and thought of it more like a fantasy. I never realised that everyone else truly believed in God until I was 12 and I discovered that I didn't have to. At that point I realised that what I was doing amounted to pretending and so I declared myself to be an atheist. My mother sounded heartbroken when I told her, but she came to accept it soon enough. My father is essentially non-practicing so he accepted more or less immediately.
When I was young declaring being an atheist in catholic community was almost the same as say your are gay! 🤣🤣🤣
This is my exact story too
@@sergioesamayoa how old are you?
@@rangercommandervelvlarumai7589
55
the more i read, the weirder it got bc that is almost word for word how it was for me
I remember reading Case for Christ as a teenager. When I remained an atheist, I was told that "satan has hardened your heart." Apparently, Satan works in mysterious ways
living in a country where 60% of the people are not afiliated to a religion. Atheism is no issue here.
This really seems to be a US problem, like alot of americans: The US is the world.... right?
Which one and can I move there? Y'all got free healthcare?
@@alexkuron5069 I’m guessing it’s the Netherlands (judging by their name) theism-rates have been strongly declining in the last couple of years to where today, indeed less than half the population would define themselves as religious. And yes we have free healthcare. And yes you can move here.
@@leeuwevdh I want to move out of the US so bad...
@@sts6055 Yea, actually my goal is to move to Toronto actually. I'm looking for a country with a higher happiness rating that the US. I just want a country that supports its citizens better.
Wow! I've been an Agnostic Atheist for a little over 12 years now, and your finding that most believers who lose their faith do so for almost purely logical reasons mirrors my journey exactly. I learned in Christianity that honesty and truth were important, and like many others, once I learned that Christianity wasn't "The Truth" it was claimed to be, I was left no choice but to abandon it. My dedication to learning and believing things that are true led me away. And I'm an INTP too, so that probably didn't hurt. But losing my faith was still the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Changing your worldview is hard, especially when you have embraced a different one for over 42 years.
It's interesting to me how the religious assume than non-religious people are somehow less moral, and that the religious are somehow more moral.
Some of the least moral people in history were also highly religious.
All the wars and atrocities in Europe for a thousand years were waged by the religious. For them, their religiosity justified their actions, no matter how horrible ("God is on our side!")
LITERALLY! I also suspect religious people who thing non-religious people are immoral simply are not well acquainted with any atheists. My atheist friends have good moral compasses. They're as good and as flawed as anyone you'd find in a place of worship.
Not even remotely !
Atheistic ideologies (like communism and fascism) killed more people in ONE century, than all the medieval centuries combined !
@@stephenwodz7593 Wrong. Men wage wars because of resources and arrogance.
Just like today (it's the oil stupid).
@@stephenwodz7593 And all the deaths in Southeast Asia were done in the name of atheism, ever heard of Pol Pot?
Claiming atheists are irrational, immoral, or angry, etc. is a common accusation from those projecting.
Feels like I learned more about myself just by watching these three video than having hour-long discussions with friends and family.
Even though my entire family has long since left church, but not on "bad" terms, we are simply a "-TP" dominated family. None of us have any anger with any religion, only the people who try to force their beliefs on us.
@@nanananananananananananana to me, if you say you are non-believer, you still believe in something (that there is nothing). And yes, those people are also annoying to deal with when they are trying to convince you to "join their movement", I agree.
@@nanananananananananananana From my understanding, the "science" is a theory (i.e. big-bang theory, or theory of evolution). A theory can - by its very own nature - be disproven, you therefore believe in a theory. That is my logic, although some may claim this science is final and there is no way the science can be disproven, I find such argument irrational as that should be considered a law rather than a theory (i.e. Newton's laws).
@@Esgarpen A "theory" in science is a proposition about how some aspect of the natural world functions, based on accumulated evidence over a period of time. The theory of evolution especially has the most abundant supporting evidence from many different areas of investigation. But you are correct that a theory can be challenged by new evidence. A "Law" however, is the term applied to mathematical equations, such as Newton's Laws, which are functionally correct according to the rules of mathematics and are not subject to scientific falsifiability.
Perhaps my earlier comment was unclear. My point was that some people argue as if certain things (such as the Big bang or evolution) are laws of the universe, when they clearly are not. And arguing as if they are, in my opinion, is not a good way to discuss complex topics.
@@Esgarpen And perhaps you didn't understand my response - it's only a LAW if it's a mathematical equation. And while the big bang and evolution are theories, that word in science means it is the best explanation that fits and is supported by all available evidence. It's not the same meaning as in common usage, where "theory" can just mean supposition, conjecture or just an idea without any supporting evidence
That search for the truth explanation holds a lot of water for me personally. My parents took a pretty lax, 'let's expose them to a few things and let them make up their own minds' approach to religion with my siblings and I, and at first my experience was largely one of inconvenience - mom decided to drag us to some church and now my Sunday mornings are disrupted. But as I got older I started getting more and more curious and I found I had endless questions that adults around me seemed to have a hard time answering. This was indulged for a while, but the older I got the more offense people seemed to take at what were to me sincere questions that I very much wanted the answers to, until finally the church we were attending when I was 17 asked me to stop coming because my questions were upsetting people. Frustrated as I was by the lack of answers I became the very stereotypical arrogant, angry atheist for a long time, I was very smug and utterly confident in my moral and intellectual superiority; much to my eventual embarrassment I didn't talk to Christians so much as debate or outright insult them.
Fortunately I've put a lot of years of distance and understanding between me and that version of myself, and while the search for the truth remains the most important aspect of my religiousness or lack thereof I have gotten past much of the anger and arrogant, and nowadays I would even consider myself more agnostic than atheist.
Its really funny when people from religios studdies can explain more than those from theology. Thats how you know the religion is based on lies.
Agnostic is not an alternative to atheist.
@@loganmedia1142 No, the two words mean different things, and in my use of them I intended them to be understood as per their widely-accepted definitions. What exactly are you criticizing here, my choice of words or my beliefs?
I don’t know who said the quote but it’s one of my favorite and really shuts down conservative christian’s. “If you need god to stop you from doing bad things that’s doesn’t meant you’re a good person it just means you’re a bad person on a leash”.
Regarding atheist morality, my favourite example is my grandfather.
After watching the Nazis and their allies slaughter most of his family, including but not limited to sending his father away on a train to a camp, burning his older brother alive, and shooting his mother, all around the age of 13, he ran off into the woods with his younger brother and was picked up by the Yugoslav partisans. He spent a good part of his teenage years in the woods by a communist guerrilla group, and was thus throughout his life a devoted anti theist. He saw religion as a dangerous superstition used by the upper class to keep the workers complacent.
He was also the most Christlike man I’ve ever met, and this isn’t “my grandpa was a great guy” exaggeration. A moral absolutist.
His moral motivator was not belief in God but I suppose you could say he was religious, in his devotion to Marxist values.
After the war, he was coordinator of youth volunteers in Herzegovina. His job was to go around with a few of his veteran buddies organizing groups of young people to rebuild infrastructure. While he was doing this, he ran into the waffenSS volunteer from his village who had killed his mother. Now, he had a band of armed soldiers, a perfectly understandable motive to kill the man, the full support of everyone in the area if he did, and if he was worried about appearances, the ability to simply make the man disappear. Hell, he didn’t need the state’s help in making him vanish into thin air, he and his pals could’ve killed the Nazi turd and fed him to pigs or built him into a road or any number of other ways to hide him. Instead, my grandpa and great uncle decided to spare him, with the reasoning roughly being “we are building a new society and everyone, even you, deserves a fresh start”.
My family were pretty big landowners with large tobacco plantations and vineyards. My grandpa gave most of it away to the state to give out to poorer families to farm collectively. He’s one of very few landowners I know who did this voluntarily.
The party put him through law school so naturally he went into politics, but was always getting moved from department to department and never advancing because he refused to embezzle funds, stopped his underlings from embezzling, kept catching on to his bosses’ corruption so he’d be moved before he could build a case.
When he was responsible for a youth employment program later, he intentionally gave his kids last pick because he didn’t want to be nepotistic. My dad’s first job was washing toilets at a campsite as a result. A bit of a dick move but he was absolutely dedicated to not abusing his position of
When he was treasurer for the ministry of education in Bosnia, he refused to give my aunt a scholarship even though she’d earned it with her grades because “we can afford to put you through school, other people actually need this”.
And of course he never distinguished people based on class, always being polite to the poorer folks. While other party members tended to be dicks to the staff at party owned hotels, for example, he (and as a result of their upbringing my dad and aunt) were always very kind to them, I know for a fact this earned my family some close friends who won’t shut up about the difference between my grandparents and the other “party testicles” as they call communist bigshots, that they worked for. He was the kind of guy to order an extra a meal at a hotel and send it to the maid.
He did have horrible anger issues though, a result of his trauma I suppose, and his anger at the failures of the society he had sacrificed so much to build, but he never took these out on his family. He tended to lock himself away or, one time, cut down 2 trees in a fit of rage. Sometimes it led him to be a bit absent as a father when he withdrew to battle his anger alone, but I think when you’ve seen the things he’s seen, that’s kind of understandable.
very interesting family history. i wish there were more movies about the people who lived through ww2.
@@spoon4956 yeah. There’s a lot of interesting stories beyond the couple of big battles that usually get depicted in movies
@@bobmcbob9856 Stories about the people who survived camps shows how horrifying it was. I think those kind of stories should be taught more at schools to discourage people from becoming neo nazis. People like Kanye West are undermining the severity of what happened in the camps, and worshiping the people who done it. If you are interested I would suggest reading about inmate 4859. A polish soldier who gone into auschwitz and escaped. I think there's a book about him called the volunteer. He's really interesting.
@@spoon4956 I think there’s a lot of good concentration camp books but not a lot of concentration camp movies. I remember reading Eli Weisel’s memoir Night in high school, and it was quite impactful. While I already had been exposed to stories of similar horrors, many of my classmates hadn’t and they were really taken aback by it all and terrified. I’m not sure if the book was mandatory reading or chosen by the teacher though.
@@bobmcbob9856 I've read and watched the boy in striped pajamas at school once. It isn't based on a true story but there are some wtf moments especially at the end.
The battle field should also be taught more in detail as well because the soldiers living conditions was horrible and they would often get infections and ptsd. A lot of people didn't even had the choice and was forced to fight.
I see plenty of religious people that are always angry. Normally when they talk about God they are screaming at someone
I see that the followers of the religion of atheist are very religious . .look at those climate activists in London .. LGBTQ activists in universities .. The Thought or Language Police in Social Media ..
the atheists are very conservative .. they don't want free speech, because speech may hurt you ..
The problem with modern religion is that the reality of it is different from the perception of it. People who grow up in non-relgious households only know of religion through media, popular press and the angriest outliers. The everyday experience is not like that at all, and every church I've been to as I've moved around has been full of caring, supportive and nurturing people. Far from perfect, because no group ever is, but something far far removed from the evil-preacher stereotypes they put into movies and the dreck that is affiliated with Fox News and the US Christian-political-right. It's like going on your local city sub; Reddit is full of bitter resentful people, but any major city/country sub will tell you that their subreddit is not actually representative of the their region in real life.
@@stuntmonkey00 yeah I know I'm going to completely disagree with you. I grew up in a Christian family and there is truth to the saying there ain't no hate like Christian love. I don't even know where to begin with your assumption that people but thank the Christian religion is bullshit hasn't actually been exposed to it personally. I frequently saw my dad beat the shit out of my mom on an at least a monthly basis and you know what his church leaders told him? That he couldn't do it as badly as he was doing it... No, they didn't say not to beat his wife. And then they also said that when he does do that just ask for forgiveness and as long as he's asking sincerely all will be forgiven. I was ostracized by my extended family growing up for being too independent because God wanted me to be subservient to a man bc that was my place in the world. I don't have a relationship with any of my family or extended family because of their bogus religious beliefs, and if I ever did have children I would not feel that my children could be safe around them because their religious beliefs state that it is their job to convert them and to tell them I'm going to hell and to also beat them into submission. So please tell me how my views of Christianity are formed by the media and not my own personal experience.
@@stuntmonkey00 and don't you dare even try to give the response I usually get to and telling people this.... That my family's church must not be a true Christian church. If you honestly believe that, you have not accepted all of the violence and racism and sexism that is in the Bible.
@@aoielf Both perspectives are valid. My mom grew up in a „church“ that was strict and authoritarian (not necessarily conservative in the best sense of the word but you get the idea). My Grandpa is still part of it. She has not much good to tell about this upbringing. Still, she has remained Christian as she later met many loving, caring, forgiving and true Christians - not least among them my father (I get the no true Scotsman fallacy, but from my point of view there are objective criteria for being Christian).
I would be dead curious to learn how you can academically study how "immoral" a demographic is in any kind of objective way.
I believe that thorough psychological testing could give some indication.
@High Priest of the Flying Spaghetti Monster I see what you mean, but I consider morality to be how your treat others regardless of how you feel about them. For instance, I am straight and I consider homosexuality personally repulsive. I treat the homosexuals in my life the same as everyone else. I find the act repulsive for me personally, but I don't find homosexuals repulsive as people.
I find homosexuals just as good friends, just as good people as everyone else in my life. Christians are supposed to be forgiving and treat everyone equally. They do not. I find that immoral AND un-Christian.
Being dedicated to finding the truth and being not afraid to change your mind is pretty much the definition of a good empirical philosopher.
I think it's funny that you use a picture of a hoodie wearer as "immoral". Those damn hoodies are the devil's playground, apparently.
Yeah, there's some subliminal race stuff going on there. Not trying to beat on Matt for that; it's hard to tear the stereotype out of one's head once it's in there, even for people as smart as he is. Always got to be watching ourselves.
Whelp, with a title like that, you're gonna get a bunch of people who comment without watching: good luck Useful Charts :)
Thankfully, it looks like just a brief glance at the comments that everyone staying mostly polite and conciliatory. I'm seeing a lot of highbrow discussions and not a lot of arguing. And that makes me very happy.
6:45. This is exactly why I'm struggling with my faith right now. I was taught all my life that Christians are good, honest people, that they are always going to be more kind and caring than non-theists.
However, after attending a private Christian college, thats the opposite of my experience. My fellow students were hypocritical with their actions and beliefs, quick to judge and arrogant about their narrow worldview. It has made me question whether or not I want to be associated with this religion at all. Obviously not ALL Christians are like this, but when you're promised love, and get hate- it makes you question what you're doing.
Yep. Being a Christian is okay, but it doesn’t make you automatically good
look, in my experience, or rather where i live God is used as a tool for fear or as a favour merchant.
everything else is different from person to person and people who generalize and create stereotypes are the ones who make hate occur.
what more a girl from school which made rituals and expressed satanism was kind, helpful and everything else christians are portrayed as while christians are the one who created diversity hate and are dangerous for someones mental and physical health.
in the same time there are satanic cults which literally kill people yearly around me and christians which are kind and have 0 hate in them.
everything should be thought of as each person is different no matter their religion, personality type, culture, town, country etc etc and for that reason your experience shouldnt be the decision maker in this sense, if you attended a small public multi-ethnic school in Bosnia you would be showered with understanding and humble people and then how would it make sense to decide based on that logic
im not that good english speaker so i hope i made sense
Some of them have taken being saved too much to heart and think it gives them free reign to act however they please.
Just remember that you don't have to do anything. You can stay and wait to see if the stupid highschool kids grow up or decide that this is a problem with the adults and doctrine as well. You can look at other Christian denominations. You can try other religions or try having none at all. Hugs from someone who used to be religious but is now happier listening to lectures on religious history and having some atheist and progressive Christian friends and occasionally watching Unitarian Universalist sermons.
Answer: No. Some are pricks, but the majority are cool.
Just like some religious people.
My problem with Atheists and religious people is that some act like they know what they’re talking about when they don’t.
Both of you are right
@@KartvelArca Of course I am. For I am Michael De Santa.
I have really enjoyed watching this series! I always appreciate data-backed assertions over assertions based on people’s assumptions. Such a great way to evaluate all these claims. I may have to dig into the paper for more.
I’m a strong FP BTW, and an atheist after regular churchgoing for 18 years. I am curious to evaluate that apparent dichotomy of my F with my atheism. But it seems to me that supporting people and seeing the human impact of things does not require religiosity. And sometimes I see religiosity being counter-productive to truly caring for all humanity. Just using thoughts and prayers instead of practical things, for example. Or crediting something miraculous instead of the people actually doing the work.
That said, I’m all about people believing whatever they wish so long as it isn’t imposed on others. And I know plenty of religious people who do espouse plenty of F ideals not like my example above.
I've really enjoyed this series! Thank you for taking the time to make these excellent, really interesting videos.
Thank you for your high quality videos! lot of fun watching this!
Thanks so much for the amazing videos. I have read many other studies that reach similar conclusions. Intellectual argument is usually the main reason people become religiously disafiliated.
I have been an atheist for the past two years now. I left Islam initially for intellectual reasons . But as time elapsed , I became more and more angry at the religion and its followers for the moral reasons. I still have not gathered the courage to admit to my family that I lost my faith lest they should abuse or outcast me. And I find Islam responsible for many more problems in the society.
hope you find success, leaving islam is particularly trick, its like leaving a cult, suddenly you're all alone after it.
I think by using the phrase "lost my faith," you have not yet fully embraced your position. When you come around to saying "found my truth," you will be there.
@@rlsfrny found the truth*
@@shahporanpriyom Truth is objective. There's no such thing as "your truth", it's everybody's truth or it isn't truth.
If you fear that they would outcast you than you must convert them to atheism before reavealing it. There are plenty of people online teaching how to do this.
The Qoran is full of weird stuff you could ask your family to think about. Like for example is it really that surprising that Muhamed could go so far west that he met people who did not speak his language? Or the more outragious statement that he saw the sun set in to a mud puddle.
I just think its not cool to push your own religious beliefs and ideals onto someone who is not and prefers it that way. By assuming that atheists are arrogant is arrogant in itself, not to mention that a lot of theists think you will be "save" by becoming theists. That seems ever more arrogant to me.
I loved this series!! Thanks for explaining everything with a lot of respect and not on the judging side.
I just wanna say I've always loved your videos, even as an atheist ENFJ who has always had an awesome relationship with my parents. Your dissertation is so interesting to me, and not only that, but all your videos. I can't really tell you why since I've known I'm an atheist since I was 9~10 years old, but I love your takes on religion and lack thereof.
The morality stereotype has always baffled me - that somehow "I get my morality from a mistranslated book" is seen as inherently more moral than "I have to think carefully and figure out right and wrong for myself."
Upvoted multiple times.
It's because you're a deviant from the social order (or at least it looks like that to me).
Well, the argument of theists is that atheists don't have an objective basis of morality, not that atheists cannot be moral. There's a difference.
I'm not counting the theists who blindly say all atheists are bad people, since that's not even an argument, that's just insulting a group you don't like.
@@Turtledove2009 redditor lol Hellow fellow person
@@FlyingAlfredoSaucer Yes, and why don't the atheists have legitimate bases for morality? Because they're not grounded in authority, of course. That's the point. Authoritarianism is presupposed. That's what the moral argument means.
Here's an irony: I had an overall good relationship with my Dad. We talked about the deep issues of life. He was the one who was cynical about religion (we were Roman Catholic). He was the one who taught us to question everything. He was the one with Humanist values (though my Mom had them, too.) So, when 3 out of four of his children abandoned Catholicism and religion in general, he was very upset! It wasn't logical. Perhaps it was guilt that he led us astray, or perhaps it was that Mom was upset with our deconversion (and we don't upset Mom!). It's a mystery. My good relationship with my Dad actively put me on the path to Atheism.
I'm also an anomaly. I'm a Myers-Briggs ENFJ. Was it outside influences that led me to Atheism or was it that we ENFJs are capable of deep thinking? Both?
~ Anastacia in Cleveland
No that's infj
Man I love your channel. This video has been a real eye-opener. Growing up in a Catholic country and family, I never felt like I belonged or enjoyed any of the things we do in Church or etc. I also always have this constant arguing inside my head about everything I find that don't make sense about the Christianity and whatnot (the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, etc). And theeen I also got an INTP in the Myers-Brigg test lol. Seriously, it's almost as if like all signs are telling me to become a fully fledged atheist lmao.
Hi Matt! I got your European family tree poster for Christmas and I’m really happy with it and recommend getting it for anyone else reading this :)
My grandmother gave up religion back in the 1920s, when she took a college biology class and learned the theory of evolution. Her reaction was, "That makes so much more sense." Her daughter (my mother) grew up to be a scientist, and taught us to think critically and shift our thinking as we gained new information. I am an INTP. I don't think there was a chance in the world of me growing up religious, never mind staying religious.
As a fellow INTP, I can relate to this comment lol
religion is a modern term; Moses did not bring Judaism, jesus did not bring Christianity .. they brought laws
HOW does it make sense, exactly ?
Don't get me wrong, Adam's story is no good either. But a rock leading to the 1st DNA.. to a full human being ?
Theory of evolution is as ridiculous as Genenis. No serious adult believe in ANY of those theories.
I just looked up INTP and it seems I fit the mold as well. I'm not sure if it's ultimately a good thing or not. Hopefully, a little research will bring some insights.
@@bhaashatepe5234 I can’t speak for the OP, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and assume he meant theistic, not religious.
I am not religious, but I love learning about different religions 😅
100% agree. It’s fascinating to see how humans have tried to explain the unknowable. Open-minded exploration may lead us to our own personal form of comfort with uncertainty.
Absolutely exceptional video as always Matt!
Great analysis, Mr. Baker!
*AND MERRY CHRSITAMAS!*
Everyone is born atheist. They’re then taught to be believe in whatever fairytale is prevalent in their region.
I’m an atheist because I dont believe in an afterlife no matter how much I want to believe there is one
@@broz1488 your comment is incredibly dishonest. The bible is riddled with claims and promises of an after life.
"He gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life." "I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death." "So it will be with the resurrection of the dead"
"I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live."
"But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself."
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life."
You should watch the video again, setting aside your theistic bias. Atheistic personality types are after truth and integrity at the expense of "feeling" better about the world.
@@broz1488 "Sure many churches make the afterlife their main focus with all the stories they invent about their imaginary afterlife, but the Bible doesn't do that,"
The Bible does, in fact, make claims and promises about the afterlife. You comment is false. If I've somehow misinterpreted your statement I apologize and maybe you could clear it up.
Bob A, the afterlife is very interesting. This is a topic I dare discuss only with internet anonymity. In my opinion, we humans are too egoistic. We call certain predators as ‘man-eaters’ as if our flesh is delicacy to tigers, sharks, crocodiles etc when in fact, a great white would rather choose a seal anytime. In the same manner, humans see our deaths as significant events but is there any difference when we squashed a cockroach?
Maravilhosa série de vídeos! Parabéns!
Wordless! From India, Kudos your efforts 👍 Continue this Logical continuum. What you make superior in my view is that unlike other, you don't get biased, and stand up clearly with reasons.
Another great video, Matt. Thanks. As an atheist who grew up Christian, I DID drift away from the faith, then, after analyzing its precepts, came to the conclusion that it didn't make sense.
A loving and merciful God who gave us floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, malaria, smallpox, influenza, cholera, yellow fever, The Black Death, etc? Only a monster could torture toddlers with disease and then expect to be worshipped.
You're trying understand God with human logic, which is understandable but not how God intended us to live. That's eventually selfishness and trying to build your own way to heaven which is unfortunately impossible. Being humble and obedient is the hardest part for our proud ego...
@@Foreignmonk34 if one cannot understand God with human logic, then how can one understand God at all? The answer often given is faith, but it is quite clear that faith leads people to wildly different beliefs. How then can you determine if your faith is the true one? Human logic? Stronger faith? Do you doubt that the faith of those who follow different religions is as strong as yours? Does all genuine faith lead to true revelation? If God existed and truly cared for us, don't you think he/she/it could provide more convincing holy texts and miracles and such so that we don't rely on the human logic which is pretty darned useful in just about every other area of our lives? And if we can't understand God at all, then what is the point of trying?
@@davidkeeton215 Good questions. I think that when you find the right faith, God will grant you peace, which different kind of peace you'll get anywhere else in life. I also think God will lead us the right way if we truly ask for it, and show the right faith for us if he wishes so. So revelation isn't our own work, but purely God's work. We have to just choose if we accept or deny/reject it in our lives. Also prayer is given to us as a way to ask for help.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."
I know the debates usually aren't very fruitful, as this discussion doesn't follow the same principles as e.g. scientific debate... I think we humans are given just a tiny portion of God's wisdom, and that's what we have to deal with. True faith is hidden from the wise and revealed to the childlike-minded which sounds stupid but that's how it goes 🙂
@@Foreignmonk34 I thank you for your answers and I wish you continued peace and prosperity. It occurs to me however, that many of the beliefs and behaviors arrived at by faith are harmful to the peace and prosperity of others, beliefs such as eternal damnation in Hell, the efficacy of prayer (often to the exclusion of rational actions), the superiority of one religion over the other, the supposed sinfulness of contraception, the persecution of sexual practices between consenting adults and the killing of apostates to name some of the most egregious doctrines. I would observe that it is not faith which has moved society away from these evils, but rather human logic, reason and empirical thinking based coupled with a desire for mutual thriving and living in harmony. Is there not a way that people of faith can maintain their cherished beliefs while understanding that it is wrong for them to assert those beliefs on the lives of others?
@@davidkeeton215 Faith never makes us do bad things but sin does. Religion can be used as an excuse to do anything horrible, but ultimately it's our own evil nature which causes that. People who believe into God aren't any better than anyone else, they just have faith. They unfortunately also do all those bad things you mentioned. But faith gives us hope to fight against evil and avoid harming others and ourselves.
I completely support scientific & technological research etc. but when it comes to existential questions, we have to admit we're just humans, nothing more, and there are things which aren't for us to choose.
By trying to control everything we rise ourself to the position of God, which never ends well. If we could become Gods by controlling everything, even life and death, why would it even necessary for Jesus to die for our salvation, why would God sacrifice his only son for us who are just made out of soil/mud? 🙂
Get's more complicated the deeper you go quite fast...
I am Agnostic Atheist and I watch all your videos. Coincidentally, I am also a PhD Student conducting my research on Gendered critique of international law. Although we belong to different fields of study, but your videos have often helped me to approach a topic when I am stuck. Honestly your academic integrity and intellectual honesty is something every researcher should strive for. I am glad that I follow and subscribe to your channel. I don't know if my research is ever gonna have the impact that your videos and research have, but I am glad that you're making these videos. More power to you and your channel!
So are you agnostic or atheist? Those terms are contradictory -
Agnostic - a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God
Atheist - a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods
@@TheRatOnFire_ Agnosticism is a position of knowledge and atheism is the position of faith. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity, and are agnostic because they claim that the existence of a God or Gods is either unknowable in principle or currently unknown in fact.
@@TheRatOnFire_ actually gnosticism refers to knowledge (a subset of belief) so agnostic means without knowing (in an absolute sense.. definitely correct) where as gnostic means to know. Theism is to believe in a god or god's, atheism is a lack in theism or lack in a belief in god's or a god. So some people would say they are an agnostic atheist meaning the lack belief in a god or god's but don't know definitely (and this is my self description as it's not impossible a god might exist but I really find it unlikely but I would also say the god of the Bible definitely doesn't exist if also defined as tri-omni as it is often) then you have agnostic atheist who believes they know god's don't exist. Same goes for theists, agnostic theist believes in a god or god's but doesn't know for definite, and gnostic theist absolutely knows god or god's exist. This use of the definition of the terms makes more precise logical sense and has been adopted by a lot of atheists. Also if you are not sure of god's existence it means you lack a belief in god's existence (for if you do have the belief in god's existence you are a theist) you are not convinced of god's existence then you are an atheist.. obviously in countries like the USA where people are continually told atheists are evil, immoral, selfish and horrible by religious apologists etc... admitting to being an atheist is difficult and can be damaging so people use the term agnostic but really agnostic atheist would be more accurate. Hopefully this helps explain the usage of the terms which you might encounter more frequently as time goes by.
Thanks for the video. Happy holidays Matt
I responded to part 2. I do love your work. The assumptions that those who are negative towards atheist people is just astounding, especially when compared to my own experience. I have a very good relationship with my father. He is the theist in the family, and he felt it was important to, at a certain age, no longer require that my brother and I attend church. We of course chose not to. In trying to coax me back into attending church, my father never raised a moral or aggressive argument. He simply said "where else can you go to hear people say be kind to each other, help people (the hungry, sick and otherwise troubled)?" Every time I did end up attending, I was welcomed and shuffled off to the choir, where I am happiest. I do not attend church because I believe in God. I attend church because as a singer, I contribute to the healing experience that so many are seeking by attending church. My belief is irrelevant - my service is relevant.
- I am an autistic INFJ. I especially love to sing at funerals so as to comfort the living - the dead need nothing from me.
This is interesting to me because it sounds like he's saying there is no other place to find nice caring people other than the church which is still, imo, calling non-theist gathering inherently non caring and non kind and helpful which is socially tied to morality so in a way he made a negative argument into a positive one by changing the subject and softening the words. Just my thoughts, I'm happy that you have a place where you feel accepted and loved and that you can contribute meaningfully ❤️
@@lelabobert3476 Honestly, I don't think that he's saying that. This is what I think he is saying: "Theists tend to believe that atheists are bad people for multiple reasons. Here in my Ph.D. dissertation, is the research that I have done do disprove the multiple reasons that theists think this way. It is simply not true."
Some church people will give you kindness and love as long as you are one of them. Be an outsider, though, and you will be treated with suspicion, especially if you are of a different religion.
I found this very interesting. In my family, my great-grandfather had an epiphany and became a traveling preacher, abandoning his family for months and years at a time. My grandfather was twelve and had to take care of the farm and younger children. After a while, my grandfather came back long enough to father another child, and told my grandpa that that child would be the only one who would amount to anything bc he was "conceived with True Love" after he had started preaching. That made Grandpa so angry he became an atheist. When he married my grandma, they agreed to raise the children atheist (this was in the 30's-40's). When my dad studied science in college he further cemented his "belief" in atheism. He married my mom, who had been raised by my Nana and Poppop both of whom had lost their faith in God. They raised me and my brother as atheists. We celebrated Christmas, but it was really just for the presents. We often spent dinner time mocking those with religion and tearing down religious traditions and beliefs.
Then, I went to college and started reading a lot of different books, including one by Thomas Merton, "The Seven Storey Mountain". One day I ended up in the chapel just as a Catholic Mass was starting. I decided to observe it like Margaret Mead, and see what these primatives were up to. I was curious so I went to a couple more masses. After a while I asked for more information, and yes, I had a conversion experience. During the year long RCIA process, I didn't tell my family at all, but I finally did, just before my baptism. I've been a practicing Catholic for 30 years.
I do believe that everyone has their own journey, however. Faith is something personal.
Happy Hanukkah, Matt!
Thanks for fighting these misconceptions with data. As a Christian turned Atheist I definitely see these expressed and remember even having them myself. The irony is exactly your final conclusions, that most people become atheist because they are seeking the truth and their path leads them there (whether you agree or not with their conclusions)... often that means sacrificing quite a bit personally, either personally in facing your own long held beliefs and breaking them down which takes a lot of willpower, or in facing family and friends who often refuse to understand. Even the caring ones will often throw little bits at you, like you'll return to the faith one day, etc. Not realizing that comments like that are equally insulting as saying they'll leave the faith one day (something I would never say to them).
Your data regarding personality does align with my own case, in that my personality profile fits with your Atheist correlation too. Though I would caution cause and effect isn't as clear as you seem to imply, unless I'm missing some additional data. Even if a certain personality correlates with being an Atheist who left their faith, that doesn't show whether or not the personality came first then Atheism, or if Atheism came first that lead to their personality change. Probably some combination of both to be honest though would be interesting to know. I suspect you'd need peoples results before and after their change to really know, which might be implausible to do.
My own anecdotal experience of leaving my faith might suggest a bit of both. I used to be less TP and I'd guess I shifted to be a bit more TP. Though I also think that once I essentially broke free of my self imposed restriction that I had to be religious, became atheist, I believe I became even more TP.
So I suspect it's a bit of both. That becoming TP might lead one to be more likely to leave their faith, but that leaving their faith definitely leads one to being more TP.
This was very interesting and thought provoking. Thank you.
The thing that is still irking me about this study, is that it's only about those leaving or remaining in church. I'm pretty sure the persuit for truth and willingness to change view of those not growing up in church, would point to theists. Because they'd start out non-religeous and being willing to change their mind and seek truth, will flip the other way.
I consider myself a case that demonstrates this. In fact those TP vibes keep me questioning enough to kinda see both sides and occasionally struggle or wrestle to find a comfortable and true position.
Alternatively: what about people who were _never_ religious and _never_ believed in gods? I.E., started atheist and are still atheist.
Maybe their personality types are very similar to those who were raised religious and either never developed a belief in god or at some point believed but have since become atheistic. Or maybe those who leave religion have a certain commonality (it makes sense to me that a TP would be more likely than an FJ to question a faith they were indoctrinated in), but those who were never religious have a different personality template, or don’t have any particular personality type at all, collectively (because they lack the common experience that would select for a particular set of personality traits).
@@natbarmore I guess I could be an outlier rather than a prime example, I've met a fair few very logical minded Christians who come the other way.
I like to think the line between atheism and theism isn't as all or nothing as it sounds, and people of all types are found in all walks of life. Even if there's some over all patterns that can be found in particular sample groups.
This is a very interesting question! Have you looked up data regarding it?
Nope. Pure hypothesis and speculation :) Just makes logical sense to me, and admittedly meets my bias for equality. So some supporting data would be handy. At least it's an idea for now :)
@@natbarmore I grew up in the woods (literally), outside of the church. While there's definite Catholic influence in my family, religion never stuck even despite religious exploration. I just don't see a point to it, having been beside the chaotic ebb and flow of nature in my childhood. But I also feel like it's outside the realm of my authority to declare if there is or isn't, or whom may or may not be a god-like power. That said, I don't even really believe in the Myers-Briggs personality typing, because people change. I've taken it multiple times through different periods of my life and came away with different typings each time. Though maybe that just means I'm one of those incredibly middling personality types LOL
For what it's worth to sate curiosity, probably the idea that's resonated with me the most is optimistic nihilism. But I also personally feel like the best way to affect a community is to roll up your sleeves and get into the work without judgement as best a person can.
The issue of theists judging the morality of atheists is that what constitutes morality correlates almost completely with what their book says. Gay? Immoral. Premarital sex? Immoral. Abortion? Immoral. So that's where they get it from. Because to theists nonconformity = immorality. Doesn't sound very moral, does it?
So good!! I'll watch them from time to time, to refresh.
Great video's on your study. I've been a professor of research methods and consider myself TP and positive atheist. I grew up in an atheist TP family.
It would be interesting to look at the impact of personality types in countries where church attendance is not the default behavior (e.g. Europe vs US)
From my own personal experience, I have to agree with this. INTP here, not angry at an imaginary being, not particularly arrogant, generally moral, and still have a decent relationship with my father who was not absent.
ENTP here. Otherwise everything the same. I have about as little faith in Myers-Briggs as I have in God though
@@ivankaramasov Agreed.
@@beauthestdane Literally same
Why it's imaginary?
@@midloran Because man invented it to try to explain things they did not understand.
Good research. I have gotten INTP on every Myers Briggs test I've taken and am an atheist so I guess I support your data. I was never religious though so not exactly the same as your study. My parents still consider themselves christian but they have never attended church or tried to get me to so anything religious.
Myers-Briggs isn't a valid scientific application, due to low test-retest reliability, as a 5-week gap between retaking the test has a 50% chance of same result i.e. could have used a coin toss for same outcome.
This was a fantastic paper!
I love the findings and data you presented. I found your video as I was contemplating Nietzche when he said (paraphrasing of course) Christianity caused its own downfall because of the nature of Christianity in trying to find the truth of reality.
So I really enjoyed it and it definitely gave me a lot to think about intellectually!
Thank you for sharing your work with us!
As an atheist who was raised Christian and who's father is still alive and my relationship with him is strong this is very interesting. For me the things that turned me away from faith and religion were a diagnosis of Dyspraxia and investigation into other potential Neurodivergence (which is still ongoing) and also my questioning and eventual acceptance of my sexuality. I am queer. I also politically became a lot more liberal and socialist. I think these are interesting factors to consider when looking into why people do and don't step away from religion. By contrast my mother doubled down on her faith after she and my dad split and is now a strong Christian living in a very Christian country (She and my step dad live in Spain, A Catholic country) and her political leanings are a lot more traditional Conservative "Tory" (or Republican if you are in the US). I do feel that there is a correlation between political leanings and religious faith as well as factors like Neurodivergencey and queerness. I do love my mother and respect her right to have faith and stuff we wildly clash on pretty much everything. I just think it is something interesting to think about.
it's ironic what you pointed out about political leanings, because jesus was pretty much a leftist himself, yet conservatives use him as justification for some of their bigotry...
@@laincoubert7236 yes .. the party of KKK .. the democratic party . Now, the leaders of the democratic party are growing their urban plantation in the dem-run cities ..
it's easier for them to 'harvest' the ballot because it's their plantation. big plantation by neo marxist activists and leaders.
@brayan velez No that is not very true at all. You can take a guy who lived in a time span when almost everybody had very few possessions, mostly farm animals as wealth and compared to today’s consumer society. We just don’t know how Christ would act in the 21st-century
@@michaelrochester48 Well one thing we can certainly say is no matter how much conservative Christians protest Jesus was not white.
@brayan velez This is an anachronistic understanding of Jesus and Jesus's teachings, that's important to keep in mind. Many of his teachings that we have today do mesh with paradigms that look socialist in nature, but it's important to remember that Jesus was not a progressive as we'd recognize that term; he was a staunch defender of Jewish law (why else do you think he attacked the moneychangers? They were violating Jewish law). Where Jesus' religious defender trip up is that he wasn't a capitalist, either, because there was no fundamental understanding of capital when Jesus was alive. We've heard the bell of imperialism, colonialism, economics, and capitalism, and we cannot un-ring that bell. There's literally no way to return to a world as Jesus would have understood it; the world that Jesus existed in and taught to. That hasn't been possible in 1,000+ years. The current neoliberal system only drives us further and further from that world.
It's fine to backwards project this sort of understanding on Jesus' teachings; however, so long as we remember that's exactly what it is: backwards projection. You are no more correct or incorrect than when right-wingers pretend Jesus would have agreed with them politically. Jesus would have agreed with nobody alive today politically, because he wouldn't understand us on a very fundamental level, nor would he understand the world we live in.
Would less selfish people be more likely to take a survey?
I don't think I've ever seen math used in this way. Thank you so much!
That does make some sense given how I've seen people work. But it's good to see a conclusion based on evidence rather than a vague feeling based on talking to people. Thank you.
Love this video and chart. Thanks so much!
I'm curious about how "anger" was measured in these trials. This might be wrong, but I feel that many christians are very angry the whole time about lots of topics and still if you ask them they seem to think they are not angry at all (like If they couldn't realize because It is the usual behaviour). Many seem to have another threshold when evaluating themselves, so if anger is measured by asking people if they feel that or that way....mmmm.... I would like to know if there are better metrics for that.
It is measured by the amount of steam coming out of their ears
@Korpen ROFL
The personality type hypothesis makes a lot of sense to me. You can definitely see a lot of overlap when it comes to worldview preferences.
I think one of the reasons as to why a lot of people have the notion that atheists are angry or just "want to sin" (aside from it being really good propaganda, I personally had a very negative view of atheists because of lines like those) is pretty similar to how other forms of discriminating thoughts form: lack of exposure. It used to be that the only atheists you heard of were the ones, well, loudly and publicly attacking religiona.
Bravo, Matt, for your dispassionate analysis of atheists in spite of your own theism, which I'm certain is genuine and deeply held. I could only hope that I (as a formerly churchgoing atheist myself) mirror your impartiality and commitment to letting the data guide you.
BTW - Your chart work is wonderful.
My father went full Evangelist. I had a good relationship before. Barely speak to him now.
The irony is he did to be closer to his father.
So are you intolerant towards him, or is he intolerant towards you ?
Also I think people in general don't understand the meaning of religions at all.
But then again, they don't understand activism either. There is a BIG difference between just virtue signalling, and actually doing what's right.
And in Christianity, family values are important. So you can't be a good Christian if you can't forgive a family member.
@@goofygrandlouis6296 He took me to his mega church thinking it would impress me. It was the most disgustingly hypocritical display of wealth and idolatry I have seen in all my life. He would try to minister to me ad nosium. I would ask questions he couldn't answer. He stopped trying to convert me and I stopped asking critical questions. A stalemate was achieved and maintained.
That says more about you then about him.
I think many of the negative stereotypes of atheists are just applied from people with a motive to discredit/demean them, but I think there is also an aspect that many of the people you *hear* talk about their atheism may be more likely to be some form of aggressive. As with any type of person, a large percentage of them will just quietly go about their day and not bring it up unprovoked.
My guess is that the most outspoken atheists may tend to be those that actively left a religion, typically due to some very negative experience such as growing up gay in a evangelical household and obviously harbour some warranted resentment. This is as opposed to those that may have been simply raised in an irreligious household or those that left a religion on neutral terms and thus whose lack of religious belief is less personal and simply an ordinary fact of their life.
@@Nick-rk7qk As a second generation atheist, I think this is on the money. It's not personal for me the way it is for someone who broke up with and burned bridges with their childhood faith. Going to a church is more like going to someone else's cultural space; mostly it just feels foreign. On the other hand, you are describing my mom perfectly with that first part.
That's basically been my feeling as well as a second generation atheist. I think there's also sometimes a tendency to do it to enforce staying within the group. I've had the unfortunate experience recently of attending funerals for religious people where... religion/lack thereof had nothing to do with the death, but I got to sit there and listen to people talking from the pulpit about how non-believers can't mourn properly, etc. The only thing I can think of is that they were worried about people of faith struggling in the wake of the loss and needing to shore them up with stereotypes and implied threats.
@@amw6846 Unfortunately, I had to lay an old high school friend to rest last spring. She wasn't particularly pious, but had married into a pretty hardcore Christian family in North Dakota, and the preacher had a lot to say about how she was with the angels and God now. I mean, I guess as an outsider I don't know how that sounds to someone who believes, but I would have rather heard something about her as a person, that you couldn't rattle off about a complete stranger.
Anyways, I do think there's some truth to the idea that we don't have proper death rituals in secular life. Like, at least as an American, I feel like I see a lot of "60 is the new 40" denialism about mortality. We like to act like we don't all end up in a hearse at the end. We've got our antibiotics and our seatbelts and airbags and we just don't see death on the regular like we did 200 years ago, which is great, but I think we've kind of lost the plot in some ways, we don't really have a process for saying the final goodbye, and that's one of the few points on which I do envy the believers.
@@tsovloj6510 yeah, I expected a lot of that sort of thing. Even expected emphasis of non-believers going to hell as a contrast, you know? I've learned to expect things that, from my background, are appalling, inappropriate, behavior.
The "people who don't believe exactly what we do are incapable of feeling grief properly" thing was new to me, and came off as a threat in this life as well as the one beyond.
There’s an old adage in journalism that any title that ends in a question can always be answered “No.”
An interesting series, thanks for sharing your research like that, I gotto have to read your linked paper as well. What I found interesteing is that you only looked - if I got that right (?) - at people who grew up attending church as children. What caught my interest there is that I think it'd qualify as an INTP but I grew up in a secular household with only marginal experience of going to chruch. I knew that some of my grandparents were religious but none went regularly to church. I was socialized in a left-leaning mostly atheist environment - and I ended up being a theist and regularly going to church after I started questioning atheism rigorously. Only later in life I had situations where I had hardships in which my belief did actually comfort me, though that lead to me looking for a community in which I felt comfortable to go to church service more often. I'm still critically of religious institutions, though.
So, I came to think: Maybe TP is less associated with 'atheism' as it is with questioning the 'standard (non-)belief' one is growing up with, while FJ is not necessarily associated with 'theism' as it is with remaining with the belief one grew up in? Is there any research available on people growing up in secular-humanistic environments and what the differences are between those remaining atheists versus those turning to theism under those circumstances?
This is a great episode. I was raised catholic, until my mom died. My dad was probably more apathetic than atheist…or I guess technically agnostic. So I grew up agnostic, but most religious people cannot differentiate an agnostic from an atheist. Having kids, including losing one, brought my wife and I back to the church. That does not mean we are better people or everyone else should too. We needed that community support at the time and it worked for us.
On the Meyers-Briggs test, my wife and I and I are polar opposites on almost all characteristics lol. So much for that correlation.
well it says 2x as likely not 100% guaranteed.
You needed community support. God seems to have come as a condition or part of that support. That seems to me a very, very weak basis for believing in a god. If a non-theistic support group was available at that time, it would have served the same purpose, I dare say.
You should watch the first video of this series. He explains how agnosticism isn’t really a position. You and your father were probably more like implicit atheists.
@@connorgrynol9021 On the other hand, I consider myself an agnostic first and foremost. My position is one you would call an -implicit- (ETA: explicit negative) atheist, but it hinges on the lack of conclusive evidence of the existence of a greater being.
@@MarsJenkar if you’ve given the subject any significant amount of thought, you’d fall under the category of explicit negative atheism. Implicit atheism is reserved for those that have not given it any consideration. Babies are implicit atheists.
Interesting thoughts. Maybe just words but it seems like you concentrate on people who "leave" religion but there are people who simply just never became religious due to lack of interest, possibly because their families weren't particularly religious either.
In my childhood I got a couple books about religion and christianity but I was not really hooked by them. I treated them like children stories or history books and after a little while I felt like it did not make much sense and it was really confusing. My parents never forced it so that's it basically. I just developed my own concept about the world and I think I do have my moral code, not worse than of a religious person.
Oh BTW I am indeed a "TP" personality and also an engineer.
Matt, I've loved these videos on your thesis. Please, more like this!
...I'd be curious to know if there's any solid evidence to show that people with TP personalities frequently (if much at all) convert from atheism to theism, and which kinds of evidence played the strongest part in their conversion. Personally, I have a bias that evidence-minded people who are willing to change their beliefs following a factual, critical, and unbiased examination of evidence would more likely leave theism for atheism; and such a study might help me examine if my preconceptions are true.
...I also wonder how much a person's fear of social stigma in their particular community is a strong factor in their ability to undertake such an examination of their beliefs, as well as how much the presence of an "information silo" factors in to any such examination. (After all, one can hardly impartially examine counter evidence f one doesn't have access to it, eh?)
I would guess that, despite one's personality preferences, for those who face strong social consequences and/or limited access to information outside their dominant belief camp, the stakes are much higher for undertaking a factual, critical, and unbiased examination of evidence--whether in support of atheism or theism. ...Of course, getting reliable access to subjects in these conditions would constitute a formidable research hurdle. Do you know if any studies that attempt to explore these angles on the question?
Hi Matt thank you for your 3 Part series, it was very interesting!
I use the terminology from your videos to discripe myself
I'm a explicit Atheist/Humanist with a ISFJ personality result. In my opinion gods/religions are man-made without any spirituality. Our thoughts are part of our physical world. A story doesn't become real, just because I believe in it. Even if a Billion People believe in it. I personally don't need a religion to live a life with a "good moral compass". So many cruel and violent acts worldwide where commited in the name of a religion, not just by extreme individuals. And so many kind and heartwarming acts where commited in the name of religions. If you as a person need a believe to be a kind person, then believe in it. I myself can do it without.
The emphasis on truth and integrity in the church is why Neitzche observed that Christianity contains the seeds of it's own destruction. A culture obsessed with truth discovered flaws and delusions in it's own foundation, which was simply intolerable
💯
"Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I'm arrogant and angry"
"Ok, I am arrogant and angry, but not because I'm an atheist"
I find atheists with a bitter and cynical sense of humor which is more caustic and not funny at all.
There is no correlation... don't twist UsefulCharts words.
@@michaelrochester48 As a severely depressed atheist, that sounds more like depression, man. The other atheists in my social circle find that shit worrisome, too, and they'd probably find it obnoxious if they didn't know me well enough to know where it was coming from.
It says a lot about the character of people who think you need religion to be moral.
the claim is not that you have to be religious to be moral, the claim is that without god objective morality cannot exist and whay you call morality is just subjective or random, in other words you cannot have objective(!) justification for what you call moral behaviour
@@fixpontt So sick of hearing this, even god's morality would be subjective.
Wow, really great research. Very interesting.
I'm an INTP who's been an atheist for 36 years. Thanks for reassuring me that I'm not (necessarily) immoral, arrogant or angry. :) Your research and videos are great. Keep it up!
Blind faith in one person is just as good as another, I suppose.
Though, I think it's kind of funny that you don't follow religions because you probably think they're just superstition, but you talk about your personality typing which is pseudo-psychology, and doesn't actually represent anything.
You trade one god for another, but your ignorance will always be right there waiting to make a fool of you. 😄
Check out video 2 in this series he explains the use of the components of myers Briggs.
It's nice to have empirical data backing up what atheists have always said: of course we aren't any more angry, arrogant, or immoral than theists. It would be fascinating to have a follow up study that used the more established Big Five to find correlations with confidence of belief/non-belief. I am also curious about the social pressure aspect of belief, meaning that I suspect there is a strong correlation between maintaining belief and living within a strong belief social matrix (family, friends, community, etc) such that being a believer is the norm. If the correlation does exist, I then wonder if it exists for atheists as well.
Humans are impacted by their social surroundings, if you grow up in a violent home, it's more likely you're going to be a more violence prone person for example. If everyone around you is an atheist, it's more likely you're also going to be one, the opposite is also true.
@@l4nd3r This is a general truism, but it would be useful to know to what degree it impacts belief and non-belief within the context of the other variables outlined by the studies in the video.
A small detail within a very good series-
I needed subtitles to remind me of the MB types. You mention TP and my mind goes to that being a very common relationship, drink T ad P...
I think some useful information would come from those who grew up in atheist households. Your information seemed to focus on people who became atheist from religious families, while an atheist who came from a atheist family might have differences that are worth comparing.
"People convert to religion for emotion reasons." ding! I think we have a winner.
The world is a big, scary, unfair, and unsafe place, so maybe screw me for being judgy about it.
We do not need religion, but we need to have some sort of ethical system at least.
Very interesting. Most of your results I expected, but some were a bit surprising. Well, that's what research is for! 👍
Great video 👍 and interesting topic
I'm an atheist and I enjoy reading or learning about different cultures and the religions they may have. That said, I just don't subscribe. It's fairly simple.
Your study leaves out those like me: those who haven’t left the church because they’ve never gotten in.
Since I’ve been a child, I was presented with the opportunity to become a believer. I was six I think when my parents took me to the priest to give me the choice of receiving baptism or not. I remember at the time reading about dinosaurs and prehistoric men and then this priest starts telling me fantasies about Adam and Eve.
It just didn’t click with me and told so to my parents thereafter that the guy was a moron trying to feed me some BS (of course I didn’t use those words but that’s what they meant). Never been a believer and don’t think I’ll ever be.
I don’t think people consider me immoral, arrogant or angry. I am neither of these. Actually ,I have a very definite value system, always try to help and almost never lose my cool. It’s just that there’s science, and then there’s religion and I don’t think they go together well.
And believe me when I say I hope I’m wrong and get to meet all those I’ve loved and lost in a Heavenly afterlife…
Narrow study is narrow.
Again with that "Adam & Eve" excuse ?
I don't know which Church you attended (probably a Protestant one), but "Adam & Eve" occupies 0.01% of the Christian faith. 🤦♂
That is NOT what the Christian faith is about, sorry bud.
The only relevant part of the story is not astrophysics, it's *pride* . How pretentious humans who put other men in place of God (or even worst themselves..) end up badly.
If ever an atheist really were angry at god, they're doing it wrong. It's hard to be angry at something you don't believe exists. Typically, the "angry atheist" is mad at theists, and these theists are most likely family and members of one's former religious community. If you didn't grow up in a religious household, you are less likely to have those people with whom to be angry. You can still get angry with other religious people in one's extended family, local community, and political leaders, but it's a less defining characteristic.
Morality and arrogance are tangential, but still related to having close people who are religious, as you are immoral by THEIR standards and not the larger secular society, and arrogant by THEIR measure on subjects you probably aren't even discussing with other people.
So yeah, I would not expect someone who didn't grow up religious to be characterized as angry, arrogant, and immoral.
And while this video's topic is tangential to his thesis, his thesis was about personality differences as cause to leave religion. If you didn't leave religion, then you would very rightly be excluded from the study.
Side note, I m happy to let you want whatever you want to want, but the entire idea of heaven sounds absolutely horrible to me. Either there will be people who don't make it and I'll have to bear that for eternity, or EVERYBODY will be there, and there's a lot of people I'd have to bear for eternity. And if you think you can simply choose to not deal with them, can't the people you're looking forward to seeing simply choose to not deal with you? Now you're spending eternity feeling slighted. I'd rather just stay 6 feet under, TYVM. Best case if I were in heaven, I'd end up a recluse, with no way to leave.
I agree JP, the 'never been a theist' group has been missed in this survey.
I was made to go to church as a little kid but was able to stop when I reached age 13. I never felt any of the church stuff had the slightest connection with reality of my experience of it, which is why I rejected it. I was happy not to have to waste more time on it, but not angry.
The following 40~ish years I barely gave religion a thought, and it was only during the Covid lockdown, working from home, that I found the time to even bother with the issue on TH-cam.
@@goofygrandlouis6296 okay, .bud", want another crap? First and second day, he creates some stuff and third day? He literally creates day! All this is a bunch of crap. Sorry, it’s not pride!
God was created by man in order to alleviate his fears of the unknown, period!
Besides, why should the monotheistic religions be right? If it’s in term of longevity, they’re still but sects!
BTW, nope! Not Protestant church. We could say Catholic Church, but then again, it was an unrequited, brief hour and I abstained to ever go back to the tin foil hat bunch! and if I still visit churches, that’s for their architectural value, nothing more.
Now, everyone has the right to believe… or not! It’s an intimate thing and should never be pressed on anyone.
I applaud your commitment to scientific method, and to draw any meaningful conclusions, it has to be that way. So thank you for the video and the others too.
I don't doubt your results, however, what does it mean to be TP? I took an online version of the test (MBTI) which you don't reference directly in your description, and found these two questions:
A: "You place a great amount of trust in the mysterious and unconscious world."
B: "You are attracted to symbolism, mysticism and the unknown."
These two questions hint strongly at religion, and I would hazard a guess that believers and non-believers in religion would answer these two questions very differently, and it would skew the results of that test towards TP or not by a fair amount of the 2:1 ratio you mention in the video. Whether those two questions by themselves would be enough to skew it, or whether the test I took was not representative of the actual test, you would know better than me.
But it does seem to me that your conclusion is that atheists are more likely to be TP, and they are more likely to be TP because they say they don't believe in mysticism. To over-simplify: people who said they don't believe in religion are more likely to be atheists. It's circular logic and tells us nothing. Not a criticism of your methodology, just of the MBTI test. I did check your thesis quickly to see if you had addressed this and didn't notice it, apologies if you did account for religious bias in the MBTI test itself.
I liked the part of your research about immorality, arrogance and anger not being statistically significant. It stands with what I thought but good to see supporting evidence for it.
Whatever test you took, it definitely wasn't the Myers-Briggs. Watch Part 2 if you want to understand what TP means.
These three episodes were based on atheist who left religion (mainly Christianity I assume), I'd be curious to see a similar study done with atheist who never were in or part of religion.
You're comment now makes me wonder how many Muslims end up becoming atheist
Very interesting Matt, thank you!
Myself and my two older siblings were never indoctrinated into religion -thankfully! Our mom grew up attending Mennonite church but it shunned her when she married our father. He grew up on a farm and didn’t attend church- but his mother was very religious.
So the three of us grew up not going to church, no discussion of religion. It was Oklahoma so it was everywhere, but not specifically at home.
I’m the youngest. The oldest is nearly 17 years older. The middle is…in the middle - he’s the one that has become religious. I think this is based on personality and needing to belong, needing a group that would welcome him.
Everyone is born an atheist - the religion you adopt as a child has everything to do with the religion(s) of your parents and of the community where you grew up.
Does this impact your personality as you mature? I can’t say because I’ve not done the research or sought out those who have.
Excellent analysis, thank you :P
Great work!! Although I am a bit skeptical about the authenticity and inclusiveness of the samples. Some of the variables may not be fully independent from each other.