13 Ara Norenzayan - Why Do Atheists Exist?

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4 • 848 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2013

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Americans don't like atheists much. It's something we get reminded of every December, as Fox News commentators decry a secularist "war on Christmas." But the distrust spans seasons: Barely half of Americans say they would vote for an atheist for president; forty eight percent, meanwhile, would disapprove of their child marrying one. Still, atheist America is growing: One fifth of the public is now religiously unaffiliated.So how do you build an atheist? Or a whole country of them like the Czech Republic, where 48 percent of the public opts for the description "not a religious person" and another 30 percent is a "convinced atheist"? In the last decade, a growing body of research has begun to home in on an answer. In this week’s show we cover all of that and more with Ara Norenzayan, a pioneering researcher on the psychology of religion.This special Christmas episode also features a discussion of whether buying your kids tablets for Christmas so they can play lots of video games is bad for their brains (you'll be surprised at the answer), and how Santa Claus will soon be Canadian if Canada succeeds in its dastardly plan to claim the North Pole.Subscribe:itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-mindsSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Friday, December 20th, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds.
0:05.8	I'm Chris Mooney.
0:06.7	And I'm Indra Viscontas.
0:08.1	Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.
0:14.0	We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.
0:17.9	You can find us online at climatedust.org, and you can follow us on Twitter at Inquiring
0:22.7	show and on Facebook at slash Inquiring Minds podcast.
0:32.2	So, Indre, this is our last show before Christmas, and so I thought I would try my hardest to make it seasonally appropriate.
0:40.1	And so that's why I made our show about atheists.
0:42.5	The free thinkers who may celebrate this holiday, yes, atheists, they may celebrate it.
0:47.8	They may not.
0:48.5	Either way, they will be blamed for being behind the war on Christmas, right?
0:52.9	And so when it comes to atheism, I've gotten pretty fascinated by the work of a researcher
0:58.5	at the University of British Columbia named Ara Norenzayan.
1:02.4	And he specializes in the psychology of religion, but he also publishes a lot of papers
1:07.8	on the psychology of atheism because it's sort of like the flip side,
1:10.9	a yin and yang kind of thing. And what he shows is the punchline is religion comes pretty
1:16.1	naturally to most people. It's pretty basic. It's pretty intuitive. It's like a default.
1:20.6	Atheism, a lot less so. But atheism happens and there's something like half a billion atheists
1:25.9	on planet Earth. So what makes people reject God?
1:29.3	What cognitive factors?
1:30.6	What psychological factors?
	...

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