Snipped from NewScientist.com.

As many of you may know, I am gradually becoming more and more atheistic in my beliefs. I still do not consider myself a true atheist due to the inability to prove that God does not exist, and if I said that she did not exist, I would be a hypocrite telling someone their wrong when they try to tell me she does. “So, What is turning you to the dark side,” one may ask. Well here would be my answer:

As I have become older, educated myself on all major sciences and experienced the many facets of humanity, including love, fear, hate, life and death, I have become more comfortable in my position in the universe as well as the amount of control, or lack thereof, of my surroundings. This acceptance and release of control has allowed me to clarify how I perceive the world around me.

Looking back, I think that was the catalyst. Since I did not perceive the world around me as out of control, fearful or chaotic, I had no need for any any religious, spiritual or other metaphysical explanations to sooth my weary soul. And magically enough, I have an article that states that very same idea — research has shown that the more people feel out of control, or fearful of their own microcosm, the more they cling to religious beliefs.

This article is quite fascinating as the author presents a couple of ideas about religion’s origin and its reason for its permanence on our species to this day. Here is a small portion of the article:

WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

…

That view is backed up by an experiment published late last year (Science, vol 322, p 115). Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas in Austin and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, asked people what patterns they could see in arrangements of dots or stock market information. Before asking, Whitson and Galinsky made half their participants feel a lack of control, either by giving them feedback unrelated to their performance or by having them recall experiences where they had lost control of a situation.

The results were striking. The subjects who sensed a loss of control were much more likely to see patterns where there were none. “We were surprised that the phenomenon is as widespread as it is,” Whitson says. What’s going on, she suggests, is that when we feel a lack of control we fall back on superstitious ways of thinking. That would explain why religions enjoy a revival during hard times.

Read Full Article Here!