Thought chatter and religion

I'm wondering if there's a correlation between having a mind filled with thought chatter and a lack of religious belief.

Lately I've watched a number of videos at You Tube on the subject of Atheism. A number of them have the people in them mention that they discarded whatever religion they had beforehand (usually some flavour of Christianity) because they started thinking about it a lot.

I personally have thoughts chattering away inside my head every waking minute and a lot of curiosity about the universe (enough that I'll be found reading highly technical Wikipedia articles late at night). When I was growing up, what little exposure to religion I did get I quickly wrote it off as being nonsense, and when someone tries to convert me, I'm quick to point out what parts of what they're saying don't make any sense.

My hypothesis here is that if your thoughts are very active, you're more likely to either not take up religion in the first place, or if you do take it up, you're more likely to discard it at some point.

So, fellow tropers, how does my hypothesis compare to your experiences?

edited 17th Jan '11 8:03:36 AM by Roxor

In my own experience, though I do spend a lot of time thinking, it hasn't made me leave my faith.

If thinking seriously makes you abandon your religious beliefs, your religious beliefs are idiotic. Sorry.

I'm trying so hard not to make a WH 40 K reference right now it almost burns.

edited 17th Jan '11 8:45:24 AM by Omnis

If you think a lot, you're likely to never really be sure of anything or become a devoted proponent of whatever makes the most sense to you, depending on how focused you are on certain kinds of thoughts.

If you think a lot, but don't want to, you're likely to become a Buddhist or an anti-natalist. Or both.

If you don't think much, you'll probably stick with whatever you were born into.

edited 17th Jan '11 8:47:00 AM by Myrmidon

It's not the case in my experience. I've done considerably more serious thinking in the last 4 months than I'm accustomed to doing, and if anything I've become more spiritual than I was 4 months ago.

I do a lot of thinking, and a lot of it on my faith. While that and the research that comes with it has made me quite annoyed toward the establishment and leadership of my division, if anything my faith in the core ideals has become considerably stronger.

Pykrete, may I ask precisely what your faith is? I'm curious; you'd mentioned being approached by the Order at some point.

Op: False, at least in my experiences. I lost my faith in Christianity several years ago and was kind-of-deist-y for a while. It wasn't until I actually started to think hard about that kind of thing that I came into my faith.

I think that maybe for the big-leagues, your idea is typically true, but for non-dogmatic pagan faiths it's the opposite; all the pagans I know thought long and hard about spiritual matters before they became pagans.

I would go into my hypothesis about paganism in general, but that would be off-topic and ranty.

There are plenty of Christian Druids, especially Catholics. Some of them have even written books about it. It helps that Druidry is more a philosophy than a religion.

edited 17th Jan '11 2:43:35 PM by Diamonnes

Catholic. I'm really not sure why I got a letter from the Druids

Ultrayellow: What, you think people lose their religions by accident? What other way is there for a religious person to become irreligious other than thinking long and hard?

Or the other way round, for that matter? People aren't all idiots, regardless of what Glenn Beck seems to demonstrate.

I have tons of Thought Chatter in my brain and I never abandoned religion.

Also, OP, you might want to watch your words. You sound like one of those passive-agressive "religious people are stupid" atheists.

Ultrayellow: What, you think people lose their religions by accident? What other way is there for a religious person to become irreligious other than thinking long and hard?

I tend to see more dropping off the map due to general apathy than serious thought leading to disenfranchisement.

@pagad: I think some people do, in fact, just drift away from their religions. They don't usually self-identify as atheists, though.

Edit: Ninja'd, sort of.

edited 17th Jan '11 3:06:14 PM by silver2195

Yeah, fair enough. I maintain that Ultrayellow's post was a bit silly, though.

Can't really agree with the OP on this one. Thinking about religion can lead you to a better understanding of it and various texts often have some pretty good things to say. I'm not religious at all, but if I was, I think that pondering my religion might very well deepen my appreciation for it.

I think it's easy for us Tropers to believe that people who think a lot aren't religious, because religious people in fiction tend not to think much. But as my mother keeps telling me, "Books are not real life!"

@pagad: There's a difference between 'religion' and 'religious beliefs', which you seemed to have missed. Abandoning your beliefs after considering them more carefully means that you haven't thought said beliefs through, not that the religion is wrong. Yes, I know that's why most people who convert away from their religion do so. Many people's religious beliefs can't stand up to hard scrutiny.

People keep brining up anecdotes when the op asked if there was a correlation. That be a statistics thing.

And yeah, there probably is a correlation. Why would anyone abandon the religion they grew up with unless they bothered to think about it at some point? Or to put it another way, how could they consciously abandon their religion without thinking about it?  ^*

Edit: True enough, and I suppose that's why all the anecdotes, but the wording was correlation.

edited 17th Jan '11 7:52:13 PM by deathjavu

I really doubt that you could gauge how often people think to enough accuracy for statisitics.

Can you rephrase your hypothesis in terms of quantifiable data?

How the heck are we supposed to know whether we think more than other people? That's just begging for bias.

Psychoanalysis fell apart for the reason, didn't it?

That and Freud.

  When someone says, s|he had a lot of thinking about his|her religion beliefs and do not discrad these beliefs... You can be sure, s|he hadnt. Not that I accuse such people of lying.

  Religious faith is not a matter of thought. Or logic. Or conscious choice. It is a matter of irrational belief. Such people believe, they do not think. Not that Im saying such people do not think at all. A human, who doesnt think at all, is a dead human, heh.

  Many make a mistake, arguing with such people, trying to explain them: you are wrong. Pointless engagement. Any dispute requires from participant use of logic and desire to find out truth. Such people fail to satisfy these conditions.

  Im not saying such people are completely stupid, all of them. Many are nice and smart, except when it comes to religious matters. Some may remain nice and calm, but most will start spray saliva all over the place.

edited 24th Jan '11 3:20:33 PM by GreyHuman

I think you're making a couple of faulty assumptions there. Under some circumstances, certain beliefs may be logical for some people that aren't for others. Furthermore, to write off all religious beliefs as irrational strikes me as a huge generalisation. Do you know every single religious belief, and every single person's reason for holding them? If not, I don't know how you can possibly say that all religious beliefs are irrational.

Besides which, it's a pretty insulting and condescending claim to make, as well as a presumptious one.

  Well, that's the point of religious belief. Keyword: belief. Else, it would be a scientific opinion.