Hi everyone,
I have always maintained that atheism and materialism are just skeptical reactions to a well accepted norm. An adolescent reaction in fact.
Most atheists choose to become atheists at around the age of 12/13 or so when adolescence and skepticism sets in. After that they just continue with that mindset all their life without growing out of it.
https://tsriramrao.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/three-stages/
We all go through three stages...childhood, adolescent and maturity. Blind believers and hero worshipers are those who are stuck at childhood level. Habitual skeptics are those stuck with adolescence. Mature people are neither stuck with blind belief nor with blind materialism. They become open to many possibilities.
Just some thoughts.
Cheers.
Sriram
I have no issue with your basic premise of three stages - in terms of fatherhood my Dad used to describe it as 'Daddy knows everything'; 'Dad knows nothing' and 'Actually Dad knows some things after all'.
But then you go down the insulting, and frankly rather infantile, approach of ascribing those who do not believe that god exists as being for ever in an adolescent stage.
Firstly you've provided no evidence to back up your claim that people tend to become atheist at age 12/13. I'd accept that kids often rebel against their upbringing at that age, but of course not all kids are brought up in religious households - however my experience suggests that actually becoming atheist (or recognising that you are atheist) tends to be rather later - late teens. Again I cannot back this up with evidence, but based on my experience and those I know.
But there is a broader point - surely the point at which one becomes mature is when an individual takes stick of upbringing, later experience and evidence to determine what they believe and do not believe as an adult. Now for some things this can vary considerable as we progress from young adult to middle age etc, but for religion the situation in early adulthood is very sticky - religious young adults become religious middle aged people and religious old people. Similarly, non religious young adults are very unlikely to develop religiosity as they get older.
But there is one really important factor - religiosity as an adult is almost always linked to a religious upbringing. It is exceptionally rare for person brought up in a non religious manner to become religious as an adult. The flip-side isn't the case - there are plenty (in the UK about 50%) of people who were brought up in a religious manner who reject that religion as an adult. Now none of that has anything to do with the adolescent rebel phase, but about the settled adult vs upbringing position.
What this leads me to conclude is that the claims of religion are effectively unbelievable if you only come to them as an adult and are only believable to those that have that social upbringing as a child. So religiosity in an adult seems to me to be a kind of hangover from the childhood stage rather, while being non religious may be that (if the child was brought up non religious) but for those huge number of non religious adults who were brought up in a religious manner it seems to be that the (non) claims of atheism seem more plausible and believable if you only come to them as an adult than the claims of religion.
