However, I wasn’t a very informed non-Theist. I still had very little knowledge of scientific principles and for the first year or so, I retained the belief that Intelligent Design “Theory” and Naturalistic biology were a legitimate scientific controversy, thus I relied on logic and philosophy to use in debates. (Which still worked quite well, long story short I once embarrassed my still-evangelical dad at a party where we made a spectacle of debating the validity of the Christian religion, but I digress.)

Once I got to college however, I began learning about European history, world religions, the natural sciences that I was until then very ignorant of, the philosophy of humanism and so on. Now instead of acting like the angry little dissenting teenager who hated waking up early on Sundays regurgitating old (although effective) atheist philosophy, I felt like I could actually think INDEPENDENTLY on these subjects, and has increased my atheism ten-fold.

I chose to major in sociology for a multitude of reasons, one of the biggest being understanding religious fundamentalism as a social structure so I could come up with some idea on how subvert the dangerous ideas that are taken so seriously by people in the United States and elsewhere. Such as that Global Warming isn’t happening, or that the destruction of the earth is a good thing because it signals the return of the messiah to judge the earth. (I’m generalizing I know, but it is honestly what my parents espouse.) Thanks for reading, I realize my comment is long I just had a lot to say. =]

Tina’s post is an example of this phenomenon: when humans don’t perceive supposedly scientific explanations to be useful enough, their brains automatically turn to other explanations they’ve been exposed to, unless they’re philosophers or non-professional scientists who’ve done their own analyses (see Science and God: An automatic opposition between ultimate explanations).

Similar to the results of the study on college majors and religiosity are the results from an analysis of Al Qaeda terrorists (w/ a note added by me):
“Three-quarters were professionals or semi- professionals. They are engineers, architects, and civil engineers, mostly scientists. Very few humanities are represented, and quite surprisingly very few had any background in religion. The natural sciences predominate. [Note: practices based on findings from science; such as engineering, architecture, or medical care; are not the same as scientific study.] Bin Laden himself is a civil engineer, Zawahiri is a physician, Mohammed Atta was, of course, an architect; and a few members are military, such as Mohammed Ibrahim Makawi, who is supposedly the head of the military committee.”

It seems that when a person doesn’t understand humans (including himself/herself) in light of what humans have learned through the sciences or humanities, the person’s brain is more likely to accept and think in terms of given religious/political memes.

Science does not explain everything. Science is just a series of theories that are constantly undergoing revision. Some scientific “facts” that we thought were true before (and were proven using the scientific method) have now been deemed false. If the scientific method is so flawless, then how could this have happened? Are we all so arrogant to think that our current knowledge of the world and universe are sufficient to explain EVERYTHING? Don’t get me wrong. I think science is a great tool at gaining understanding of the world, but it cannot explain everything. Can science explain how a tumor can disappear suddenly from a patient without any medical treatment? Can science explain how some people apparently die and come back to life 15 minutes later? I haven’t heard any decent scientific explanations. The world is not always what it seems. Not everything is tangible and can be figured out by performing some calculations. That’s where religion or spirituality comes in.