Originally Posted by
Scarper
Hi anndelise, I thought a bit before I answered this, because I think science - and research, psychology etc is cool, and I have an interest and affinity for it, but my opinion is that certain parts of 'atheist psychology' for want of an expression, misses out on key ingredients, that is, it reduces humans to the level of animals (and raises animals to the level of humans).
That is, we may therefore be coming from different perspectives on this. There's a reason why I think - if you want to look at it purely from an atheistic view, that topics such as religion, spirituality exist, it's because we as people are hardwired for such things. Trying to remove this aspect is a denial of how humans want to live - as they have lived since we know from the inception of society, and to remove such a key facet of people from research makes the research to me, lacking in scope.
Animals are cool, but animals don't feel the need for something bigger than themselves, some purpose, the 'God' factor if you will, so in this regards, of saying we are animals, all mammals etc, is missing out a key and vital difference.
Sooner or later, the 'God' question has to be addressed. If you take for instance recovery groups (where depression, poor emotional regulating/processing etc are common place), it's addressed eventually, ie, the 'higher power' as one of the 12 steps.