The psychological motivations for belief are ingrained in us. It's quite clear from a study of homo sapiens that religion and belief in the supernatural is as instinctive as procreation, war, and power. There is some sort of evolutionary advantage to religious belief; it could be that it builds community and homogeneity, aids in fighting hopelessness and depression, or something else. So belief and non-belief are not two sides to the same coin; non-belief is something that goes against instinct, so I think it is unique.
Atheists/agnostics choose their belief based on weighing a worldly existence against a Godly one. How much do people enjoy money, alcohol, drugs, sex, the self in general, and even relationships with other people? These things and more are what Christ tells us to give up in order to follow him.
I just find this amazingly off base. Maybe you've constructed your entire impression of non-believers off of a few quotes from Sartre and Huxley, but we KNOW that belief in God is not a barrier for most people to engage in excessive vice.
Also, the idea that people make a decision based on some cost/benefit analysis on how much vice they'll be able to take part in just seems cursory and unrealistic. We already know for a fact that for most people believing in God is no barrier to vice.
Sartre and Huxley seemed to approach vice and behavior from a philosophical point of view, and they wrote about their unique individual experiences. But to cast their very specific reasons for unbelief as the entire basis for why people come to different conclusions about the supernatural than you is just wildly shortsighted.
In my experience, one generally arrives at non-belief through a combination of reason, logic, evidence, and unique life experience. People who reject religion(s) do so for the same reasons that you reject Thor, Odin, Apollo, Allah, Vishnu, and the Great Juju in the sky. They just go one god further and include the God of Abraham in the mix.
If there is no God, everything is permissible goes the Dostoyevsky quote.
Well, it's a dumb quote to begin with, since everything is already permissible. We know that God doesn't strike people down for vice.
It's also wrong in the sense that it insinuates that if people stop believing in God, they'll immediately start raping, pillaging, shooting up heroin, banging prostitutes, and killing people for fun. We know for a fact that there's no evidence for that at all.
It also draws the wrong conclusion by saying that somehow, individuals don't have a defined earthly, personal, and moral reason to not help one another, hurt oneself, or otherwise engage in unhealthy activities or lifestyles.
You haven’t processed this concept, as stated in my last post:
Again, I’m not referring to whether or not believers/nonbelievers engage in certain behaviors. It’s not the topic here. We’re speaking of psychological motivation to believe. Whether or not belief from there goes on to motivate behavioral constraint is an entirely separate question which has no bearing on whether or not there exists a psychological motivation to believe.
You’re right, non belief seems to go against instinct. But when I use the term I mean nonbelievers in God. Atheism is a religion, as is environmentalism, universalism, humanism, existentialism and postmodernism. These all fulfill the instinct that has been associated with the “God spot,” the pineal gland, or whatever biological mechanism forms the basis for the instinct you mention.
In other words, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who truly believes in nothing.
I stand by the assertion that one of the most common atheist arguments has been neutralized as explained in my past several posts.
Everyone has faith in something. It's a matter of what that faith is in.
For some the faith is in God. For others it's in themselves or some other force.
But there is no non-belief because non-belief in God means belief in something else.
For those who reject God, science has filled that need being the something else.