I think. Therefore, I am an atheist?

Last week, I had an opportunity to guest-lecture where I tapped into my autoethnographic ways of understanding the world.  In explaining a situation that I had experienced, I made what I thought was a passing comment about my atheism.  Turns out that quite a few students wanted to explore that aspect, too.  Some of the questions during the Q/A were strictly about atheism, which was quite a surprise to me.

After the meeting ended, one student walked up to me and asked whether the atheism resulted from my undergraduate in engineering.  Apparently the bunch of science courses he had taken had triggered him to ditch his faith.  And, consistent with the popular images of people of his faith, the toughest time he had about his atheism was with his mother.

I told him that while engineering might have played a part, it was a whole bunch of readings I had done that took me over to the other side.  I agreed with him that science tends to make us question everything around us, and that it is more than likely that science folks are atheists for a good reason that the physicist Weinberg so succinctly put it:  "science doesn't make it impossible to believe in God, it just makes it possible to not believe in God."

Thus, I am not at all surprised with a recent news:

Scientists have revealed one of the reasons why some folks are less religious than others: They think more analytically, rather than going with their gut. And thinking analytically can cause religious belief to wane — for skeptics and true believers alike.

The finding is, for all purposes, quite a duh! moment; I have always wondered how those trained to think have not managed to walk away from religion.  

A couple of times, I have shared with the less-doubtful this essay by Steven Weinberg, in which he writes:

Living without God isn’t easy. But its very difficulty offers one other consolation—that there is a certain honor, or perhaps just a grim satisfaction, in facing up to our condition without despair and without wishful thinking—with good humor, but without God. 

Yep, humor--good or bad doesn't really matter, I think.  Wait, I did blog about humor contributing to my health and life :)