Sigh....alright. So i just joined this forum mostly because i wanted answers, and this place doesn't have a psychology category but since what i wanna know is based heavily on the religion vs science thing I figured i might as well put it here. Feel free to move it wherever its appropriate....now where to start?
I guess the easiest place to start is to point out my religious affiliation, and let me just say right now....I do not consider myself a christian not even close. In fact I don't consider myself aligned with any of the abrehemic religions. Instead i borrowed most of my philosophy from Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and paganism. Basically I believe in balance of body, mind and spirit, self improvement and the concept that all living things possess a soul.(That should give you a good idea which angle i'm coming from with this) This of course led me to have an interest in Parapsychology, Quantum mechanics and Panpsychism.
And as you can probably guess, all of them are considered pseudo scientific woo by strict materialists despite the fact that panpsychism is actually gaining academic credibility, as it fills in the gaps that materialism can't answer(Even more to the dismay of strict materialists considering panpsychism is basically a rebranding of animism) And if you're thinking none of those have shown proof, well actually they have it's just the proof isn't good enough. Because apparently anecdotal evidence is all but useless ,because normal humans aren't intelligent enough to understand what they saw and are just deluded fools, despite the fact that there have been studies to support various things such as Dr Ian Stevensons Theory of reincarnation, which people will insist is a hoax despite no one being able to disprove it yet.
The point i'm trying to make is it feels like there's this mindset that If you are an atheist your IQ goes up by like 30 points and anyone who is religious or spiritual is automatically inferior to you and should be treated as such. Which brings us to scientific materialism. This idea that everything is made purely of matter and all other prospects are impossible just doesn't make sense to me. Even from a scientific standpoint this just seems illogical and frankly depressing. Like when asked what made the universe we get the big bang theory. Fine. But how it came to be, you get some very interesting answers. My favorite is richard dawkins famous quote stating that we and the universe we live in are some "Happy little accident". An accident like we were the result of a drunk night at a bar or something. I mean the chances of the universe we living being purely by accident are so astronomically low, that in my opinion to even suggest such a thing is an insult to science. And yet there are plenty"Wannabe smart guys" who just lap it all up. Which in turn leads people to believe that when we die we simply cease to exist, despite the fact that....well lets take a basic law. It's impossible to create something out of nothing right? Very basic law of everything. Which means the reverse should be true as well. Something can't become nothing, and that includes consciousness. Which makes the very idea feel like something an edgy teenager would say.
Anyway...point what is it? What i want to know is....is this mindset prevalent in the scientific community and if not, then why does it seem to common among those who detests religious people to the point where they go one step further and deny spirituality as a whole? It almost seems spiteful really.
Sorry if this was long, but I've had A LOT on my mind. In fact I'm pretty sure i didn't get everything down.