Dr Kelly Clark - Is Atheism 'Normal'? Reflections from the Cognitive Science of Religion

From the Agency Detection Device (ADD) to Theory of Mind (ToM), the cognitive faculties involved in the production and sustenance of religious belief are well known: regardless of the extra-mental reality or otherwise of the objects of religious belief, to have such belief is natural and normal, across a wide range of definitions of these terms. Unbelief, however, has not received nearly so much attention, a fact that may be due to the explicit or implicit treatment of religious belief as a deviation from a state of natural cognitive innocence, comparable to a malfunction or mind-disease, or a deficiency incompatible with rational human perfection, once superstition has been banished. Paying careful attention to range of positions that could be characterized as 'atheist', I summarize new research that has examined cognitive capacities or deficiencies that correlate with a professed stance of unbelief. Is atheism, then, rational? Are atheists 'normal'?