Are you saying, the blatantly organised ones are staying with you longer for religious reasons? ; )

MIckey - What about you?

Mickey - Thanks for sharing your history. Interesting isn't it that "atheist" has become synonymous with "antitheist"? Back when I was a kid (long, long ago) atheist just meant someone who didn't believe in god...."not a theist". I guess to some people it may be an active "disbelief" but for some of us it's not an anti or subtractive thing but more of just an understanding that god is just as silly as the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. I've found that sometimes people who grew up with god as being important in their life take on atheism as an anti-belief rather than merely non-belief *shrug* "Atheist" seems to have taken on rather evangelical connotations - so much so that it appears that someone moderating an atheist's tribe feels the need to distance themselves from the term! (Back when I was younger an agnostic was someone who believed in god but though it inexplicable and unprovable, or someone who didn't know one way or the other, there weren't quite so many subsets...I wonder if that means more people want to identify as some form of atheist?)

As someone who was brought up as godless, I can only imagine (and probably not very well) what it's like to be a believer and then lose faith. Is it a bit like falling out of love with someone? Would you be willing to talk about your experience and how it came about?

quel - Oh, I kinda got the impression that you were saying something along the lines of Dr Yo's interpretation....not that she didn't like or have faith in humans so much but that she didn't look at humanity and human potential/achievement with much wonder or, well, acceptance of what humans are capable of creating. Though considering she had the evidence of Gaudi's work in front of her, it sounded a bit of a strange position for an atheist! ;-) This is a subject that marries my two passions - art and the brain - so pardon me if I ramble on!

I have found that sometimes people like to weave overly romantic ideas about artistic creation (and artists for that matter but they're usually the one's doing the weaving and positioning themselves as exceptional beings, or their agents are ;-). I would suspect that the history of the various churches as patrons of the art sand the traditions of art being in service to God(s) has something to do with the language and memes that position inspiration as divine. Well, that and the fact that when highly concentrated it's easy to get into a flow state (just like athletes or meditators); there's a cyclical aspect to creativity (and many highly creative people are a bit left of "normal" to begin with) that tends to be pretty manic; and artists and their dealers tend to like to create a mythology around an artist (and some artists just don't understand their own creative cycles or are insecure about their skills, it's hard to be creative on demand and this creates a certain mysteriousness to inspiration). Inspiration isn't rational but that doesn't mean it's suddenly all about god! ;-) Kinda like intuition :-)

I'd actually suggest that art attracts people who are prone to religiosity due to certain mental features such as schizophrenia or OCD (you really can quite often tell something about the artist's physical body and the internal experience it creates via their work). What came first? OCD repetitive soothing rituals or religious ones? (Most of us find repetition soothing in that it lulls us into a hypnotic state but someone who's extremely OCD HAS to constantly repeat their rituals to keep the demons at bay.) Of course, most of the time being extremely OCD or schizophrenic tends to get in the way of actually being able to create art that communicates to others and sustaining the practice needed to develop the skills, or sustain art as any form of career. Inspiration is actually only a tiny part of creating art and is often the result of lots of groundwork.

quel - "it's just that for some, the inspiration they get from faith may be their catalyst"

I suspect that this is once again a case of attributing something that's not understood as being supernatural. If we don't understand where inspiration comes from, attributing it to an outside, omnipotent force offers an explanation and - through various means - a potential for controlling/petitioning the source of inspiration. Having just recently suffered from a creative block, I can certainly understand why people resort to prayer!

I don't know, and absolutely nothing personal against you here nor am I saying you believe this, I get a bit sick of god and believers trying to claim all the best parts of being human for god (and blame the rest on the devil or that other god over there who's really the devil, etc). If believing in god allows someone to be personally creative and gives them ideas for art projects, that's great and really pretty much a personal thing as far as I'm concerned. Same goes for taking psychedelics, and so on.