Profiling the atheist

Many claims of second guessing proponents has been made, some of it even referencing psychology research. Yet the research into whether, say, grief over a dead loved one turning into spite against those who don't think death == oblivion doesn't seem to have been done.

But it's going to be much much deeper than that... it will go all the way back to earliest childhood.. In my experience, most of the really deep formative stuff is buried in our early childhood, it is often extremely sore, very frightened, and small. It's also very brave when it seeks another's help to change, and often very beautiful when it trusts someone enough to reveal itself.

I wasn't referring to the poem but to the "some people" that you mentioned.  A poem is not reality.

I do think some people see the Rainbow Bridge poem as suggestive of an afterlife they might want to believe in. So it may not work exactly like the afterlife of the poem which could be read as symbolic.

Re: obvious fictions people believe in, I'd note the compatiblism idea floated by some skeptics on how to reconcile their faith in materialism with their desire to preserve humanist ideals.

I wasn't referring to the poem but to the "some people" that you mentioned.  A poem is not reality.

“Some people” are friends and family. I know their motivations because they told me. The sentiments expressed in the poem are supposed to be real, even though someone made them up.

Linda

Perhaps it is zero but people don't always have (or give) an accurate reading of their own dispositions. We do have some limited knowledge of some feeling a great unease regarding the possibility Psi or anything else supernatural would be real.

Yes, “unease” I think is a good description of how some people feel about the possibility of psi. I wonder if some people could be envious of certainty (which would fit with the study Ninshub mentioned).

Linda