Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
My Non-Crisis Of Non-Faith
A "congregational leader" (sorry, weirdly there is no byline associated with this piece, so I am not really sure who wrote it) from the Ontario, California area writes an op-ed column in the Daily Bulletin and makes an incredibly good point about belief vs. unbelief.
First, he outlines his own "struggle to keep believing".
[link] My faith in God has always been a struggle. There have been numerous moments when I've been standing on a different rock trying to convince myself that my faith in God is right. "Look at all these other people who believe," I say to myself. "Some of the smartest people in the world believe that Jesus was right. They speak with excitement about their faith. You can do this faith thing. Just believe." And so I do. Sometimes with just 51 percent.
This rings so very true to me. When I was a Christian, I also struggled to keep believing in a God that I increasingly suspected wasn't really there. Eventually I concluded that it was all a bunch of hogwash designed by humans to control other humans, and that the god-thing that I had spent the first part of my life worshiping blindly was never there to begin with.
But it is his next bit that really got me:
[link] It seems there is a lot being said these days about the struggle of faith. Is it because we are being more honest today than in the past? Or, is it because it's harder to believe today than it was a hundred years ago? Probably both. Obviously science has impacted the world of faith and caused far more skepticism than there used to be. Which leads me to wonder about the skeptics of the world, the "unconvinced" as we sometimes refer to them in the church. Do they ever have a crisis of faith, or should I say nonfaith? Do they ever have a struggle of unbelief? Do they ever want to deny God with all their heart, but find that darn believing side creeping in?
I have yet to see a book by an atheist entitled "My Struggle Not to Believe." (Bold is mine -Brent) A book where the author shares his stories about his near conversion and tries to encourage his fellow atheists to keep up the unbelief. I know Bertrand Russell told us why he wasn't a Christian, but he never talked about his struggle to remain a non-Christian.
Do any of you ever struggle with your unbelief? Is it difficult for you to continue being an unbeliever? Because for me, it's like the default position on a spring-loaded switch.
However, I do see some lovely snarky possibilities in writing a book entitled "My Struggle Not To Not Believe", or "My Non-Crisis Of Non-Faith". Heh.
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Never a struggle..but morphed as I grew
Raised in an ex-Catholic/atheist home...that became Unitarian when I was a teen.
Pre Unitarian days wanted to be a Catholic to fit in the world around me where everyone had a religion ...(Catholic Grandmother influence)...Once we had a religion (Unitarianism) it all became less important to me and I no longer lusted after the god of belonging.
In my 60's now, children have been raised and parents are now deceased....and must say that my nonbelief is stronger than ever. (no crises of doubting the doubt) I am very comfortable with the circle of life I see all around me. I like being part of this beautiful universe, and love the vision of my molecules & atoms being recycled in the world. My secret vision/longing is that after my demise some of my atoms will get to be sucked up by a tree....yes...really.
My philosophy poem/song...written when I thought I was dying some 13 yrs ago:
We share the earth, the sea, the sky;
We share it one and all.
We seek to learn just how it works;
This world of ours so small.
We face it square: our joys and woes.
We need no magic sign.
We live, we die, our genes go on
And our atoms recombine.
We have one chance to love & learn
And to make a better world.
So rejoice in life.
Rejoice in life
Rejoice in life.
The spring-loaded switch...
The spring-loaded switch is a great description! I held it in the belief-position for years, eyelids drooping and arm trembling from the effort. What a relief when I finally let it down. Or admitted that it had tripped years ago and that I was denying it.
Like Hank, I'd say science fiction helped. The nonfiction works of Carl Sagan probably helped more than anything. Reading Demon Haunted World was when I realized I just didn't believe anymore, and that I should stop being silent about it.
That's an unusually frank op-ed. Not sure I can condemn the author for private doubts. "There, but for the grace of Darwin/Russell/Dawkins/Sagan/Heinlein/Asimov/Clarke go I..."
Another recent example is the revelations about Mother Theresa show that someone can go to her grave tortured by the Christian meme when they really don't believe. No wonder her "ministry" was such a study in contradictions. She would have needed superhuman courage to say; I think we should help the poor because life and human dignity are precious, and our fantasies about an afterlife are only getting in the way.
Do any of you ever struggle
Do any of you ever struggle with your unbelief? Is it difficult for you to continue being an unbeliever? Because for me, it's like the default position on a spring-loaded switch.
Ditto. I can honestly say that I've never believed in "God" and I have never had any sort of period in my life where I wasn't sure about by non-belief. I can remember being a kid and I'd hear other kids talk about church or God and I could never understand how they could believe in some fairy tale when it was so obvious to me that it was complete nonsense.
I guess I've always been this way and I've yet to encounter any reason for thinking otherwise.
I have been an athiest since
I have been an athiest since I was knee high to a grasshopper and very vocal about my non-faith. I find religion/spirituality/faith fascinating and can completely understand why it has persisted but at the same time I just 'dont get it' personally.
However I am writing this from a room in a pediatric oncology ward, my little boy is strugglng and I am terrified.
You can laugh all you want, I confess, I am being drawn to the chapel. There seems to be nothing more I can do. I am very stubborn and set in my ways yet now I worry, "what if I am wrong".
best wishes
Thats a tough spot. I can see the chapel being comforting if for no other reason that a quiet place to think. As for turning to faith in a difficult time, its not the route I would take but its perfectly understandable, things are already out of your hands so I can see it being comforting to think that there is an all-powerful something watching over your child as opposed to a fallible doctor. But its the doctors who are going to save your child.
When someone has a story like this it would be handy to be religious from this perspective too. It would be easy to say, "ill pray for you" or something like that, but does that really help anyone?
If your wrong then god is pretty much a dick anyway so why bother praising him?
No real crisis, just doubts.
I've never really had a "crisis" or anything like that. Every once in a while, though, I'll kinda doubt myself. I wonder if my non-belief is simply the result of having parents with non-belief. This usually starts off by imagining what various friends/family/coworkers would think if they knew I was an atheist. I get worried that they'll just dismiss it out of hand: "well, of course he'd think that he's an atheist; just look at his dad".
I don't take it too seriously, though. I usually just think, "well, regardless of WHY i disbelieve, it still doesn't change the damn good reasons for not believing."
Just Curious ...
"The Colonel" seems to have vanished. Anyone know what's up with that?
An Honest Subject
...and an honest answer from you, Hank, as well as others.
I'm still here once in awhile, but evaluating my stay at UTI. If I can be brutally honest without being labeled something on one end of the pendulum swing or the other, the lack of this kind of interaction is why I've pulled back a bit.
I've written here that I have evaluated my own worldview many, many times over the past 25 years or so. This is one of the first times I've seen this sort of interactive reflection from UTI, however. It helps me, because it brings us all down to a very equal footing in one important aspect: we are all human. Sometimes when I read the posts here, (or on various religious sites) one could get the notion that some people are above just this--being human. Political and theological pontifications--it sometimes seems so stilted. But when we can talk--sort of both hands on the table, man-to-man--I think it is good for us all and reminds us of our similarities in the midst of our vehement differences.
C.S. Lewis spoke about his deep struggle to keep from believing. Others at Oxford and elsewhere have done the same. But in some very real sense, isn't a certain amount of doubt something most seekers of truth wrestle with, regardless the trajectory of their belief/doubt? Isn't it somewhat akin to bravery in the face of danger? It isn't that brave people are never afraid; the very word "brave" carries with it a certain amount of fear or you wouldn't be brave. Likewise, seeking truth carries with it, at least at some points, a certain amount of healthy doubt, or you would no longer be seeking anything. Some of you here (I'm not speaking directly to you, Hank, just using your post as a place to jump in generally), say you just came to "know" or "believe" what you currently believe almost automatically (the default switch analogy). I have come to believe otherwise, but ever want to be honest with myself--particularly since I admire it in you (plural).
It's interesting that you, Brent (and other responders), take the button as spring-loaded "no God". What, in the final analysis, makes it that way in your mind, and the precise opposite in others'? These kinds of naked inquiries don't, to me, open us up to try to score "points" on one another--rather they open us up to see that we're all on the same blue planet standing in the same dust from which we came. It speaks of the theist and the atheist alike being human. It is a respite from barbs and snarks and gotcha's--a respite that must surely appeal to all of us in our most sober moments.
-Col.
I may not be around much for a few days--will be away from the office and computer some. I'll try to poke my head in once in awhile.
Oh the humanity
On this we agree. However, and it is a big however. We most assuredly do not agree on the nature of what being 'human' means. To me it means that I am a sentient living process here at the end of 4 billion (more or less) years of evolution unguided by a greater intelligence, but influenced rather by natural law, by chance and by choice. I am a soulless creature of baryonic matter only, without any mysterious components unmeasurable by known science. When I die, my consciousness will cease to exist. Forever.
You on the other hand are a created thing. Your world is full of created human things who could not be other than they are and who live only to serve the obscure purpose of an inscrutable master whose chosen means of communication is through millenia old texts and their army of interpreters. Your texts imply that your human consciousness will persist after the death of your flesh perhaps into eternity (and you'll have the joy of watching all the stars go out I guess).
The sentiment is nice, but alas the definitions of human do not square.
There's no mystery what orients the spring toward non-belief
Colonel asks:
I am not aware of any evidence for a god. A book full of miracles, but never seen one. Never seen solid evidence for an amputee's limb growing back.
The Bible makes claims about Jesus. I've heard claims about Elvis. In two thousand years, who knows? Maybe he rose again on the third day.
I look at the claims of Christianity, and they seem so parochial against the scale of the universe as we now know it to be. The switch defaults toward unbelief because of the age of the Earth, of the Universe, the distance to the next star, to the Orion nebula. There are hundreds of billions of worlds. Trillions, probably.
The book talks about evil spirits, but as a child I was already skilled in microscopy (had two microscopes, a 1000x transmission scope and a 10x stereo dissection scope. Still have the latter. I also had a four-inch reflector telescope, which has gotten lost somewhere along the way.)
All those legends about the moon, and it's just a hunk of lifeless rock orbiting our world by Newtonian mechanics.
It's such an effort to deny what I know is evidentially true, to cling to explanations that are so obviously the product of pre-scientific culture.
That's what loads the spring for me. I have a number of guesses what loads it the other way for believers.
Doubts
I had a LOT of doubts. You have to.
My own experience during my years-long journey: Early-on I did worry, many times, that I might be wrong, that there might really be a holy telepath looking into my thoughts, or spying on everything I did. And that I was going to hell for doubting.
Rather than chant to myself something to drown out that worry, I'd look again at the evidence. What do I know about things that really exist? Aside from this current moment of fear, what really makes sense? Is there ANYTHING any religious authority has said or written that jibes with my own personal experience of the real world?
I think being a science fiction fan helped. I was exposed to alien creatures, advanced civilizations, superior species on other planets -- countless mental models for gods and devils, supernatural phenomenon and magical beings.
Typically, I'd find some new perspective on the religion I'd been taught, and it would suddenly "ridiculous-ize" it to the point that I couldn't believe in it. For instance, if you substitute the word "magic" for all references to holy miracles, or some phrase like "Big Magic Juju Guy" for whatever god your tribe happens to believe in, it makes things sound waaaaay different all of a sudden.
The phrase "My Struggle Not to Believe" is just another bullshit slap at atheists. Like every unbeliever has to work hard not to accept Jesus, so we can live our sinful, hateful lives free of the guilt we should feel for all the raping and murder and -- my favorite -- pinching babies to make them cry.
I'd like to ask the guy who wrote the piece about his struggle to believe, "If you had private doubts about the existence of gods, why did you betray your own mind by ignoring them? And is there ANYTHING today that you'd accept as valid reason to question the basic ideas of your religion? Is there ANYTHING that could convince you that you've made a mistake, that the people around you might be mistaken or lying, and that your religion might not be true?"
...
And just incidentally, there have been at least a few books written by triumphant Christians who claim to be "former atheists." You'd think some part of those books would be something on the order of "My Struggle Not to Believe."
The struggle to not struggle to not believe?
I wonder. I think the fact that we RARELY hear of atheists/agnostics/nontheists writing about their "struggle" not to believe is telling of the fact that it ISN'T really a struggle. It pretty much throws into relief how the struggle to keep faith is really just a form of denial. There may be other reasons for the dearth of books on struggling to not-believe, I don't know for sure, but it sounds reasonable to think of it in the "default position" terms Brent uses here. Once that spring-loaded switch snaps back home, the tension is lost and the struggle vanishes.
The only times when "that darn believing side" creeps in, for me, come in the (many) moments when events seem to have conspired in just such a way to make a fool of me. Those are the moments when, as a younger man, I might have flipped the bird skyward. Now, however, I simply recognize coincidence for what it is, and stop trying to personalize chance. That, too, is an easier position to hold than the other assumption that some Sky-Daddy loves me and is testing me. No crises of non-faith here.
My ever-decreasing struggle
I had an experience when I was 10 that saved me a lot of the struggle I could have otherwise had in the deconversion process, which took ten years. Other factors contributing to my eventual deconversion:
-Being introduced to Carl Sagan through "Cosmos" when it was first broadcast and I was a young 'un. Nothing stands in the way of Carl! Not even Chuck Norris' beardful of fists!
-I was brought up a VERY freethinking Episcopalean. Which means: "Hey, ya wanna go to church?" "Nah, let's get donuts." "Right." Despite this, I still believed.
-A knowledge of other myths throughout history in other cultures through childrens' books. Again, despite this I still believed. I needed a constant security blanket.
-The congregation at my church was extremely educated and liberal/openminded, religiously and politically. The difference between the thinking people outside church and the same droning on and on inside church was anthropologically interesting if spiritually confusing. Ritual is a powerful salve, I guess. So. Ten years old. In church. Imagine my surprise when I heard:
"If you worship another god, you will perish."
I lost a LOT of respect for the religion then and there in an eyeblink. Then later I read the Bible. Hoo boy. That sealed the deal. The only thing I learned from that book was giving up Christianity saves me a lot of struggle and fear. Besides, the 'science' (HA HA HA) in the Bible is, shall we say, unique.
I didn't like the idea of leaving religion. It was a struggle, for a solid ten years, in my teens. Periods of vacillations and rationalizations. But it eventually came down to: what I felt I must rationalize was supposed to be an allpowerful god. Can't he rationalize himself, without my help? Evidently no. Ergo, not allpowerful. Ergo, a human emotional buoy. A Decision: Clutch buoy or learn to swim. Scary? Yes. But what is gained by accepting that this buoy is the only way to live? Cowardice. Anyway, swimming gets easier over time. So would critical thinking. I slowly realized that doubt gives one a sense of personal purpose in an impersonal universe. Belief subjects one to an impersonal purpose in a personal universe. I'll take Door #1!
But it's interesting that my need to connect with Something Larger has not left. So while I do agree that 'no god' is our default position in the sense that one is not born a Christian, Muslim, Hindu etc, I do disagree that it's that simple. We naturally want to believe in Something Larger. Blame evolution. But its up to us to focus that need toward studying our material origins, not Mr. God.
Since I saw Carl that first time, I've been driven a bit obsessively to learn about the universe. That battled with my belief during my deconversion, and belief lost. So today I just try to connect with the universe. Which inevitably allows me to connect with myself in a non-Bliss-Ninny way. The universe is my creator. I bear no embarrassment or resentment today towards my defunct god- he just turned out to be REALLY disappointing.
(Not to mention imaginary.)
belief
I used to be an atheist.
Then I experienced god for myself.
This world is a form of virtual reality.
It is an illusion.
God is more real than the floor you stand on.
God is out their.
God loves you.
God loves YOU!
This world is an illusion
This world is an illusion
Buddhism seeing through the illusion
Quantum physics double slit experiment
Secret beyond matter Only good for the first 19 min. (it turns to shit when they start to shove god down your throat)
God LOVES Brent Rasmussen
It's an illusion
gods and love
Why am I getting the feeling the three commenters who call themselves "God is loving," "God is love" and "god loves you" are, like, one guy?
Difference of perspective
I was raised by atheists so for me that is the default "religious" view. Late in high school and into college I began to wonder "Are these dudes that keep talking about some god-thing serious?" and in a sense the question that has haunted mankind since, well, a long time ago "Is there anybody out there?" (note: yes, I do think a lot of the UFO nuttery that goes on is due to the same psychological forces that created the godly nuttery). That question lead me down a road that made me realize something. It doesn't really matter if there's a god or not. I'm doing OK without one, I don't need someone to protect me or make good things happen to me. Also, I'm not really good at the whole unquestioning obedience thing, so any relationship I tried with God would inevitably go the way of Lilith's relationship with god (found out about this reference from a video game site) and we'll end up parting company. But if you asked me definitely "Do you believe in God?" I'd have to say "No" on several levels. I don't believe the Christian god exists. I don't believe that this world or any of the lifeforms within it were created or needed to be to exist. I don't believe it's necessary for things to have a purpose. This continually baffles me, why is it that people feel something exists therefor it must have a purpose? I've never in my life thought that or thought that rules were just made up by someone for kicks. Rules have a purpose: they inform you how best to either do something or avoid untimely death, other things are just there so people can break them.
Also, seeing some friends with varying belief systems I realized I don't actually believe in Karma. I don't believe that bad things only happen to bad people and I think it's cruel to assume that, because it allows you to say "Hey, you deserve what you're getting" when something horrible happens. Ya, I know, I do that, I don't have much sympathy for someone whose house falls into the sea because they built oceanfront property on a sandbar, but that's stupidity at work rather than some divine judgment system.
I also realized (with little surprise or revelation) that the only time I really pray for something it goes something like this "Please Square-enix, don't delay the next Final Fantasy game too long. Please let it have a good plot and fun battle system. Please let me be surprised by at least one of the plot twists." In other words, typical gamer hopes and dreams. Being a fantasy fan helps because there's nothing extraordinary about bringing someone back to life if all it takes is a well placed Phoenix Down or Yggdrasil Leaf.
Then there's the question of an afterlife. For that I figured "well, if I'm going to hell that's one thing, but if I'm sent to hell there must also be a way out. Therefor I'll find it."
Too funny, it's true you
don't hear much from atheists struggling to bolster one another's unbelief. ;)
It's a little like how books that claim to answer the burning question of whether evidence supports creation or evolution tends to be by creationists... (see one last thing about Lourdes.)
Still, I actually did stumble upon a thread recently of a bunch of unbelievers discussing occasional worries that their former beliefs may actually have been right: Does it ever go away? (Note that most of the people in the discussion are not actually atheists, but would be more accurately classified as "less-believing" as compared to literalists.)
No struggle to not-beleive -- just a struggle with convenience
I only started calling myself Atheist about a year ago, when I heard Richard Dawkins on the Penn Jillette and then read "The God Delusion." Prior to that I was a "default" Christian (hey, it's my name!) but not a very observant one.
I haven't had to struggle to not believe; but I have thought it would be more convenient to be a 'believer'. Some examples include:
It would have been nice to avoid the awkwardness when my family asked me to go to a Christmas service.
...or the anger when my Grandmother died and someone said, "At least she's happy now in a better place." Screw you! She lived to 94 and had an amazing life and the best you can say is that it's good she's dead?
*shakes off anger -- takes deep breath*
Pardon me.
Anyway, I don't think I've ever had struggle.
Ciao!
PS: It's very hard to phrase this right. It's not "struggle with doubt", because I would be doubting doubt. It's not a "struggle with a lack of belief", which implies something different. I hope that "not struggle to not believe" coveys the correct emphasis.
Odds and edns
My father said of his father that, whenever he moved to a new neighborhood, he would start going to whatever church was closest to where he lived. Going to church was just part of what you were supposed to do, and the denomination, so long as it was protestant, didn't matter.
My mother said of my father that he never seemed to be quite sure how he felt about the possibility of a deity. He knew the bible more as literature than as an instruction book, and he knew what to do in church, but he let us children find our own way.
My sister married a regular churchgoer, and my parents invited him to say grace at Christmas dinner, "so he would feel welcome," my mother told me quietly before dinner. After the 3rd or 4th year, my brother leaned over to me and said, "Are we going to do this every year now?"
My mother started referring to god a whole lot after my father died. It seemed unlike her, but I figured it was her search for comfort. My parents had been devoted to each other for 48 years, and his death left a great void in her life.
I have professed to believe in god a few times in my life. My favorite was when, in my teens, I was out sailing with my brother, an experienced sailor, and the boat seemed, to my frightened eyes, to be falling apart. I looked up in the sky and swore I would stop masturbating if I got to shore safely. That resolution, I am sure, did not last through the night.
I have not had any urge to believe in a god, and, besides a few moments of panic, I have been quite comfortable in that state of mind. Some might argue that, if I invoked a god in my panic, I should follow up on that. I did and found the concept completely lacking any attraction or value; it had no emotional hold on me, and the structure built around the concept of god completely crumbled for me once I started thinking about it. I am quite comfortable living in a chaotic universe to which we bring meaning, to paraphrase Sheldon Koop (If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him).
Frank Moorman, skeptic
This switch has had its
This switch has had its contacts permanently welded in the nonbelief position. There were years of struggle but one day the dang switch finally just got stuck in the default setting. Unrepairable.
My struggle to keep on not believing
It still happens to me. I'm still journeying and still trying to keep objectively looking at my world. There are times when it would be really nice to blame things on a god or to seek help from a god because there is nothing else you can do (and at least this way you feel like you are trying to do something). It is all motivated out of fear for me though. I'm a planner. I run through scenarios in my head and make plans for what I would do in all kinds-of "what if" circumstances. If there isn't anything that I can do or I don't know how to prepare for something...that is when I would switch back to the "there is a god" safety blanket. I've also caught myself inserting a god onto the end of any exercise where I start by trying to think about the universe and the scale of everything and how complex everything is. The closer we look the more questions we have to answer. God is convenient to insert there so that there is some sort of explanation. The problem is that it is a really weak explanation that doesn't make any sense at all once you begin to look objectively at it. My current struggle to keep not believing is more of a struggle to be comfortable with the unknown. I need to realize that there is no reason to fear things that I don't know. I don't need to know and understand everything in order to have a happy and meaningful life. That's where I am.
Mandy U
I have doubts.
Because of other things going on, I've been slow to jump in on this, though I find some of the answers quite interesting.
And, at the risk of ruining my atheist cred, I'll say I have doubts about my non-belief.
No, no, I don't have any doubt in my mind that there really isn't some big anthropomorphic father figure in the clouds looking down at me, making sure I'm a good little boy. Actually, most of the characterizations of 'God' in the various religions is just too limited for me to accept, and smacks too much of human hopes and fears made manifest (and sometimes exploited).
If anything, I wonder sometimes about the Primer Mover of classic Deism. Or some kind of pan-dimensional coherent awareness of which we can no more understand than can the individual cells in my body comprehend me, Jim Downey, as an entity. A few weeks back I got into the following discussion with a friend (friend's comments in italics):
For me, this is 'having doubts': saying that the jury is out on whether or not there are other aspects of reality which we do not comprehend. To some extent, I feel like we are barely out of the middle ages, unaware of even the basic principles of electricity, yet claiming that we have mechanistic models which will explain all reality.
I think the difference is that so many of the religious wish to attribute the unknown to God, whereas I just want to learn the science and gather the knowledge to develop new models and expand our understanding.
Jim Downey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like Science Fiction? Read my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Nope.
The world is not a form of virtual reality. It's real. There is no god.
While you're thinking about that, watch The Matrix a few more times. Maybe get a few new tattoos. Kick back and take some more drugs. Clear your mind and attempt to feel the psychic vibrations. Give up speaking aloud for a week or so. Cast off the chains of the physical world. Praise Jesus. You know, the usual stuff.
And have a nice (fantasy) life.
...
And you were NEVER an atheist. You’re not capable of the necessary degree of independent thought.
Reality is for people who can't handle drugs
You've got to do better than "I had a personal experience." Not to be cruel or flip, but you experienced something. The brain's a pretty complicated neighborhood.
Once when I was in the hospital for some surgery, and it hadn't gone well, I was on morphine, LOTS of morphine. The nurse was being kind to me and in my drug-addled state, I thought she was coming on to me and flirted right back. Right... twice her age and certainly no prize. But my logic, such as it was, certainly passed the experiential test of the moment.
Later when I had regained my right mind and my wife told me about it (it would have been kinder not to tell) I was mortified. But the nurse never mentioned it again. She probably got that a lot from stoned middle-agers.
Meditation, hypnosis, even group hysteria can all result in altered mental states. It's as real as anything else, since your (altered) brain is the arbiter of "real". If you then decline to examine the experience, it stays real forever.
Awesome
"I slowly realized that doubt gives one a sense of personal purpose in an impersonal universe. Belief subjects one to an impersonal purpose in a personal universe."
I just have to say that this is awesome, and so true. Thanks!
What's this "we" stuff, Kemosabe?
Mountain wrote:
> We naturally want to believe in Something Larger.
What's this "we" stuff, Kemosabe?
Are you sure this is natural and not a result of your upbringing?
I do not seem to posess this "natural want to believe in Something Larger."
Nope.
It's not an illusion. It's all real.
Well, except for the stuff that goes on in YOUR head.
Nope.
The world is not an illusion. The second you believe that, you descend into DElusion, and you give up all possibility of control over your own life.
Get real.
Irrationality is easy
Steve,
I understand you disagree with what Mountain said:
I don't pretend to speak for Mountain, but I kind of agree with him/her. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe either. However, I think that we(humans as a race) are wired to assign supernatural explanations to events and ideas that are unknown. It's part laziness and part creative imagination. There are so few of us who actually take the time to stop and think things through logically and rationally. Look at all of the variations of the supernatural realm humans have created. Deities, magic, voodoo, ESP, UFO's, curses, luck, superstitions, ghosts, tarot cards, ouija boards, astrology, elves etc. and so forth. We, as a race, are obsessed with the supernatural. In my opinion, it is much more work to be a rational logical human being than an irrational one.
Something larger
We naturally want to believe in something larger for ONE reason: We have parents.
We're born into a situation where huge, mysterious, all-powerful beings exert total control over us, love and punish and nurture us, during our most formative years.
Like a belly-button, the scar of an organ that served as a vital part of us at one time, the psychological mark of that period in our lives never goes away.
Too many people automatically interpret this (and other natural aspects of human nature that are perverted into religious meanings) to mean that we're "wired to believe in God."
Freud: Religion comparable to a childhood neurosis
Hank-
Thanks, you really got me thinking. You said:
I agree with most of what you have just said especially when we are talking about god. God is generally referred to as "father" and always thought of as an authority figure. The whole religion thing is about setting rules like a parent would do. It's also about alleviating guilt.
But, what about Big Foot and the Loch ness Monster? Or UFO's or Zombies? And Superheroes? I don't see the parent connection. Fear and feelings of helplessness maybe? I suppose that could be a connection to childhood?
I think it is something deeper that has to do with humanities overactive imaginations. I thought about trying to make a list of all things supernatural that I have ever heard of and quickly gave that up. It could go on almost forever. People just love to escape reality. Perhaps that is why so many of us take drugs or drink alcohol or believe in god?
"Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces." ~Sigmund Freud
I hate that quote, but he might be right. I have my own perspective that "protects" me from me. For example, I never thought of myself as a drug addict, yet I smoked pot daily for years. The funny part is that is how I might classify someone else doing the same thing. It is easy for me to see it now that I no longer smoke pot, but at the time I was easily able to rationalize it and file that truth away somewhere deep where it couldn't hurt me.
Religion is the same type of illusion. It saves many people pain and allows them to enjoy pleasure instead. Religious people can steal, lie, cheat, murder or whatever then simply ask god for forgiveness. Genius! No wonder so many believe. And no wonder it is always the worst people who are religious. They need an escape from their guilt.
Another Freud quote that fits right in with this train of thought: "Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis."
Sorry if this post is all over the place, but it's something I just begin thinking about and need more time to organize. Your comment started it and I am just writing off the top of my head.
Dirk
Parents and gods
I read the phrase "something larger" as specifically about religion, belief in gods.
The business about parents rings true for me, but solely in the sense of when we get that mystical feeling that Sky Daddy is going to swoop down and fix things, or smack us.
Bigfoot, Nessie, zombies, etc., that would be in a different conceptual package for me. Feels to me like willingness to believe in those things would spring from different psychological/developmental roots.
Growing up
It is strange that most of the religious people use the parent metaphor in relation to their deity. We are in no way god's children. If we were God's children then we would eventually grow up to be Gods ourselves and create our own universes. I think only the Mormons promise something even remotely like that. No indeed, we are more like pets according to most religions (and definitely including Christianity), sometimes favored pets and sometimes abused pets, but always pets, there to lick the hand of the master and make it feel better about itself. As much as I like my dogs they are never going to grow into people any more than people are going to grow up to be gods.
Embryos
If we were God's children then we would eventually grow up to be Gods ourselves and create our own universes.
That's really what the Eastern Orthodox church teaches (except for the creating universes part--which could be possible; a theological Multiverse, what?) And if you think about it, it makes sense. Cows produce cows. If we're supposed to be children of God, then we're probably embryonic gods or gods in gestation. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote, "The Son of God became man, that we might become God." Dont ask me how that works. I have no idea. And no bad jokes about God's reproductive habits either.
Seriously, in the Bible, there's this part where the Pharisees accused Jesus of equating himself with God, and Jesus basically said to them, 'So what if Im God? So are you!' That's in John 10:33.
Well now
Thanks for the info Jeg. As an American (or at least a human living in America) I receive little exposure to Eastern Orthodox Theology. I had no idea they propounded this idea. A short film that I saw on Mormonism talked about mormon couples becomming gods on their own planets or something to that effect. That certainly would be more of a draw than sweeping the streets of gold and polishing the silver all the while bellowing out praises for God which one might look forward to in the Christian heaven although as a male the eternally re-hymenizing virgins in the Muslim heaven have a certain appeal. I mean if you have to spend eternity doing something...
Absolutely
I could not agree more!
-Col.