As I come to the final 12 days of my undergraduate degree, I strangely find myself thinking a great deal of my Christan past. Perhaps not so strangely. Even though I have As and Bs in all my classes I could still screw up by not studying enough, and in some cases make a bad enough grade to fail. Some of my finals are very heavily weighted.
So I hear a familiar call in my mind, “Oh God! Please help me.”
WTF?
I don’t believe in God anymore why am I even having that thought?
I think its because to a certain extent, I wish God existed.
At least the kind of God who would help me ace all my finals.
Its kind of like a wish granting sky-genie.
This is a real step down from the way I actually believed in God, which was always as some kind of transcendental being that in addition to granting my wishes, would also help me be a better person, a person who was as the bible says, “in this world, but not of it.”
I guess being an atheist has made my schemas about prayer shallow.
When I was a Christian I prayed for things like a greater capacity for love, compassion, patience.
Now I call out for good grades and then I feel like a douchebag, because I don’t even believe in God.
Its like some sort of strange reflex I have yet to lose.
I find myself using this strange behavior if I have a hard enough time finding the remote or my keys as well.
I don’t know.
I just hope it gets a laugh.
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Every so often, but rarely ever, I find myself asking something for help. I don’t know what that something is and it just seems like a reflex. Then I realize that if i’m so stressed and worried that my first reaction is asking something for help then I better make sure I use every inch of human potential I have to make sure whatever I’m asking for help on is resolved with my own will. Flip something like that and turn it into motivation.
Interesting observations. Is the behavior/need built into humans as Augustine would have argued (and I’m not much of a fan), or is it some kind of evolutionary vestige as one may also argue? It also seems that even some non-theist religions/philosophy have something that could be described as prayer.
Sometimes when my computer is acting up, I talk to it, yell at it, and swear at it, I even encourage it when its slow. Human beings have an instinct for empathy, which means we can feel things vicariously, we can also attribute human qualities to things that aren’t human, like animals, rocks, computers, and even situations. We anthropomorphize everything, because we look for patterns, motivations and reasons for everything. Its a survival mechanism, but as such it can be over applied. We also live in social communities where common language and belief is part of living. Old habits die hard.
_Is the behavior/need built into humans as Augustine would have argued (and I’m not much of a fan), or is it some kind of evolutionary vestige as one may also argue?_
Well, you’ve highlighted both. When you say built it, it’s hard for that to be separated from the biological reasons. You could take it further to consider it along the lions of the (admittedly dodgy) “evolutionary psychology”.
But it certainly was outlined by Freud in “The Future of an Illusion” and the idea, projection and maintenance of a god will continue because of the ideas he expressed in that essay. It really comes down to that. It’s why even nonbelivers like Rodrigo will project onto something else. It has little or nothing to do whether someone is religious – it is a perfectly normal human longing and need. That explains the second half of your point with regards to nonbelivers praying.
Your thoughts?
Well said: The old seeing false positives over and above false negatives. It’s perhaps the reasons our ancestors survived, I hope you’d agree. In that those who saw faces in the dark were more likely to live than those who dismissed sudden movements as nothing. (Funny that the “sceptics” of this time were the less likely to survive
Yes, there is an old psychology experiment that deals with superstition and mice. They set up the feeding mechanism to give food to different mice at random intervals. The result was the different individual mice repeating idiosyncratic actions to get the food to appear. They had become superstitious in the face of uncertainty.
I remember one about pigeons. They showed it to us when we investigated psychology of belief, last year. There was one pidgeon who became convinced that it was spinning in a circle that produced the pellets, long after the first two coincedences (ie. the food dispenser gave the pellets at random times; two of those times, the pidgeon had turned; it then continued to do it when it wanted a pellet, even tho it had nothing to do with it).
I still do it myself. I am convinced that if I listen to Vicarious by Tool, good things will happen. It’s become a relaxer for me, a kind of non-rational form of reasoning things out. I know its irrational but i feel calmer by depositing luck into something else. Its the same principle.
Thanks for the engagement, took me a couple of days to get back to this. I guess I’m saying in so many words that what we do with Rodrigo’s (and Tyler’s) observation mostly has to do with what end of the stick we have got hold of.
I’d guess most non-believers would say, this is a human need that is somehow produced by evolution but says nothing about the existence of a God or higher power, simply that we sometimes wish there were one or feel a need for one.
I’d also guess most believers, such as myself, would say that it’s similar to a child’s desire for it’s mother. Humans have a built-in sense that there is a higher (creative) power out there and also have a need to think about, know, appeal to, or converse with that power. I tend to think this is evidence that there is a higher (creative) power, but as I said it depends on which end of the stick you’re hanging on to.
In my thought, it’s no coincidence or vestigial remnant that all humans feel these desires, even non-theist ones. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of humanity has always had some sort of religion of theism. And it’s no great advance into liberty that some people have lately (and in antiquity as well) chosen not to believe. It is something morally neutral, it is what you make it.
As to the stick — I think ultimately it’s a choice we make. Evidence, of any kind, can be applied and interpreted in either case and mainly provides an index to our desires, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell in “Roads to Freedom”.
I have no real counterpoint to that Curtis.
I guess over all I just felt that it was not the best bet.
Hm I like you cos you quoted Russell.
You are absolutely correct in your assessment of evidence, so, if you will allow, I will provide what I think it is. In terms of psychology, which is my discipline as I can’t comment in other areas (I wasn’t trained in them!), the need for things doesn’t necessitate the existence of the object.
Your argument that it is no coincedence that we all feel it has echoes of Thomist proofs. And I doubt someone like you finds complete solace in the Thomist proofs alone, so I won’t deal extensively with them.
Nonetheless, many people can have the desire for any number of things but it doesn’t make them true, Indeed, wouldn’t make more sense to be suspicious if MORE people want x? Because we all crave various things, to lesser and greater degrees, but some of those things (killing nonwhites, or nonmuslims) we would hope are not true! (this is why I am a so-called anti-theist, some would say, in that I reject religion on the basis of its truth claims of good, as well as its bad.)
And we also have need for sex, food, and so on. And we work at various ways to acquire it. I know lots of people, by the way, who do not care for the numinous or transcendant. People who will never go on their knees for anything. Anyway, to acquire food you might buy it or another person might make it. In terms of the numinous or projected perfection, I find it in art and literature and music; you find it in god. (correct me if i’m wrong). No doubt, you also feel the resonance of god in what I would also find beautiful – but i wud stop there.
It makes no sense to me to apply god to these things. It does not make it true, just because a lot of people have felt it, or experienced it. Indeed, as Russell pointed out, given the majority of silliness in mankinds past, it would make more sense to doubt the majority opinion. I have this discussion with my best friend, a Protestant, all the time. I’m just wondering why
1. you need to apply god to what is already beautiful
2. the logical fallacy of saying because we crave x, x therefore exists (we all crave a magical island of perfection, but it doesnt make they island real)
Write back soon.
Tauriq,
I certainly sympathize with your thoughts on violence religious/ethnic or otherwise. My wife is a Beiruti and we went through 2006 together.
Some of your points reflect what Rodrigo has recently said in “Art is God”. I guess my response to your points 1 and 2 is 1, because beauty is perfected in creation, and it’s not creation if nobody created it. So really I choose more than need to apply God to this, and that makes me happy, but I certainly respect your position to leave it as is. To 2, I imagine Aquinas would have said that all the other things you mention that we crave exist in reality, they are something that are attainable, whether good or bad. We crave nothing that we cannot have, at least in theory. So if most of humanity craving God/god/gods is unattainable and imaginary, it would be a total exception to the rule that would need explanation.
You are are correct in your suspicion that I am not a pure Thomist, or pure anything really, I’m my own breakfast blend. I take a coherentist rather than a foundationalist approach to faith and philosophy. I find that more resilient and potentially authentic. I give God alot more credit than some people of faith do, I imagine he’s big enough to appreciate diversity since he created it, and that he’s not sitting on a buzzer waiting to send me to hell for getting something wrong. The kind of childish petulant God some people espouse wouldn’t be worth the trouble for me, but I believe in something much better.
My choice is also informed by my position of having been an agnostic in the past. I also had a theology degree with alot of study in anthropology in there.
I understand.
In my agnostic years, I found no comfort in what I was doing, only sadness and bitterness. That had a lot to do with my I found my way back. Before that, I’d found sadness and bitterness in religion for a few years that drove me away. It was after I came back to a new and different, more nuanced faith that I found something that really worked for me and made me happy and healthy.
People need to do what gets them through life.
I agree. I also find your perspective refreshing.
Curtis
I’m glad I successfully picked up on some of your nuances and dispositions regarding faith.
Let me address your most prominent point and please correct me after, if I have mistaken it.
1. We crave x because we have perceived or experienced x before.
2. It is because we have experienced x before that we can crave it.
3. This means it exists or is attainable to a lesser or greater degree
4. by replacing x with god, we can say god exists and can necessarily be attained or experienced.
I believe CS Lewis spoke of water and contrasted this to the longing and eventual quenching of thirst. Similarly, that need is fulfilled by god.
But this does not make sense. We do not know firstly, what x is in the case of the numinous or transcendant. I am “quenched” with, as I said, art, literature etc. It is simply wrong to say that god fulfills that for me and that, necessarily, he exists. It may be that the idea or concept of a benevolent deity, or the god you perceive, “quenches” that longing for you. In that sense, yes: I too believe in the concept of god.
I, too, can say that that god, that concept you derive, quenches Curtis’ thirst for the numinous. But you still have all your work cut out for, as they say, in showing this god
1. exists
2. is the god that created the universe
3. is the god of the bible
etc.
So, whilst I do not deny that the concept frames your thirst into a quenchable answer, I do wonder about what that necessarily entails as to its existence, its goodness, its truth as the god of the bible, etc. etc. Whereas, as a naturalist, I can hand you and point you to the things that fulfil my thirst (i agree that most if not everyone has it, perhaps), yours must remain in purely metaphysical.
This is my only difference. I think this also touches a key point with regard to many believers I’ve encountered – it says nothing about their intelligence, their goodness or their humanity. And they are quite happy and content, like yourself, to hold that their god exists and so on, without ever having to prove it to anyone. The only important thing is that it is true for them (we don’t believe anything that we do not think is true – ala Schopenhauer, Pinker, etc.).
As my dialogue above to you demonstrates, someone like myself is interested in finding truth in this. Hence, it usually comes across as emotional and the response is usually emotional. However, I think you’d see that it is based purely on argument. Hm, I think I’m going to write a column on why theists and atheists perceive the same argument differently. Anyway, I just added that as a disclaimer.
The thrust is this: You do not have to justify yourself to me, I am no one. And if your (concept of) god (which I do believe in) makes you happy, then great. If he fulfills you and gives you inspiration great. But, when coming to the matters of what is provable, what can be shown logically, that is entering another arena all together. And the concept of god then takes on the role of an existent entity. Thats a leap that believers, if they want to show their god to be true or existent, they must then face up to the unsound, illogical arguments of what we consider evidence, reason and logic (which they do not ever have to do when keeping faith in the private sphere and i am fine with that; neither do i think you are shoving god into my face, nor think you even should answer this.) But I hope we can at least agree on the fundamentals (excuse the pun ;P)
Hi again,
I think we do agree on fundamentals here (har har
). I write mainly because I enjoy writing and exchanging ideas, not because I have something to prove. I enjoy sharing my unique perspective. I wouldn’t claim anything in the field of epistemology or metaphysics as proof. I learn more by discussing with alert people of differing perspectives than I would by talking to someone who shares my assumptions.
I tend to think that God intended it that way: because if a being that great and overwhelming made his/her/its’ presence undeniable, there wouldn’t really be any free will. You’d pretty much say, “Yep that’s the guy calling the shots” whether you liked it or not. I think there’s a lot of evidence that could go either way, so I wouldn’t claim any kind of objectivity either. I don’t think anyone can.
I also of course recognize that all the Thomas-style apologetics only deal with the question of whether there is a diety, but in my case I wouldn’t presume to take that further into what can be known about such a being, whether it’s the God of the bible, etc. Somebody like C.S. Lewis (you quoted him!) might have been up to that but that’s not my project.
I do think you have taken my point regarding longing one step further than I intended: my point was that every longing of (sane) humans is connected to reality, is something that can be fulfilled, at least in theory. We want food, food exists to be had and we can obtain some. I wasn’t making the claim that in some sense we’ve all experienced God and that is why we long for the divine — some people who have thought more on that may make that claim, but I am not prepared to do so.
I’m guessing the longing for God may be more like the longing for sex — a virgin can (and often does) long for sex, fantasize about it, dream about it, etc, although this person has not yet experienced it. Even if said virgin has never actually seen people having sex, but has only heard about it, the person’s biology tells him/her that it is an extant and quenchable need. If something in our physiological makeup pushes humans to long for the divine, that doesn’t automatically imply they’ve already experienced it, but it does imply that divinity is out there to be experienced. Perhaps the most we might infer from this is that there is something divine or numinous out there to be experienced or we wouldn’t desire it — for what it’s worth.
Peace!
Curtis
Thank you for clarifying it. My apologies for taking it one step further than you intended.
_”Perhaps the most we might infer from this is that there is something divine or numinous out there to be experienced or we wouldn’t desire it — for what it’s worth.”_
Absolutely. It seems we place our fences of fulfilment at different parts and claim the same thing. Call it the beauty of human diversity.
Your humble reproach speaks volumes and I only wish more of the faithful could be as kind as yourself in being undogmatic, critical and open to such discussions. I dont agree with you AT ALL but so what. Where would we, as writers, be without good critics?
Thanks for the discussion. Peace to you, friend.