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By Jim Downard
What Would It Take For You To Believe In God?
One might ask if the questioner had a particular god in mind on that, but the capital G suggests its the one they believe in, not some generic supernatural entity, which in our local cultural context is the God of Abraham (Trinitarian Jesus edition typically). But my reply actually would apply to any of the gods people do or have believed in.1) The god could chat with me personally (none have done that so far, despite my frequent invitation). This phenomenon is apparently not uncommon (and can be rationalized by assuming the deity is inherently inscrutable and/or shy).
2) The god could become visibly active generally, smiting nasty people, curing illnesses, or otherwise being useful or observable. The absence of this too has been the condition historically (and can be rationalized by assuming the deity is inherently inscrutable and/or shy).
That about covers it.
Now how do people come to believe in god(s) without either of those two happening, that’s the more common occurrence. Individuals can come to think they were experiencing the first situation, without any actual “Hi, I’m Vishnu, how have you been?” interaction taking place in their den. Only rarely do people profess to actually be chatting with gods, by the way, and other things about them tend to suggest they are the least likely to actually be chatting with gods (off their meds).
Which leaves the old fashioned ways most people come to believe in gods: they are raised in that culture and accept that frame, or they come to accept some manner of argument for that god (but not for others usually) common in their culture, particularly becoming inspired and/or impressed by the content of (usually) one among the many documents recounting the adventures of the deity or some inspired prophet(s) acting on its behalf. This path to belief can be boiled down to a “they wouldn’t make this up, would they?” argument, that becomes less convincing the more one studies many religions and their history, where “they must have just made this up” becomes all too evident a general explanatory model.
Once the person comes to believe in a particular god, they translate their experiences into that frame as a reinforcing mechanism, typically deeming good things that happen to them as blessings from the god, and bad things as perhaps lapses on their part or “it’s all part of the god’s (inscrutable) plan.” Neither require any actual direct interaction with a deity to be psychologically effective or persistent.
And remember: any omniscient deity (if such there be) not only is aware of all the content here at SpokaneFāVS, but also every conversation and occurrence that has ever happened in the entire history of our species, constituting an exceedingly long list of missed opportunities of the first and second categories on their chit (punctuated of course by occasional allegations of burning bushes or epiphanies in the “they wouldn’t make this up, would they?” folder). Deities may weigh in on the comments section here any time they choose.
Nice Article! Very logical point made!
Yikes, your screen name is concerning. Why are you too afraid of FAVS? We don’t ever want anyone to be afraid here. People use fake names or silly names to comment all the time, but it should never be because of fear of FAVS 🙁
That may be a spambot. Just sayin’.
Jim, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess to the one and only living GOD and that is JESUS CHRIST.
… or else?
Steven, if you have any problem with what GOD’S word says you will have to try and take it up with JESUS when you stand before HIM, however, I know HE’S not going to give you the opportunity to question anything.
What a totalitarian hereafter you seem so sanguine about, to banish one of the most characteristic features about humans, our curiosity and ability to think through things by questioning. While you may have no no “problem with what GOD’S word says,” others not of your faith (and remember, whatever it may be, most people on Earth are not now nor ever have been of that faith) can rightly be troubled by many of the contents of religious texts (regarding the Christian Bible, the creepy slavery rules of Exodus 21 come quickly to mind). I stringly recommend people read the various religious texts, attentively, and not be discouraged (or punished or proscripted) from questioning the parts that are questionable.
Scott, you’re trying to proselytize on my “Ask a Jew” page, too. I’m wondering what, other than the Great Commission, compels you to do this on a site where, obviously, people of many different faiths (or no religious faith) gather. Is it a numbers game? Proselytize in enough places and you’ll win a few over? Because I’m a lifelong Jew and I only got interested in Buddhism (which interest doesn’t make me not a Jew) because I was drawn to it. Persuading and cajoling doesn’t make for good proselytizing. Modeling Christlike behavior works a lot better.
If that does happen that will happen. But the same may be said of every other doctrine of every other religion whose certainty about their own view is most likely not dissimilar to your own.
…not an effective method of evangelism or argumentation, even if it is true.
Ask a believer why they don’t believe in the other Gods of the worlds major religions (past and present)? I like to make the point that out of the thousands of Gods, I believe in just one less than most people.
Good article Jim. I’m just curious, however, because every culture has a god. Even atheists within our own culture believe in some kind of transcendent math or physical laws, much like a god. That seems strange to me. Why would that be if some kind of god did not exist?
(The way I see, it, math is a type of language, and the laws of physics are organizational structures within our own minds to help describe the order we find to reality).
I do suspect the universe is what mathematics does for a living, but the notion that such mathematical relationships are due to some god making it that way rests entirely on the arbitrary (and circular) assumption that gods are required for such things. Mathematics has as one of its essential properties that it can’t avoid being what it is. 1+1=2 and not 3, and no god can decide to make it 3 and not 2. Similarly, not even a god can write down a root formula for a 5th degree or higher polynomial (its not just difficult, its impossible in principle, forever, and for all universes). How much of the universe’s lawfulness is unavoidable in the same way is a matter of philosophical predilection, not deductive empiricism.
Now if we could actually determine that universes do exist that are not based on mathematics or have physical systems that can be described by something else altogether, that would be something one could sink your teeth into. Say, if saints fell slower than sinners, rendering gravitation laws moot. Or even farther afield, where one can be splogish (the sprouting of purple asparagus from the forehead when telling the truth on alternating Tuesdays if perpendicular to October, something which makes no sense whatsoever to us but maybe would in a universe built by a splog-friendly deity). But we don’t encounter either of those.
It would have been informative also if there were pre-scientific religious descriptions of the physical laws, suggesting its author(s) had access to the Big Mathematician. For example, “a moving object must continue thus, unless a directed force acts upon it.” Or “God knows heavy objects fall no faster than light ones, unless the air acteth upon them by measure of their spread,” something like that. Such sciency scriptures do not occur as far as I’m aware, though, which may be due to (a) their authors being not even slightly interested in the underlying structure of what even they thought was divinely designed, and/or (b) they never actually were in contact with any entity particularly privy to the underlying structure of those objects and forces. Instead we get concerns over circumcission or animal sacrifices or exploitation of women or conquered rivals. Priorities, priorities.
Thanks for the discussion, Jim. From reading your comment above, it seems we are looking at things from the opposite perspectives:
“Now if we could actually determine that universes do exist that are not based on mathematics or have physical systems that can be described by something else altogether, that would be something one could sink your teeth into.” I guess I wouldn’t see our universe as being “based” on mathematics. The universe does what it does, and human beings with brains use math to describe to each other so that we can understand it better. For example, an electron doesn’t consult the Standard Model of Particle Physics to decide which energy level it should inhabit. It does what it does, and then the Standard Model tries to describe that behavior so that physicist can study its behavior better.
“I do suspect the universe is what mathematics does for a living…” Again, I would see this as opposite. The universe does what the universe does for a living, and mathematics attempts to describe it so human beings can understand and predict its operations better. Math is for humans, not the universe. The universe would exist whether math existed or not. The universe does not depend upon math, rather math exists only in the brains of human beings as a way of interpreting the universe to ourselves.
“It would have been informative also if there were pre-scientific religious descriptions of the physical laws, suggesting its author(s) had access to the Big Mathematician.” To me, this would imply that you are seeing math as god, i.e. “Big Mathematician”. What is that but a math god? To me, math and empirical analysis are not the last word in understanding the world around us. Some day, somebody will come along and figure out a better way of understanding the universe, and they will look back on us the way we look back on other primitive cultures.
To me, you have only provided evidence to my initial point that atheists tend to worship math and science in a similar manner to the way other religions worship their God. I don’t see the difference? Either Jesus causes the world to spin or the laws of physics cause the world to spin. What’s the difference?
In my view, there is order to the universe. Math and science are simply languages we human beings use to describe the order we see around us. Someday, somebody will come up with a better way. But the universe is not based on math and it is not based on the laws of physics. These are simply ways of describing the world around us.
My initial question still stands: Why do you and so many other people insist on seeing something behind the universe, whether it is Math or Jesus? Could it be that something (a god) really does exist?
Easy question re why do so many people see things behind things, we humans do that naturally, inevitably. We are pattern seeking creatures, and will generate explanations for things no matter what (this is observsable especially in split brain cases where we can se which brain systems kick in to “explain” discordant sensory input). Science differs from traditional philosophical or religious speculations in having more rigorous and potentially testable mechanisms for the characterization of sufficient evidence for their scientific explanations.
Thanks for the discussion!
To add to what Jim has said – the best explanation I’ve heard for the near-universality of supernatural beliefs is that it’s an evolutionary advantage to assume agency when you observe natural events.
If the wind blows the grass, and you assume it’s a tiger and run, no harm done. That’s a much better outcome than if a tiger moves the grass and you assume it’s just the wind …. Natural selection (with the help of tigers) would select for individuals who err on the side of assuming there is a “mover” when we see ambiguous natural events.
Extrapolate that long-term evolutionarily, and someone see a lightning bolt in the sky or a volcano exploding, and you assume there is some agency behind it, especially when multiple significant events happen at once (you see a solar eclipse, then a drought comes). In frustration you call out to whoever it is that’s causing the drought to please stop, and then the rain comes, and a religion is born.
Michael Shermer has xpounded on this idea in “The Believing Brain,” drawing on work like Bruce Hood’s “SuperSense.” The attribution of agency would play a part in the origin of religion, but I suspect there are many other factors, especially related to the brain systems that facilitate the sense of the agency being personal.
My working definition for religion is “a neotenous spandrel that is sustained as a Scorched Earth Defense”, the neoteny angle concerning how religious beliefs work off conceptual systems worked out in early development, and then retained into adulthood and gaining new properties (spandrels are biological systems that have acquired their importance or utility originally nonadaptively as an unintended spinoff of other things that do have adaptive origins), and the Scorched Earth part concerning how biological systems with downsides can still be sustained if they inadvertently protect you from something that is more dangerous (sickle cell anemia being the most famous example, which is a potentially fatal disease sustained originating and sustained because it inadvertently protects those who carry it from the even more proximately deadly malaria).
Under this working definition, then, religion originated as an initially peripheral byproduct of adaptively useful cognitive processes, becoming ingrained with social context an history. It would be the prediction then that pre-human populations with brains incapable of generating the attributions of agency (that in our brains allow religious conceptions too) never made the cut, and the upsides of religion (meaning of life, social cohesion explanatory myths, etc) tend to outweigh the downsides (religious wars, heretic perseucutions, etc).