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Thursday, October 2, 2014

Thor's Day: Believing what makes us feel good

We're not free to do it

By Morris Dean

Something I said last week has been on my mind a lot since. I mentioned that I come from a large family of true Christian believers, and that's a big reason religion has played a pivotal role in my own life, going right back to Mother's knee, where I was schooled in emotional Pentecostal religion.
    It wasn't Father's knee. My father wasn't inclined to go to church, and I suppose that he probably didn't "believe," although I think it possible – maybe likely – that he wanted to believe, that he may have worried about it. He didn't say much. I got the impression that his own family had believed in the Church of Christ way, and I gathered from something my mother told me (more than once) that their way was relatively "high church." What my mother told me was that her mother-in-law once shook her finger in my mother's face and told her, "You ain't nothing but a Holiness!" I could tell from the theatrical way my mother told me this that my Grandmother Dean had delivered her pronouncement with a lot of energy, and it had hurt my mother deeply.
    One thing I've realized during the week is that my attempts to believe were likely motivated by the simple, natural need to fit in and be a part of my family – or, more precisely, to support and comfort my mother. At times, in fact, I thought that I almost did believe. But I never could quite get there. And then, in 2005, my mother died and was beyond comfort. I was free of that constraint.


Last week I indirectly quoted someone who said that people can believe what they want to believe if it comforts them and makes them feel good. It would have made me feel good to believe as my mother did and by so doing support and comfort her. But even my desire to feel good about this wasn't enough to make me believe.
    The fact is, I couldn't believe something – you can't believe – something just to make yourself feel better. You have to have reason to think it's true. That's what believing something means: you think it's true.


As sometime happens, this week I serendipitously re-encountered that section of Sam Harris's 2010 book, The Moral Landscape, that deals with freedom of belief, where he writes that "people do not knowingly believe propositions for bad reasons."
A belief – to be actually believed – entails the corollary belief that we have accepted it because it seems to be true...we must also believe that we are in touch with reality in such a way that if it were not true, we would not believe it. [p. 136]
    Conveniently for my discussion, Harris had had a debate with someone who "thought it reasonable for a person to believe a proposition just because it makes him 'feel better,' and [this person] seemed to think that people are perfectly free to acquire beliefs in this way."
Let's see how this might work. Imagine someone making the following statement of religious conviction:
I believe Jesus was born of a virgin, was resurrected, and now answers prayers, because believing these things makes me feel better. By adopting this faith, I am merely exercising my freedom to believe in propositions that make me feel good.
How would such a person respond to information that contradicted his cherished belief? Given that his belief is based purely on how it makes him feel, and not on evidence or argument, he shouldn't care about any new evidence or argument that might come his way. In fact, the only thing that should change his view of Jesus is a change in how the above propositions make him feel. Imagine our believer undergoing the following epiphany:
For the last few months, I've found that my belief in the divinity of Jesus no longer makes me feel good. The truth is, I just met a Muslim woman whom I greatly admire, and I want to ask her out on a date. As Muslims believe Jesus was not divine, I am worried that my belief in the divinity of Jesus could hinder my chances with her. As I do not like feeling this way, and very much want to go out with this woman, I now believe that Jesus was not divine.
Has a person like this ever existed? I highly doubt it. [pp. 137-138]
My mother and sisters and a good number of aunts, uncles, and cousins (and some nephews and nieces) believe what they believe because they think it's true. I don't believe it, because I don't think it is. Whether our beliefs "make us feel good" seems beside the point.
    In any case, it appears that I was never going to be able to comfort my mother in that way. I wish now that I could have talked with my father about what he didn't believe either. We might have been able to help one another not worry about it. But we never had a conversation like that.


Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

7 comments:

  1. I'd say that feeling good about a belief is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making it a conviction. It also needs to belong to a closed system of logic in which it (a) makes sense and (b) seems even more sensible when it's challenged and defended. This is exactly how creationism works, for example.

    Foe a believer to become a nonbeliever, he must somehow get outside the closed system—"outside the box," as it were. I've long had a strong hunch that such escapes can be traced back to an event of disaffection, not with an idea but with people. I've never become completely convinced, though.

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    1. Ken, harking back to an earlier discussion; I spent much of yesterday at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State. This is a famous hotbed of dinosaurologists. As far as I can tell, all of them are convinced that birds are dinosaurs. Moreover - a brand new result to me - they were able to study the physiology of a pregnant Allosaurus (a particularly large and fearsome theropod) , and demonstrated a very close parallelism with pregnancy in birds. Thought you'd like to know.

      On the subject at hand: I've never been able to fathom how people form beliefs. Reason rarely seems to enter the process. True in many areas, not just religion. Anyone have a good reference on this?

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    2. Well, speaking of Christianity, first you have to be exposed to it somehow. Many people are born into Christian homes. To become a true Christian and follower of Christ, you must have a testimony that He is your Savior. To find this, you must receive personal revelation, sent to you upon studying the scriptures and praying fervently. Your mind and heart must be open. You can't have a preconceived answer. The same process would apply when choosing a denomination. This prayer and scripture study must continue your whole life, along with church attendance and a life in accordance with Christ's teachings to stay strong in the faith

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  2. It has been said that people can believe whatever makes them feel better, but can they really? Is that reason enough?

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  3. I've known people who say they believe in Jesus, but move from one religious doctrine to the next. They seem to be searching for the justification of their belief, but not finding it in any church. In this case it would seem there is belief without the "feel good".

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  4. I was brought up in the Christian faith until work took me away for a couple of weeks and had to face a kangaroo court on my return, I did a complete about face and now question the logic behind all religions
    Bear

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  5. Thank you for sharing these stories from the heart. I agree you can't just look at what feels good when choosing a belief system. Honestly, if we chose our beliefs on what felt good, we would never choose Christianity because Christ gave us commandments to help us bride our passions. I agree with the other comment of it not being right to jump from church to church until you find one that already works with your lifestyle. Being a Christian, a devoted Christian, is actually very difficult because people will always oppose you, put you down, and tell your beliefs are silly. No, to be a Christian is about so much more than feeling.

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