Is It All In My Head?

Thanks to Derren Brown and Russell Crowe, I’ve recently been looking at Christianity differently than I ever have before.

At the time I watched Derren Brown’s Miracles For Sale (in which he trained someone to be a convincing faith healer), I only thought of it applying to the so-called Christians who manipulate people’s emotions to get money out of them in return for supposed miracles. Since my church background is not charismatic (i.e. you won’t see “healings” or people getting “slain in the spirit” or “speaking in tongues” at our services), I didn’t really see much connection between what he was talking about and my beliefs.

Then I watched the film A Beautiful Mind.

If you haven’t seen the film and don’t want any spoilers, you probably shouldn’t read beyond this paragraph, but please come back after you’ve seen it. Or maybe up to now you’ve had no interest in seeing it; in which case, perhaps the following will make you more interested.

A couple of things about the film led me to start really analysing whether the God of Christianity is just as imaginary as Parcher, Charles and Marcee.

For example, there’s the idea that Marcee doesn’t get any older, from which Nash worked out that she couldn’t be real. Obviously, unlike humans, God’s not supposed to age, so that specific line of reasoning doesn’t apply to Him, but this got me thinking about the attributes that God is supposed to have, that could work equally well, or perhaps better, for an imaginary friend.

Also, Nash found Parcher appealing because he gave his life a perceived purpose which it didn’t otherwise have. It seems that Nash’s brain created its own fictional purpose for existence to make up for the pointlessness of his real life. This got me analysing the way Christianity gives our lives an objective purpose that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

I don’t think any of the following is evidence that God doesn’t exist, but perhaps there really are plausible alternative explanations for a lot of Christian experiences.

So here are some of the questions that have been swirling around in my head recently:

God’s Guidance

One of the things I’ve learnt recently about Christian living is about getting guidance from God. Basically what I found from various sources was that, when making a decision, God doesn’t want you to just sit around and wait for Him to send a lightning bolt from heaven, you’re supposed to kind of knock on doors and see which ones He opens… Basically (once you’ve consulted the Bible) do what you want, and then find out whether God approves or not by your success or failure.

I’m starting to understand why unbelievers don’t want to spoil religion for those people who get “inner strength” from their belief in God. God gives them boldness to go out and do whatever they want – pursue their dreams! – armed with the knowledge that they’ve got an omnipotent friend to make things happen, instead of just their poor little selves trying to do it all on their own. At the same time, they can tell themselves it’s not their fault if things don’t go as they’d hoped; it was obviously not what God wanted for them. Is it possible that God could be totally imaginary and still perform the same function?

God In Control Of Everything

Then there’s the things that happen to us and other people around the world. God apparently works all things, both the good and the seemingly bad, for His purposes. We may not be able to see how, but everything will work out for the best; if not in this life, then in the next. We attribute the good stuff that happens to us as God’s goodness, and we attribute the bad stuff to God teaching us to depend on Him, or testing us or something. But what if we’re just kidding ourselves, and actually, things just happen… some good, and some bad?

Communicating With God

When we pray, are we just talking to ourselves? This is something that bugged me before I saw either of the films mentioned above.

Does God really answer prayer, or is that belief just a result of the confirmation biases of people who want it to be true?

An example of a belief based on a confirmation bias is Murphy’s Law, which states that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Obviously it’s not really true that everything that could go wrong in our lives does actually go wrong; it’s all about our perception. We notice when things go wrong; we don’t notice when things work as normal. The things that go wrong stand out. They seem more significant than they really are, so much so that we almost start to believe that whatever can go wrong really does go wrong. With prayer, when we apparently get a clear, positive answer, it’s very noticeable. When we don’t get an immediate answer, or we get a negative answer, we can write it off as “not God’s will” and perhaps these negative occurrences become much less significant than the positive answers, encouraging our belief that God really does answer prayer.

Why Pray?

Since God doesn’t change His mind, the point of praying can’t be to try to convince Him to do things he wouldn’t have done otherwise. He already knows exactly how things are going to work out. In this way I consider myself to have something in common with Deists, or maybe it’s determinists… anyway, what I mean is: I believe God had all of history (including miracles and “answers to prayer”) planned out before creation started, so in a way you could say he doesn’t really intervene any more; everything’s going exactly according to plan, so why would He intervene? So I’m not sure in what way He could be said to answer prayer. The only prayers He appears to answer are the ones that match what He already had planned.

So what is the point of prayer? We’re told that God likes to hear us ask for things, but surely the point must be, not that we convince Him to give us stuff, but that we somehow learn from the process of prayer. We learn to depend on God for things, we learn patience when He doesn’t answer our prayers immediately, or we learn to submit to His will when He doesn’t answer our prayers in the way we hoped. But in reality, could all those things work in the basically the same way if God is not really there and we’re just talking to ourselves? Sometimes things go our way and sometimes they don’t. Believing that God is listening to their prayers could usefully teach people patience and help them move on in life when things don’t go as they hoped, even if God didn’t actually exist.

On Paper

A while ago one of the blogs I follow shared this post about how fantasies regarding men and women appearing in printed media compare with real relationships with people we actually know, and who know us. He talks specifically about how Christians relate to their favourite authors compared with how they get on with their local pastors, and notes the similarities with a man’s relationships with women in real life compared to pornography.

I’m pretty sure fantasy relationships don’t need to be based on paper forms, I reckon it works just as well – if not better – with TV, movies, song lyrics, and facebook… and images certainly don’t have to be pornographic; the people in them don’t even need to be physically attractive. In fact, I think the fictional personalities of TV and movie characters have the potential to cause even more problems than their looks… and I’m certain it’s not just men that have this sort of problem. How many women complain that “there’s no really nice guys out there”?* Could it be that unrealistic standards have been set by the men in Rom-coms? Is it surprising that real-life men don’t live up to those standards?

*Do women really complain that much about a lack of nice guys? Or have I just got that impression based on women I’ve seen on TV? :S

I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent there, but does a similar thing happen with God?

We’re told that God, like the paper men and women described above, is unchanging (EDIT: I haven’t explained it very well, it’ll make more sense if you go and read the article yourself). I wonder if we’re convinced that God is unchanging because our knowledge of Him is based on a book that hasn’t changed in the last 1900 years. Do we impose our own thoughts and ideas and desires on a text that is perhaps in a lot of ways more ambiguous than we think? I don’t have anything particular in mind here, but (even in a Sola Scriptura-minded church) I do wonder how much of my understanding of God’s character is actually directly from the Bible, and how much depends on interpretation. Derren Brown demonstrated how to use mood lighting, arm-waving, shouting and emotionally-charged music to manipulate people, but I think a church can influence people just as powerfully without putting on that sort of show; when I read the Bible, how much does my understanding of it depend on what was originally written, and how much does it depend on what I’ve been told it means? And in private too, how much does my understanding of the Bible depend on what’s going on in my head at the time as I read a particular passage?

When it comes to decision making based on our understanding of the Bible, on one level we might think we’re obeying God, but in reality, do our thoughts about what God wants actually always suit our mood, our needs, our wants (or what others have taught us we should want)?

I wonder if I’ve sometimes tricked myself into thinking I’m submitting to God, when really I’m just doing what I want to do (or what I’ve been brought up to think is the right thing to do). I suppose at least with Christian Hedonism, you don’t pretend you’re not doing things to make yourself happy, but still, is God just a kind of sophisticated psychological tool for motivating ourselves?

Like paper pastors, and unlike the humans we speak to literally face-to-face, God always has time for us, He’s available 24/7, anywhere we like, at our whim, and we always have His full attention. He’s willing to listen to all our moaning, He never has to rush off to another appointment, He’s never ill, and – as far as we know – He’s never in a bad mood when we’re speaking to Him; He understands exactly how we feel, and almost certainly agrees with our conclusions. He also keeps His distance when we don’t want to hear from Him. We can just shut the book and think about something else and stop listening to Him. Just like you can turn the TV off or skip a few pages in your paper pastor’s latest book when it makes you a little bit uncomfortable.

To be continued…

Since I have more of an open mind than ever before, I thought it would be a good time to read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, so at some point I’ll get a review posted on here.

In the mean time, in case you’ve read this far thinking all this is evidence that God is not real:

Also, I reckon the film Horton Hears A Who! is worth a watch.

A Creation Fairytale

Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong? (click image to be taken to iPlayer)

You don’t like the existing descriptions of how the universe came to be. It’s time to write a new one.

It looks like the universe is expanding, so clearly there’s no other possible explanation than that it used to all be compressed into a very small space, before it exploded.

Cool, so the universe started with a big bang, that explains everything.

…

Hang on, all normal explosions lead to random lumpy debris that’s really hot in some places, but cooler in others. How do we explain why our universe is really smooth and all the same temperature? I guess we could say it started off expanding slowly, so it got smoothed out while it was still small, then it suddenly inflated really quickly for some reason to get to the sort of size it is now. No idea how or why that would’ve happened, but it means we can stick to the big bang story, so we’ll go with it.

…

Those galaxies don’t look right. The stars at the edge should be moving slower than the ones in the middle, like the planets in our solar system, but they’re going the same speed. How can we fix that? I’ve got an idea. How about if there was a load of extra mass that we can’t see? If there was enough of the stuff, the physics would work. How much do we need? 5 times as much of this dark stuff as the matter we can see?! That seems like we’re relying pretty heavily on something we invented without being able to detect it, but it’s the simplest explanation I can think of, it’ll have to do.

…

Um, guys… why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

Could there be a load of energy we can’t see, too? Yeah, call it dark energy and we won’t have to prove it exists by detecting it or anything silly like that; people will just have to accept it ‘cos we’re the clever people and we can’t come up with anything better.

…

Dark flow? Mate, is it just me, or is the whole idea that the present can tell us everything we need to know about the past becoming less and less convincing?

And, fun as it might be to have a go at those religious nuts who use a scientifically unobservable God to explain where we came from; taking an honest look at what us scientists are putting our faith in, it’s not really any more sensible. And if we judge a theory’s success by how well it resists people trying to rip it apart, those guys have a bit of a head start.

Like that whole Jesus rising from the dead thing, it’s actually surprisingly well supported by historical evidence. Is there really a scientific reason we can say for certain that miracles like that could never happen? I mean the whole point of a miracle is that it’s not a normal event, so we probably shouldn’t expect to be able to apply the normal rules of science. And if he actually rose from the dead, he probably deserves to be listened to…

…

So God wants everyone to be perfect like him, I guess that’s fair enough, but no one lives up to that, do they? What are we supposed to do?

Nothing? Just trust that God took the punishment I deserve on himself? That’s too easy, I want to earn my forgiveness…

…

Ok yeah, that’s not gonna work…

So it’s really all been done for me? That’s actually unbelievably awesome.

Christianity’s Civil War

I just watched Ann Widdecombe’s episode on the Reformation from the Channel 4 series Christianity: A History.

She has an interesting perspective on the whole thing having been brought up in the Church of England but converted to Catholicism about 15 years ago.

In case anyone reading this has no idea what the reformation was, basically a 16th Century German monk called Martin Luther realised that a lot of what the Catholic Church practiced contradicted the Bible. One of the main corrupt practices was the sale of indulgences; these allowed people to buy forgiveness from the Pope so they could go to heaven. Luther posted 95 theses on the door of a church, and worked on translating the Bible into German to allow many more people to read it, rather than just priests and scholars, so everyone could see that the way to salvation was by faith, not works.

Widdecombe acknowledged that the church needed reforming, but wasn’t happy with the chaos that followed, and I have to say, watching this gave me some sympathy for those who argue that religion causes a lot more problems than it solves.

If people believe they are doing God’s will, it turns out they are capable of doing some horrible things, and the Catholics weren’t going to give up their power over the population of Europe without a fight. A five day massacre of protestants in Paris turned the Seine red with blood. And while I don’t remember anything being mentioned that was on the same scale aimed at Catholics, protestants can’t claim to be completely innocent. The attitude towards Catholics can be seen in the tradition that continues in the town of Lewes every Fireworks Night (one of the five best places to see fireworks – alongside the mighty Broughton Gifford – as chosen by The Times) where they blow up an effegy of the Pope. Now I’d say I’m as anti-Pope as your average Bible-believer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the correct Christian response to people who don’t agree with you.

They say God works in mysterious ways. ‘They’ didn’t get that from the Bible, it’s from a hymn by William Cowper, but it seems proven true in the way the reformation came to England. Henry VIII was named a Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo X after writing a book defending Catholicism. The trouble was he wanted a male heir, and his first wife Catherine of Aragon wasn’t producing one, so he wanted to divorce her. The Pope (quite rightly in this instance) wasn’t happy with this idea, so Henry decided to put himself in charge of the church in England instead. So Catholicism was booted out and Reformed teaching was able to infiltrate Britain thanks to the lust and greed of one of its kings.

Widdecombe explains that she left the Church of England because it had abandoned it’s roots and seemed immersed in liberalism and political correctness. Ok so far, but why become a Catholic? I don’t reckon there’s any perfect church out there, but why not at least look for a church that bases its teaching on God’s Word rather than the Pope’s?

EDIT: I don’t mean to criticise everyone in the Church of England or all Roman Catholics. If people believe in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, Lord and God, and seek in their thoughts and actions to be ruled by the teaching of the Bible, then they’re my brothers and sisters.

Jesus Camp & The Baby Bible Bashers

I’ve expanded my TV watching from just iPlayer to include 4oD.

Jesus Camp

This sort of thing doesn’t help with the idea that Christianity is just a method of social control by brainwashing people.

As we heard at my church last Sunday, you can (and should) try to bring up your children to live Godly lives and teach them the Bible, but you can’t make them Christians.

But when an interviewer suggested to Becky Fischer that there’s a difference between learning and indoctrination, she said she thinks churches should be indoctrinating their kids more.

Fischer talks about Muslims putting weapons in the hands of 5 year olds and claims we’re at war. Now, the Bible does use language that suggests a battle, but I think she’s got the wrong idea about who we’re fighting and the way to go about it.

It’s kind of scary, I think these people would agree with my definition of Christianity, but they act it out really very differently. Whipping people’s emotions into hysteria isn’t what Christianity is about.

There’s a kid preacher here too, he was apparently saved when he was 5. He wanted more out of life, this life just wasn’t fun. At 5. Do you know any 5 year olds who already find life boring?

Some adult tells him that God has his life planned out (true), then tells him that God has written that he’s going to grow into a preacher that will shake America, “What do you think of that?” (Personally, I’m fairly certain he’s talking out of his backside).

When someone asks the kid what his favourite subject is to preach on, he replies “faith”. What? I think most preachers worth listening to would choose a favourite Bible passage to speak on, rather than say “faith”. In the clips of him preaching that were shown, he was holding a Bible, but talking about what he felt God was telling him, that “this generation is a key generation”. Definitely sounds like he’s just regurgitating what the people running the camp are saying, not much to do with the Bible.

Baby Bible Bashers

(At time of writing this is still available to watch)

This was interesting because I was less suspicious of the way these kids became Christians, but there were other issues.

Despite Samuel claiming to be saved at 3, it somehow seemed more like he’d decided for himself than some of the kids at Jesus Camp. He hasn’t experienced any other ideas though, so I think he’ll face some serious challenges as he grows up.

I don’t think ordering people on the street to repent or go to hell is the most effective way to tell people the gospel. I’m all for open air preaching, but not in the way they were doing it, with a board listing all the people who are going to hell. That doesn’t seem like a good way of getting people to listen.

Terry Durham hears voices that “sometimes sound like me, but I say no, it’s the Lord”. hmm. I can’t find or remember the exact quote, but a friend suggested something along the lines of how amazing it is how often “what God wants” matches the desires of the person who claims to know.

I reckon if it’s not from the Bible, question it. If it is from the Bible, still check it, it’s not too difficult to take things out of context and say pretty much anything you want.

His dad was made to look very much like he’s using his son for financial gain. Good preachers don’t aim for celebrity status. They wouldn’t want to be welcomed onto the stage with a round of applause. But I guess my definition of ‘good’ is different to theirs.

Ana Carolina’s dad is her choreographer. I think that’s enough said really.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

First, if you don’t recognise the title, you need to read Animal Farm. Not that this post is really anything to do with the book, you just should read it.

It's only available 'til 8pm Thursday, so get watching

I watched Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Born Equal? the other day.

How many times have you heard that religion is clearly evil because of all the wars it’s caused?

As if the Theory of Evolution is harmless.

Yes, people have done some seriously bad things in the name of religion, but I think you’ll find in most cases (certainly in the Christian ones) those people were twisting their religion to justify their own ambitions. Hence, a Christian will tell you to look not at Christians for an example of how to live, but to Jesus.

Meanwhile, whether Darwin would have approved or not (I’m sure he wouldn’t, but), the goals of the Nazis actually made some sense in relation to the Theory of Evolution.

I’m thinking that’s quite a controversial statement.

Of course, perceived evil doesn’t have any bearing on whether a religious belief or atheism is true or false. It’s not a valid argument either way.*

I do wonder why we should think anything “evil” though. You know, if there’s no such thing as right and wrong.

*I know, I know, evolution and religion aren’t mutually exclusive, but this is a comparison of evolutionary thinking with religious belief. I’m thinking of atheistic evolution, let’s ignore the theistic evolutionists for now, their views are too confusing.

The Invention of Lying

So apparently the loser does get the attractive* girl occasionally. Lovely.

*I don’t like criticising people for things that aren’t their fault (such as looks), but it looks like Jennifer Garner has had some junk pumped into her upper lip (as if she wants to be Angelina), it makes some of her expressions look a bit silly.

I went to see The Invention of Lying yesterday. If you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading now.

I think it’s supposed to be a comedy, there were some really funny moments, but overall I thought it was actually better in terms of asking interesting questions, and I quite enjoyed it, despite a bit of mockery of Christianity.

What would the world be like if no one had the ability to lie? Well, pretty depressing according to the film, the only films and TV shows would consist purely of a person reading a history book.

As someone who believes that a perfect world would not contain any lies, this made me think. Would that sort of world really be all that much better?

Ricky (I can’t actually remember the character’s name) did use his new ability to make people feel better, but funnily enough, telling people what they want to hear, rather than the truth, doesn’t bring them lasting happiness.

He did have some morals too, nobody else understood the concept of telling something that wasn’t true*, and he had the opportunity to convince Jen (again I can’t remember her character’s name, that’s probably not a good commendation of the acting) that his new fame and riches changed his DNA, so their children wouldn’t be short and fat with snub noses, but decided it wouldn’t be right.

*This makes you wonder if anyone ever made any mistakes in this world. We can often tell what we believe to be the truth only to find later we were wrong, but as far as you could tell the people in the film were immune from this problem.

Ricky (maybe his name was Mark) makes up the idea of heaven because his mum is afraid of eternal nothingness when she dies, and because everyone believes he’s telling the truth, he becomes famous and the whole world wants to know more, so he comes up with the Man In The Sky. (I really hope it’s not supposed to be a realistic theory for how belief in God could have started.) He also has to explain who gets a mansion in the afterlife and who goes to the really bad place, so decides that you’re allowed 3 chances to be good (you know, don’t do anything to hurt someone else on purpose). I’m fairly certain this is supposed to be based on Christianity, and to be fair, I think a lot of people who would say they’re Christians do think like that, but it’s not what the Bible says.

“the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” – Romans 3:21-24

Resurrection?

It happened, Jesus came back from the dead, historical evidence proves it beyond any reasonable doubt.

Debaptism

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7941817.stm

I’m actually sort of with the atheists on this one.

You can’t make someone a Christian by pouring water on them (or dipping them in water).
Baptism is for people who have made a conscious decision to follow Christ.

I had to look up ‘perfidious’. I think what they’re saying is that original sin is a concept made up for the church’s own gain.
Basically I disagree with this, as far as I’m aware, no child has to be taught to be bad, it comes naturally.

However, it’s an interesting issue, because I doubt babies make a conscious decision to reject God, so I do wonder how those that die in infancy (and even those not born yet?) are judged. At this point I just have to trust that God is just, he knows whether people would have repented given the same opportunities as others (see link below).

Matthew 11:20-24
Matthew 11 on Bible Gateway (NIV)