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.

Richard Dawkins admits the possibility that life on Earth was Intelligently Designed?

I recently watched Ben Stein’s film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

The basic point of the movie is to show how scientists who believe we may have been intelligently designed are expelled from the community of “real scientists”.

There were a few things I didn’t like about the film. For example, Stein portrayed himself as an unbiased investigator, and even being on the side of ID myself, I have to say this film was blatantly biased against Dawkins & Co. from the start. I wasn’t surprised to read afterwards that certain people interviewed for the film felt they’d been misled, and that quotes had been carefully edited to fit what the producers wanted them to say. Scientific American has Six Things That Ben Stein Doesn’t Want You To Know.

I also think Hitler should have been left out of a film about the scientific validity of Intelligent Design. Whether the Nazis based their principles on natural selection or not has no bearing on the accuracy of Darwin’s theory. It is also pointed out that the notion that life was intelligently designed and the acceptance of the theory of evolution are not mutually exclusive.

I can also understand that using the idea of Intelligent Design to just say “this is complicated, God must’ve done it”, is not really very useful science, so some concerns are about allowing ID-ers into the realm of serious science are understandable. However, many people seem to be under the impression that anyone who believes in God is completely incapable of doing anything useful in science. If that’s true, then I guess we should abandon everything Newton and Einstein did.

Anyway, onto the part my title is referring to. Dawkins said that, while he cannot believe in the God or gods of the world’s various religions, there is a possibility, albeit very unlikely, that life on our planet is a result of ‘directed panspermia’, i.e. that life was designed by beings of higher intelligence elsewhere in the universe, although those beings would of course have had to evolve by chance themselves. He said it’s possible there could be some design signature observable in the world around us that would point to this conclusion. (Sorry I can’t be bothered to watch the film again to get exact quotes, but I don’t think I’m bearing false witness to what he said.)

Now, if there’s even the slightest chance that we could find evidence that life was designed (even if it was by aliens), why is science currently outlawing any suggestion that it was anything but the result of chance? What if that evidence is there, but you’re ruling out the possibility of ever finding it because of your obstinate faith in the creative powers of chance?

Nobel Prize-winner Fred Hoyle likened the possibility of life starting by chance to the chance of a tornado blowing through a junkyard and producing a 747 jet ready for take-off… “even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe” (Source: ICR). I know the argument that, given infinite time and possibly and infinite number of universes, it was bound to happen eventually, but there’s certainly no more evidence for universes other than our own than there is for a designer.

In conclusion, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that you evolutionists should allow those with alternative theories to put forward their ideas for serious consideration. You talk about how oppressed people like Darwin and Galileo were when they came out with radical theories that challenged the understanding of established scientists, and yet the current science establishment seems no better at allowing free-thinkers to get their theories considered. If the evidence for evolution purely by chance is really that overwhelming, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of in debating with these nutters, because all sane people will be able to see who’s got the evidence to back up their theories.

History of the Bible?

I was looking forward to this series on Channel 4, but it makes a shockingly bad start.

Apparently to have ever begun believing in only one God, the Jews must have stopped believing in more than one, never to return.

This is despite the Bible being full of accounts of the Jews turning away from faith in the one true God, to worship the idols of other nations over and over again. Archaeological evidence of idol worship since the time of Moses doesn’t even come close to proving that the monotheistic creation account wasn’t written until much later.

I agree to some extent with John Polkinghorne, and the conclusion that the Bible is not a science text book; Genesis 1 alone isn’t what convinces me that the theory of evolution is wrong, but I’m with Greg Haslam in that my faith in God is rooted in real events.

Thou Shalt Think For Yourselves

- Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip. I saw them at Bath Uni. He vomited on stage during that song but kept going. Rock ‘n’ roll.

So Richard Dawkins is supporting a summer camp that teaches kids to think, as an alternative to the Christian ones like the one my brother is at right now. You can read a bit about it at the BBC News site.

I think teaching children to think critically rather than just accept what they’re told is a great idea, because they get taught a lot of rubbish at school about things like so-called evidence for the theory of evolution.

So apart from pitying the poor organisers who believe they’re the ones thinking clearly as opposed to the people who run Christian camps, I can’t really argue with much of what they say their aim is.

My problem comes with the hunt for invisible unicorns for which the only evidence is an ancient book. There’s a prize for whichever child proves they don’t exist.

It’s not that it’s not fair enough to try that, but it seems rather biased.

I would like to try putting a watch on the ground. There’s a booklet with it that gives the name and contact details of the manufacturer, so while they may not have previously met the person who made it, they can actually get in touch with them if they wish. I would give a tenner to a child who could give a sensible reason to doubt that the watch was in fact made by anyone, rather that it could have just come to be there all by itself.