When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. - 1 Corinthians 13:11A few months ago, I wrote a post drawing an analogy between belief in god and belief in Santa Claus. I would like to continue that discussion and build upon what I said in that previous post.
In the previous post, I mostly focused on the parallels between belief in either entity. That is, I mentioned how the concept of "nice" children get toys and "naughty" children get lumps of coal is analogous to "righteous" people going to heaven and "evil" people going to hell in the next life. In this post, I think I shall focus more on the differences.
In fact, I mean to make the case that any of the silly fables that we tell our children is far more likely and believable than the story of the Christian god (and most gods, but I don't know too much about other gods, so I'll stick to the Christian one). We'll start with Santa Claus.
In order to believe in Santa, one would have to accept a few ridiculous claims--such that reindeer can not only fly, but pull a heavy sleigh laden with a man and billions of toys. There are many other nonsensical claims involved in the story of Santa, but we'll stick with the toy delivery, since it is (in my mind) the most preposterous. Having a family full of engineers, I got an email for Christmas a couple years ago from a brother-in-law where someone actually calculated how fast Santa would have to travel in order to deliver presents just to the Christian children in the world all in one night. He would actually have to travel so fast that he would literally burn up, because of the drag force that velocity would create. So, to work around this, you would need to somehow allow Santa to defy the laws of physics. He would either have to have a way to slow down time or negate the drag which would cause him to disintegrate.
Okay, so pick whichever explanation you like best for how Santa can deliver all these presents all in one night (technically he has maybe 36 hours or so to deliver toys, because of time zones). I'll pick the slowing down time option, since that seems the simplest to me. So, to believe in Santa, you need to believe that he has some way of bending time. This is, of course, a ridiculous notion. But, now contrast that with the notion of god. The Christian god is capable of telepathic communication with billions (if not an infinite number) of people all at the same time. He can hear and understand the words of the prayers of all of his believers. Not only that, but he is capable of taking action based on the words of these prayers--changing weather, making a certain football team win, comforting people who are depressed, healing people who are ill, etc. This is a far more incredible claim than that Santa can fly around the world and deliver toys to all the children in one night.
Now, take the Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy simply goes around replacing teeth with coins, when found under a child's pillow. This is far more believable than the Santa story, since there are a much smaller number of children at tooth-losing age than there are at Christmas present age, and the fairy has the entire year to spread out the work of paying for lost teeth, whereas Santa is required to do all of his work in one night. And yet, no adult (that can be considered sane) truly believes in the Tooth Fairy. Contrast this with god. First of all, the Tooth Fairy gives money to children (and is therefore generous), whereas god asks for money from his followers (and is therefore selfish). But, it is far more believable that someone will come and change your son's molar into a quarter than it is that paying money to your bishop will affect your welfare in any way at all. The claim that paying 10% of your income to your church will make you more financially stable or that it will bring upon you blessings that god would not give you otherwise is completely absurd and is easily seen to be a scam. It's a far more obvious explanation that your church leaders simply want money from you (who doesn't want money) and are willing to ask for it in the name of god.
How about the Easter Bunny? To believe in the Easter Bunny, you simply have to believe that there's a rabbit that goes around all over the world hiding eggs and candy for children to find. Certainly, that is an absurd thought--which is why no one takes the Easter Bunny seriously. But, is it any less credible than the teaching that god goes out of his way to put people into your path as part of an intricate and eternal plan? That he hides all along your life situations and people who will maximize your opportunity to be happy, to learn what you need to learn, and to return to live with him in the next life? Clearly this teaching is far more ridiculous. That is, if you can believe that everything in your life happens for a reason and that god is controlling all of these encounters and situations, then it should be very easy for you to believe that there is a rabbit who hides eggs once a year for children to find.
Next, I think it would be good to talk about simple superstitions. I can't say how many people I've seen actually knock on wood when they wish to avoid ill fortune or get some good fortune. I've done it myself on a number of occasions. I doubt very much that anyone is ever serious when doing so (I know that I'm not). That is to say, most people I thought would admit that the idea that knocking on a piece of a dead tree will somehow bring good luck is a silly belief. But, is it any more absurd than the belief that saying the words "please bless that it will rain" will actually have an effect on the weather? Is the idea that breaking a mirror brings 7 years bad luck really any more preposterous than believing that all of existence and life and everything poofed into being because one being said that he wanted it to be so?
As ridiculous and naive as the concepts of Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and other fables and superstitions are, belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing being who is personally concerned with the goings-on of each individual's personal life leaves them all in the dust. It is so much more fantastical, so much more unrealistic, requires so much more suspension of reality, as to render it hopelessly false.
And so, I say, just as I have cast aside my childish beliefs in the mythical creatures and fairies that I was told stories about as a child, I have also cast aside the childish notion that there is a god. Be reasonable. Think about what it is that you actually believe (or claim to believe) and consider whether to do so is truly a rational course to take. Are the things you believe in really all that more reasonable than the fairy tales that we easily dismiss off-hand?
I appreciate your perspective, but I think you need to read some Joseph Campbell. Have you? There's so much more to religion and belief than just validating or falsifying truth claims. I consider reducing it to that as actually being "childish"--though in a way not really comparable to the "childishness" of believing outrageous truth claims (which I grant, approached from the way you do).
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that I was addressing the whole of religion in this post, but merely the belief in a god that has all of these supernatural powers which are commonly attributed to him. Surely, there are religions that do not entail a belief in such a god--or any god at all. That is another matter entirely. I may or may not address such religion in a future post. The point of this post was merely to indicate ways in which common children's fairy tales are far more believable than a being with all of the properties that the biblical god possesses.
DeleteI hadn't so much as heard of Joseph Campbell. I might possibly look into some of his writings in the future, but I can't honestly say I have any interest at the moment.
Hmm, fair enough.
DeleteNo Joseph Campbell? Actually, I've not read a full one of his books (though I will be soon), but we discussed some of his ideas fairly extensively in a Spanish literature class I took a few years ago.
I've always thought that everyone possessed a sort of irrational "religion" regardless of their beliefs, but I could never quite articulate what that might be, exactly, it was more intuitive for me--pure rationalism just doesn't explain humanity (I always thought there was a legitimate "spiritual" aspect to life outside of or encompassing "religion" as we know it, but I lacked the vocabulary to realize it). I felt this especially after serving my mission among Chinese and otherwise being more directly exposed to their culture and how their whole paradigm of "religion" and belief is TOTALLY different from ours!--to the point that it seemed to evidence the correctness of my intuition on some level.
Joseph Campbell was really into studying the myths of all the cultures of the world and how myth works in the psychologies of individuals and societies. It's truly fascinating, and I think his ideas finally start to articulate the ideas that I had been intuiting but unable to develop for so long. I've always thought that people who dismiss the value of religion--or myth--based on its irrationality are missing something of the goodness and importance of a big part of life, and Campbell's work seems to be a potent antidote to this sort of thought (which I believe to be limiting). That's why I suggest reading some of his work (and, incidentally, why I react somewhat strongly to some of your posts).
That's very interesting. I had the exact opposite experience on my mission. Perhaps it's because the people of Japan are less religious and more logic-driven, like me. At any rate, I think that religion is very easily explained by rationalism. I think there are very reasonable explanations for why people believe in various forms of superstition, spirituality, religion (whatever you want to call it). In fact, I believe one (or more) of my previous posts even linked to an article (or several) about that. I read one article that was discussing how religious beliefs are tied to survival instincts. I watched a YouTube video of a lecturer explaining how religion hijacks many mechanisms of the brain.
DeleteAt any rate, the point is that I don't think there's any more mystery to human psychology than there is to the cosmos. Certainly, we don't know everything at this point, but that doesn't mean there isn't a rational explanation for it, based on reason and fact. I think that people's behaviors are very well explained by logic (even the behaviors which we call "irrational"--they too can be explained).
I must say that your statement "I've always thought that people who dismiss the value of religion--or myth--based on its irrationality are missing something of the goodness and importance of a big part of life" is rather malformed. There are people who dismiss the claims of religion based on its irrationality, which I believe to be perfectly reasonable, but still admit that religion itself has value. Whether that is value that cannot be obtained from any other source is a different question--one which I don't feel qualified to answer at this point. However, you're mixing two different ideas into one and I don't think that yields an adequate depiction of the matter.
But, even then, to say that religion is irrational (which I certainly believe to be true) is a completely different statement than that people believing in religion is inexplicable. Now, it may very well be that illogical to say that there is a god who rules over the skies and controls the lightning. However, it seems to me that there is a very reasonable explanation as to why the ancient Greeks would believe in Zeus. They experienced storms in the skies and they needed an explanation for it--people are naturally curious and, as part of this curiosity, want to know why things happen. Therefore, not having any reason at hand (and not having the knowledge to deduce any scientific reason), they invent a creature who controls the weather and calls down lightning on people or things with whom he is displeased. That seems like a very good (although misguided) use of reasoning to me. The belief itself is quite irrational, but how the Greeks arrived at this conclusion is perfectly reasonable, with an understanding of human psychology.
There are lots of reasons why people believe in a god who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent, and omnipresent. There are comforts to be had in thinking that someone always cares about you, even when you feel abandoned by everyone else. I don't doubt that, nor do I believe I have ever refuted it. I have said that some of these comforts can come from other places. I find comfort in the truth rather than in fables.
And, as I said, perhaps one day I will read this Joseph Campbell, if the subject interests me enough to do so. I don't mean to close my mind to any particular ideas, I just honestly do not have a sufficient level of interest to motivate me to look into it.