I saw something today that made me think. On another blog I read, the topic of faith came up, specifically, how faith provides hope and comfort for some people, but not others. For the latter folks, the thought of not ever knowing for certain that they are pleasing God evokes a certain anxiety, aka, fear. After all, God is presumably watching your every move and knows your every thought. Basically, when you're not sleeping, you're under surveillance. Nice.
Anyway, it was one blogger's observation that if faith causes fear, then it is not really faith at all.
This got me thinking: If "faith" provides believers with hope and comfort, then you'd be really hard-pressed to convince me that the thought of losing that hope and comfort would not cause at least some anxiety. But of course, if one can convince one's self to not allow such thoughts, then "faith" is doing precisely what it's intended to do: It's making your brain impervious to certain thoughts. E.g..it would literally be unthinkable that this life is all that there is and that the day will come that we'll never see our loves ever again.
So, if you could entertain the unthinkable, then, once again, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that there wouldn't be any aspect of fear there.
Notwithstanding, once a bell rings you cannot "unring" it. This is why atheists say over and over that, while belief is a choice, non-belief isn't necessarily the same simple matter of choosing. In other words, I cannot set an appointment next week to dupe myself... literally, dupe myself , just because there is a known method by which some people can buffer or even totally escape reality. And yes, unless we're talking solipsism, there is an objective reality that we all live in. I'm not going to sit here and assert that atheism doesn't have its hurdles, but there is something very freeing about shedding my faith in exchange for seeing the world as it really is, instead of(as opposed to) as I want(ed) it to be.
Addendum: After giving what I had written some more thought, I feel it's a good idea that I point out that the reason I deconverted from Christianity is not because I got tired of, and/or, could no longer cope with, not knowing if I was pleasing God. No. The reason I deconverted is because I no longer believe - in fact, I'm unable to believe - that the triune god of Christianity has a referent in reality. There are of course other contributing factors, but that's the conclusion of all factors. I didn't just decide I'm not going to not believe in God anymore because I'm sick of the question marks and/or because I'm disappointed with the constant no-shows. No. If I really believed God was there, I'd still be finding a way to make "faith" work, just like everyone else who believes there's a god actually there. If I don't believe there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, no amount "faith" is going to change that. Only evidence will.
6 comments:
While I certainly concur that it IS freeing to shed faith ... I think I slightly disagree with the literal statement of:
" ... instead of what I want(ed) it to be"
I think I understand the <spirit of you statement ... but I think the literal wording suggests that you, I, we etc. may have actually "wanted" a world as asserted by our chosen spiritual scripture.
I think that you may agree that in reality No One wants a world exactly as described by their chosen scripture ... and I don't think it realistically matters WHICH scripture you choose to be the BASIS of that 'World". I think you'd agree that that everyone has - no matter how slight - a personalized, yet VERY different view/interpretation of their chosen scriptural discription of how a faith based world would "look".
Perhaps I'm being too granular here - but I think the faith based world that you may have "wanted" prior to shedding your faith would have, in many ways, been rejected by those who shared a similar interpretation of that faith and the scripture it was based on. Reject as being in some way or other as not being the proper interpretation - or - as we've come to understand POST faith - cherry picked to personal taste/preference.
None the less - your broader point is understood and nothing about it changes in light of my comments/interpretation of your "pre-atheism" faith based world preference. It stands as valid regardless, but I felt compelled to point out that I'm pretty sure I'm safe to assume that despite your background in a strict religious upbringing, I'm sure that the world you'd have "wanted" was outlined accurately in scripture - I think there are as many personalized religions as there are believers and no one version fits precisely into the literal word for word scripture of their choosing.
Peace and free thought :)
The kind of faith that it takes to not be fearful is the kind of faith that encourages non-thought. In other words, if you are afraid you're probably thinking too much. I realize that the person who said that if your faith produces fear it likely isn't faith at all was alluding to the scripture that says "Perfect loves drives out all fear." Bu anyone who stops to actually think about the reality of things, whether that reality includes their God or not, must surely feel some measure of fear. At the very least fear that loved ones who don't also walk around fearless will be going somewhere very frightening.
"The kind of faith that it takes to not be fearful is the kind of faith that encourages non-thought."
Dratts! That's precisely the gist of what I was trying to get across, but you did it in one, swift sentence.
But yes, the inventors of faith didn't want the users to think too much.
"I, we etc. may have actually 'wanted' a world as asserted by our chosen spiritual scripture."
I actually didn't have specific scripture in mind, but instead, I was alluding to the tenets of Christianity that promise that we can overcome death and that our deceased loved ones are not really dead, but alive and well in another realm of unadulterated never-ending bliss, patiently awaiting our arrival. That, and that God was blessing and overseeing me and his followers.
So, mainly those three things. And yes, at one time, that's the way that I *did* want to see the world. I chose to see the world that way because the alternative was just too scary. And I'm not saying that it isn't the least bit scary now; it is in some ways, but that is a moot point, because after allowing myself to actually think about the "unthinkable"(I lost faith in "faith"), I now know that there's not one shred of objective evidence to support my previous desires to see the world as I described it above, and there's nothing I can do or think to change that. The evidence would have to change, and so far it hasn't. I may have worded it poorly in my post. If so, my bad. Peace.
Nah - you didn't "word it bad" ... I was just being nitpicky :P
Is it possible to :overthink" stuff? If so, I'm definitely guilty :P
Kudos to Ruth for the super efficient and precise synopsis :) Brilliant
"The kind of faith that it takes to not be fearful is the kind of faith that encourages non-thought." ~ Ruth
Exactly.
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