The Emotional Appeal of God

Again, my apologies for the delay in posts. I've been incredibly busy with school, and I just picked up a part time job on the side, but winter break is fast approaching, so hopefully I will have plenty of time to catch up on some posts and keep this blog alive! Something I have been working over in my head these past few weeks has been the concept of god, and why it is so powerful. While not specific to any religion, I want to address the issue of belief in god without going into any in depth syllogisms or philosophical arguments.

What I have come to believe over the past few years of my life is that the number one reason that people believe in a god is emotion. While this may seem obvious, the reasons for this may not be so. Why do so many Christians continuously assail us with notions of "Jesus loves you" and "you can feel God in your heart"? This is because of the emotional connection these ideas imply. Love is the most powerful human emotion, (and more interestingly, most resemblant of insanity), so the idea that the most powerful, all knowing being in the universe loves you is very appealing to some people. Everyone wants to be loved, so why wouldn't you want to be loved by an all knowing, omnipresent deity who created the universe? The Christians love to tout their god as a loving god (directly contradicting much of the Bible, which many of them have not fully read anyways). Put yourself in the shoes of a young child attending Sunday school, or someone on the fence about the existence of god. When you repeatedly hear "God loves you" and "Jesus is love", these are very powerful appeals to your emotions, which, for better or worse, have the ability to overpower their counterpart: reason and rational thought.

Some religions take the opposite approach, using scare tactics to push people over the fence into their camp. Muslims have "the wrath of Allah" and even some Christians attempt to scare people with visions of the Rapture and other doomsday scenarios. But the important thing to realize here is that all of these arguments are relying on an appeal to emotions, with no use of logic, evidence, critical thinking, the scientific method, or the application of reason.

So why do so many religions use appeals to emotion as their primary recruiting tool? The answer is simple: it is their most effective method, because they do not have legitimate reasonable arguments. If they had real arguments, they would use them. The theists who do attempt this route call themselves apologists (Greek for defenders) and they come up with elaborate arguments such as Ontological Argument for God, the Transcendental Argument for God, and the First Cause Argument. Unfortunately for them, all of these arguments prove flawed upon closer inspection. This is the reason why theists come to rely upon emotion to keep themselves and others believing. The thing that adds to this problem is that emotional bonds are very difficult to break. When you spend 10 years of your life honestly believing that "Jesus loves you" and is with you every where you go, it will be very very hard to all of a sudden drop that belief, since you have become dependent upon your beliefs. This is what makes religions so self-perpetuating. There is no encouragement to rationally examine your beliefs, but they are merely reinforced day after day in a way that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Overall, the idea I am trying to get across is that religious arguments and appeals are dominated by emotion rather than reason. Even more troublesome is that when you actually confront these emotional arguments, theists often refuse to think rationally and logically because of their dependence on the emotional connection. Hopefully, with time and the continued efforts of atheists and freethinkers everywhere, this trend can be reversed.

Some Abortion Statistics

One of the common arguments against abortion come from religious believers, who may or may not quote the Bible to attack abortion. The religious right also tend claim that people without religion are less moral, and more sinful. However, I came across some interesting statistics, from an anti-abortion website, nonetheless. The follow statistics come from the website 
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html
who in turn cite their source as the well known The Alan Guttmacher Institute. (www.agi-usa.org):


"Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as "Born-again/Evangelical"

Notice anything unusual? Thats right, of the three major religious denominations in the United States, 2 of them account for a significantly higher number of abortions each year. Almost 10% more. So much for being more moral, or even enforcing their own doctrine. The theist who shoves the Bible in the atheists face preaching against abortion should first turn to their own congregation, where statistically more abortions are occuring. 

All of this leads us to an interesting question: why might religious believers tend to get more abortions than non-believers? I think there are probably a few reasons for this. First, the majority of denominations in the United States support abstinence only education, which current affairs tend to indicate is not an effective method to prevent teen pregnancy and the spread of STDs. When churches refrain from teaching the youth anything about sex, there is a higher risk of young or unwanted pregnancies, and this is where the second reason comes in. For women who are religious and value the church community they are part of, there is a certain conduct expected of them. One major part of Christian doctrine is saving one's virginity until after marriage. If a high school girl gets pregnant, and wants to maintain her image and status within the church, her only real option is abortion. People have to maintain their priorities, and if it is someone's priority to remain a valued part of their church, they may feel compelled to get an abortion rather than face the dirty looks they would receive had they openly broken the convention about saving their virginity. 

While these stats are not meant to demonize theists, I think they do help point out some of problems that religion can cause in a society. They also demonstrate an interesting clash of ideas among many Christians, who assert that virginity is to be saved until marriage, but also forbid any alternative, and protest against real sex education, you know, the one that talks about STDs and condoms. Not only that, but these figures show that those without religious affiliation tend to be more responsible when it comes to sexual activity. It is time for theists to own up to the things that they cause, and only then can they began to repair the damage that has been done.

The Meaning of Life

How many times have have you heard a theist make the assertion that without a belief in god, life has no purpose, no meaning. They say that if god didn't exist, our own existence means nothing, and we might as well all resort to hedonism. They believe that their god has a plan for us, our existence has a reason, and thereof life is not pointless. However, I would like ask a few questions here:

1. How can life be meaningful if we are merely robots, following a predetermined path set up for us by some all knowing man in the sky. What meaning is there in life when your choices are already made, your decisions predetermined?

2. What about that special person, who does so much good in the world, helping people, volunteering, etc. yet does so without the belief in a god, is that person's life meaningless?

3. What does make life meaningful? How does one create purpose out the chaos that is life?

The first question, at least from my perspective, is unanswerable. While Christians love to tout how full of meaning and purpose their life is, they fail to see the irony of the situation. What meaning is there in following a path that is already been laid out for you?

In terms of the second question, I would argue that that person's life is full of purpose and meaning. They are helping their fellow human being, being a "good" person, and in general making the world a better place. If that isn't a way to make your life meaningful, I don't know what is. Why does it matter that a person must believe in a higher power to live a "meaningful" life? Why does one have to believe in, say, the divinity of Jesus in order to find meaning and purpose in the things that they do? Religion has created a monopoly on purpose and meaning, selling these things as only attainable through the belief in god.

The third question is the most important of all. How does one live a meaningful life? Of course, we will all have different definitions of meaning, but what really is significant here, in my opinion, is the intent, and because of this, I think the lives of non-theists can in fact be much more meaningful than those of theists. If you  enjoy doing things for other people, such as volunteering,  that is an act in which the intent is to create a better world for other people. For Christians, doing good deeds is seen as necessary for salvation and to get to heaven. I'm sure there are plenty of Christians who truly enjoy and appreciate helping out people in need, but the overall intent there is to be subservient to god, and in doing so achieve eternity in heaven. I believe that a person's intent is a major factor when considering the meaning and purpose in their life.

However, what is perhaps most important of all is that meaning is created by the individual seeking it, and it is therefore a personal component of life. Theists often assert that for an atheist, life is meaningless because, as many atheists believe, in X number of years the universe will suffer a heat death, and all life as we currently know it will cease to exist, and the theist claims that this makes everything we do meaningless, because at that point in time, "nothing that we ever did will matter".

But I would say that they have this backwards. Meaning is not something that is judged from the future, but it is constructed at the present. A good deed is not deemed "good" 1000 years in the future when it is recognized, but it is good at the time when it happened. Meaning is something that is personal to each of us. It does not matter that in 500 billion years nobody will ever know that we existed. What matters is that we can create purpose in our own lives now, and that is what makes them meaningful. The relationships we have with other people are often the key to meaning in one's life; family, friends, loved ones, these are the people we spend our lives with and find meaning with. I don't sit back and say "well, I would like to be friends with you, but eventually I will die and nothing will exist, so we might as well not bother". This would be ridiculous, and it specifically highlights what is wrong with the notion that theists have about atheists. All that matters is that at sometime, somewhere, something was meaningful to you, and it gave your life purpose, and that is all you need.

My Apologies

I sincerely apologize for my recent absence from the site, I dislocated my finger a few weeks ago, and typing has been quite the chore for me. With many midterms and other college papers, I have just bee swamped. But alas, I am still an atheist, and I do not think my finger injury was a sign from god. It happened during a pickup basketball game with my friends, completely inadvertent, but very very painful. Anyways, it is better now, I can type with some efficiency and little pain, so I thought a blog post was well in order.

To get things swinging again, I thought I would bring up a recent revelation I've had, one that comes from the enlightening position of being an atheist at a Catholic college. When I think about all the crazy, wild, stupid things that college students do, even "Catholic" ones, I realize that these people can't actually be Catholics, or at least believe it to the T. The way the drink, party, talk to each other, treat each other, treat their school work, they just can't believe the entire Catholic Church doctrine. I'm not saying they are a bunch of bad people, but it just seems that they haven't thought it all through. I know so many people who believe that the God of the Bible (which one?) actually exists, yet they break the 10 Commandments all the time. Honestly, if you believe this all knowing, all powerful, ever present being exists, then shouldn't you be doing everything you can to do what he/she/it says?

Yet, it's like they take it only on the surface. They believe it so they can be part of the religious community, or because their family raised them that way, or because they want to go to Heaven. But, its not the type of thing you want to do a half-ass job at. Either you listen to everything Jesus said and follow it exactly, or nothing at all. How can so many people go halfway on these things. It's like they never fully have thought it through. And,  if they actually took the time to fully examine their beliefs and investigate the claims they have been accepting, then perhaps they may realize what I, and so many others have: there is just not enough reason to believe. Even if they took the time to investigate, and they still believe, at least they can understand their faith better now, and realize that it is just that: faith.

If you really believe that God exists, wouldn't you do everything you possibly could to praise and please him. The Bible sure thinks so, yet so many "Christians" take it only half way. They believe what they want to believe, and they ignore what they don't. If they could only step back and see what is going on there, perhaps they would realize the paradox of their beliefs.

Why we ask the biggest questions

For almost the entirety of human existence, we have been asking the "big" questions, such as "how did we get here?" and "what is our purpose?". However, we rarely stop to think why we ask those questions, and especially why we are so prone to leaning towards some answers innately. For example, the majority of people in the U.S. are Christians, and the when asked why they believe in their, one of the most common responses is that "it just couldn't happen by chance. All of this world, our existence, the love we feel, it can't be random." Many theists cite the their belief that the world is "too complex" to have formed from nature, without being "created". 


However, this innate desire to comprehend the world around us as "too complex" is inherently flawed, and I'll show you why:


We attach significance to things that are meaningful to us. For example, my parents are significant to me, because they are meaningful, i.e. I depend on them, I enjoy spending time with them, in fact my existence required them. Therefore, they are very significant to me. Because I see my parents as meaningful, I see them as purposeful, causal, and driven by thought. My parents are not some random, by chance beings that came into existence from nothing. In fact, almost everything we perceive as having "meaning" is because it is not "random" or "by chance". We find faces and shapes in clouds that, to the objective observer, would look like random, blurry shapes. Yet if we realized that they were random, unspecific shapes, we wouldn't find meaning and significance in them. When you happen to meet your old high school friend when you are at a baseball game, you don't see it as random, but you think "what a small world", or "it must be fate". 


So, now that we've established that humanity as a whole finds meaning in things they perceive as purposeful, intended, we can turn our view onto religion's role in this. Perhaps the most meaningful "'thing" in my life is my own existence. Without my existence, I wouldn't exist. Therefore, my own current existence is very important and significant to me. With that in mind, consider how we examine the world as a whole with that perspective. Our friends, our family, our pets, our jobs, our planet, our own existence, all of these things are very, very significant to us. Therefor, they could not have come about randomly or by chance. If that was the case, we would think they aren't meaningful anymore, because they are purposeless (the very notion of which I would strongly argue against.


In an overview of above, my main point is that human beings define certain things as meaningful and significant, things which are important to our existence and our lives. We place such import on these things because we see them as intended, purposeful, caused. We do this because almost all of these things are in fact so. My existence was intended and caused, it was not random and without purpose. A couple's love is meaningful because to each person, the other loves them for a reason, with purpose. They love connection was not drawn out of a hat. So when we look at the world around us, our common connection as human beings, and our experiences, we want to find a cause there. Because if it is uncaused, then we would (incorrectly, I would posit) conclude that our lives are meaningless. 


One of the best analogies I have ever heard was the poker hand analogy. Imagine you are teaching a friend how to play poker, and you are about to deal them their first hand to explain the game. You shuffle the deck, then deal them 5 cards. To your friend's amazement, your friend has a royal flush, the rarest of all poker hands, the odds of which are 1 in 649,740. The first reaction of your friend will be, inevitably, astonishment, but then suspicion. "Did you plant the cards there?" he will ask, because of course, he is looking for a purpose or a cause, because he sees meaning. This is the most important point, so I will say it again. When someone seeings meaning, they automatically look for purpose or cause. In fact, the royal flush is only the best poker hand because there are rules about the game of poker, which make it so. THE ODDS OF GETTING A ROYAL FLUSH IN 5 CARDS ARE THE EXACT SAME AS ANY OTHER 5 CARDS. The difference is, society has already placed significance, or meaning, on that combination of cards. When we see this meaning, we expect it to be caused. 


This is the exact same thing that religious believers are doing when they say "look at the trees, God's hand is everywhere" or "Jesus is love" or "Look at the world. It's so complex and incredible, it can't be random and without purpose". Believers see all this meaning and significance around them, so they automatically expect there to be a creator, a purpose, a cause. They fail to understand that just the meaning and beauty that we see in the world, or in love, or in a newborn child, is there because we've put it there. Society imparts significance into us, along with our own preconceptions. When religious believers claim that the universe is too complex, to unlikely to have come into existence "by chance", they see that as a reason to believe in a higher power.Yet just as with the poker hand analogy, the odds of getting the royal flush are no different from any other 5 card combination, it is only because of the meaning and significance that we already attached to that specific combination that the friend finds it highly unlikely that they actually got dealt that hand, and they suspect planned involvement, purposeful action. In  the same way, the religious believer, who of course finds meaning all around them, misplaces the source of that meaning and asserts that it is meaningful for an external, supernatural purpose, rather than the human reasons why we attach significance to certain aspects of our lives.

Interesting Study, and Belief

Although not related to religion, I found this article on the  web the other day, and thought it was worth sharing:
Swearing can reduce the feeling of pain


Here is a brief overview:

"Scientists have discovered that uttering swear words can help to lessen the feeling of physical pain.

The study by researchers at Keele University found that volunteers were able to withstand pain for longer when they swore compared to when they used words which were not offensive."


"The researchers, whose findings are published in the journal NeuroReport, tested 64 students' tolerance to pain by asking them to submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as they could while repeating a series of swear words of their choice.

They were then asked to carry out the task again while repeating non-offensive words they would use to describe a table. One subject, however, had to be excluded from the trial because they could not suggest any swear words.

They found that volunteers who swore were able to keep their hands submerged in the water for an average of 40 seconds longer. When questioned about their perceived pain they also rated it as being lower."


"Dr Richard Stephens, who conducted the study at the university's school of psychology, believes it may explain why swearing is still common place in languages around the world.

He suggests that swearing could have evolved as a way of raising aggression levels and reducing the feeling of pain to allow our ancestors to flee or fight back when attacked by predators.

He said: "We think it could be part of the flight or fight response. In the volunteers who swore, we also found they had an elevated heart rate, so it could be increasing their aggression levels."

While this study certainly gives us an insight into some of the basic instincts and responses of the human  body, it also demonstrates an important  aspect of evolution. As the human species evolved and developed language, a certain group of words was developed, that, over time, have come to be (biologically) connected to aggression and the fight or flight reflex. This is certainly a useful trait to have, the ability to withstand pain longer to be less sensitive to pain in times of heightened aggression, so one can see why this trait would have gained genetic power over time.

This article often brings to mind another issue, one directly related to religion, and that is the issue of belief and prayer. Just as the human body as evolved to physiologically react to certain swear words, it could have the ability to react to other words or mindsets, such as prayer or other religious believes. For example, in times of stress, I think everyone would agree, it is useful to be able to calm yourself down and relax. Often times, religious people use prayer or other forms of meditation for this purpose. While I fully support meditation and other calming techniques, this example serves to show us that people can be predisposed to the used of certain beliefs or ideas that benefit themselves physically or psychologically. Its a nice thought to think that there is someone out there watching over us, and its  nice to think that things happen for a reason, especially bad things. However, how good some thoughts or ideas may be at helping our bodies and mind has zero affect on  the actual truth and reality of those ideas. Just because human beings are predisposed to believe in a  god does not mean that a god is any more real than if nobody believed in it.

The Belief-O-Matic Quiz

I just took the "Belief-O-Matic" quiz and here are my results:

1.	Secular Humanism (100%)
2.	Unitarian Universalism (92%)
3.	Nontheist (80%)
4.	Theravada Buddhism (74%)
5.	Liberal Quakers (72%)
6.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (59%)
7.	Neo-Pagan (59%)
8.	Taoism (48%)
9.	Reform Judaism (47%)
10.	New Age (46%)
11.	Mahayana Buddhism (38%)
12.	Scientology (35%)
13.	New Thought (33%)
14.	Orthodox Quaker (26%)
15.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (25%)
16.	Sikhism (25%)
17.	Baha'i Faith (24%)
18.	Jainism (22%)
19.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (19%)
20.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (18%)
21.	Islam (16%)
22.	Orthodox Judaism (16%)
23.	Seventh Day Adventist (12%)
24.	Hinduism (10%)
25.	Eastern Orthodox (8%)
26.	Roman Catholic (8%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (0%)

First of all, I think the most obvious conclusion that can be made is that the test is fairly accurate, at least at categorizinig non-believers. I think its accurate to describe myself as a Secular Humanist, an also as a "non-theist" (no atheist option?). However, another thing I immediately noticed, and found rather funny, is the fact that my beliefs (or lack thereof) more closely align with Unitarian Universalists than non theism. This is particularly interesting to me, since for the first 6 years of my life I went to a UU church, and some members of my family still consider themselves Unitarian Universalists. I often joke that the UU church really has no specific doctrine, that its members can believe or not believe whatever they choose. Apparently, I fit more closely with this church than with the non-theistic worldview.


Secondly, the nature of the questions that were asked are highly suspect. I don't recommend this entertainment quiz for anyone who is truly trying to discover what they believe, it is interesting and fun to take it and find out where you fit. However, as I just mentioned, the questioning was far from perfect. In fact, it even indicates an anti-atheist bias, which is something high on my list of "Why a secular world would be better". The way the quiz is design clearly indicates that it is better to have some sort of faith or spirituality. I find this claim highly unsupported, and in fact I would posit that faith does much more damage than is does good. But I guess that's for another time. For example, the first question that the  quiz asks 


"What is the number and nature of the deity (God, gods, higher power)"?

Only one God--a corporeal spirit (has a body), supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.

Only one God--an incorporeal (no body) spirit, supreme, personal God Almighty, the Creator.

Multiple personal gods (or goddesses) regarded as facets of one God, and/or as separate gods.

The supreme force is the impersonal Ultimate Reality (or life force, ultimate truth, cosmic order, absolute bliss, universal soul), which resides within and/or beyond all.

The supreme existence is both the eternal, impersonal, formless Ultimate Reality, and personal God (or gods).

No God or supreme force. Or not sure. Or not important.

None of the above. The only possible atheistic responses are "None of the above" or, the one I went with "No God or supreme force. Or not sure. Or not important". O.K., I could understand possibly lumping "No God" and "Not sure" together, but "Not important"? Give me a break. To be clear, I think the questions of existence and good and evil and the origins of humanity and love are the most important questions of all! Yet, there is this underlying attitude that for atheists, this isn't important, and they don't care about these things, and there is no purpose to live. Quite the contrary, I spend a good deal of my time and effort exploring these issues, possibly spending much more time than many "believers" do investigating these things. It is this ridiculous connection between atheism and "not important" that makes people look down upon atheists and not trust them in public office. The best way to combat this attitude is to continue to examine this things for yourself, and engage believers in these discussions, demonstrating your knowledge of and the level of significance you attach to the most important questions facing human existence. That way, the world will begin to understand who we are and what we believe (or don't), and perhaps the differences can slowly be alleviated and we can move forward together.