La. La. La. Psychological mechanisms of Religion

La. La. La. Psychological mechanisms of Religion

It took me some time to educate myself on the finer points of an anti-theistic position and one I reluctantly went down in fear of unwittingly jumping on the current band wagon of faith bashing that seems to have donned our society of late. To be honest I care not for the faith bashing. As much as I disrespect an individuals view on religion I dare not, nor want not, to disrespect that person. To overcome the first obstacle of automatically assuming a persons intellect as corrolative for their affinity to faith, was difficult. People who are religious are not all stupid, nor are they intellectually inferior to a non-theist.

People of faith often use their very healthy and imperative faculty of critical thinking and skepticism for all aspects of their life except their religion. Where they may use such mental ability, innate to all of us, to question the validity that fairies exist, a proposition seriously entertained the Victorian area I might add, they reluctantly apply the same modes of logic to their faith.

In order to understand why I have adopted the stance of atheist, which I did some time ago on moral grounds firstly, before learning of the logical pitfalls for a theistic, deistic and pantheistic position, I have had to understand why people still stick both fingers in their ears and shout repetitive vowel sounds when being asked to justify their superstitious and supernatural claims of the divine. Two keys words - rationalisation and apophenia (often coined nowadays as patternicity).

We all rationalise day to day. From the trivial to the not so. It is a perfectly useful mental function to prevent us from being overloaded with emotion or to isolate us from our social group. It often helps us deal with things we feel uncomfortable addressing. Take for example the taking of life by one person upon another. We have laws that prohibit murder, both civil and religious. We also have social acceptance of killing another person based on particular moral grounds, again both civil and religious. Our soldiers are taught how to kill but nobody in their right mind wants to kill someone nor wish others to do so, not without cause and reason. We rationalise the difference between murder and death through this reason. They are the enemy threatening your way of life, land, home, territory and therefore must be killed to repel them. Another example can be dealing with sickness and death. As a religious doctor he or she may adopt a position that the inexplicable recovery of a terminally ill patient accounts for the divine intervention of their God. They care not for reality that cancer can go into recession of its own volition instead adopting a default mental thought that God healed that person. When this viewpoint is challenged by asking why is it God does not heal amputees nor intervenes on genetic disorders do we get the answers that only come from rationalisation. God walks in mysterious circles, he has a plan for us all, we could not possibly entertain the notion we could ever understand his reasons and so on. These people understand the discrepancies in their belief and justify it with a rationalisation we use everyday on the trivial. This is a powerful mental thought process that reinforces religious belief and a wall that logic can never penetrate.

Pattern finding is a very animalistic and innate perception, given to us from our evolutionary heritage, another mental thought process that reinforces religious belief. Where we once roamed the grass plains of Ethiopia hundreds of thousands of years ago we now find that the same mental faculties that kept our ancestors alive are used to reinforce ones own belief in the supernatural and unexplained. We have a fearful primate brain that is developed to put two and two together to make four, and that four is a massive feline with teeth the size of your arm. Sometimes we get five and no threat is upon us, but tis best to consider four before five for the sake of our own survival. That pretty much sums up apophenia. Animals would see a ripple in the water and based on previous experience understand that there is a chance a predator, most likely a crocodile in this case, could be lurking under the surface, ready in an instant to strike. The cautious critter takes measures to put itself out of a potentially life threatening scenario. This time the ripples turn out to be caused by a cool summer breeze, gently massaging the waters' surface. There will be a time when that ripple is indeed a rather hungry crocodile so for the animal to behave each and every time as if there was a potential predator is to afford them the luxury of a longer life. The same mechanism is true of us. We all use it, but for religion it is a powerful tool. Where I might believe the voice in my head is a worrying sign of a mental disorder, the faithful will attribute it to God. But the mechanism is so powerful even the most trivial coincidences are given the grace of God's warm touch. A woman caller to the Atheist Experience, a public access television show broadcast online but based in austin Texas, once had a Christian caller tell of her story for her belief in God. One of the tyres on her car had blown and had the good fortune of finding a helpful young man who could change that car tyre for her. She announced this as a miralce. That the chances of finding this person to help her in her predicament was a miracle from God. It turns out she broke down near a gas station so the chances of meeting such an individual was probably very high. Taking into account the amount of people who can change a car tyre, which is fairly significant, it makes you wonder how she ever formed that pattern in the first place. She used the same mechanism we used in our ignorant past, to consider an outcome as the cause of her God, instead of a statistical probability based on reality.

For all the pitfalls of religion, and I reject the good works of religion until I can see evidence of a morally righteous deed by a person of faith that could not be done by someone without, I still do not wish to cause any religious person harm nor ill-will. If However if I question someone on their faith and they find it offensive, all I can do is apologise for the grievance, rationalise the experience to limit my own guilt and as much as possible neglect to act upon my instinctive mechanism of apophenia which would suggest all religious people are ignorant, defensive and irrational.

POST COMMENT

Taking Your Faith Higher through Christian Blog Community Goodword Books- Collection of English and Urdu Islamic Books Muslims are victims of terror and not terrorists ,PART I, Is it Jewish conspiracy to rule world Social Media Consultants: Do You Want To Make Money? Stuffed Teddybears Selections The Basics By Social Media Consultants The Reign of Social Media Consultants Tips From the Social Media Consultants Social Media Consultants Are Very Helpful Concept of God in the Muslim religion of Islam Social Media Consultants: How Effective Are They? Social Media Consultants: They Are In Demand The Best Social Media Consultants: Work With Them!