Re: Deconversion

Simon Woods wrote:

[me:]
My impression is that for the great majority of religious
people, the value they find in that content is -- for them --
strongly dependent on its truth.

[Simon:]
But experiential rather than logical/rational truth, though -

Depending on what you mean, I'm either unconvinced that
that's a valid distinction or unconvinced that "experiential
truth" deserves to be called a kind of truth.

which is
why, TMM, it is so difficult to give up religious belief. If my own
experience is anything to go by, there are a series of
mountain-top/comforting experiences which arise in the practice of
one's religion and which appear to lend support to the underlying
belief system.

Well, being the nasty rationalist I am, I'd say: given what
we can find out about the prevalence of such experiences
among people with different belief systems, how strongly
can such an experience really validate the subject's
belief system? (And I'd go on to say: not very strongly,
as it seems to me.)

Lots of people really believe (e.g.) that God will condemn
billions of people to eternal torment on account of ordinary
human nature plus not believing certain magical propositions,
and that those billions of people will *deserve* that. That's
a disgusting idea, and if it isn't profoundly corrupting it's
only because of people's remarkable capacity for compartmentalization.

I do wonder whether that compartmentaliz/sation is the root
cause.

(If you don't like my choice of spelling, please feel free
to use your own preferred spelling. Surely, surely, this
z/s nonsense is the worst of all possible worlds?)

(Perhaps you could elaborate at bit in the way you think this
works). I would have guessed at something about upbringing or perhaps
a 'phase' they were going through (which may result in a certain
compartmentaliz/sation).

I'm not sure exactly how and why it happens, but here's some
hand-waving. (We have at least one real psychologist here; if
anyone wants to comment from a position of expertise greater
than mine -- which isn't a difficult standard to meet -- then
please do.)

Suppose you believe two things that are inconsistent with one
another, or at least awfully hard to reconcile. If you were
some kind of idealized perfect logician then this would immediately
destroy your mind because from a contradiction you can deduce
anything at all[1]. But of course you aren't, so what happens?
Well, typically it'll only become an issue if you do enough
deduction using those two things to produce a blatant contradiction,
and there are at least three was that that might not happen.
(1) The two things might be relevant to different parts of your
life, so that you seldom have cause to bring them together.
(2) You might, on some level, be able to get some sense of
impending contradiction before actually making any deduction
so unequivocally crazy as to force you to concede error; and
you might then (without quite being aware of it, typically)
avoid pushing in that direction. That might actually be a
good heuristic, not merely a comforting one; we *do* all
have inconsistencies in our beliefs, I expect, and in areas
of blatant contradiction our thinking is always going to be
unreliable; so why waste time and energy on it? :-). (3) When
you do arrive at a contradiction, instead of saying "OK, so
I got something wrong; I wonder what it was ..." you might
say "Aha, so here I've arrived at a deep mystery; how
wonderful" or "Well, clearly the truth is multi-faceted"
or something of the sort.

[1] An example due, I think, to Bertrand Russell:
Suppose that 2+2=5. Then (subtracting 3 from
both sides) 1=2. Now, the Pope and I are two
people; but 1=2, so the Pope and I are one person,
so I am the Pope.

Now, let's consider the case where #1 is operative, but
where there's enough overlap that every now and then you
still get close to contradicting yourself. Then #2 and #3
will come into play, and perhaps you'll gradually learn
either to avoid letting those two parts of your life
interact too much, or to become vague and fuzzy when
they do. So you'll stop encountering contradictions and
near-contradictions, by training yourself not to think
in ways that produce them; more specifically, by separating
those bits of your life from one another.

So, e.g., you might have (1) a belief that everyone deserves
to suffer eternal torment on account of being human and
not believing those magical propositions, and (2) a sense
that actually most of the people you know obviously don't
deserve any such thing, that it would be an outrage if
anyone attempted to inflict on them even a finite amount
of torment, etc. To avoid being forced to think about the
conflict between them (and also, in this case, to avoid
being forced to think about all those people suffering in
hell) you might avoid bringing your beliefs about the
judgements of God too closely into contact with the real
world. (Useful words and phrases might include "ineffable",
"God's thoughts are not our thoughts", "it isn't our place
to judge", "vengeance is *mine*, saith the Lord", etc.
But more effective is just to avoid thinking too much
about it.)

So you end up with much of your God-belief in a sort of
separate mental compartment, and avoid drawing inferences
too far outside that compartment on the basis of your
beliefs about God. (Believers in an imminent Rapture
usually still have investments, life insurance, etc.,
if they can afford to.)

There's nothing special about religion here. The same
could happen with any situation where some of your beliefs
are difficult to reconcile with others.

I repeat: I am not a psychologist, and the above is all
mere hand-waving. And I also repeat: this sort of thing
isn't all bad, even from a rationalist's perspective;
if you have a whole lot of beliefs that are close to
the truth but not quite right, then it may be *right*
to keep using each of them within its domain, while
avoiding pushing them too far. (It'll depend to some
extent on how much effort you're prepared to put into
improving your beliefs.)

I'm not sure people believe things
fundamentally because they think they're true but rather something
like "it seems true as it meets me where I am" ... yada yada
... decisions made on limited information ... blah blah blah ...

You might enjoy
http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/selfdelusion.html
on this subject.

I think it's wrong to believe (e.g.) that Jesus died in your
place because someone had to be killed for your sins and this
way it needn't be you, because (1) so far as I can tell it's
false, and (2) it embodies a deeply broken idea about morality.
If you do believe it, then obviously religious language is an
appropriate way to express that. The idea, despite #1 and #2,
isn't wholly without merit -- e.g., it can be comforting or
moving in various ways. Different contexts place different
emphases on the factual and the emotional elements of an idea;
since I think the emotional elements greatly preferable to
the factual ones in this case, I think expressing the idea
in contexts like music and poetry is typically more beneficial
and less harmful than contexts like evangelical Statements Of
Faith.

I wonder though how else someone may express the
experience/desires/hopes which they find so aptly summed up
by "Jesus died in my place".

What's wrong with "Jesus died in my place"? :-) I mean, if
it's really the best way to sum up whatever-it-is then why
not say it frankly?

Of course you then have to decide whether or not you believe it
and how much that matters. In my case, I don't believe it, and
it matters a lot in some contexts and not so much in others.

(One thing that might be wrong with it is that it's not
very poetic, but I take it that isn't your point. We could
make it "And know you not, said Love, who bore the blame?"
or something instead.)

(I went to my children's school's Christingle service last year and
as we sang "Light a candle in the window", I was struck by the,
presumably unconscious, psychology behind " ... and the child will
lead you on." I conclude that certain people need/enjoy these
sentiments perhaps in a similar way to others needing logical truth.)

I'm not sure what psychology you have in mind, but the idea
that religion (at least some sorts of religion) is a kind of
wilful infantilism goes back at least to Freud.

("Infantilism" is too unkind a word. "Neoteny" might get the
idea across, to the 0.1% of the population who've encountered
the word. It's interesting to reflect that (1) humans look
in some respect like neotenous chimpanzees, and (2) retaining
some child-like mental characteristics seems to be a common
trait in the exceptionally clever or creative; it's not all
bad...)

I really wonder whether religious terminology (and organisational
structures and practices) more appositely expresses certain
experiences than any other other language could (given where we are
culturally/evolutionarily).

It's certainly possible. I'm not aware of any good reason to
think it's actually true, though...

That's my argument for postmodernism/the
avant-garde etc as well, btw! If we have to use either only poetic
language or language which expresses only testable, repeatable science
as an accurate description of our experience, perhaps we'd feel
alientated in some way.

Perhaps. I'm not sure anyone's calling for quite such strictures
on language use, though. I'm fairly sure I'm not.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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