Just imagine what you'll know tomorrow

As a "computer guy", I have frequently had people ask me to help them with their hardware or software problems. Many of the people I have helped have made statements like this: "this computer doesn't like me" or "this stupid thing is cursed" or "sometimes it just does that for no reason".

These are all statements of faith or belief, not statements of fact. Every time I have looked deeply into their claims of seemingly inexplicable behavior, I have invariably found the root cause to be a mundane one: user behavior, environmental factors, software defects, etc.

In this context, people's statements of belief are the result of ignorance, lack of expertise, or just being too lazy or not caring enough to get to the bottom of the problem.

I think that in the case of religious belief there is a similar but not identical phenomenon at work. People who believe that God exists start with the idea in their head that inexplicable things may sometimes be accounted for by the Will of God. They are willing, even anxious, to discover the hand of a benevolent deity at work in their lives. The very fact of this belief is sufficient to stop them from looking more deeply into the reasons why things around them happen. Someone overcomes an addiction? It's God's hand at work. But if you look deeply, I absolutely guarantee that you'll find it's really something like a change in neural wiring or brain chemistry that did the trick.

Ever since the introduction of conscious cognition in our genome, we humans have been trying to figure out why things are the way they are. Before we discovered the existence of the invisible world of microorganisms, we were perplexed and baffled by the appearance of illness and disease. Why did people get sick and die all the time? Our indomitable drive to identify cause and effect led us to conclude the existence of evil spirits, arbitrary deities, or other supernatural hypotheses to try to account for the seeming randomness of life because we simply could find no other explanation.

When Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the father of microbiology, first looked through a lens and discovered the first hints of existence of this unseen world, it forever altered our perception of illness and disease. From that point onward, we were in possession of knowledge that would forever banish the need to resort to supernatural explanations about illness and disease. As of that moment it officially became a cop-out to say "God did it" in reference to bodily sickness.

That pattern of the natural displacing the supernatural has continued consistently over the centuries. Whenever we have bothered to get to the root of any problem or previously unexplained occurrence, we have always, Always, ALWAYS found that the root cause could be explained by the regular action of discoverable, testable laws that arise naturally as an inevitable consequence of the fundamental properties of matter/energy/space/time. Not once, not one single time, have we ever been forced to conclude that something has been the result of an arbitrarily powerful deity.

So when I hear people testify that they "know" this or that thing that God has done, I am deeply cognizant of how that type of non-fact-based thinking is inherently impermanent and unreliable. To quote the great line from the movie, Men in Black: "Just imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."

 

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Standing on Your Own Two Feet

On a Facebook group that I read, a young man posted the following:

So... I'm kind of struggling right now, and I want to reach out to try to receive some support from those who have been where I am now. 

Friends, it's like every morning I'm waking up feeling more and more depressed. When I first started questioning, I felt hopeful because I still had a commitment to many of my old standards... but now, as I have questioned and deconstructed more, it feels as if my moral compass is shattering. It's as if I no longer know what things are healthy for me and for society, and I am scared of giving in to only my baser desires now that I have lost whatever used to counteract them. 

Has anyone been here? How did you cope? Is there a place beyond this in which I can hope to recover healthy restraints for myself, ones that are authentic for me and in which I believe?

Here is my response:

This is the nihilistic phase. If you have grown up in the church, you were like a vine growing on a trellis. Suddenly the trellis is removed and you feel the loss of both the support and the protection it gave. I can best explain with an analogy.

When you were a boy, perhaps you learned to ride a bike with the help of training wheels. If you did, you might remember how you felt when those training wheels were removed: a sense of exhilarating freedom, a release from the constraint of those wheels. But that sense of freedom was probably not unmixed with fear and a little vertigo. With those training wheels off, you could ride anywhere as fast and freely as you wanted. You could fly like a bird, but you could also crash and injure yourself. With that freedom came a scary but wonderful sense that you were now wholly responsible for keeping yourself alive and safe.

When the religious framework on which you had built your life to this point dissolved from underneath you, you initially experienced the exhilaration of sudden freedom. You are now experiencing the great and terrible realization that you alone are responsible for your actions and your life. You miss the certainty of relying on the idea of absolute truth and you are scared that you will make a terrible decision and ruin your life or wreak havoc around you. 

But there is reason for confidence and hope. You are no longer a frail, thin shoot that collapses to the ground if the stake holding it up is removed. You are a grown man with a strong, substantial stem that can support itself.

You have a lifetime of experiences to draw upon to show you how to be a good man. Look around you and find the examples of good people living vibrant lives of honesty and integrity. Also look around you to see examples of the results of bad choices and dissolution.

You know inside you what it is to be a person of worth. Your inner voice is still there and will guide you if you listen to it. You just need to dig down inside and feel that sudden rush of realization that you are a free and independent person and you can take charge of your destiny and succeed!

Once this happens, you will no longer live in fear that you will offend God. Do you want to do something that the church forbade you. Fine! You are free to do it! You are free to jump in and experience that sensation. But also remember you are responsible -- only you -- for the consequences. Think first. Think of yourself. Think of those around you. Ask yourself if the action you are contemplating is consistent with being a man of integrity. Ask yourself if that action will bring harm to yourself or another. If the benefits outweigh the risks and the costs, then you are right to pursue that course of action. If your inner voice advises you to steer clear, then give it a miss. 

The church teaches some good and right things. That is why you loved it. The church also teaches some indifferent or dubious things. That is why you doubted it. The church also teaches some wrong and bad things. And that is why you left it, at least in some sense. Keep the good. Discard the indifferent. Eschew and decry the bad.

Several years ago, I left religion and have since entirely discarded all belief in the supernatural. What I used to call the influence of the Holy Ghost I now simply refer to as my inner voice. It still speaks to me as strongly and consistently as it always has, perhaps even more. I have a clear and strong sense of right and wrong. That which increases the total happiness in the world is right, that which decreases it is wrong. I know that if an action brings me some benefit, but only at the expense of another or at the expense of my own integrity, it is wrong and I will eventually regret it. That is the only measuring stick you need to carry around with you to live a good life, free from the unnatural constraints of religion.

My dear young person, take a lesson from someone a little further down the path: if you can increase the amount of light in your life and be a beacon, reflecting that light in the lives of those around you, you will have a happy and fulfilled life. Seek out the good with an unprejudiced heart and an open mind. Discard the bad and banish it from your mind and your life. Peace, Love, and Music.