There are a variety of experiences which are relatively common in religion, but quite rare elsewhere. The best articulators of spiritual experience I know of are Buddhist mediation traditions, which describe a whole range of different mental states. Others specialize in reaching a few, like the ecstasy pursued by whirling dervishes and Pentecostals passing around a snake.
This has practical consequences; there is a notion in political anthropology called the theatre state, wherein the government’s function is not resources or security but rather to provide dramatic ritual experiences. Naturally these are through the vehicle of religion. It is an increasingly popular viewpoint when considering issues like large-scale human sacrifice in Mesoamerican empires like the Aztec and Maya.
But if you are actively searching for empathy for faith, I think we are better served by not thinking about people or groups. Instead, consider math: I propose that when we use equations or methods of analysis that are dissimilar from how people think (which is most of them) and then use those answers, what we are doing is similar to the radical surrender you point to. The difference is of accuracy and precision, so it is less of a leap, but still goes in the same direction.
Imagine the Apollo mission: a few people wrapped in a few layers of foil drifting through an environment utterly inimical to human life. The course is computed; they do the burn for traveling to the moon, and then stop the thrusters to conserve fuel. Hineni, hineni O Newton.
I like the example of the Apollo mission. But I think an even more direct parallel to faith as surrender is EY’s definition of lightness in Twelve Virtues of Rationality—LessWrong:
The third virtue is lightness. Let the winds of evidence blow you about as though you are a leaf, with no direction of your own.
If you are strongly committed to one belief, and then find evidence to the contrary, and actually change your mind—then you’ve just surrendered to the superiority of something outside yourself.
Perhaps changing your mind doesn’t provoke the same mystical experience that you see expressed in Leonard Cohen’s lyrics or Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith”? But EY’s post feels equally mystical to me.
There are a variety of experiences which are relatively common in religion, but quite rare elsewhere. The best articulators of spiritual experience I know of are Buddhist mediation traditions, which describe a whole range of different mental states. Others specialize in reaching a few, like the ecstasy pursued by whirling dervishes and Pentecostals passing around a snake.
This has practical consequences; there is a notion in political anthropology called the theatre state, wherein the government’s function is not resources or security but rather to provide dramatic ritual experiences. Naturally these are through the vehicle of religion. It is an increasingly popular viewpoint when considering issues like large-scale human sacrifice in Mesoamerican empires like the Aztec and Maya.
But if you are actively searching for empathy for faith, I think we are better served by not thinking about people or groups. Instead, consider math: I propose that when we use equations or methods of analysis that are dissimilar from how people think (which is most of them) and then use those answers, what we are doing is similar to the radical surrender you point to. The difference is of accuracy and precision, so it is less of a leap, but still goes in the same direction.
Imagine the Apollo mission: a few people wrapped in a few layers of foil drifting through an environment utterly inimical to human life. The course is computed; they do the burn for traveling to the moon, and then stop the thrusters to conserve fuel. Hineni, hineni O Newton.
I like the example of the Apollo mission. But I think an even more direct parallel to faith as surrender is EY’s definition of lightness in Twelve Virtues of Rationality—LessWrong:
If you are strongly committed to one belief, and then find evidence to the contrary, and actually change your mind—then you’ve just surrendered to the superiority of something outside yourself.
Perhaps changing your mind doesn’t provoke the same mystical experience that you see expressed in Leonard Cohen’s lyrics or Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith”? But EY’s post feels equally mystical to me.