This isn’t just idle curiosity. I am currently a Christian (or maybe an agnostic terrified of ending up on the wrong side of Pascal’s Wager), and when you actually take religion seriously, it can be a HUGE drain on quality of life. I find myself being frightened of hell, feeling guilty when I do things that don’t hurt anyone but are still considered sins, and feeling guilty when I try to plan out my life, wondering if I should just put my plans in God’s hands. To make matters worse, I grew up in a dysfunctional, very Christian family, and my emotions seem to be convinced that being a true Christian means acting like my parents (who were terrible role models; emulating them means losing at life).
As a former Evangelical Christian, I wonder if this isn’t the crux of it all.
Of course it’s possible real faith healings and resurrections have taken, and are taking, place somewhere on the globe. It’s possible that these miracles are happening due to the power of a supernatural entity. And it’s possible this supernatural dude is best described by the Christian Bible.
It’s going to be difficult for you to dismiss these possibilities no matter how small because you’ve (presumably) been indoctrinated to believe in things like eternal conscious torment in hell, let alone the guilt/shame/fear associated with all sorts of “secular” worldviews and rational thinking. Indoctrination is very powerful, and it can wreak havoc with your emotions long after your rational mind has (all but) dismissed religion’s claims as fairy tales.
The rest of LW has provided, and will provide, plenty of reasons to seriously doubt miracle claims. But religious memes have evolved to survive such skepticism—they are clever enough to avoid being pinned down...they escape and get passed on. They are hard to dismiss and tempting to believe in.
The reality is, there is some non-zero probability that the power of Jesus Christ through prayer raised someone, somewhere, from the grave. And this would provide some evidence of the veracity of Christianity...and this would make hell into a bit more realistic threat...and hell (at least in many Fundamentalist churches) is beyond the worst conceivable punishment...
So, for those who were indoctrinated, Pascal’s Wager is a pretty good bet according to the simple math. Believe! Do anything you must do to avoid an infinitely bad eternity in hell! No matter how slight the probability, it makes sense to at least try to believe and “live according to God’s plan.” It’s a mathematically sound wager. (Most Christians I talk to end up revealing Pascal’s Wager as the basis for their belief if you dig a little bit. Most start off with flowery sounding stuff about “God’s love”, etc… but if you push beyond that, they paraphrase the Wager, even if they’ve never heard of Blaise Pascal.)
For those who don’t “take religion seriously”, it’s pretty easy to make this bet. They just go with the flow and reap the social and psychological benefits of church and faith. If the church gets too demanding, they leave and find a church/denomination that is more accommodating to their lifestyle.
For those who can actually wrap their heads around the implications (hell, etc.) of a Universe ruled by the God of the Bible—for those who take that religion seriously—it’s quite a difficult dissonance to resolve when rational thought collides with some of the fantastical claims of faith.
You seem to have compiled a pretty good-sized list of rational reasons to doubt...but you’ll never prove God doesn’t exist. And there will always be sophisticated sounding theological gymnastics available to provide reasons for why you just need more faith even though things don’t seem to make much sense (i.e. God doesn’t cure Ebola because..., God never raises someone from the dead in a developed country with pristine medical records and lots of evidence because..., God doesn’t heal amputees because...).
I went through something like what you are experiencing. It’s very difficult—anxiety and fear galore. After this will come the existential void/sigh of relief phase. Then some anger. Then it gets better. Check out Marlene Winell and Valerie Tarico. Good luck!
I’m going to chime in here as well. I was also raised by an extremely devout family—they are pastors and Christian counselors, and have religious degrees. As an adult, I began the process of becoming a Catholic—this is not a very good Protestant move, but I was attracted by the relative sophistication of the theology, and a certain contemplative approach one can find there. So until I was 27, while I was finishing graduate school, I was a committed Christian.
You sound like you are already on the fence. You can put the arguments on both sides with greater depth and power than those who have never been on the fence ever can (it’s hard for someone who’s always been secular to really get it, honestly. Not a bad thing, just different). I got to the point where I was on the fence—both sides seemed equally possible. In that situation, your theology/philosophy can get quite sophisticated, since it has to grapple with so many tensions and contradictions. It was a lot of work.
In the end, I realized my gut was driving my head—my intellectual quest was intimately intertwined with and motivated by rather complex emotions. For one thing, I was afraid I would simply have a bad life. A good relationship with God, putting Him first, was the foundation of a happy marriage, the guardian of a sturdy moral life. Would I lose myself in drugs, become a mean person?
I now believe that pinpointing a gut-level bias, an irrational belief that conjures up truly plausible reasoning, and targeting that gut feeling instead of the reasoning, is an extraordinarily difficult and valuable skill. I have done it twice now (once with religion). I think few people have done this, rationalist or otherwise. I think you may need to do this. Focus on your emotional fears rather than the complex intellectual doubts, and with a bit of time you may find things look different.
At least, for myself, when I stopped needing to believe in it so much, I thought about it much less. My religion just sort of fell away, over the next year or so. There were times I missed it, a lot. Mostly not, though. Life is easier without religion, a little more prosaic at times, until I learned to care more about real things than abstract theology/philosophy. There was some anger—evangelicals attach so much baggage to some really trivial things, things that just don’t actually matter to your psyche.
As for the miracles, learning about how modern cults spread was very eye-opening. You can watch baby religions get born, and you can see the elements of human psychology that cause people to believe in miracles and to believe other people who believe in miracles. It’s not just “oh, you can debunk some miracles”—it’s that you can see precisely how miracles get born and their stories spread. If it happens this way now, it probably happened that way then. I found this to be empirical evidence against miracles. An argument in favor of miracles must not only establish a probabilistic argument about the universe, but it must also establish that observable tendencies of humans did not occur on this occasion.
One last thing. I felt more freedom to stop believing, because I had come to believe two things about hell (these may sound like gibberish to non-former-Christians). First, the freedom to say yes includes the freedom to say no. God wants our real yes, therefore God will not punish an honest no. Second, God’s grace comes in subtle, lengthy, drawn-out ways. If God were there and loved us, then our lifelong evolution into the people He meant us to be is precisely what Christ came to accomplish. Rejection of God must mean rejecting these tender workings of grace—not just doubting or rejecting His existence. In other words, a bad Christian is more likely than an honest atheist to go to hell.
I hope it’s not cheeky to say I think you’ll deconvert. The transition can be hard, but I have found it worth it, though not the be-all end-all. I might advise talking with someone sympathetic, like the folks Brillyant recommends. Best of luck. Please update with progress. Message me if I can help.
As for the miracles, learning about how modern cults spread was very eye-opening. You can watch baby religions get born, and you can see the elements of human psychology that cause people to believe in miracles and to believe other people who believe in miracles. It’s not just “oh, you can debunk some miracles”—it’s that you can see precisely how miracles get born and their stories spread. If it happens this way now, it probably happened that way then. I found this to be empirical evidence against miracles. An argument in favor of miracles must not only establish a probabilistic argument about the universe, but it must also establish that observable tendencies of humans did not occur on this occasion.
Yep. I tried to articulate a similar point in an open thread not long ago. This became the lynchpin of my non-belief. It became unnecessary to debunk each individual claim, rather I came to better understand the psychology behind why people tend to believe in such claims, and religion writ large.
Joseph Campbell, Ernest Becker, Michael Shermer (and a bunch of the “New Atheist” gang) have all been helpful to me.
I now believe that pinpointing a gut-level bias, an irrational belief that conjures up truly plausible reasoning, and targeting that gut feeling instead of the reasoning, is an extraordinarily difficult and valuable skill. I have done it twice now (once with religion). I think few people have done this, rationalist or otherwise. I think you may need to do this. Focus on your emotional fears rather than the complex intellectual doubts, and with a bit of time you may find things look different.
I’m curious what other belief, besides religion, you targeted?
This is well stated, by the way. I’ve found it hard to articulate around here (and other places). Indoctrination seems to plant a seed that is (almost) immune to purely rational debunking. As long as God, hell, etc. are non-zero probabilities, there is a deep emotional, fear-filled urge to cling to the “what if?” of one’s childhood religious upbringing.
You have to find a way to examine the indoctrination itself, not it’s manifestations...since there will always be theological gymnastics ready to thwart rational and logical arguments. God is mysterious. God requires faith. God knows your thoughts and motives. You need to look into the “why” God must exhibit these characteristics in order that the religion meme survives. A sufficiently evolved God meme will always survive rational attack—those gods who didn’t are no longer feared or worshiped.
“Indoctrination seems to plant a seed that is (almost) immune to purely rational debunking...You have to find a way to examine the indoctrination itself, not its manifestations.”
I like this concise way of putting it a lot, and it’s heartening to hear someone else had this same difficult-to-articulate experience.
BTW, I think the people downvoting may have mistaken which side these posts are on, due to skimming through the thread.
A good relationship with God, putting Him first, was the foundation of a happy marriage, the guardian of a sturdy moral life. Would I lose myself in drugs, become a mean person?
Well? Are you in a happy marriage? Have you had problems with drugs?
One more former extremely devout Christian (Evangelical 22 years, then Catholic 6 years). I’d like to add just one thought. If you consider only the likelihood or unlikelihood of the Christian God, you might be missing something important. (I was.) You need a theory to compare it against, that you can judge to be more likely or less likely.
For myself, I stayed Christian for years after devouring the material on LessWrong, acknowledging that in some ways my religion seemed to have a lot going against it, but lacking an alternative that I judged clearly better. Then one day I stumbled across an exposition of an atheist worldview that “clicked” in a way that no other had for me, and it switched me from devout Catholic to atheist in the blink of an eye. (Despite the consequences, the moment was pretty underwhelming, actually.) YMMV, of course, and your conclusion may vary also—each of us can only judge the theories we encounter and only based on our own knowledge of the evidence.
Briefer: Comparing theories requires at least two. You’re intimately familiar with one theory and are troubled by uncertainties, so it might relieve your uncertainty to learn more about the alternative theory.
The switch flipped for me when I was reading Jim Holt’s “Why Does The World Exist?” and spent a while envisioning and working out the implications of Vilenkin’s proposal that the universe may have started from a spherical volume of zero radius, zero mass, zero energy, zero any other property that might distinguish it from nothingness. It made clear to me that one could propose answers to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” without anything remotely like a deity.
As a former Evangelical Christian, I wonder if this isn’t the crux of it all.
Of course it’s possible real faith healings and resurrections have taken, and are taking, place somewhere on the globe. It’s possible that these miracles are happening due to the power of a supernatural entity. And it’s possible this supernatural dude is best described by the Christian Bible.
It’s going to be difficult for you to dismiss these possibilities no matter how small because you’ve (presumably) been indoctrinated to believe in things like eternal conscious torment in hell, let alone the guilt/shame/fear associated with all sorts of “secular” worldviews and rational thinking. Indoctrination is very powerful, and it can wreak havoc with your emotions long after your rational mind has (all but) dismissed religion’s claims as fairy tales.
The rest of LW has provided, and will provide, plenty of reasons to seriously doubt miracle claims. But religious memes have evolved to survive such skepticism—they are clever enough to avoid being pinned down...they escape and get passed on. They are hard to dismiss and tempting to believe in.
The reality is, there is some non-zero probability that the power of Jesus Christ through prayer raised someone, somewhere, from the grave. And this would provide some evidence of the veracity of Christianity...and this would make hell into a bit more realistic threat...and hell (at least in many Fundamentalist churches) is beyond the worst conceivable punishment...
So, for those who were indoctrinated, Pascal’s Wager is a pretty good bet according to the simple math. Believe! Do anything you must do to avoid an infinitely bad eternity in hell! No matter how slight the probability, it makes sense to at least try to believe and “live according to God’s plan.” It’s a mathematically sound wager. (Most Christians I talk to end up revealing Pascal’s Wager as the basis for their belief if you dig a little bit. Most start off with flowery sounding stuff about “God’s love”, etc… but if you push beyond that, they paraphrase the Wager, even if they’ve never heard of Blaise Pascal.)
For those who don’t “take religion seriously”, it’s pretty easy to make this bet. They just go with the flow and reap the social and psychological benefits of church and faith. If the church gets too demanding, they leave and find a church/denomination that is more accommodating to their lifestyle.
For those who can actually wrap their heads around the implications (hell, etc.) of a Universe ruled by the God of the Bible—for those who take that religion seriously—it’s quite a difficult dissonance to resolve when rational thought collides with some of the fantastical claims of faith.
You seem to have compiled a pretty good-sized list of rational reasons to doubt...but you’ll never prove God doesn’t exist. And there will always be sophisticated sounding theological gymnastics available to provide reasons for why you just need more faith even though things don’t seem to make much sense (i.e. God doesn’t cure Ebola because..., God never raises someone from the dead in a developed country with pristine medical records and lots of evidence because..., God doesn’t heal amputees because...).
I went through something like what you are experiencing. It’s very difficult—anxiety and fear galore. After this will come the existential void/sigh of relief phase. Then some anger. Then it gets better. Check out Marlene Winell and Valerie Tarico. Good luck!
I’m going to chime in here as well. I was also raised by an extremely devout family—they are pastors and Christian counselors, and have religious degrees. As an adult, I began the process of becoming a Catholic—this is not a very good Protestant move, but I was attracted by the relative sophistication of the theology, and a certain contemplative approach one can find there. So until I was 27, while I was finishing graduate school, I was a committed Christian.
You sound like you are already on the fence. You can put the arguments on both sides with greater depth and power than those who have never been on the fence ever can (it’s hard for someone who’s always been secular to really get it, honestly. Not a bad thing, just different). I got to the point where I was on the fence—both sides seemed equally possible. In that situation, your theology/philosophy can get quite sophisticated, since it has to grapple with so many tensions and contradictions. It was a lot of work.
In the end, I realized my gut was driving my head—my intellectual quest was intimately intertwined with and motivated by rather complex emotions. For one thing, I was afraid I would simply have a bad life. A good relationship with God, putting Him first, was the foundation of a happy marriage, the guardian of a sturdy moral life. Would I lose myself in drugs, become a mean person?
I now believe that pinpointing a gut-level bias, an irrational belief that conjures up truly plausible reasoning, and targeting that gut feeling instead of the reasoning, is an extraordinarily difficult and valuable skill. I have done it twice now (once with religion). I think few people have done this, rationalist or otherwise. I think you may need to do this. Focus on your emotional fears rather than the complex intellectual doubts, and with a bit of time you may find things look different.
At least, for myself, when I stopped needing to believe in it so much, I thought about it much less. My religion just sort of fell away, over the next year or so. There were times I missed it, a lot. Mostly not, though. Life is easier without religion, a little more prosaic at times, until I learned to care more about real things than abstract theology/philosophy. There was some anger—evangelicals attach so much baggage to some really trivial things, things that just don’t actually matter to your psyche.
As for the miracles, learning about how modern cults spread was very eye-opening. You can watch baby religions get born, and you can see the elements of human psychology that cause people to believe in miracles and to believe other people who believe in miracles. It’s not just “oh, you can debunk some miracles”—it’s that you can see precisely how miracles get born and their stories spread. If it happens this way now, it probably happened that way then. I found this to be empirical evidence against miracles. An argument in favor of miracles must not only establish a probabilistic argument about the universe, but it must also establish that observable tendencies of humans did not occur on this occasion.
One last thing. I felt more freedom to stop believing, because I had come to believe two things about hell (these may sound like gibberish to non-former-Christians). First, the freedom to say yes includes the freedom to say no. God wants our real yes, therefore God will not punish an honest no. Second, God’s grace comes in subtle, lengthy, drawn-out ways. If God were there and loved us, then our lifelong evolution into the people He meant us to be is precisely what Christ came to accomplish. Rejection of God must mean rejecting these tender workings of grace—not just doubting or rejecting His existence. In other words, a bad Christian is more likely than an honest atheist to go to hell.
I hope it’s not cheeky to say I think you’ll deconvert. The transition can be hard, but I have found it worth it, though not the be-all end-all. I might advise talking with someone sympathetic, like the folks Brillyant recommends. Best of luck. Please update with progress. Message me if I can help.
Yep. I tried to articulate a similar point in an open thread not long ago. This became the lynchpin of my non-belief. It became unnecessary to debunk each individual claim, rather I came to better understand the psychology behind why people tend to believe in such claims, and religion writ large.
Joseph Campbell, Ernest Becker, Michael Shermer (and a bunch of the “New Atheist” gang) have all been helpful to me.
I’m curious what other belief, besides religion, you targeted?
This is well stated, by the way. I’ve found it hard to articulate around here (and other places). Indoctrination seems to plant a seed that is (almost) immune to purely rational debunking. As long as God, hell, etc. are non-zero probabilities, there is a deep emotional, fear-filled urge to cling to the “what if?” of one’s childhood religious upbringing.
You have to find a way to examine the indoctrination itself, not it’s manifestations...since there will always be theological gymnastics ready to thwart rational and logical arguments. God is mysterious. God requires faith. God knows your thoughts and motives. You need to look into the “why” God must exhibit these characteristics in order that the religion meme survives. A sufficiently evolved God meme will always survive rational attack—those gods who didn’t are no longer feared or worshiped.
“Indoctrination seems to plant a seed that is (almost) immune to purely rational debunking...You have to find a way to examine the indoctrination itself, not its manifestations.” I like this concise way of putting it a lot, and it’s heartening to hear someone else had this same difficult-to-articulate experience.
BTW, I think the people downvoting may have mistaken which side these posts are on, due to skimming through the thread.
Hopefully posts don’t get simply downvoted based on the side they are on. I haven’t downvoted but I guess it’s because the post isn’t very clear.
Well? Are you in a happy marriage? Have you had problems with drugs?
This. A thousand times this. Wish I had more than one upvote-you’ve summed up what’s going on in my head more or less perfectly.
One more former extremely devout Christian (Evangelical 22 years, then Catholic 6 years). I’d like to add just one thought. If you consider only the likelihood or unlikelihood of the Christian God, you might be missing something important. (I was.) You need a theory to compare it against, that you can judge to be more likely or less likely.
For myself, I stayed Christian for years after devouring the material on LessWrong, acknowledging that in some ways my religion seemed to have a lot going against it, but lacking an alternative that I judged clearly better. Then one day I stumbled across an exposition of an atheist worldview that “clicked” in a way that no other had for me, and it switched me from devout Catholic to atheist in the blink of an eye. (Despite the consequences, the moment was pretty underwhelming, actually.) YMMV, of course, and your conclusion may vary also—each of us can only judge the theories we encounter and only based on our own knowledge of the evidence.
Briefer: Comparing theories requires at least two. You’re intimately familiar with one theory and are troubled by uncertainties, so it might relieve your uncertainty to learn more about the alternative theory.
What sort of presentation of atheism did you stumble across that made it so clear?
The switch flipped for me when I was reading Jim Holt’s “Why Does The World Exist?” and spent a while envisioning and working out the implications of Vilenkin’s proposal that the universe may have started from a spherical volume of zero radius, zero mass, zero energy, zero any other property that might distinguish it from nothingness. It made clear to me that one could propose answers to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” without anything remotely like a deity.