More On The Religious Trap

I was thinking about my last post and I would like to expand on what I touched on in the last part. If you haven't read it, you can read it here.

This is a subject that I find a lot of atheists don't understand.  Even some of the greatest minds in the atheist community often over-simplify or just look past why people are religious. I think if we give credit to their emotions and approach it with compassion and empathy we will be more effective in pointing out the objective reasoning we use. 

Of course, one of the things I love and appreciate about the atheist community is that there are no leaders and there is no dogma.  We all approach the world with our objective reasoning and through that debate we reach conclusions. Each of us has different areas of knowledge and different strengths and weaknesses. My point is that different approaches can work better or worse depending on the situation. Sometimes people will respond to something more abrasive or humorous then they will respond to an empathetic approach since they may confuse empathy for justification.  My goal of this post is to add my approach to the table using my experience as a genuine believer turned atheist. 

It seems to me that the main problem is one of communication. What we say isn't what a theist hears and what a theist says isn't what an atheist hears.  And even if we actually hear what they say, it is a matter of what you value that determines where you land on. I will use the story from my last post to better explain what it is that I am trying to say.

So when I had that simple but great experience on the mission, I assumed that it had been orchestrated from god. It seemed to make sense that god would inspire something to come my way in order to teach me and so that I could have a positive impact on someones life.  The thing is that this wan't an isolated incident. This kind of thing happened all the time before during and after the mission.  The fact is that things can and do work out, people often respond positively to a situation, and things can very easily feel serendipitous. It is comforting and hits a real need to think there is a heavenly parent out there that loves you and is taking care of you. The need to feel special, loved and to know you matter is pretty much universal. This is the basis for why people are religious (along with fear and the various aspects of our social needs). Obviously from an atheist's perspective, they are (and I was) just seeing what they want to see.  They are seeing randomness and cause and effect and applying a thinking and controlling deity to the situation. When people say "the evidence for god is in everything" we are seeing that this is only evidence that someone can see god in everything if they want, and nothing more. 

The thing I think atheists tend to miss is that someone who has an experience like this, is actually learning something about the human experience. They are learning about how to be a better person or a better father/mother, teacher, worker, etc... They are having powerful moments that they use to guide their lives.  The moments are real, the lessons are real, but the assumption that they come from god is not. This is where the problem comes in. When we say "Your church isn't true. There is no evidence and we should dismiss it and the idea of god" they hear "Those experiences you had didn't happen and if they did, they didn't matter because there was nobody watching out for you and caring for you"  Can you see why it is so easy to accept nonsense? They are basing the value of their existence on these experiences that they assume is communicating the truth to them. This is why the theists have such intense cognitive dissonance. This is also why they can be so stubborn to see reality. This is also why they view atheists lives as meaningless. They think these experience are exclusive to god and don't realize that we can have them too, the only difference is that we don't mix in the supernatural. We see it for what it is. If you can understand what they are hearing you can take that into account and better communicate.  It also helps to understand what they are trying to say.

Pay attention to what they are really saying when arguing about god. Going back to my story, it would be like if you told my there was not god.  I would think "but god inspired the mission president to tell a story so I could use it to have this great experience. So there is a god"  but I would say something like "I know there is a god" or "I have experience that there is a god". When you would point out the logical fallacies, I would feel cognitive dissonance but then go back to what I felt and have to assume that you just where seeing it wrong or that there was some explanation that you are missing.  Also, when they say something like "Jesus is my friend" or "I love Jesus" they are really saying "Those experiences are my friend" or "I love those experiences" and they are calling the experiences Jesus because they assume they came from him. 

If we are actually understanding each other, it often comes down to the atheist saying "I understand your experiences, but: logic." and the theist saying "I understand your logic, but: experiences." We value the logic and use it to explain the experiences and they value the experiences and use it to ignore or be selective about the logic. I think where we as atheists can improve is that we tend to use logic to invalidate the experiences. We need to understand that they are real and have an explanation (not god). We need to know that they have value in our lives and that we can use logic and science to understand them,.  Just don't be too quick to dismiss them. I think of the quote from Sam Harris "If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn't value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?" (Can be seen here).  I think that validating the experience can be a way that we can break down the barrier a little and we may be able to surgically remove the supernatural part while allowing them to still connect with those moments. It may be that it has to be destroyed down to have to be rebuilt, but there may be some other way.  

For me, it took being completely destroyed emotionally and a complete rejection of the past only to work my way back here. It was painful and lead to a suicide attempt.  As science and the internet keep invalidating religions and religious thought, there need to be people and places people can turn to as resources in rebuilding their lives. I hope to be one of those resources. If you read this and like it, please let me know. I could use the encouragement and support to keep blogging. I have to dive into some hard stuff as I continue and would like to know it is making a difference. 

Wisdom in religion and why it is hard to see past it.

First off I would like to establish that I am about as much an atheist as you can be.  I have been through the reasoning and find that we have rather soundly reasoned away the idea of a god and the existence of a spirit. This effectively destroys any religion's authority and allows people to dismiss any access to a god or spiritual connection. So I only view religions as social organizations that are filled with nonsense and ideas on how to act, and they confuse emotions being triggered as spiritual experiences.  For an incredibly concise and damn near perfect argument against religion, I recommend What Are You Without God?: How to Discredit Religious Thought and Rebuild Your Identity by Christopher Krzeminski 

This brings me to the point of this blog. Although I see religions only as man made organizations that should be replaced with reasoning and that are built upon the foundation of people believing bullshit, I see that they often touch on some profound truths of human interaction and self realization. Religions are filled with stories of people who thought outside the box on things like forgiveness, self-improvement, and how to treat your enemies. They mix it in with mythology and the claim that it can only come from a supernatural source, and then demand loyalty and money. I will share a story from my mission to better explain myself.

I want to make my stories accessible to everyone and not just people familiar with Mormon terminology and organization, so a little explanation of a Mormon mission first. In the mission you are assigned a companion (the totally not gay sounding term they use) who is with you 24-7 unless you are in the bathroom.  You sleep in the same room but different beds.  They are afraid of missionaries having sex, drinking, or doing something else (this happens on occasion because the missionaries are in their early twenties). The idea of a companion is to have you watch over each other and keep each other in line. They also assign you to a certain area that you preach and live in.  Every 1 1/2 months new missionaries come into the mission and old ones leave and they rotate the missionaries as needed.  You often have two companions per area and then change to a different area.  You usually are with a companion from 1 1/2 months to 3 months and an area from 3 months to 6. Your first companion is called your trainer and has had a lot of experience in the mission. Missions last 2 years so he would usually be almost about to go home.

I had been in Venezuela for 3 months and was still rather new to the country and language. I had spent the first 3 months in one city called Barinitas and had 2 companions who were both American. At this point I was sent to a rather large city called Barquisimeto and placed with a Venezuelan companion that didn't speak English. Often you will live with another companionship, so there will be 4 in an apartment, but it was just the 2 of us in a 24th floor apartment in the heart of the city.  This was quite a change from a house in the small city of Barinitas. Barinitas was a beautiful city located on top of a mesa surrounded by jungle. I have fond memories of both the people and the cities themselves. 

Throughout the mission they have organizational and spiritual promoting meetings with other missionaries and, at times, with the mission president (he is a married adult who is responsible for the whole mission and you are supposed to obey any rules he gives you). During one of these meetings the mission president shared a story about Joseph Smith (the founder of the Mormon religion). The church often dilutes stories down to these happy little storybook lessons that always reflect the leaders as better then they were, but for all I know this one could have been based on exactly what happened. It doesn't matter for my point because, like I said, when you dismiss a soul and god you see religious stories as men adding the supernatural to anything that moves or scares them.

Anyway, I don't remember the details, but the president shared a story about how Joseph Smith had a fight with his wife about something and he went outside to cool off. He prayed and then went back inside and apologized and they made up. It definitely had more detail, but that is the general plot of the story.  Then the president asked "Did you see the point I am trying to make?" and I thought to myself that he was saying after fighting you calm down, invite the spirit, and make up. And then he said forcefully "You apologize!"  That surprised me. His point was that each person has a part in an argument and you find what you did wrong, no matter how small, and apologize for it. This was profound for a 19 year old boy who had never lived outside his home before. I really took it to heart.

A few weeks later, I was with my Venezuelan companion and we had just finished a meeting with the local church leaders in the city and were heading to get lunch when I brought up something about our schedule that day and he snapped at me. He told me about how we already discussed this with the leaders and I realized that he thought I was talking about something else and that he misunderstood me. When I tried to explain, he yelled at me and looked like he was about to hit me.  I was startled and we continued home in silence. After we got to the apartment I was annoyed and rather angry and that is when the words of the mission president came to my mind, "You apologize!". I thought to myself, "What could I possibly apologize for? He misunderstood me and was a jerk." I took a second to calm down and I prayed for help (this is the old religious me. I now think prayer does nothing more then allow self reflection and analysis). I started to think about how I didn't speak Spanish very well and I may have just not explained myself well. It was the only thing I could think of so I gave it a try. I walked up to him and told him I was sorry for not explaining myself well and that it was probably the Spanish barrier and then I let him know what it is that I was actually talking about.  At this point he softened up and started to cry. He told me that he was having a hard day and the pressures of the mission where wearing at him. He apologized and gave me a hug.  It was a really emotional and profound moment for me.

This is my point. It is so easy to have these moments (they are being had by church members around the world) and assume that there was a supernatural force behind them. I felt that the president was inspired by god to teach me that and that god lead me to say and do those things. It was touching and beautiful and helped me grow up and understand the world a little more. It was so easy to feel that this was something orchestrated by a loving god to make me a better person. The experience happened, but the supernatural aspect to it did not. As atheists, it is easy to forget that people are having moments like these. We see the logical problems with religion and are confused as to why they can't see past it. It is these moments combined with social pressure and fear that keep people trapped in a church. It is important that we remember that this is why people are so sensitive about religion. They feel we are telling them that these experiences didn't matter and that they were a waste.

There are amazing lessons to learn about this existence and it does matter because we experience it. The point is to be able to separate the supernatural aspect while taking in the experience.