[lit-ideas] Re: Better to have had faith
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 22:42:02 -0400
Maybe because to me "a blinding to reality" is someone getting excited
enough about religion to take science out of schools and otherwise embrace
superstition over empirical evidence. Maybe because I saw the look on my
nephew's face as he told me about accepting Christ and how they're home
schooling to avoid contact with non-religious ideas for their kids. Maybe
I think you have to be weird to be willing to die rather than give up the
tooth fairy, er, God. Are you in the habit of taking LSD and standing on a
window ledge, so to you this is normal?
> [Original Message]
> From: Graeme Wend-Walker <graemeww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 5/25/2005 9:20:34 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Better to have had faith
>
> Andy, I appreciate your thoughts on the psychology of conversion, but your
> constant and seemingly automatic movements to assert that all peak
> experiences amount to a "heroin-like high, a blinding to reality", and
that
> all the most extreme forms of religious response can be equated to "any
> religion", leave me wondering how much of that loops-forming-in-the-brain
> stuff doesn't also apply to you. Why is it, I wonder, that you, too,
cannot
> entertain doubts? To what have you been converted?
>
> Graeme Wend-Walker
> Macquarie University, Sydney
>
>
>
> From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Better to have had faith
> Date: Sun, 22 May 2005 16:03:44 -0400
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From:
> > To: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Date: 5/22/2005 6:13:47 AM
> > Subject: Re: Better to have had faith
> >
> >
> > >Listening to him relate the experience of the day he was born again has
> to
> > >be like listening to a drug addict describe his first shot.
> >
> > Admittedly, there is a similarity here. However, I don't think this is a
> > useful way of looking at the phenomenon.
> >
> > What seems to happen in the brain, when a person "converts" in this
> manner,
> > is that doubts suddenly get interpreted, not as doubts, but as
certitude.
> > Suddenly, anytime one has a doubt (as one normally does have doubts),
> this
> > experience of having a doubt is no longer being *understood* as that of
> > having a doubt. Instead, suddenly, it is being understood as being
> certain.
> > When that loop forms in the brain, the result is a fixation.
> >
> > Notice how such an event occurs. Usually, what immediately precedes the
> > "conversion experience" is an escalation of the anticipated consequences
> of
> > doubt. Typically, the potential convert is thinking about the infinite
> > danger of an eternity in the flames of hell. Doubt, instead of being
> merely
> > an unpleasant and unsettling experience, becomes the ultimate terror,
> > because, if one allows oneself to entertain any doubt at all, then one
is
> > doomed. The preacher, in order to induce such a transformation, usually
> > pulls some such sort of absolutist "Jonathan Edwards" trick in his
> oratory.
> >
>
>
> A.A. I do agree that defining one's life within very narrow parameters is
> comforting for many people. Having God take over all one's cares, take
all
> doubt and uncertainty out of life and having him fill up the emptiness in
> the bargain has to be immensely seductive and powerful. Unfortunately,
> there's no free lunch. The trade off is that it leaves a person something
> of an automaton and makes them happy with a reality that exists
essentially
> in their mind, not terribly unlike drugs in my opinion. That would be
fine
> if it weren't exclusive of reality in general. For example, Nicky and his
> wife are home schooling the kids so the kids don't come in contact with
> non-Christians and non-Christian ideas. How is that different from a
> totalitarian society doing mind control of its population? Or from being
> in a cult? Likewise, how is living and breathing any religion 24/7
> different from being mellowed out on opium?
>
>
> Andy Amago
>
>
>
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