[lit-ideas] Re: Better to have had faith
- From: "Graeme Wend-Walker" <graemeww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 11:20:45 +1000
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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