Not thirty feet from my head a shark sliced along the clear wall of a building wave. Its dorsal fin briefly split the surface before it descended and was gone. I had just surfed into an area of mush — topside evidence of an underwater breach in the sand bar. As I turned and paddled back out I spotted the five-foot shark. I pushed past the break and sat up, my toes dangling in the home of the toothed torpedo. Moments later everyone was called out of the water. When a nineteen year-old with white goop on her nose, designer sunglasses, and red flag blows her whistle, I guess it’s serious. I paddled in.
I live in the shark-attack center of the world. Around the globe there are roughly 70 reported “shark incidences” each year. Florida’s eastern shore accounts for nearly 30 of them. Fortunately, no Great Whites inhabit our waters. The shark attacks at the beaches I surf are of the you’ll-need-a-few-quick-stitches-in-the-emergency-room variety. Hands and feet get bloodied, not outright stolen. Still, no one wants to get bitten by a shark. But there’s no way to surf without running the risk.
While surfing gives me a physical thrill, science mentally excites me. Both are risky pursuits in their own ways. With science you put your beliefs to a test; you conduct research to see if they withstand challenge.
The risk is that when it comes to the actual data, your belief/hypothesis may take a wipe-out. Then what?
Then you jettison your bruised ego and head back into the action.
Consider this scenario: A surfing friend tells you that when you were out of state, for 7 days and 7 nights there was an endless procession of perfectly glassy waves tubing their way to shore. He had the waves all to himself and he surfed until his arms quit. Would you believe him? I might say, Dude, your beautiful story is making me cry. But until I see the photos, I ain’t buying it.
Tales are like the wake of a surfboard. The scratch a surfer leaves in the face of a wave quickly disappears after the fact; the storyteller is then free to say anything he or she wants about it. Without somehow catching the bubbling slice, there is no hard evidence to prove a tale right or wrong.
It is not, however, up to the listener to prove the tale-teller wrong; it is the tale-teller’s responsibility to provide something more substantial than yet more words to establish the veracity of his or her claim.
Of course, if a claim can’t be verified there is no risk involved. Is it any wonder that the bulk of religious tales and claims can’t be tested? And so they are safe.
Accepting dogma and having faith is easy. Just listen and let be. “Doing science,” however — formally or informally — takes time, effort and exposure to potentially embarrassing, bruising correction.
Not many people surf. There is less danger and more comfort on shore.
One week in 2008 the Orlando Sentinel carried a story of what was basically a non-fatal, freak accident that very well could have been fatal. The word “miracle” appeared in the headline. A boy had been following behind a heavy-duty lawnmower when a long, thin shard of metal shot out from beneath. The projectile nearly flew completely through the boy, but didn’t. After piercing his pancreas and abdominal aorta, it stopped. Because the projectile didn’t have the necessary momentum to continue its flight, the piece of metal sealed its own hole in the boy’s aorta. Otherwise he would have bled to death.
The newspaper dutifully reported the father’s conjecture: God had has hand on the boy. While the boy came very close to dying, he didn’t, thus a god was involved.
Critical thinkers and non-believers in miracles might venture to wonder why the god hadn’t completely deflected the path of the metal shard, sparing the boy all trauma. It is actually as much a miracle (i.e., highly improbable event) that the boy was not only hit, but hit above the waist. Most mower accidents of this kind involve injury to the lower legs.
Of the fat pie slice of a direction it could have flown in, the projectile seemed to have zeroed in on the worst target possible. The vital organs of an innocent boy. But it only “seemed to have zeroed in” if you bother to inject meaning into what was an accident.
In cases such as these, thoughts of miracles are a cognitive Band-Aid placed over an ugly truth that could have been uglier. In reality, miracles have nothing to do with truth, besides masking it.
Because people like to read and hear about improbable events (the seemingly miraculous), news agencies repeat them. Next story: Video of a cat that rescues a drowning mouse! Now that’s news!
In the King James version of the Bible, Exodus 13:21 reads,
And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.
Here’s how I expected the passage to continue: And the Lord went before them by weekend in a tree which sneaketh from one side of the trail to the other. The Lord had gone before them in a boulder, but he got sitteth upon, so he switched to the tree, the fire, the cloud, and, on special occasions, the talking Afflac duck.
Two chapters later the identity of this mysterious operative is revealed:
The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name. (Exodus 15:3)
The Lord is a man? Toto, did you hear that? Go to the curtain. Pull, Toto, pull!
Yah, with all his secrecy, his sneaking around, and his invisible whispering in the ear of the Israelite army generals, he certainly seems like a man of war. But I beg to differ about the name. This Lord’s name ought to be Sybil. For he is a loving god, an angry god, a god of the Jews, a god of the Jews and Gentiles, a god who demands you to get circumcised, a god who changes his mind about circumcision, etc., etc., etc.
Today’s civilized believers prefer to keep the “man of war” side of the Almighty Sybil (he of a divinely split-personality) in the closet, to be recruited only when it comes to squabbles over land or other conflicts with thine enemies. But he is still there, lurking. What else does a god do but lurk out “there,” just beyond sight? But you can kinda feel him, can’t you?
For those who said “yes,” I would suggest making an appointment with a psychiatrist real soon. No, not because you sense a god lurking out of sight in the clouds or darkness or shrubbery, but because while you were sleeping the CIA implanted a computer chip into your brain.
You can feel that, too. If you want.
[cartoon thanks to atheistcartoons.com]
Although I am an atheist, I do acknowledge that there are people/things/events greater than me. What are they? Depends on the measuring stick you use; depends on how you define “greater.” Of course, because I am a skeptic, I put no stock in those imaginary, holographic, holier-than-thou measuring sticks. My own thoughts and feelings, and yours, are far too subjective to be reliable measures.
As for me, I’m tiny. Relative to the Earth. And the Earth is minuscule relative to the Sun. And the Sun . . . .
But I am greater than our dogs. And the thousands of ants on our property. At least in terms of physical size. Supernatural size? Show me the measuring stick, and explain how it is an objective measure, please.
[image thanks to NASA]
Christians speak of a loved one getting “called home.” That it was “their time.” Why did the person die? Because it was time. Why was it time? Only their god knows.
That god has the phone manners of a telemarketer. Some poor Joe, while making love to his wife, gets called home just prior to achieving the big O. What timing. Why not let Joe get his rocks off one last time?
Apparently, the Lord was planning this event for awhile, letting plaque build up in Joe’s coronary arteries. That way he could make it look like Joe had a heart attack. But the heart attack isn’t what really caused Joe to die. By picking up his phone and dialing, a god did.
Think of Joe’s poor wife. What a bummer of a last moment to have branded onto the folds of your memory. One moment she’s thinking, Joe’s really having at it. The next, What in sweaty hell! Then panic. Then heart-wrenching sorrow. Embarrassment when talking to the EMTs and coroner. Private shame when telling friends, “He died in his sleep.” Unspoken anger when they lamely respond, “Well, that’s the best way to go.” The burning urge to scream, There’s no best way to go. They all result in his being gone!
“God called him home” is a cognitive Band-aid placed over a whopper of a boo-boo . . . to use the technical term. It may help blunt the pain. But then again, it may not — the little, real research I’ve seen on the matter is mixed.
The sometimes helpful, sometimes harmless god-talk always perpetuates a way of thinking about the universe that humanity needs to outgrow. Just as children grow out of belief in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, we need to shed the fantasy that there is some invisible big daddy making the important calls in our lives.
Fantasy worlds are for children and playtime; reality is where adults live.
I do not find this science headline surprising: Brain study shows that thinking about God reduces distress — but only for believers.
There is nothing magical about thoughts associated with something positive inducing a more positive emotional state. I imagine that for lovers of “Mom” or “long walks on the beach” thoughts of these would likewise reduce stress.
But there were a few elements in the article I did find surprising. In a disappointing way. There were two common assumptions repeated, and by association with science, perhaps given greater legitimacy.
First, “God.” Co-author of the study wrote, “Eighty-five percent of the world has some sort of religious beliefs.” That is beliefs, plural. Yet in this and so many other studies we read of God, singular. As if all people around the globe and even within this one country believe in the same god.
The very first sentence to the article -
Thinking about God may make you less upset about making errors, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. [all emphases mine]
Um. Thinking about which god? Does Shiva count? Did Christians think about Allah and Muslims about Jesus and the triune god? I doubt it. In the very least, the piece should have better highlighted that individuals did not think about “God” so much as they likely thought about “their god.”
Second, the researchers found this bit noteworthy:
Interestingly, atheists reacted differently; when they were unconsciously primed with God-related ideas, their ACC increased its activity.
Those atheists — they get upset by “God-related ideas.” So negative.
How much do you want to bet that were the researchers to measure the Christians’ response to Allah-related ideas they would discover an increase in anterior cingulate cortext (ACC) activity.
The paragraph in question continues:
The researchers suggest that for religious people, thinking about God may provide a way of ordering the world and explaining apparently random events and thus reduce their feelings of distress. In contrast, for atheists, thoughts of God may contradict the meaning systems they embrace and thus cause them more distress.
Okay, that’s the second stupid assumption. That atheists have distinct “meaning systems” about their atheism. Do people who don’t believe in the Loch Ness monster similarly have no-monster meaning systems? Please.
Perhaps atheists simply associate religious ideas with negative experiences they have had. Like being preached to or otherwise having someone else’s “God” shoved into their lives. You think?
The final two sentences to the article are real winners. Stupidly condescending and worse -
Atheists shouldn’t despair, though. “We think this can occur with any meaning system that provides structure and helps people understand their world.” Maybe atheists would do better if they were primed to think about their own beliefs, he says. [emphasis added]
Wait. The researchers couldn’t possibly be stating that, when primed with religious ideas (god-related), atheist would be better off thinking about their own beliefs?
I think my brain is bleeding.
So all you atheists out there, from now on when someone says God, think freedom, or science, or even rainbows. Then you could be happier. And then absolutely everyone could believe in God.
