It is an axiom of marketing, that people make decisions based largely on their emotional connection to the product, service, or idea on offer, then find logical and reasonable arguments to justify that decision.
I’ve seen it described as an iceberg. The person is aware of the fragment above the water; the conscious, rational, decision-making process. The person believes they’ll reach a decision by ticking their way through a series of criteria to reach a sensible conclusion. Meanwhile, most of the action is hidden under the surface, as the sub-conscious mind does its own sorting and rejecting routine, based on how the various options make the person feel.
Think about some people you know who have made a decision you thought was odd, and justified it vigorously. Then, when you’ve finished applying this idea to other people, remember that it also applies to you – and, of course, to me.
Of course, the rational reasons may well be true. Maybe it does make sense for you to have a 2 litre vehicle to take you 3 kilometres to the railway station, since three times a year you need to pull a trailer. Or maybe there were other ways to fill the trailer need, and the 2 litre car fitted your image of yourself, or seemed safer to you, or was a model you’ve always wanted.
The point for marketers is that we make sales by hitting people’s emotional buttons along with (and – for some products – instead of) their rational ones.
I was thinking about this phenomenon in relation to how people make faith decisions. I think I have rational reasons for my faith. Others think they have rational reasons for their non-faith. Given the iceberg, there is no reason why we can’t all be right; because what we believe comes down to what we choose to believe.
A recent article by Darwin Catholic has a comment I think very much to the point (it’s in the second half of the article). In it, he talks about how people who reject God often claim that religion is totally irrational. He points out several other widely accepted ideas for which there is only indirect, ambivalent, or theoretical evidence, and goes on to say:
This brings us to the other thing that I think often goes un-acknowledged in these kind of conversations: In any given situation, there is often more than one conclusion which explains all of one’s experiences with logical consistency, and at such a point, one must make a decision what to believe. This decision is not merely arbitrary. Usually you will make it because you are convinced by one of the experiences or observations which make up the “evidence” that you are weighing.
In a classic example, it is logically consistent with one’s observations of the world to conclude either that there is an outside world populated by other thinking, acting entities or to conclude that one’s entire experience of the world is the result of a demented imagination, and there is in fact no reality but one’s self. Both explain all of one’s experiences and are logically consistent. However, since solipsism is profoundly un-useful, few people choose to believe it.
Similarly, well before monotheism became dominant in the West, some pagan philosophers had worked around to the idea that since no thing exists without a cause, and since an infinite regression of causes doesn’t make any sense, that there must be a single, eternal, uncreated thing which existed by its nature and was in turn the cause of all other things. The “unmoved mover” proof of God’s existence thus goes back further than Christianity does. However, modern non-believers generally laugh it off with a “If you can believe God exists without a creator, why not believe the universe exists without a creator?”
The answer is, of course, that one can. The force in the “unmoved mover” argument is that our experience generally tells us that normal physical things always have causes, and thus the universe as a whole must have a cause… However, if one is ready to instead believe that just this one time the physical universe behaved in a way wholly different from how we’ve ever experienced it to behave, that belief is also fully self consistent. One must, in the end, make a decision which metaphysics to believe. The evidence cannot make that decision for you. There is no one conclusion which is so overwhelmingly clear as to be unavoidable. Rather, if one is willing to accept the implications of either, one may then adopt that belief with full logical rigor.
At the end of the day, belief in God, or belief in a spouse’s love, or belief that all men are created equal, or any such belief, may be supported by an incredible amount of evidence, but the belief itself is a choice. The evidence will take you so far. Belief does not have to be some sort of “blind leap”. But it is a crossroads, and one must decide which way to go.
It is an axiom of marketing, that people make decisions based largely on their emotional connection to the product, service, or idea on offer, then find logical and reasonable arguments to justify that decision.
Priceless…
A very interesting post. Before replying I’d like to set up a distinction between God and human religion. Does God exist? Are the claims of a particular creed true? — Two very different questions. With respect to God I answer in the affirmative, interestingly, I know from various posts by JP about the transcendant and the numinous that our reasons for an affirmative answer are actually rather similar. Roger Scruton and Wittgenstein both have a certain amount in common with me on how they approach the question of God. And– believe it or not — some of what Ratzinger says in his least dogmatic and most cautious passages in his Intro to Christianity. “The new atheism” — which is merely a systematic refusal to talk about or think about the transcendant, is irredeemably shallow.
But what about, say, Catholicism. — Well Darwin Catholic and JP are right, it is not in danger of being “disproved” — our experience of the world can be reconciled with the claims of Catholicism with violating any any logical rules. — The criteria for assessing the claims of an overarching system such as Catholicism are quite different. If I say, (and I do) that the Bible is as purely human a creation as The Iliad, and the Church affirms its doctrine of inspiration, neither of us can prove our point. — Each of us settles the question by the cautious process of noticing certain “straws in the wind”. — Who is making the more audacious claim and thereby incurring the burden of demonstration? Who is giving ground as our knowledge grows, which claim is progressively becoming more prima facie plausible as the process of historical criticism does its work? Who is being forced to add continual subtilties to their explanation, sacrificing simplicity for the sake of keeping the theory? —- I obviously have answers of my own to these questions and others. — The modern apologetics on the subject aren’t so much demonstrably false as they remind me of nothing more than the adding of epicylces to reconcile the data with a geocentric world. —– A proposition which was not so much disproved as it ceased to be an intellectually responsible way of reading the evidence.
The example of biblical inspiration could be replaced by any Catholic dogmatic claim you care to mention, all can be reconciled with the evidence, and all are increasingly weakened by unacknowledged intellectual retreats, redefinitions, and burdensome subtilties which perform the role of patches on an increasingly threadbare coat. The system as a whole the sum of its dogmatic claims is of course exponentially weaker than any one of them.
So JP is right in a sense, everyone must make a judgement which has an irreducible subjective component, and their is more to that subjective judgement than the purely intellectual. But nothing, not even the invocation of faith, gets a person off the hook for making the most intellectually responsible judgement that they can. I COULD for example reconcile the evidence with respect to epilepsy and a theory involving possession, but we all agree I would be irresponsible to do so.
“If I say, (and I do) that the Bible is as purely human a creation as The Iliad, and the Church affirms its doctrine of inspiration, neither of us can prove our point.”
The Biblical books are purely human – but that is not *in itself* a contradiction of the Church’s affirmation of inspiration. Asserting indspiration does not of irself say what the concept means – & AFAICS, inspiration can be seen as working in many different ways. The outline of inspiration in “Providentissimus Deus” is not a denial that inspiration may function as, or be, other than as “Providentissinmus” teaches – other models are not denied; they are not mentioned, in some instances at least because they are later than the Encyclical.
The statement “The Biblical books are purely human” only collides wth what you’re saying if it is understood positively to exclude the action of God. But then one would have to ask on what grounds that is asserted. Human action is not to be understood as excluding that of God; and that God’s action is always primary. That man is an agent at all, is a window on the action of God, and evidence of it. Besides,the Church is only 2,000 years old – if one goes back to the known beginnings of organised religion, 5,000 years: by 4000 AD the Church will, one may reasonably hope, have a far more adequate notion of inspiration.
If Christianity were meant to be able to be proved by reason, I think it would be a very different religion. It can be proclaimed, and the reasons for Christian belief can be given, but they can’t be proved by reason, because reason is always undercutting itself; it’s a very powerful acid for destroying ideas, but it is no basis for certainty; one cam have moral certainty about things, but only faith in Christ gives anything more – and it is not based on reason, but on something else – on revelation. I don’t see this as anything to be embarrassed about, but simply as a fact. If reason were all-sufficient, grace would not be needed – if Christianity could be founded on reason, instead of on grace and revelation through Christ Alone, it would be another form of rationalism. ISTM a lot of Christians,who should know better, fall into this very trap. I don’t think God gives Christians the right to have a rationally-founded Christianity – that would take away from the all-sufficiency of Christ, in whom all things hold together; reason is not something co-ordinate or parallel with Him, but is found only in Him.
The statement “The Biblical books are purely human” only collides wth what you’re saying if it is understood positively to exclude the action of God.
Clearly I was aiming for a direct collision. I do not exclude the possibility, but I do not accept the claim that either Lady Chatterly’s lover or any biblical book is in any way divinely inspired, let’s put it that way.
“Clearly I was aiming for a direct collision.”
I missed that 🙂
Whenever someone rejects the Catholic view of inspiration they are told they don’t understand it and are only rejecting a simplistic parody. I assert the I DO understand it, and am rejecting the real thing, even unto its most sophisticated presentation.
That being so – why do you reject it ?
And Paul undertood this too. But unfortunately it comes with a terrible price tag. The fact that it is revelation you are presented with must be accepted and internalised, then belief in revelation provides a bed-rock of certainty — or so the believer thinks. But it isn’t so, the faith in the revelation is a collapse into pure subjectivism, the believer is leaning on their faith in revelation, not the content of revelation itself which is undemonstrable and often prima facie implausible. The believer leans on their own “decision for faith”. Christianity rails against the idea that truth is a subjective thing — but pure subjectivism is what ultimately props revealed religion up. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all fail to provide the bed-rock that they claim the agnostic is missing.
“Christianity rails against the idea that truth is a subjective thing” – no. That is a part-truth. Truth is both subjective and objective, and much much more. More to the point – Christian faith is not a proposition, but in a Person. To present Christianity as assent to concepts or propositions, however accurate, is one-sidedly intellectualistic; Christian faith is not in propositions or a system of them, but in the God to Whom they witness; Who is made available in the Person of Jesus.
“Truth is both subjective and objective…” Well said, that hell hound!
As to this: “Islam, Christianity and Judaism all fail to provide the bed-rock that they claim the agnostic is missing.”
No one can be made to believe – if people find Christian witness to Christ, unconvincing, so be it. Only God can provide the degree of certainty & credibility people want; reasoning can eat away at people’s faith, but cannot possibly give it. God is not a tame lion – and talking about Him can’t make him real, or alive, to those for whom he is neither; He alone can do that. So it is pointless to find fault with Christians for not doing what they do not claim to be able to do, and could not do in any circumstances. God can be known, & God can be encountered – but only on His terms.
But you probably knew that too 🙂
Yes, indeed. And that encounter is only real if it takes place under the water – those who try to comprehend God and explain Him (myself included) need to remember that the part of the iceberg above the water is only an illusion of a complete object.
It can be proclaimed, and the reasons for Christian belief can be given, but they can’t be proved by reason, because reason is always undercutting itself; it’s a very powerful acid for destroying ideas, but it is no basis for certainty; one cam have moral certainty about things, but only faith in Christ gives anything more – and it is not based on reason, but on something else – on revelation.
And Paul undertood this too. But unfortunately it comes with a terrible price tag. The fact that it is revelation you are presented with must be accepted and internalised, then belief in revelation provides a bed-rock of certainty — or so the believer thinks. But it isn’t so, the faith in the revelation is a collapse into pure subjectivism, the believer is leaning on their faith in revelation, not the content of revelation itself which is undemonstrable and often prima facie implausible. The believer leans on their own “decision for faith”. Christianity rails against the idea that truth is a subjective thing — but pure subjectivism is what ultimately props revealed religion up. Islam, Christianity and Judaism all fail to provide the bed-rock that they claim the agnostic is missing.
I don’t have a bedrock of certainty. I have a choice that I made, and continue to revise. But I don’t believe certainty is possible without the believer doing serious damage to their ability to defend themselves against sharks and devils.
In fact, what I’m claiming is that there is no bedrock of certainty. Bedrocks of certainty are for madmen, children, and people who purchase Brooklyn Bridge from men in raincoats.
That doesn’t mean that truth itself is subjective – just that I perceive truth with a great deal more than just my rational mind, and the decisions of my subconscious mind are subject to all kinds of influences I don’t control and am not aware of.
I am as certain of God’s existence and love as I am of my husband’s. The possibility that my husband has been masquerading love for 40+ years appears to me to be so low it is not worth bothering about. And wasting time and energy thinking about the possibility would have unpleasant effects on my comfort and happiness.
My belief that the Catholic Church is the temporal expression of the Church founded by Christ is of a second order of certainty, but follows logically from the belief in God’s love (through quite a long rational argument I’ll get into another time).. My certainty that the temporal Church is finding things out as it goes along, frequently by getting it wrong before it gets it right, is an observation based on history and personal experience.
I could be wrong about all these things, but all the arguments I’ve seen against them seem to me to fall short. I say this fully understanding that the iceberg syndrome applies to me, just as it does to those arguing against me.
The fact that the bible is about God must surely be a form of inspiration, albeit a weak one and not the church’s view, but nonetheless any book about someone must ipso facto be considered to be inspired by the said someone.
The evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is quite compelling. It therefore follows that those who participated in it would pass it on thru the Church where it would eventually be written down. And that God would in some way assist this process.
I’d like to see Mr Badger try to prove that the bible is not inspired by God – I don’t see how anyone could possibly prove such an assertion. Unless they knew enough about God to be able to realistically claim that nothing in the bible is inspired by God. But those who know God know he is goodness, and kindness, and love and solidarity and justice and mercy and forgiveness. And we see those themes constantly repeated in sacred scripture. In fact, they so saturate the sacred scriptures that millions of people have gained very great spiritual insights merely by reading and meditating on a single passage.
The best one might claim is that there are certain interpretations of the bible that are not divinely inspired.
God Bless
How interesting!
You are all making the assumption that decisions made at a gut level, then justified through logic, are somehow suspect, and you are all assuming that your own decisions don’t fit that pattern.
I recommend a session with Thomas Kuhn!
I’d like to see Mr Badger try to prove that the bible is not inspired by God – I don’t see how anyone could possibly prove such an assertion
Well I’ve just ptoved that chris skims not reads what I write. Nobody can prove the bible wasn’t inspired by good — a fact that was central to my point
*good, — read God
You are all making the assumption that decisions made at a gut level, then justified through logic, are somehow suspect, and you are all assuming that your own decisions don’t fit that pattern.
No on both counts. Many of my decisions do fit that pattern — a pattern which I do not think is suspect
*first sentence was meant to be in quotes
Actually I remember a while ago Toad discovered Chris has difficulties with the meaning of the word “prove”. So perhaps it is not just slapdash reading.
The fact that the bible is about God must surely be a form of inspiration, albeit a weak one and not the church’s view, but nonetheless any book about someone must ipso facto be considered to be inspired by the said someone.
Pure sophistry
The best one might claim is that there are certain interpretations of the bible that are not divinely inspired.
Actually Chris many of us can, and do, claim that the thing itself is not divinely inspired
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…but nonetheless any book about someone must ipso facto be considered to be inspired by the said someone.
Like Harry Potter or Sherlock Holmes, for example, eh, Chris? Well, why not?
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(Rebwritten again, is Toad. Doh!)
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Anyway, re the poor, battered old ‘First Cause’ stuff, again.
Who’s to say our particular world was ’caused’ by the first cause?
In other words, maybe the First Cause (God?) caused the universe then caused a Second Cause ( the Devil?) who caused the planet earth. No infinite regression there, suggests Toad.
And that would explain why it’s so horrible for most of the people on it, wouldn’t it?
Hume, as we know, jokingly suggested that possibly Big God had handed the design of the world over to an apprentice Little God to practice on until he got it right.
Which would also explain quite a lot.
Hard to prove though, eh, Chris? But if Hume is correct, what do we do about worshipping The First Cause? And not eating bacon sandwiches on Fridays?
Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice.
Or, you refuse to make a choice, because the options aren’t clear, and that’s a choice, too.
Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice.
Well yes, one can believe whatever one wants, and we all do, often with great enthusiasm. The issue only comes into play when there is a social aspect.
Perhaps Daniel Dennett is therefore right to be amused that his suggestion about religious education in the US was met with stony coldness by Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other religious leaders. Don’t push religion out of the classroom, teach every child (and make it a compulsory part of the curriculum) every faith in great detail, with approriate neutrality. Let every child learn the bible, the book of mormon, and the Koran, and the respective claims about them.
it isn’t just that people announce the right to believe any supernatural claim they want, they also claim the right to tell their children that any supernatural claim they care to settle on is true. And on this one question the annoying Dawkins was, in fairness right on the money — why are their 3 year old muslims but not 3 year old socialists, why are there 3 year old methodists but not 3 year old Torys? Why is it fine to decide a childs theology but somewhat frowned upon to decide their view on economics at birth.
The answer — as everybody knows, is that if you wait till someone is 21 and been given a broad education before beginning to “pass on the faith” the chances of them finding it plausible, whatever it may be, are very small indeed.
So taking JP’s remark quoted above, it seems there is a strong case for the “Christianity is fine — but only between consenting adults” position. — But no Church will accept that will they?
‘Like button pressed’
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Badger’s dead right. The vast majority of people on earth “pays their money” and gets no choice, anyway.
Born a Muslim, die a Muslim, or Catholic, or Hindu, or Jew or whatever.
We handful of well-off, educated folk in the comfortable, democratic, parts of the world are fortunate.
We have the time and money to consider these things at leisure, and decide.
Joyful seems to be exhibiting a healthy degree of uncertainty, these days. Or so it seems to Toad.
It wouldn’t be good to stray to far from the original post. The iceberg analogy seems very good to me. But put briefly, my point before is in line with the topic. It is one thing to discuss how a person reaches a set of beliefs, however it is quite another matter to discuss how one determines what can be responsibly presented to children as truth. — But with respect to the major religions most believers don’t keep the two seperate.
I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, it’s my faith, respect my belief, I’ll respect your unbelief says the Mormon lady, well fine.
I also believe that it is my right to raise my children from birth to adulthood while emphatically using my parental influence to convince them that Joseph Smith was a prophet of the Lord, she then says.
–Well maybe not madam, because now it isn’t just “your faith”, its someone elses intellectual formation. — If you’re gonna teach it to children as important truth, the demand for exceptional evidence to justify an exceptional claim can no longer be ducked.
And re that comment i wrote above at 6:36, the vast majority of believers in revelation aren’t in the personal faith alone category, they’re in the ‘passing on the faith to the impressionable category’ —- and that is why the atheist critique, and demand for evidence, can’t be dodged by appeals to faith.
The extra ordinary claim – the claim that is not ordinary – is that there is no God. And my problem isn’t with the demand for evidence, but with the demand for a particular type of evidence (and the rejection of any other evidence outside of that narrow type).
The claim that people believe what they were taught as children doesn’t fit well the facts, it seems to me. In the West, at least, where attempting to protect one’s children from competing ideas is a loser’s game, those with more than a lukewarm attachment to their faith are likely to have chosen it, and often come to it from another.
The extra ordinary claim – the claim that is not ordinary – is that there is no God.
Rubbish. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, of which you have none, other than you ‘feelings’ or ‘faith’. One only needs ‘faith’ when one does not have proof
KA, read the post again, and this time apply it to yourself.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that my choices have been in part based on ‘feelings’. We’ll make some progress in understanding one another when you do the same.
My position is not based on feelings at all, but on an understanding of the available evidence. I have no need of ‘faith’ or ‘feelings’ in understanding my atheistic position. Once you can support your worldview without ‘faith’ or ‘feelings’ then we’ll have some common ground.
KA
A belief in God isn’t at issue, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, and others who didn’t subscribe to any particular system would all affirm that. Including myself, and I tend to agree that pure atheism is unsatifactory.
But what I was talking about is <iparticular revelation, something utterly different. But so often (and frustatingly!) conflated.
In the west, children are exposed inevitably to a diverse range of views. The result has been that it is no longer easy to raise a child to believe in particular revelation — that is only easy in a relatively insular society. But has it occured to you that the reason for this is that competing claims of divine inspiration all jostling together lead people to a healthy scepticism about the whole revelation business???
But generally people do tend to stick with what they were taught, however lukewarm, and despite exceptions. There is a greater proportion of German rather than Irish Lutherans.
Fair point regarding particular revelation. And I still intend to do a series of posts on how I came to accept the particular revelation of Christ, and then later the Catholic Church.
As to scepticism, I’m in favour, myself. I don’t think people really know what they believe until they’ve challenged and checked their beliefs with a large dose of scepticism and a good look at other options. A certain amount of churn is both inevitable and a really good thing.
But when I am repeatedly told by people who have been raised in one faith and then moved to another or to none that people ‘tend to stick with what they were taught’ – then I’d say where is your evidence. Because my experience – including my understanding of their experience – is that this isn’t the case.
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“Rubbish. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof,”
The only things that can be provedat all, KA, are some math and basic logic.
Until we accept that, we will get nowhere.
When we do, we will not get much further.
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“provedat?” Thanks, WordPress!
More to the point – Christian faith is not a proposition, but in a Person.
Kerberos, that is probably the strongest response (from my perspective) to what I said in my comments. Hans Balthasar used to say that the Christian doesn’t assent to a set of propositions, he recognises a face. — The response of the faithful is not irrational, but it isn’t about rationalality either, it’s like knowing that your wife loves you, it can’t be proved, but if you accept it as true everything in your life will make sense.
As to whether the person encountered by the Christian is Christ, the logos, or a profound but human creation fashioned from the long forgotten clay of Jesus the itinerant preacher — there you and I differ. but I do take your point.
That being so – why do you reject it ?
I reject the belief in inspiration for many reasons, for one, I know (for my sins) too much about the process by which the canon was settled. The main reason is that I recognise the humanity of the Bible, and its profundity, but I have learnt that whenever a text ceases to be literature, and becomes scripture pain, misery, and dogma are bound to follow.