Good observation about the supposedly tepid nature of non-triumphalist "apatheist" religion. I am continually surprised by how many of my fellow Christians have had some mystical "epiphany" experience that anchors their commitment. My transformational experience had nothing to do with apparent alternate realities, and everything to do with the power of empathy and human connection, but that's me.Robert Tulip wrote:This conversation, beginning from observations about people who just don’t care much about religion, has led to this valuable point about the sociology of religion, the question why fervent belief appears so much more effectual from within. Believers can see that any chink of doubt carries high risk of a loss of the energy of faith. From outside this fervency looks absurd, but from inside it is psychologically necessary.
The only conclusion I would add to your interesting way of analyzing this is that ginned-up "energy" tends to betray in the long haul. This is a familiar story in the charismatic or Pentecostal branches of Christianity. Some people experience other-worldly intervention in the manifestations that come from emotional overload to their nervous system, but when their fellow Pentecostals try to rev themselves up to get the same kind of experience, they are left with a sense of fakery. So energy and fervency are fine as markers, as guideposts one might say, but when they are the only road map for understanding the process they are likely to lead to the wilderness.
Maybe I will try to take it one step further. You said fervency is psychologically necessary, and that is true when religion focuses on "sacrificing" one's attraction to sin, or "submission" as Islam puts it. But for a long time there has been an alternative focus to understanding the effect of faith. Illicit desire is not going to go away, but its power is removed by constructive and genuine relationship. In modern parlance, sinful desire operates like an addiction, and a person who has solid "feedback loops" of relationship with others will have a much easier time fending off addiction.
I feel sure that there is an ecclesiology at work in this alternative perspective that has the power to revolutionize society. Again, reference David Brooks. The pervasiveness of social sanctions against illicit behavior has substituted for fervency in the past, but that has created a system in which power was also freedom from constraint. The result is Harvey Weinstein.
Yes, it's the insight behind "Bet on the bugs." Feedback loops are fascinating, and one of the great gifts I gave my sons was to help them understand what makes a good board game (they are both fans) in terms of positive and negative feedback and the balance between the two.Robert Tulip wrote:I have been interested in the general causal principle of amplifying feedback loops, based on observation of such effects in climate science. The principle is that a very small steady force pushing a system in one direction will generate changes that increase the effect exponentially. This seems to be a universal causal principle of evolutionary systems, whether physical, biological or cultural.
Yes, I think the resistance to willful blindness is one reason "non-dual" Christianity is picking up among Progressive Christians. Father Richard Rohr is the undisputed leader and face of that movement. The non-dual approach, for which there is an astonishing amount of scriptural support, works by decoupling from fervency. It meshes well with the Girardian non-violent approach and the traditions of restorative justice and reconciliation cultivated for centuries in the Peace Churches.Robert Tulip wrote:In religion, advocates want to make sure that all the influences are pointing in one direction, towards deepening of faith and commitment, so they suppress anything perceived to undermine that purpose, in order to generate an amplified change, generally the deepening of faith in the believing community. Of course the problem is that when outsiders look at this system they readily see its failings, to which adherents have become wilfully blind.
Essentially the feedback loops work completely differently, setting up a process that is independent of social reinforcement and its need for willful blindness.
There are a number of discoveries made in early Christianity that have been passed down until they were re-discovered in modern times. One is the freedom created by spiritual, rather than conformist, community. I suspect society had to reach the level of education seen in the Protestant communities of northern Europe before this approach could be either appealing or intuitively reasonable.Robert Tulip wrote:The Bible warns against this pervasive psychological tendency, especially in the condemnation of the hypocrisy of institutional religion, but also the very subtle but deep comment from Christ that the truth will set you free.
Be careful not to equate the criticism of institutional religion with spiritual insight. There are two strands: one is the antagonism between Jesus (and John the Baptist) and the temple authorities, who were allied with the Hasmonean collaborationists; and the other is the Johannine opposition to diaspora Judaism, based probably in the Jewish rejection of Hellenized Judaism (aka Christianity). Both critiques tend to emphasize the spiritual shortcomings of the opposed institutions, but the undertones can be very different and to read the text well you have to be able to tell which branch it belongs to.
Fascinating way of cutting into the matter. The process of policing the "boundaries" of clannish religion look a lot like the mechanisms of selfishness in ordinary society. Priority on limiting threat by suspicion of outsiders, transactional thinking about other people, very grudging acceptance of relationships that do not obviously serve the concrete motivations of the deciders.Robert Tulip wrote:The clan psychology of belonging makes loyalty a key to popular religious ideas of salvation, but I think the messianic core in Christianity is more existential than popular. Against the traditional herd mentality of unquestioning obedience to established authority, modern science has tried to make evidence and logic the highest values. Similarly, existential philosophy sees the authenticity of the individual, through openness to being, as a framework that deconstructs the primacy of the clan.
Existentialist preoccupation with authenticity may be an artifact. While authenticity is an obvious attribute of autonomy, the near-obsession with it by Sartre and Camus may be generated more by the compromises required of the French after being overrun by the Nazis than by the inauthenticity that prevailed within both Naziism and bourgeois European society.
Openness to being turns out to be more or less a search for a calling or mission that offers fulfillment. Without mission, authenticity easily becomes fraudulent, with the philosopher claiming to have chosen honesty by projecting his or her own quest for self-esteem on those who have not reached his or her exalted consciousness of fact. Knowing what you don't believe in does not bring any added authenticity to your life if you don't know what you do believe in.
This outlines the actual process of inauthentic, bad-faith endorsement of existentialist nihilism. Because markers of respect go to those who process things at a highly abstract conceptual level, citing these "authorities" becomes a substitute for authenticity itself. There is a strong kinship between SJW's shouting down conservative speakers on campus and burning of heretics: not so much as categories of case law (shouting down is far from burning) but in terms of the internal dynamics and the dangers ignored.Robert Tulip wrote:Of course the traditional tribal approach is deeply embedded in our neurons so people find it impossibly risky to assess claims without reference to criteria such as the social respect that the maker of the claim can demonstrate. That means heretics are hung out to dry, even where they are simply drawing attention to evident facts.
Well, it depends on who is resisting and what they say as explanation. Maybe it is nothing more than the fact that modern people have very little sense of meaning for any of those, much less one that they can sense in the four evangelists.Robert Tulip wrote:Sure, unconscious psychological processes are how archetypal symbols get their social power. One of my favourite such symbols is the four living creatures, used as the symbols of the four evangelists. From a scientific perspective, the ox, lion, eagle and man are obviously based on looking at the sky, since ancient constellations put these four living creatures at the four corners of the heavens. But I have encountered an amazing obstinate refusal to engage with this empirical interpretation of these symbols, apparently because of the unstated unconscious fear that any admission of a natural basis for supernatural myths will undermine faith.
That's a cogent analysis, but I see escape from literalism as necessary but not sufficient for genuine reformation. If it is part of an experiential feedback loop in which mutuality is cultivated and seen for the Comforter that it is, moving beyond literalism can be very liberating and empowering. If it's all about rejecting structure in one's life, then seven devils may come in to replace the one expelled.Robert Tulip wrote:The necessary reformation of Christianity is to see stories in terms of what they mean for us today, not as accounts of what really happened. Unfortunately that shift is very slippery, since any admission of doubt has historically led to a collapse of faith. I think part of the answer is to open a more pointed criticism of how literal belief is defective, seeing this recognition as part of what Calvin identified as the first point of salvation, the humble acceptance of the total depravity of human psychology.
Well, it isn't easy. I saw a Facebook claim that more than half of those interviewed by a marketing firm thought A&W was overcharging because their price for a 1/3 pound burger was higher than a 1/4 pound burger at McDonalds. The McDonald's burger, in their mind, was bigger because 4 is bigger than 3. In this age of echo-chamber endorsement of such idiocy, it would be wise not to expect too much of organized religion.Robert Tulip wrote:The scientific method is very humble in its refusal to move beyond evidence.
Similarly it is possible for religion to accept that empirical method while fully retaining the powerful parabolic meaning of Gospel stories.