Thought of the Day 07.28.08

Atheist: Religion only exists because humans are wishful thinkers who desperately want to believe in God.
Christian: Do you want to believe in the existence of God?
Atheist: How’s that relevant?
Christian: Well, you’re saying that our beliefs are tainted by our psychological motives, and I was just wondering what your psychological motives are. Clearly, if you want to not believe in God, your ideas are as tainted as mine. So, would you want to believe if you could?
Atheist: Actually, yes. I truly wish your story was true, but evidence and reason tell me it’s not.
Christian: Then you agree it’s quite possible to want to believe in God and yet still not do so?
Atheist: Exactly, that’s me.
Christian: So some people who want to believe do, and some people who want to believe don’t?
Atheist: Yes.
Christian: Then it doesn’t seem that wanting to believe determines anything at all. You and I share the same psychological need, yet we believe differently. I guess you’d have to admit there must be something more to religion than just psychological need.
Atheist: Do you want to play some X-Box?
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Christian: Then it doesn’t seem that wanting to believe determines anything at all. You and I share the same psychological need, yet we believe differently. I guess you’d have to admit there must be something more to religion than just psychological need."

That's sort of simplistic. If there is a tendency to to believe because desire is there, it doesn't mean it has to be a 100% relationship. It is also quite possible that the need to believe is just one factor, and that there are others which also influence the decision to believe or not.

Let's take a different example. A person who grows up in a western predominantly Christian country is more likely to express their faith in Christianity, true? Just as a person in a predominantly Muslim country is more likely to be a Muslim. These causal relationships are very real, but it doesn't mean that everyone in a predominantly Christian country necessarily becomes a Christian.

So I think the reasoning you are using in the quoted paragraph is flawed.

As for sharing the same psychological need, I don't think that is true either. Clearly, some people's needs in certain areas are stronger than other's needs in those same areas. Victims of violent crimes often express a stronger need for security than those who haven't undergone such traumas. To bring it closer to topic, people who are undergoing many problems in their life often have a stronger "need for God" than others, which is why you hear so many stories of how people found Jesus at the lowest point in their lives.

I think you and I can agree that the desire for something doesn't make the object desired any more real, but having a strong desire certainly makes such beliefs more likely.

As with most things in life, it is less a black and white issue, and more a matter of probabilities

August 4, 2008 at 7:42 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

The point here was to illustrate the dilemma the atheist finds himself in when he alleges psychological need as the basis of faith. If his own desire to believe is exactly as strong as the Christian's, then nothing at all comes from psychological need (it's fully resistable, as his own non-belief confirms). If his own desire to believe is any less intense than the believer's, then he must admit (by the same reasoning that he uses to assail the believer's alleged wishful thinking) that his own conclusions are conditioned by his less powerful or contrarily impulsed psychological needs. But, yes, of coruse, this is one factor among many. If a non-believer wants to say that psychological need is one of the factors often seen in believers, fine. So long as he also admits the same line of reasoning in his own case if he wants to disbelieve and moderates his allegations of the importance of such need if he wants to believe, himself. Usually, when I hear this (from Nietzcheans, for instance), it's said as a matter of pride. "Look, you're weak because you give in to your psychological need, but I'm strong because I resist it." There's no obviousness to this assertion. The believer might respond by looking at how difficult the Christian life really is compared with do-it-yourself-ism. But also, he might say, "Psychological need is just a negative way of saying 'acting in alignment with natural desire' the way we do with marriage and sex impulses. We were designed by God to desire Him. If you want to call my acquiescence to that design 'psychological need,' alright. But I would call your resistance to 'natural design' a form of deliberate perversion (understood as action contrary to design). How foolish to brag about resisting an impulse God put in us just as sure as He put in us the desire to eat, breathe, and reproduce."

Agreed that many factors can influence religiousity, including cultural favorability.

Are we having fun yet? I know I am. =)

August 5, 2008 at 3:46 PM
Anonymous said...

If his own desire to believe is any less intense than the believer's, then he must admit (by the same reasoning that he uses to assail the believer's alleged wishful thinking) that his own conclusions are conditioned by his less powerful or contrarily impulsed psychological needs.

Yes, but that is not really a dilemma for the non-believer. The assumption here (by the non-believer) is that proper beliefs are formed by reason, but that strong desire can override reason. Having a less powerful desire simply means that reason is less clouded. It's not symmetrical both ways.

We were designed by God to desire Him.

And yet we don't all feel that desire to the same degree. Some don't feel it at all. That's odd.

But I would call your resistance to 'natural design' a form of deliberate perversion (understood as action contrary to design).

Which would make sense, except that how strongly one feels a desire is not a deliberate act. What choice you make given your level of desire is a deliberate act.

The problem with simply satisfying all needs willy-nilly is that often these needs are contradictory, against societal rules, or just plain harmful (I'm talking all possible feeling of need here, not specifically the need to believe in God). But we also have reason, which is what we use to allow us to act appropriately based on these felt needs.

Is belief in a God appropriate just because one has a feeling? That is where you and I disagree.

August 6, 2008 at 5:12 PM
Andrew Tallman said...

The real issue of this thought, which I want to refocus on, is the symmetry involved in alleging that reason has been overcome by motivation. It's rare to hear an atheist admit that they do not want to believe. It's even more rare to hear an atheist admit that they want to believe but are capable of resisting this desire. In short, atheists are reluctant to discuss their own epistemological motivations at all, but instead usually want to throw them about casually in discussing the defective belief structures of believers.

Psycholical need can look like a desire for a happy ending, a desire to feel superior to others by your beliefs, a desire to feel in control of this world, a desire to look smart, and many other things. The reluctance of most atheists (in my perception) to be forthcoming about their own psychology while simultaneously being so dimsissive of the psychologically weak motives of the believer is the assymetry which this thought is meant to address.

Different psychologies motivate us and to different degrees. This is true for both atheists and believers. It's silly to dismiss either with one sweeping assertion (as some do in referring to a desire to avoid moral accountability for atheists, by the way). Ultimately, that's all I'm getting at here. I would bet we agree about this.

August 26, 2008 at 7:33 PM

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