the great disappointment
October 22, for all you date-watchers, is the expected return of Jesus Christ. Well, of course, it depends on what your definition of “is” is.
In 1844, William Miller (after several other dates he prophesied had come and gone) convinced a large group of people that today was the day of Christ’s return. While the cuckoo clock sound is ringing in your head, no doubt, just think of this as the end of a slippery slope, and work your way back. At what point did it start to sound unreasonable? Slightly before this was “well, all that stuff is true, but I don’t think it’ll be today.” Why wouldn’t a person think that? The Bible does, of course, say no man knows the hour. Fine; although it takes some wrangling to make the logic of all that work when Jesus is talking about the Destruction of the Temple, and – oh – now he’s talking about his return from the heavenly exile he was yet to undertake. What I take from all this is another “holy man” telling you the nature of the Deity, when none of it bears out.
I am constantly told by people of how well prayer works – unless it doesn’t. What to do? Redefine prayer.
Well, god said he’d answer. He didn’t say “now.”
Here’s one of my favorites. How they expect someone – usually a child – to grasp this without realizing what a vindictive personality this would take after touting god’s power is beyond me:
“No” is an answer.
What a vile, vile joke for people to play on each other.
Studies have been done that show the Jean Dixons and other horoscopists (?) around the land are correct about a third of the time. Not bad, right? That’s better than a thirty-three percent success rate. They analyzed Nostradamus. They found, astonishingly (depending on how you interpret his messed-up writing style), that he hit the nail on the head – about a third of the time. Well, he’s a prognosticator, too, right? Doesn’t that bear it out? Well, part of the study was getting a bunch of Joe Schmoes to do some predicting. After some analysis they had failed miserably, of course. They missed about sixty-six percent of their predictions.
See what I did there?
If (according to the last scientific polls) nine out of ten people are believers, and a plane of 300 goes down, then based on averages alone ninety people should make it out okay. Of course, that’s pretty rare. The more important thing to take away, even if we stipulate that prayer DID in fact work for the survivors, is what about the other poor schmucks who didn’t make the prayer cut? Were they really sinners? Were they “doing it wrong?” Were they really super-saints that were ready to go on? Was it “someone’s time” and the other 299 just chose a bad travel day?
The amount of mental and emotional wrangling one has to go through to have a picture of a loving, caring, responsive god is staggering. It creates untold amounts of confusion. Unless, of course, you accept it without reservation. Why worry about the mental part of it – just accept it “because Teh Bible says so.” Makes me want to whip up the next “Left Behind” or “Prayer of Jabez” and find these people. Take advantage of P.T. Barnum’s proven adage. And it’s easy enough to find them. Standing out in a field, waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
You mention the “redefintion” of prayer. The common reaction to cognitive dissonance is this very thing — redefinition of beliefs. Cognitive dissonance — which is what happens when beliefs and actions don’t sync, or when facts arise to contradict a held belief — causes mental stress. (And it’s real mental pain that can be seen on MRI’s in brain activity related to the cognitive dissonance.) And actions, once taken, can’t be undone. Thus, all that is available to change is the belief. It makes very smart people do very silly things, trying to get their beliefs or the world to sync back up with the other.
I am convinced that ignorance is a tightly-closed (but not impermeable) loop. Most people who believe that prayer is a coaxing mechanism to get god to flip a switch on or off for them are hopelessly lost in the closed circuit of ignorance. They will never question the veracity or efficacy of bothering The Almighty with healing a canker sore. (LOVE the Mr. Deity add on this count.) And those that believe prayer is not a lever by which they can coerce divine interference … well, I haven’t quite figured them out. I count at least a couple of such folks among my very dear friends, and we can’t seem to speak the same language about how they retain their belief or their need to believe. They Just Do.
In the past, I too used the “were the others just doing it wrong” query to believers. The more reasonable among them would suggest instead that “the Lord lets the world work as it will.” It’s the same argument (Free Will) used to support why god doesn’t force his believers to believe him, or eliminate evil and sickness from the world, etc. What’s love if it’s not freely given, etc. etc. etc. And that’s shiny and happy, that Good God is going to let the world just roll along and give everyone a choice in the matter, but I go back farther than they do to question why a “perfect god” would create a world and children (we humans) so very NOT perfect. So programmed not just to fail, but to *EPIC FAIL.* Those reasonable believers will usually beg off this conversation, because it again treads into an area where we just can’t find common ground. And I find this shocking, really, because I used to practice the very same faith they do. But for some reason the spaghetti stuck to their wall and not mine.
Ironically, that position of “we agree to disagree” is rooted in the same fundamental miasma that they root their own belief system in: it just is. God just Is. That’s the beauty of it, really: they just don’t care to know why! It just IS! God just IS! God is mysterious and we are lowly men, and what do we know of the ways of god, so don’t waste the brain power thinking about it.
That fundamental lack of curiosity, that lack of wishing to dig further, to *need* to know more about who made them and why, and what the flaws are and why … it’s stultifying. And it doesn’t even seem to involve that much wrangling on their parts. The only ones doing any emotional or mental wrangling on this issue are those sliding out the door of faith; people like you and me. WE’RE the ones grinding our teeth and tearing our hair. It’s the process of jettisoning faith that incites the mental gymnastics. Had we not been infected with the viral programming at all, we’d be like Sam Harris. He just doesn’t believe because it’s not compelling.
I see no appreciable difference in this utter lack of curiosity in current-day and in the ancient Medieval man who drank a tincture and then laid down four times, each time with his head pointing in a cardinal compass direction, so he’d be healed of his disease. And if/when he was healed, he never cared to know why. I see this same fatal disconnect in the modern world as well, and not just when it comes to religion; we don’t care how health care works, we just want it to. We don’t care why marriages end in divorce, we just want the right to do so. We don’t care why the hate crimes bill should or shouldn’t be passed. We just know what we THINK. And we maybe know we WANT. But we do not KNOW *WHY.* And too rarely, we don’t bother to ask.
So yes, they are standing in the fields. And in the streets, and in supermarkets and restaurants. They are literally everywhere. Dare I say it? THEY are so pervasive, because THEY are still too often Us. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I’d do him one better: It isn’t worth living, with or without god. In the examination, we *become* our own god.
Well-said, Deb, as always.
The only thing I would contribute (because there’s little, if anything to add) is: I just don’t see the point in being a Deist.
Either “God” is who he says he is in the Bible, or he’s not, and the Bible is “errant” – but the Bible is the reason he’s believed in, anyway! Certainly, I’m not the only one that perceives this as a tautology.
Wouldn’t a perfect god have designed a better way of knowing it than thru a muddled mess of books that a host of men with their own agendas passed through a revolving door of consideration over a period of centuries? Yeah, I’d have chosen mass hallucination, myself. Lot less problematic on the whole “interpretation” issue. And how about a little consistency? And a mental health exam, because Paul was clearly a lunatic.
But I digress.
Ahh, yes. The Universal, Unconditional Truth. Ironic to me, because Deists think “god” is that “Truth,” and in fact truth must be verifiable. It’s inherent in the *definition* of truth. Because, how else will we *know* it’s the truth if it cannot be verified? They’d do better with comparing god to Zeno’s Paradox of Motion, but that’s another kettle of fish.
truth (Source: dictionary.com)
1. the true or actual state of a matter
2. conformity with fact or reality; verity
3. verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle
4. the state or character of being true.
5. actuality or actual existence.
6. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude
7. honesty; integrity; truthfulness.
8. (often initial capital letter) ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience
9. agreement with a standard or original
10. accuracy, as of position or adjustment
11. Archaic. fidelity or constancy.
As you know, I don’t see a point in being a Deist either, and it’s been endlessly engrossing to ask believers why they believe. (I do love and adore the question, “Why?”) It’s usually a question best broached to a more learned believer; someone who’s done some research into the history of their own creed, who can speak to more than just the dogma of the thing. Almost universally it comes down to “just wanting to.” Or more often, “needing to.” Which I’ve always found strangely frustrating. Really? That’s all it is? Feeling you need to? Because it’s not really a *need,* is it? Not like food or rest.
I used to rabble-rouse with a Calvinist on a daily basis, and he and I would quickly come to frustration with each other because he insisted that “God was Absolute Truth,” and he was a slippery little bastard when I tried to get him to define “absolute.” To me, absolute meant universal; for simplicity’s sake, it would be a statement that any two people would agree on. Seems a simple enough posit, but oh, it was anything but. He would not agree that “the sky is blue” or “it’s dark at night” were truly universals. At night in Alaska … or on a rainy day … yeah, neither would be universal. And subjectifying it to “right now” was insufficient in his mind. He seemed inclined to consider “gravity exists,” but then he got all hung up in how do we *know* it exists, that requires proofs. (Again, ironic coming from a guy who thinks a paternalistic murdering jealous type picked him to be a citizen of Heaven before he was even a twinkle in his daddy’s eye.) The Calvinist *supremely* sees what he wants to see. What he needs to see. So much so that he’s predestined. (Predestined to see it, of course, haha.)
Ultimately, it seems it’s almost Dr. Seuss simple. There are two kinds of folks when it comes to belief: the Do’s and the Don’t's. (I like my personalized and somewhat snark nomenclature better; see it at the bottom. For now I’ll be diplomatic.)
The Do’s need that comfort of Someone/thing Else. They need it so much, it’s like their need for air or water. Remove their faith, and you might as well have taken their lives. The Don’t's are never really comfortable with the schema of belief or of something that they can’t perceive cognitively. It offers quite the opposite of comfort, in fact, to believe. It never fits quite right, and so they spend their utilization of air and water on other pursuits. I suspect we’ll ultimately discover that this is a genetic wiring issue; those who engage parts of their brain to “believe” and those that engage those same parts to quest. The neuropsychology studies being done currently are supporting this finding.
We atheists are like Weebles; we wobble, but we don’t fall down. Deists are like Gumby dolls; highly twistable but unstable so they wobble and fall over a lot. And then they pray to be given the strength to stand up, only to fall over again.
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