Valerie Tarico, PhD, in a section of her piece in called ‘I Know because I know’ in the ‘Christian Delusion’ edited by John Loftus, “Many a free-thinker has sparred a smart, educated fundamentalist into a corner only to have the believer utter some form of ‘I just know’. This ‘knowing’ is what ‘Believers’ take as ‘belief’ and ‘Faith’. Their personal experience of ‘gnosis’ cannot be taken as evidence but that ‘knowing’, that ‘belief’ is the strongest proponent of their ‘Faith’.
People ‘Believe’ in part because believing makes them feel special. This has been posited as the reason for ‘conspiracy theorists’ believe in their nonsense. Ironically, they feel special being a part of a larger group of ‘Believers’. One common thread is that each is a Believer because they have been touched by god; they have received a personal revelation from god. Most typically, the revelation comes in the form of what they interpret as a cryptic message or an inner voice which provides a message felt by the receiver to instruct them at a crucial point in their life or is insightful and vaguely meaningful to them.
One question which Believers will ask plaintively when all deflections are deflected, all diversions re-diverted, all prevarications stymied, all back-pedaling brought to a halt by the looming walls of the corner in which they’ve illogically backed themselves is; ‘Why would so many martyr themselves if Christianity wasn’t True and Jesus wasn’t the Lord and Savior, god of the universe? Why?’
The emotional, disparate tone of the question is disarming. Why would so many thousands give their lives for their belief in this Jesus of Nazareth and his bloody self-sacrifice?
Why?
One ponders the horror.
Then, one recalls the thousands who were murdered, tortured, imprisoned by the various inquisitions and ‘cleansings’ of heretics, pagans, ‘Believers’ in other gods. Why die for Allah? Why die for Zeus or Athena or Minerva, Osiris, Mithra, Ba’al? Why die for Agrippa the Skeptik? Why die for possessing a papyrus of Lucretius? Why did they die in the thousands for Arianism, Catharism, Pelagianism, Hussitism? Or Jan Hus, Jerome of Prague and a raft of heretics through the ages who proclaimed a version of the message from the Loving Christ that was unapproved by the authorities.
Why?
One answer might be gleaned from the books by Charles MacKay, ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions’ and ‘The Madness of Crowds’; an encyclopedia of mass delusions which captivated the rich and the poor for centuries; stock ventures based on lies, alchemists feeding on the greedy and the gullible, vendors in elixirs of eternal life and the philosopher’s stone. This telling of sustained madness which permeated the populations of countries and continents does not deal with murder or genocide, but one might easily amend the compendium with those who died for their delusions of god, Christ, eternal life and salvation for wrongs done to an invisible, all-powerful Creator.
Could ‘belief’ (in the ‘Believers’ technical sense of ‘Faith’) be chemically based? Might not the ‘rush’ of the Holy Spirit – the peace, calm, joy, ‘connectedness’ – all be part of a chemically induced euphoria? Might not the self-induced delusion of god, amplified by the stress of the occasion of testimony, the pressure to conform to the zeitgeist of the rest of the congregation cause a release of endorphins? Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin are famously happy hormones that promote positive feelings like pleasure, happiness, and even love. All those emotional states have been cited as the rush of feelings when one is ‘filled with the Spirit’ or sense the presence of god.
A scientific study of this phenomena would not (could not) substantiate or verify the presence of ‘The Lord’ or the ‘Holy Spirit’ but such a study could be undertaken to measure endorphin levels in the blood of those testifying to the power of the ‘Spirit’, could it not?
In fact, the University of Utah School of Medicine, did such a study in 2016, and published a report. The lead author was Michael Ferguson, who carried out the study as a bioengineering graduate student at the University of Utah. The researchers ‘set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, by creating an environment that triggered participants to "feel the Spirit."’
The study was conducted using fMRI scans but did not measure brain chemical release. Neuroscientists suspect that a key player in mystical experience is the serotonin system. The neurotransmitter serotonin affects the parts of the brain that relate to emotions and perceptions. Chemically, peyote, LSD and other psychedelics look a lot like serotonin, and they activate the same receptor
What they found was that the subjects’ brain-reward circuits were stimulated by thoughts of Jesus, as a savior, thoughts about being with their families for eternity, thoughts about their heavenly rewards’ and feeling ‘the Spirit’. The subjects described feelings of peace and physical sensations of warmth accompanying the thoughts of religious experiences.
(See the section on psychedelics)
Could it be that the mystics of the Bible and those ‘Feeling the Spirit’ are and were simply addicted to their own brain chemistry?
It might seem that this discourse has strayed too far afield but it has not. The point made at the beginning citing the casual, colloquial use of the terms ‘believe’ and ‘belief’ is a sound one. When, in discussion of science versus religion, wayward use of those terms becomes the sticking point, as Mr Hovid demonstrated when he cited the use of those terms to set up his straw-man argument equating science with religion.
That misuse, that acyrologia, can also be a stumbling block in sensible discussions of every-day matters. For example, in an informal conversation with a friend about this rather pedantic misuse of the terms of faith and the word ‘believe’, the friend asserted that in order to sit on a chair one must have faith that the chair would support one’s weight. The simple, ordinary act of taking a seat was an act of faith, therefore. He was using the same ragged line of logic used by Kent Hovind and Ray Comfort.
The counter-argument offered was that while one may commonly assume that a chair could support one’s weight, that assumption could be nullified by evidence that the chair was too feeble or ill-made. If, as one sat, the chair wobbled or creaked or gave some other sign that it was structurally unsound, then one would take another chair.
Hypothesis: the chair can hold my weight.
Evidence: the chair is unsound structurally. It wobbles.
Revised hypothesis: the chair can’t hold my weight.
Conclusion: choose a different chair.
Sad to say, my friend was adamant in his erroneous assessment that taking a seat required ‘Faith’. In this way, he mistakenly conflated the colloquial, informal use of ‘faith’’ as a synonym for ‘confidence’; another bit of slovenly rhetoric exploited by ‘Believers’ like Mr. Comfort. Faith is not required in taking a seat. Faith is not required for mundane tasks. Faith is not required in the natural world. Stating that one believes it will rain a profession of Faith. Confidence is NOT faith. Assurity is not Faith. Faith is the reason given when there is no good reason.
As might be assumed by this point, I am a skeptic. Perhaps I lean a mite heavily into being cynical about some things. I am less prone to believing what cannot be substantiated by evidence. I’m not one to give the benefit of the doubt quite as freely as I once was. By that I mean, with experience, one learns to discern details and extrapolate from them and compose a more complete picture than those details alone convey.
As an analogy, being able to recognize if the lion has already eaten is as valuable as recognizing the signs of the presence of the predator. Seeing the unsteady gate of the lion might indicate that it is on the verge of sleeping off a meal. A slight drooping of its eyes may support that inference. If its stomach is distended, one should not have to actually witness a bloody muzzle to assume the lion has fed recently and therefore would not present the usual danger of wanting to feed on you.
Away from the savannah, in the company of modern human predators, a glib verbal delivery of smooth non-sequitur plus a glad-handing demeanor might warn of a con-man or a politician, or a life insurance salesman, not to slice too fine a hair.
If your brother, who doesn’t normally speak to you, suddenly gets chummy, you can count on being asked for a loan. If your child sidles up with a sheepish grin, you know that disturbing news may be delivered. The list of examples in most relationships is endless. One learns to read the room.
So, when a slyly grinning numpty asks if I ‘believe’ in the ‘Big Bang’, or ‘Darwinism’, it’s certain that my hackles will rise and my conversation will be couched in snark. It is certain that the ensuing conversation will be baited with non-sequiturs and false equivalencies which will each require a detour from the main topic in order to address and debunk what the ‘Believer’ believes; what the ‘Believer’ takes on Faith.
To quote another pop song, ‘But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away.’
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