Danielle and I received a card in the mail today from my mother. I couldn't for the life of me imagine what the card was for. Late for St. Patrick's Day; early for our anniversary. I racked my brain and, eventually, gave up and opened it. You probably saw this coming, I did not - it was an Easter card.
To put that another way, my mother sent us an Easter card; I literally have no idea when Easter is.
My mother and I? Not on the same page...
IBL:mm
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This imaginative infill is why we experience dreams as stories. As our nightime brain is at work on synthesizing memories, it insists on interpreting the images and ideas flashing through them in a narrative form. Alchoholics and patients with brain injuries that cause memory gaps sometimes "confabulate". When asked about missing chunks of time they make up stories about where they were and what happened. This is not intentional deception. it is the brain, faced with an impossible question, creating an answer. And once the answer is generated, the person whose subconscious created the history actually believes it.
ReplyDeleteOur compulsion to think in "stories", to ignore threads that don't fit the plot line, and to fill in any gaps, may be at the heart of the religious impulse.
As we learn more about the human mind, even the outrages of religious belief become more understandable. How can a college educated engineer think he just happened to be born into the one true religion? How can tourists who escaped a hurricane or plane crash believe that a god intervened to save them while letting others drown or burn?
It all becomes a bit easier to understand when you realize that we humans are only partly rational. Bias is our default setting, and most of the distortions happen below the level of conscious awareness. Understanding this may let us be a little more sympathetic toward otherwise smart, decent people who hold beliefs that make us cringe. It should also make us wonder about our own blind spots. But is puts Christianity as a system in an awkward position because Christianity sanctifies belief itself.
Christians call themselves believers. Philosopher Daniel Dennett calls their stance "belief in belief", which shines a light on one of the core problems Christianity must face. Arriving at belief in an infallible God by way of an inerrant Bible requires an unwarranted belief in yourself.
- Valerie Tarico, PhD Chapter 2 in the book The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails edited by John W. Loftus.