So recently I've been thinking a lot about God. Actually, I've been thinking a lot about God since I was three. I am not a fan of trying to convince other people to believe in God. I can give reasons that I believe in God, but I think, that while there are rational arguments both for and against God's existence, ultimately, the decision to believe, like the decision to disbelieve, requires a leap of faith.
I recently realized however, that while many people disbelieve in God on the grounds that it is "irrational", no one seems to disbelieve in human emotions, like love or happiness, even though they are not rational. How can I prove happiness exists? I can say I feel happy. I can say people say they feel happy. I can also say I feel God and know people who say they have felt God's presence - why is one more irrational than the other?
I think this is especially true in the case of love: How do we know love exists? Maybe it is psycho-sexual tricks our mind and body play on us, that we call love. We simply mislabel: Evolutionarily, we were meant to reproduce, and if we realized our bodies are duping us for that purpose, we wouldn't want to be in relationships, so our minds came up with this adaptation, this myth of love that enables us to create stable families, which up our chances of producing offspring that survives to pass on its genetic material to the next generation. We already know that our bodies and minds are capable of a) playing tricks on us b) coming up with adaptations to better enable us to pass on our DNA - yet most people, even staunch atheists, would rather agree in this wholly irrational, inexplicable theory of love. Why?
I mean, I can't even prove I have a soul, or that I exist. I can make logical, rational arguments for the latter, but I can't prove it, beyond the shadow of that doubt - I take a leap of faith. Yes, this leap is based on reason, but at the end of the day, it is faith that moves my belief in my own existence from "highly probable", to "certain".
I think human existence is composed of faith, of things that can not be explained purely by reason, and to try to do so, is to underestimate human nature and the richness of human experience on this earth. Yes, it is important to use logic: Do not buy the car you can't afford just because it looks pretty - that would be irrational. Yes, take the medicine the doctor prescribed, using an evidence-based scientific method. But don't expect the reason you love your wife and only your wife, from among the hundreds of beautiful woman you've come into contact in, to be explained solely through science or logic. Some facets of human life can not be reduced to empirical evidence or rational arguments - and that is ok. To my mind, one of the flaws of modern, secular culture, is that it is too quick to discount that fact of human nature. Life does not mean having to choose. It can mean being an engineer and a passionate lover, even if you can't rationally explain the reason behind your love. It can mean being a scientist, or even a Biblical critic, and still believing in God.
Just to play the devil's advocate, I think there are a few points to be made.
ReplyDelete1) Emotions are actually demonstrable. Different emotional states can be read out of brain activity - when people feel X, the brain looks one way, and when they feel Y, the brain looks another way.
2) Even if they weren't, emotions are a reflection of our own personal state. You can't prove to someone else that you feel happy, but all you're trying to prove is your own mental state - you can't tell someone they feel happy.
3) In contrast, God is, in standard belief systems, an external entity. That means God has relevance and existence irrespective of you. If there is some personal feeling you are referring to as God's presence, you don't have to justify your feeling to anyone else, but if you want to claim that it's being caused by a literal entity outside of your brain, that's a matter for which your claim that you feel God is not sufficient.
4) Love is *totally* an evolutionary adaptation as you describe it. And I don't particularly care :) It doesn't change my *experience* of love to know that it's controlled by/represented by a set of molecules and hormones interacting with my neurons in particular ways, even though that is absolutely known and demonstrable.
I think that's the main problem with God - it's one thing to say your subjective experiences can remain undemonstrable and still be valid; it's another thing to argue that an external entity is objectively undemonstrable and have that claim be valid. Not everything may be subject to empirical analysis, but some things are if you want to claim them as existent outside of a subjective experience.
I've been having a lot of conversations about rationality and emotions recently. I can't really reproduce them all here, but they've been on my mind.
Some thoughts :)