<Discussion continued from "The Origin of
God">
Susie - Question though, why would BELIEF be a virtue?
Why would all powerful beings spend their time devising ways to trick people
into unbelief? Why, really why, does God care if we suppose he exists? Is he
really so insecure of his own reality that he feels it's awfully important for
his children to believe he exists? I can understand a superior being concealing
his identity, and not blatantly walking around the planet. If I was running an
experiment on a planet, I would do the same thing. However, it makes no sense
why a superior being would remain almost completely hidden, and still require
his subjects insist that he really is there. It makes no sense that he would
actually judge us on how certain we are of his reality. If knowing he existed
was so vitally important to him, how about he just... I dunno... Makes himself
known. It's because either no such person exists, or he does exist, and he
absolutely isn't concerned with our "level of belief." Belief is not
a virtue. It does not make you a more moral person, it does not make you a
kinder person. In fact, it's so frequently opposite. Some of the most difficult
people in the world are those that believe the strongest. As I have let go of
my need to "believe" in stories, I have become a better person, a
person Christ if he's real would get along much better with, a person who, if a
superior being is watching, would be much prouder of. There is no
monstrous, evil creature taking ideas of
how he can lead me astray to God, and God approves, because he likes tricking
people, because he's testing how strong I can "believe" despite
reason. I cannot makes myself any clearer, there is no one leading me astray.
This journey is my own, it came from my heart, it came from my head. The beauty
and truth I have discovered on this journey belongs to me and no one
else.
Are you familiar with the idea of memetics? I imagine
you are. The reason the concept of "belief" has persisted as a
standard for moral character, when belief does not inherently even GIVE you
more moral character, is because the idea itself is self-preservatory. So many
people believe that believing is good, because the very idea requires that you
believe it. It's the evolution of memes, ideas, the same way organisms evolve.
The same way viruses evolved because they happened to preserve and propagate
themselves, so that there were more of them. And the better they survived and
propagated, the more there were. Certain ideas in the mind behave the same way.
If you think about it, really think about, "belief" as a virtue is
almost completely arbitrary. Kindness. Loyalty. Confidence. These ideas clearly
translate into wellbeing and survival for an organism, but belief? It persists
because it happens to be a meme that viciously defends itself, and spreads from
parent to child, from preacher to investigator. It's as arbitrary as if it just
so happened that... Say... Crankiness was essential to your spiritual health.
It's very important that you hold onto your crankiness! Being cranky shows how
much you deserve to go to heaven. Those who aren't cranky, don't understand how
powerful it feels to snap at people. God has asked us to be cranky! Therefore,
display your crankiness often, to show your devotion to God.
I hope that after our discussions we can agree on a few
things,
1 ) It is possible that a framework exists for the natural
"evolution" of a God, making God's existence logical.
2 ) Because of the
many people who have experiences with prayer, the probability that a God exists
is very high.
3 ) Belief is a
virtue
4 ) It is logical to
have faith in God and therefore follow a religious practice.
5 ) It is possible to
have both belief and charity without sacrificing one for the other.
Your first question, "Why would belief be a
virtue?"
I completely agree with you when you talk about
memetics. I was actually thinking about
that before you posted about it. I think
that you bring up a great argument here.
It makes logical sense that cultures with no belief, had no belief
passed on. But eventually a belief might
be generated in a society, and if it has enough intrinsic qualities to motivate
others to belief it and spread it, it can be passed on. You could say that different beliefs are just
a bunch of memetics passed on to their kids and there is no intrinsic value in belief
and you would have an argument there.
Now, despite the strength of your argument, I would like to
build the case for "belief" being a virtue.
Per wikipedia, "A virtue is a positive trait or quality
deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and
good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting
collective and individual greatness."
I have three points to make in this case.
1 ) If disbelief is a vice, then belief is a virtue
2 ) Belief benefits humanity
3 ) It is logical that God would desire us to believe if it
has a spiritual function.
1 ) If disbelief is a vice, then belief is a virtue.
When I was young, I listened to my father tell me stories
about how God had influenced his life, answered his prayers, and given him
revelation by the spirit. When I was
young, I trusted my father to be an honest person. Because of this trust, I
believed in the stories and therefore in God.
If my father was lying about all of those experiences, then I could have
just sunk many of my following generations into a memetic trap with me
retelling my father's stories at reunions by the campfire.
But the thing is, everything my father said was consistent
with reality. I eventually had my own
spiritual experiences, which reconfirmed to me the reality of my father's
experiences. Now when I tell my
grandchildren my personal experiences, they will be affected by these memes.
But the reality is, the experiences are all consistent with
the gospel. They all make sense within a
religious framework. They are all 100%
true.
I grew up in a household that was honest and pure. My family members fully trusted each
other. I considered my younger brother
to be one of the most virtuous people on the planet. When my younger brother
tells me that he received an answer to his prayer, I do not doubt it. I believe him. I trust his character and integrity. And everything he says is consistent with a
religious framework that is logical.
As I grew into my teen years I began discussing some of the
spiritual experiences with a variety of people.
I was shocked that people were so quick to disbelieve. I was always the gullible one in school. I never expected those around me to
purposefully deceive in order to crack a joke.
I almost never told lies, and therefore had a worldview that imagined
that people were like me and could be honest and virtuous all of the time. I didn't realize that that was not the norm.
I quickly found that in my discussions with people about
spiritual experiences that those who did not believe in God were also the
people who did not trust others easily.
In fact, they didn't even trust members of their own family. These people lived with a world view that
"Hey, I have a habit of lying, therefore people around me are probably
just like me, liars.'
I found that I had a negative feeling around those types of
people. There isn't really anything you
can do for them. No matter what you tell
them, they won't believe you. They have
drunk the poison of their own lies and they are in a state of constant distrust
of others. It was as if they had given
up on the idea that trustworthy people could exist in the world and therefore
had no expectation for themselves to meet any standard of goodness. I did not view their disbelief as a virtue,
but rather as a vice. Rather that being
"liberated" from the captivity of "belief" they were
trapped in the illusion of a world that is unstable, unreliable, unhappy, and
lonely.
Belief, on the other hand, should be liberating. Belief means that you trust yourself and
conversely trust others. Belief means
you can live without fear. Belief means
that you don't give up on what is good in the world. Belief, as a function of trust, is a
virtue. It is a positive trait. It promotes and inspires individual goodness
and collective goodness. When you
believe in others, it makes them want to live up to that trust. When you give out the "belief"
vibe, others can sense it. Others can
tell when you give off that vibe because they instantly feel that you are
trustworthy long before they could know you well enough to determine that
factually. It promotes unity, love, and
mutual trust. The lack thereof implies distrust,
which works against love.
So generally, belief is a virtue. When you believe in yourself, you will begin
to believe in others. And when you
believe in others it opens you up to believing in God.
2 ) Belief benefits humanity.
Regardless of whether belief comes by the natural evolution
of memes or by God's influence, religion has useful functions in a society.
A. Belief supports
integrity in humanity.
I think
that it is logical to say that belief in a higher power reinforces the morals
of a society at any point in time. Each
culture develops moral codes for acceptable behavior in society. Moral codes are often enforced by the people
within that culture through a variety of rewards and punishments, whether social
or physical. Whenever an individual desires
go against the moral code, the human must decide whether or not to put the
moral code before or after his base desires.
The likelihood of the punishment can obviously influence the individual
to choose to follow the moral code and therefore benefit society. But when the likelihood of punishment is
small, the human may be more likely to violate the moral code. But belief in a higher power helps influence
a human to always want to follow the moral code. Belief reinforces integrity in all
situations regardless of whether or not you will get caught. Even if it isn't belief in a higher power,
belief in goodness, belief in virtue, or belief in anything positive is more
likely to keep a person following a moral code.
And that is good for humanity. If
a person doesn't believe in a higher power then they should at least believe in
right and wrong. But those who believe
in nothing are the most likely to violate moral codes and damage society.
B. Belief supports unity
of people in humanity.
Despite
common accusations against religion, religion has been one of the greatest
unifiers within humanity. The accusation
that religion causes wars is most likely an issue of correlation rather than
causation. Throughout history the people
who started wars wanted to start wars anyway.
Religion just helped them pick their targets better. And the people without religion were equally
involved in wars.
Judaism helped unify the Jews as they traveled around the
world in their diasporas. Whenever the
Jews became slaves, they focused on religion and were eventually able to unify
themselves, reclaim freedom, regroup, and build a great civilization.
Christianity helps unify people into churches. These churches provide support to people both
locally and globally. They benefit
humanity.
Buddhism is a very flexible religion but still helps people
develop unity. People gather to learn
Buddhism and meditate in Asia. They are a very peaceful people because of
it. When a typhoon struck Taiwan in
2009, I witnessed an impressive array of united Buddhists organizing themselves
and gathering to the disaster zones to help clean up.
Islam, back in the day, was very successful at creating a
peaceful empire where ideas could be exchanged and mathematics could be
developed.
They all have their own flavor of unity, but they do benefit
humanity.
And often it is the disbelievers who declare war on the
believers than one religion declaring war on another. Hitler didn't kill Jews because his religion
had a conflict with theirs. Chinese
Communists didn't persecute and massacre Fa Lun Gong members because their
religions conflicted. If Hitler or the
Chinese Communists had more belief in religion maybe things would have been
different.
3 ) It is logical that God would desire us to believe if it
has a spiritual function.
Belief has multiple spiritual functions.
A. Connects us to what we believe in
B. Helps us develop greater moral strength
C. Feeds faith which feeds repentance
A. Connects us to what we believe in
A bittersweet aspect of belief is that it connects us to
what we believe in.
God wants us to believe in him because it spiritually
connects us.
We can receive great spiritual strength by being connected
to him.
Likewise, fear of evil spirits is equivalent to believing in
their malevolent power and also connects us to them.
The more we believe in evil spirits the more power they have
over us.
I have very personal experience with both sides.
I have learned that a confident belief is the healthy
medium.
The confident belief is that you trust that the positive is
stronger than the negative, and therefore, despite your belief in the evil
spirits, you do not fear them. I believe
that this type of confident belief disarms them.
B. Helps us develop greater moral strength
It follows logically to say that
if God has all power, and
if God has all knowledge, and
if God is our father, and
if God loves us,
then
his teachings are for our good
his will is for our good
what he does is for our good
what he lets happen if for our good
Under this framework, we can understand that if this God
teaches us to believe in him, then it must be for our own good. If this God makes it hard for us to sense his
existence, then that must also be for our good.
You bring up a good question - Is it logical for God to both
make it hard for us to sense his existence and want us to believe in him?
This is a hard question because I can't say anything for
certain.
We don't necessarily know why God does what he does.
But to me, it is logical to think that God designed this
life to be a test or a place to develop ourselves.
It is logical to me to say that we need a lot of experience
in order to fully develop ourselves.
It is also logical that God would want us to mature
independent of him.
For example, a father wouldn't want a son to only do chores
when he is in town, but also when he is on business trips. A father must teach his son to be accountable
at all times, not only when he is around to enforce things.
Because of this, I think it is logical to say that acting
morally because of a belief helps us develop a stronger moral strength than
acting morally because of knowledge.
Basically, in the face of uncertainty, we still choose the right
path.
Therefore I think that it is perfectly reasonable and
logical to believe that God make it hard for us to sense his existence and
still want us to believe in him.
C. Feeds faith which feeds repentance
Belief is extremely important because it feeds faith and
faith feeds the rest of your spirituality.
In church, faith is the first principle of the gospel.
It is the center of everything.
The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart,
but you can't do that if you don't believe in him.
If you were to compare different religious principles to
different parts of the body, I would say that faith is the heart because it
feeds all the other parts of the body/religion.
It gives purpose and meaning to all of the moral principles you
believe.
Without faith, your moral compass is limited to "how do
things affect people/environment around me?".
But with faith, your moral compass extends to consider
"how do things affect God/spirituality/people/environment."
Because your moral compass is wider now, you begin to feel
guilt for things that affect God/spirituality negatively and try to change
those via repentance. These positive
behavior changes would never happen without belief. The side effect that you might have witnessed
is that sometimes people can put too much of their moral compass priority on
"God/spirituality" and to little of their focus on "people /
environment". You might have
realized in your journey that by eliminating "God/spirituality" you
were able to focus more of your energy on "people / environment" and
were able to be more charitable. But ultimately,
doing so reduces the scope of your moral compass.
Belief vs Charity
Now I would like to discuss with you the trade off between
belief and charity.
You mentioned that as a Mormon you felt like you had to pick
one or the other.
One analogy I learned from the Book of Mormon on my mission
was that the Nephite civilization could become a symbol for my own personal
spirituality. An example was in the book
of Helaman when Moroni fortifies all of the small cities. I began to form an analogy that each city
could represent a spiritual principle, like charity, virtue, kindness,
diligence, obedience, knowledge, patience, honesty, etc. But Moroni's only mistake was that in his
fortifications, he left the capital of the Nephite civilization in a weaker
state.
The Lamanites (symbolizing Satan's temptations) would attack
the small cities first and slowly inch their way towards the capital,
symbolizing Satan's efforts to start with small temptations and gradually get
to the core of our belief and destroy it.
The Lamanites attacked the small cities but were forced to
retreat because they were well fortified.
Perhaps a person is well developed in patience and honesty. When Satan tempts them in those areas he
makes little progress. But what happened
was one of the Nephites left and joined the Lamanites. Symbolically, part of an individual began to
sympathize with Satan's position. Once that
Nephite had switched teams, the Lamanites knew exactly which city was
weakest. It was their capital. The Lamanites marched straight through their
civilization and took over the capital in one sweeping blow.
Luckily, all of the small cities were able to regroup and
recover the capital. So investing in
"christlike" attributes pays off because they can be mobilized to
help you in other areas of your life.
But the key point here is the importance of faith. Sometimes there is a trade off between
fortifying faith and fortifying Christ-like attributes. Maybe this is part of what you were going
through as a Mormon. You felt that too
much faith left too little room for charity.
But you need to understand that they work together. Don't believe that they are mutually
exclusive. You can build up both of them
at the same time.
