#Philosophy

I passed a dead possum on the road today. Its face was turned towards me and its eyes were open, staring at me, with stains of blood that had poured out of its eyes when it was dying.

What is this possum’s life worth? What is our own life worth?

As someone who no longer believes in the existence of an afterlife or an omniscient invisible being that’s pulling all of the strings, I have a new perspective on the meaning of life. The answer for me has merely become to live.

Living is being in the moment; observing nature; focusing on your breathing; tasting food; smelling pleasant scents; drinking water; intimacy; rest; and feeling the sun give you warmth.

As humans, we allow our complexities and higher reasoning to stack, smother, and obscure what it means to be alive. We build and participate in social constructs that enrage us or cause us severe depression. We become chronically anxious and will either eat too much or not enough. We commit ourselves to debt for things we don’t need, enabling what we owe to become the master of our future actions.

Am I that possum? Are we all that possum after you strip away all of the social constructs that forever occupy our minds?

For me, the possum is a reminder that life is short and our bodies are fragile. It’s a reminder to step away from the fictions we’ve created and participate in, and to reset my body and mind with things that are simple and true, like breathing, resting, smelling, feeling, helping, and loving.

I will continue to create, participate, and do all of the things that I just mentioned that make life messy. But I’ll also try to be mindful and attempt to remain tethered to what is simple and real.

Information is the enemy of religion. There's a direct correlation between access to dissenting, logical information about religion and one's beliefs and devotion to it. This becomes exasperated when you introduce cultural phenomena, like the mixture of politics and religion that are incongruent with each other and society as a whole. This is especially true for younger believers whose minds are more capable of plasticity.

My philosophical status as a None came from a direct result of religion mixed with politics. I was an Evangelical Christian for the first three decades of my life, but something significant happened in the early 2000s. I watched in dumbfounded despair as Christians across America were mindlessly controlled by fear-based rhetoric from our President and his Administration. It resulted in Christian books being published about when war was okay with God and the politicization of the pulpit. At the time, it was obvious to me that not only was the Administration lying, but the idea of rushing into the war was incongruent with my beliefs and scripture as I knew it. It was the first time I had ever witnessed firsthand the power of fear and groupthink.

That moment in time – a lying President, fear-based rhetoric, and blind devotion – was the catalyst for my six-year-long deconversion away from Christianity. The internet played a significant role in my ability to find and access information. However, there was also an agnostic and atheist book publishing Renaissance during that time. Some of the books I read were considered heretical, like Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, which shed light on the origins of the Bible and questioned the validity of Jesus. While others were thoughtful, provocative, and atheistic in nature, like Christopher Hitchens' god is not Great and Sam Harris' The End of Faith. Without the internet and access to those books, it's possible that I could still be clinging to my faith and suffering from even worse cognitive dissonance.

It's now 2017 and one month into Trump's presidency. Trump brings an entirely new degree of incongruence between his ideology and Christianity. Taking into account 1) the continued trend away from religion; 2) access to more philosophical and dissenting views via the internet and books; and 3) the coupling of the Trump presidency with conservative Christians (a true deal with the devil), I expect a new wave of Nones as a result. If you want to know how to kill your own religious relevance within society and among an entire generation, all you need to do is sit back and watch how conservative Christians are self-destructing through their myopic worldview and desire for theocracy.

In a world of games like Candy Crush, game creators borrow from psychology to intentionally make their games as addictive as possible. Players then allow these games to rob them of their precious time. Time away from socializing, relating, loving, and even creating.

If the game creators are lucky, they can make a lot of money. The end result is a profitable company and a sea of people who wasted their time and potential on nothing.

And then you have Flappy Bird.

The creator of Flappy Bird wrote the game in a week and over time, it became one of the most successful games on iTunes. At its peak, it was making $50,000/day in advertising. And then Dong Nguyen, the game's creator, removed it.

Dong Nguyen told Forbes:

“Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed.”

“But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone forever.”

Lan Anh Nguyen, Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Says App 'Gone Forever' Because It Was 'An Addictive Product', Forbes

So there you have it. Dong Nguyen is the only person looking out for your best interests in this cold and dark gaming world. He would rather you do something with your life than allow himself to get filthy, stinking rich.

---

Update March 11, 2014

Rolling Stone caught with Dong Nguyen and was able to get him to further elucidate his decision to pull the game.

But the hardest thing of all, he says, was something else entirely. He hands me his iPhone so that I can scroll through some messages he's saved. One is from a woman chastising him for "distracting the children of the world." Another laments that "13 kids at my school broke their phones because of your game, and they still play it cause it's addicting like crack." Nguyen tells me of e-mails from workers who had lost their jobs, a mother who had stopped talking to her kids. "At first I thought they were just joking," he says, "but I realize they really hurt themselves." Nguyen – who says he botched tests in high school because he was playing too much Counter-Strike – genuinely took them to heart.

By early February, the weight of everything – the scrutiny, the relentless criticism, and accusations – felt crushing. He couldn't sleep, couldn't focus, didn't want to go outdoors. His parents, he says, "worried about my well-being." His tweets became darker and more cryptic. "I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine," read one. "But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it." He realized there was one thing to do: Pull the game. After tweeting that he was taking it down, 10 million people downloaded it in 22 hours. Then he hit a button, and Flappy Bird disappeared. When I ask him why he did it, he answers with the same conviction that led him to create the game. "I'm master of my own fate," he says. "Independent thinker."

David Kushner, The Flight of the Birdman: Flappy Bird Creator Dong Nguyen Speaks Out, Rolling Stone

Near the end of the article, the author, David Kushner, asked him "will Flappy Bird ever fly again?" His answer was maybe, but it will have to come with the warning, "Please take a break."

My parents taught me that I was God’s creation and that I was loved unconditionally by Him. They told me that the Bible was God’s Word and that it was perfect (something the Bible conveniently states about itself). They made it clear that all things good come from God, that Christianity was the source of all morality and that everything good in this world comes from it. I later learned that was all bullshit.

My parents never told me the full story.

Misinformed

In the first few years of my deconversion from Christianity – something that didn’t happen until my early thirties and took about six years – I had the feeling that I had been lied to. Lied to by my parents. Lied to by the church. Basically lied to by all of the people I trusted most.

Why hadn’t anyone told me about the full history of the Bible? Like how exaggerated orally transferred stories had made their way onto paper and were altered countless times. How this religion was historically used for political purposes to unite people under a single god and belief system. How Christianity is a fairly new religion, borrowing and stealing from the traditions of other mystical belief systems that came before it.

As far as I knew, Christianity had been around for a long time, everything else was a false religion, and that’s all I needed to know.

Inherited Ignorance

If you tell a lie, but don’t know it’s a lie, is it still a lie?

Coming to the realization that I was just another victim of generational ignorance — not a vast conspiracy perpetrated by those I loved the most — greatly improved my feelings about being lied to. Without the intention of lying, I didn’t feel lied to. Instead, I felt misinformed by those who had also been misinformed.

My parents never got the full story. Their parents never got the full story. I realized nobody ever gets the full story.

I can’t haz Enlightenment

Obvious examples of misinformation include news sources like MSNBC, Fox News or the bat shit crazy Glenn Beck. Less obvious examples include any source I implicitly trust. In the same way I implicitly trusted my parents and the church, I must accept that whatever enlightenment I think I have now is ultimately still an illusion.

For example, Sam Harris’ general philosophies resonate with me today, but it’s doubtful he communicates the full story through his writings. He most certainly leaves out details that he thinks are insignificant to the arguments he’s making. He also has probably never been a true believer of any religion like I have, and therefore lacks the ability of knowing what it’s like to feel the presence of God.

Sam Harris is incapable of telling the full story, just as I am incapable of perceiving and comprehending it. It’s part of the human condition.

A Fullish Life

No matter how much I read and learn, I will most certainly die not knowing the full story. The best I can do is to continue to seek out truth, as best as I can comprehend it.

If I can do anything with this knowledge of my chronic lack of knowing, it’s to be more patient with those I don’t agree with, and to try to be less of a dick.

Some of the simplest and shortest sayings that people use in U.S. culture are actually overly complicated and philosophically wrong. They're used to comfort those who are anxious or emotionally stressed, much like the religious institutions they are connected to.

Take for example the saying, "everything happens for a reason." It's something that people tell others to imply that God has a hand in certain (or all) events, and it's okay, because the circumstances must be connected to something bigger than them – a master plan.

As a freethinker – one who espouses logic, reason and science – a more correct saying would be:

"everything happens for a reason"

While coincidences occur in practically everyone's life, in most (if not all) cases the things that affect us are a response to stimulus from an incomprehensible system. There is no plan as the superstitious would have us believe. Everything just happens, period. We must deal with it, whatever it may be, if we can.

There's another saying that's become popular near where I live, and that's, "it's gonna be ok." Or better known as IGBOK. The "ok" part means it will be okay after death, when you're in Heaven, blah, blah, blah. Not exactly helpful for the here and now, unless of course you long for death and can't wait to live in your fictitious resting place for eternity.

I prefer the more existential statement of:

"it's gonna be ok"

At the root of these sayings is a desire to provide comfort to another person (which is obviously not a bad thing in and of itself). However, in the same way that all religions are used as a coping mechanism for our limited and sometimes miserable existence, all these sayings really do – philosophically speaking - is provide false hope.

I was thinking about ignorance today. I realized – I doubt for the first time – that ignorance is not just one thing. There are different types of ignorance. Different reasons and circumstances for why people experience ignorance.

Incapable of knowing ignorance

Some people are ignorant because their life circumstance doesn't permit them to know. They could live in another country and be ignorant of a cultural folkway – one that's never been discussed on the Internet or in any book. Or they could be mentally incapable of understanding something.

Choose not to know ignorance

This is the "ignorance is bliss" type of ignorance. This can be conscious or unconscious denials of facts. A mother who refuses to accept that her son is gay or a Christian who refuses to follow a logical thought pattern for fear of finding an answer that is inconsistent with their beliefs.

Influenced to not know ignorance

Then there are people who are suffocated by those around them. A religious family that shuns any education that isn't inspired by their own canon and rituals, forcefully and intentionally keeping their children from experiencing a world view that would deviate from their own family traditions.

Not knowing how to know ignorance

There are those who lack the tools and skills to research, learn and build upon their knowledge. Even if they wanted to know more, they wouldn't know where to begin.

Stupid ignorance

Then there are those who refuse to live mindfully, and allow their impulses to drive their behaviors and are unable to take the time to experience empathy or understand the world around them. They experience the worst kind of ignorance. The kind that makes everyone's lives a living hell.

Since my wife and I became freethinkers – we were formerly evangelical Christians – we've had many discussions about the culture our children are growing up in. We are Southerners, and we live in a neighborhood that is predominantly protestant. Almost everyone we come into contact with goes to church, and their kids are active in church-related activities. While this concerns my wife, it doesn't concern me. The main reason is the Internet.

Since the mainstream adoption of the Internet, I've been predicting that it would forever change religion – especially for teenagers and young adults. The main reason for this is access to knowledge.

My wife and I grew up protected from dissenting views of our faith. We were lied to (or not told enough information) about the origin of the Bible and the true history surrounding our religion, let alone all religions. Our parents and our churches used an age-old method used by all religions, which was to relentlessly educate us from a young age with a myopic worldview – one that was severely sanitized.

That approach still happens today, but something now changes when those kids become teenagers. They gain uncensored access to the Internet.

My prediction has been that access to knowledge on the Internet will forever change the religious landscape in the US. Unlike when I was a teenager, there are now numerous resources like the ExChristian.net and Think Atheist communities, books like Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why and The God Delusion, and movies like Religulous.

Based on new research by the Barna Group, my prediction (a prediction that is not unique to me) may be coming true.

Researchers found that almost three out of five young Christians (59 percent) leave church life either permanently or for an extended period of time after age 15.

While it may take another decade to see real change in our traditionally superstitious society, I believe the demise of make-believe in American society is now only a matter of time. This not only gives me hope for society, but it also gives me hope for my children.

I live in a neighborhood (just South of Nashville, TN) with a lot of evangelical Christians. This seeming majority belief in my community is usually not a big deal. The only time it gets annoying is when leaders force a truly evangelical prayer onto the festivities – something that was done a few weeks ago at our neighborhood Fourth of July celebration. It's completely inappropriate and insensitive to those who believe differently, but in the grand scheme of things, it's still not a big deal to me. For me, it's no different from having a leader thanking a Sun god or asking for a blessing from ancestral spirits. It's all just modern-day mythology, and I'm just happy nobody is sacrificing a goat or worse a virgin.

While I tolerate the evangelical god-speak at community events and in neighborhood email newsletters, there is one thing that has me continually irritated, and that's IGBOK. It irritates me because it's a patronizing statement based on false hope.

It's gonna be

The first part of IGBOK I agree with. At least they recognize what I would call the ineffectiveness of prayer.

God's "o.k." doesn't mean that the cancer will be healed, the relationship fully restored, the physical pain or emotional ache will go away in this life.

However, the second part – the O.K. part – is based on delusional false hope. The hope that even if life is a giant ball of shit, you will still spend a blissful eternity with God.

It means that because He has entered and overcome our brokenness...we can live this life with real hope — a hope that knows one day everything will be set right forever in the life to come.

Hope is the drug of choice for Christianity and many other religions. Similar to antidepressants, the false hope of life after death is meant to mask reality so you can better cope with your problems. All you have to do is believe.

Is religious hope a bad thing? I don't have a good answer for that. If the hope for a better afterlife helped keep my daughter from killing herself, or my son from living in despair now, then I would be more accepting of it, regardless of my own philosophical differences. That's simply based on wanting my children to be happy and to thrive.

However, like most drugs, there are side effects. In order to sustain hope powered by religion, a person must fully immerse themselves into its religious dogma. That means a denial of what is rational and logical (from a scientific perspective), and buying into a worldview that perpetuates exclusion and hates onto other people in the name of love.

Philosophically, I think the only true statement that can be made is, "It's gonna be."

As I've written before, the idea that anyone can explain the existence of life, let alone what happens after we die, is greater than or equal to bullshit. For me, clinging to a mistruth during a time of grief is both living on false hope, and dishonest to your being.

If you take away all of the things that cannot be observed – the superstitious beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation, and whose origins can only be attributed to human imagination and creativity – we are left with existentialism. There was a time when we didn't exist, and now a time when we do exist. And like all living things, we will return to the same state as before we existed. There is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise, even though our survivalism mixed with higher reasoning would have us believe otherwise.

"It's gonna be." There's nothing that comes after that, and that's O.K.

It's important to know why you believe. As a Christian, I believed what I thought to be true. As I came to the realization that what I believed may not be true, my desire for it to remain true kicked in. I wanted there to be a loving God – a savior named Jesus – to care for and watch over me. I wanted to believe that as a human being, I was somehow special and would live forever. All of the things that had no proof, I still wanted to be true.

I think many religious people are stuck between what they want to be true, and what they know to be true. It's a strange place that's full of functional denial and fortified by the groupthink of socializing with only those of like mind.

It takes great mental fortitude to deny what you want for that which is true. To accept that your desire to live forever is the survivalism of higher reasoning. That your relationship with Jesus is an imaginary friendship. That the supernatural is superstition, revealed through your fears and imagination.

Intelligent, logical, and rational Christians believe in spite of what is real because they want it to be true. It's only when they remove what they want, and settle for what is true, that they can live free of mental tyranny.

May 21st, 2011 has now come and gone, leaving everyone predictably un-raptured. The response from Harold Camping was almost exactly what Richard Dawkins predicted in the Washington Post.

I don’t know where he gets the money, but it would be no surprise to discover that it is contributed by gullible followers – gullible enough, we may guess, to go along with him when he will inevitably explain, on May 22nd, that there must have been some error in the calculation, the rapture is postponed too . . . and please send more money to pay for updated billboards.

That's close enough to Camping's response after his none event. However, what intrigued me most about Dawkins' comments was this.

In our case, as the distinguished astronomer and former president of the Royal Society Martin Rees has conjectured, extinction is likely to be self-inflicted. Destructive technology becomes more powerful by the decade, and there is an ever-increasing danger that it will fall into the hands of some holy fool (Ian McEwan’s memorable phrase) whose ‘tradition’ glorifies death and longs for the hereafter: a ‘tradition’ which, not content with forecasting the end of the world, actively seeks to bring it about.

There's a term for that – it's called self-fulfilling prophecy. There's nothing mystical about self-fulfilling prophecy because it requires 100% human intervention. If a person or group of people talk about and believe in a prophecy long enough, they will build a false reality around it. For example, if the existence of Israel is key to the continued validity of scriptures and prophecy, the powers that be will do whatever they can to fulfill its pre-ordained destiny.

A self-fulfilling prophecy is intriguing because it perpetuates irrational and illogical world views. It also, ever so subtlety, preserves sacred beliefs and enables global events and decisions that otherwise wouldn't occur. And in the worst-case scenario, as Dawkins' expressed, it may be the thing that instigates our own extinction event.

This Easter was especially enjoyable because it was spent without either of our parents (don't get me wrong, we both love and enjoy our parents). There was no pressure to go to church, have our children confused by the absurdity of Christian theology (including the belief that a half-human, half-god came back to life, and if you don't believe in him, you'll go to hell for eternity). Instead, we did an Easter egg hunt at our city zoo, and on Sunday we decided to go to a local park to enjoy and celebrate the real life around us.

The freethinking blogs I follow had some interesting thoughts for this Easter that I connected with. Jody Milholland posted thoughts about past Easter morning services.

Now, with Christianity a mere reflection in the mirror of my past, I am sure it was the serenity of being with the earth at that early morning hour, and with my mom, that made it so special. Because now, I can say with true freedom and gladness that my religion-inspired guilt, shame, and fear are buried. When I rolled away from the rock of spiritual oppression and bondage, I emerged a new person. I was raised from the dead, resurrected in new life. The old is gone the new has come. I have welcomed the change, the metamorphosis of leaving behind superstitions and fears and welcoming the experience of living fully in the present. No longer with remorse for my past sins or fear of an impending doomsday, I embrace my life with enthusiasm.

Marlene Winell exclaims it is we who are alive.

We emerge from the coma of conformity and stand blinking as we get our bearings. And then we realize “We’re alive!” Here and now, in this world. We pat our own bodies and notice they are real. We pinch ourselves. We look around and see the natural world and we allow ourselves to be moved, perhaps weeping with amazement.

Not to be outdone, Atheist Revolution posted an entry called Happy Zombie Jesus Weekend. While it's a little over the top–and by over the top, most definitely offensive to many Christians–the point made is very good. Like zombies, Jesus came back to life to claim our minds, err hearts.

There are laws that make up our universe – some of which we still don't understand or know even exist. As best we know, we're part of a great expansion. From the Big Bang, we are the consequences and the results of time and matter. Everything exists because of a natural structure to things.

If we are all on a continuum of some kind of great expansion, are we simply a reaction to a stimulus? Is our existence, our thoughts, our actions, simply nature playing out its natural, violent rhythm? I think the answer is yes and no. Yes, in that everything we are and do is a result (a reaction) of the structured, lawful existence of everything. No, in that the future is unknown and unlived.

There is a dichotomy between our existence and our behavior being predictable in hindsight, and the unknown chaotic future powered by our choices. A future that is most certainly predestined by the structured chaos of our universe and its mysterious properties.

For me, it reinforces the meaning of life. That is, to fulfill the purpose of our existence – to live vigorously to the end.

Religion masks our primal need to be safe, comforted, and to live forever, with the promise of the supernatural. However, when you strip away human nature, and the mind's capacity for imaginative thought and limitless denial, all that is left is the reality that what you're worshiping only exists inside your mind. Such is the case for prayer.

Prayer, like the belief in a god or gods, is a cultural and mental phenomenon. Part of my self-deprogramming from my Christian upbringing was to see what would happen if I stopped praying. While it wasn't scientific, because it was so subjective, it did show me that nothing changes significantly in your life when you do or don't pray. In fact, the only thing I experienced was a feeling of peace and freedom from the tyranny of having to worship and talk to an imaginary friend.

There have been several studies about prayer, most of which have been all over the place. Unsurprisingly, most studies were flawed or unduly influenced in some way. Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist, and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute conducted a meta-study on prayer, which concluded that there was no statistical difference between people who prayed and those that didn't. In some cases, prayer seemed to cause more harm than good.

A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving 40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

The other interesting thing about prayer is how it affects your decisions. I was reminded of the insidious nature of prayer by a recent post, The Deceit of Prayer. Not only does prayer deliver nothing, it also promotes inaction.

it traps a person into non action, into a pattern of passive waiting, of believing they are not able to control their lives, of waiting on someone/thing else to solve problems. To the extent that some people are unable to make any decisions without first waiting on god. How many people are trapped in destructive marriages waiting for god to heal their partners, to change their personalities, to make things better. How many wait for years, praying for god to get them the right job, and not taking control and going and doing whatever it takes? How many times have we read about children dying for lack of medical intervention - while parents pray and believe god instead?

While prayer may seem like the healthiest and best thing for a person to do, it may actually be a deterrent towards living a full life – similar to the mental and emotional shackles that religion imposes on its followers.

Until we understand how anything could exist – the beginning and cause of matter as we know it – there is no reasonable explanation for how or why we exist.

Theology presents an imaginative fabrication of our existence, quenching our mind's desire to never die. Our inherent superstitious tendencies attempt to accept a metaphysical meaning that has no grounding in reality. Yet, for all human cultures, there is a clinging to folklore, and a suspension of rational and logical thought for explanations that serve three prevalent desires.

1. We desire to know why we exist
2. We desire to know the purpose and meaning of events in our life
3. We desire the ability to live forever.

The latter is experienced by all living animals, in the form of conscious and unconscious survivalism. However, when higher reasoning is introduced – present in all fully-functioning human beings – all three desires become what a psychologist might call unresolved conflict.

Religions provide the most cohesive and tangible answer to these desires. For the superstitious, answers provided by religions are logical and reasonable. This is true, but only when considered in ignorance of facts and history, and void of true critical thought.

Science has shown us attributes of our observable universe and has exposed religious explanations for what they are, complete bullshit. The interesting thing about science is that it doesn't quench our desires, it only strives to answer them. Science says that we can physically observe a universe that appears to have evolved, and was most likely started by something called The Big Bang.

Science doesn't explain or offer any factual explanations as to why we exist. It's not that science doesn't want to know these answers, because it most certainly does. The reason it takes this position is that based on our current knowledge, to provide an answer would be greater than or equal to bullshit.

One of the most challenging things about leaving the faith of your parents is raising their grandchildren as freethinkers.

Freethinkers who have come from evangelical homes, like me, know the intense social pressure that comes from their extended family. This is especially true when the grandparent believes you're leading their grandchildren straight to hell!

There's a song by David Bazan – someone who has also gone through a major faith transition – that fully understands the position that freethinking parents find themselves in. His song, Bearing Witness, captures exactly how I feel as a parent, but also repurposes religious vernacular to offer encouragement to those who have chosen a rational and logical belief system, and parenting style.

I clung to miracles I have not seen
From ancient autographs I cannot read
And though I've repented
I'm still tempted, I admit
But it's not what bearing witness is

Too full of prophecy and fear to see
The revelation right in front of me
So sick and tired of trying to make the pieces fit
Because it's not what bearing witness is

When the gap between
What I hoped would be
And what is makes me weep for my kids
I take a cleansing breath
And make a positive confession
But is that what bearing witness is

Though it may alienate your family
And blur the lines of your identity
Let go of what you know
And honor what exists
Son, that's what bearing witness is
Daughter, that's what bearing witness is

Lyrics from the song Bearing Witness on the album Curse Your Branches by David Bazan

The last paragraph is the most powerful statement for me. Every parent that has experienced a transition from make-believe to freethinking, has felt the alienation from their family, and initial blurring of their identity. For me, it includes a loss of intimacy. I no longer have the ability to talk deeply or philosophically with my parents, because the foundation of our belief system and world views are so deeply opposing.

I feel fortunate and hopeful though because I'm in the unique position to help stop the superstitious beliefs that have accompanied my family lineage for as long as anyone can remember. Bazan put that reality into a more concise statement, by naming his album Curse Your Branches.

When I first started seriously questioning the validity and truth of my now past faith, I created a list of hard questions. These were questions that I didn’t have the answer to, and most, if not all of them, held the potential to dislodge my worldview. One of those questions was:

“What’s the difference between Jesus and an imaginary friend?”

The question at first seemed absurd, but I knew it had to be answered. When I initially researched it, I found out that the official psychological term for it was “imaginary companion.” I thought companion was a fitting word for how I and most Christians view their relationship with Jesus.

The more I pondered my own belief in Jesus, and what it meant to have an imaginary companion, the more it looked exactly the same. I would constantly ask myself how this could be. How could so many people have the same imaginary friend? Not only that, how could rational adults believe in an imaginary friend, let alone, the same one?

Imaginary friends, which are usually experienced by children to combat loneliness or an emotional deficit in their lives, have names, unique characteristics, and most of all, provide companionship. Even though imaginary friends can’t be seen by the person who is imagining them (except in some rare hallucinatory cases), the person fully believes in their existence. They talk to them, depend on them, and often love them. The alternative to life without them is loneliness, and in some cases, despair.

In Christianity, if you bring together groupthink, a tendency to be superstitious (which includes every human being), religious doctrine, and the desperate need for hope and meaning in your life, then congratulations, you’ll be getting a new imaginary friend named Jesus.

The idea that everyone perceives Jesus, in the same way, is a fallacy. Jesus is experienced differently by everyone, even for those who are indoctrinated in the most homogeneous of religious sects. While the experience of Jesus may appear identical, that illusion comes from a religious group’s structured archetype of Jesus. The who and what of Jesus is a well-defined social construct. The rest is completely up to your mind’s imagination. That’s why Jesus talks to people in different ways, and why they ultimately experience their relationship with him in very unique ways.

During my journey into becoming a rational, logical freethinker, I had the opportunity to meet with a very popular Christian author. This person is very intelligent, has a background in psychology, and is someone who I continue to have great respect for. We met privately, and I presented him with my list of questions. As with most of the questions I presented to him, he didn’t have a reasonable answer for it. When I asked him what the difference was between an imaginary friend and the belief in a relationship with Jesus, he quickly conceded that there wasn’t a difference.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study on the religiosity of states. It measured three things; worship attendance, frequency of prayer, and belief in God. Unsurprisingly, the Southern states—also known as the Bible Belt—were found to be the most religious.

I thought it would be interesting to look at the five most and least religious states and compare statistics related to education, poverty, health, and death by firearms.

Five Most Religious States

1. Mississippi
2. Alabama
3. Arkansas
4. Louisiana
5. Tennessee

Five Least Religious States

1. New Hampshire
2. Vermont
3. Alaska
4. Massachusetts
5. Maine

When I compared the top five religious states with the top five lowest religious states, the results were dramatic. The most religious states were, on average, the least educated¹, poorest², and unhealthiest³. People in those states were also twice as likely to be killed by a firearm⁴. The differences were even more staggering when you removed Alaska from the least religious list. For example, you are almost three times as likely to be killed by a firearm.

Based on these correlations, one could conclude that there is a relationship between being religious and being less educated, having less money, being less healthy and owning, or at the very least, being killed by a gun. All four of which, even without including religion into the mix, usually have a direct relationship with each other.

Religion & Education

Education and access to knowledge have always been the enemy of religion. When critical thought, logic, and historical reference are applied to theology, it tears holes into its very foundation. It is no wonder that a culture that is better educated, especially philosophically, would be less religious.

Religion & Poverty

Desperation and fear create the greatest need for hope. Religion provides a pseudo-hope that people can easily cling to. Religion can be used both as a coping mechanism and an explanation for their current state of affairs. Poverty is often related to poor education, and both of those are often related to poor health.

Religion & Health

While education and poverty can have a direct influence on health, attitudes — specifically religious attitudes towards life — can influence health too. For example, if life after death will be angelic and perfect, there's really no need to concern yourself with living a healthy lifestyle. Especially if that means you'll get to heaven quicker ;)

However, I tend to think (from personal experience), that most people in the South comfort eat in order to get relief from the neurosis caused by following and believing in illogical superstitions.

Religion & Guns

At the core of most people's religious beliefs is fear. Fear of damnation and fear of death. It's that fear that makes it easy to believe in make-believe and it's that same fear that gets people to unnecessarily arm themselves.

Conclusion

While this article is intermingled with correlations (which aren't all that scientific), speculation, and personal opinion, I do think there are significant patterns within cultures that can be attributed to — both as a source and symptom — superstitious beliefs.

References

• ¹ "This fourth Smartest State designation is awarded based on 21 factors chosen from Morgan Quitno’s annual reference book, Education State Rankings, 2005-2006. Morgan Quitno Press, 2005
• ² Percent of People Below Poverty Level in the Past 12 Months (For Whom Poverty Status is Determined). American Community Survey 2004
• ³ Health Index by state. "The Healthiest State designation is awarded based on 21 factors chosen from the year 2005 edition of our annual reference book, Health Care State Rankings. Morgan Quitno Press, 2005
• ⁴ Number of Deaths Due to Firearms per 100,000 Population, 2002. statehealthfacts.org

Related Articles

• Does More Education Lead to Less Religion?

We see, smell, taste, touch, and hear the environment around us, and then our minds (both unconsciously and consciously) create realities based on what our senses tell us. We generally believe that we are experiencing all there is to perceive, and we make assumptions based upon those perceptions, which ultimately shape our actions, worldview, and ideologies.

Without our senses, we wouldn’t be able to thrive and understand the world around us. Yet, at the same time, we are severely limited by our senses. This is especially true when we compare ourselves to other animals. Although human beings have a unique trait of higher reasoning and self-awareness, our reality may actually be a limited, illusory perception.

When individual senses are directly compared to humans and other animals, we look primitive in comparison. In fact, there is an entirely different reality being experienced by amphibians, fish, mammals, birds, insects, and reptiles. These enhanced senses undoubtedly shape an entirely unique perception of existence for the life of these animals.

Unique Animal Senses

Sight

• Some insects like ants can see polarized light, while some fish can see infrared light.
• Cats have a mirror-like membrane in the backs of their eyes that lets them hunt and move in almost complete darkness.
• The eyes of insects and birds are attuned to wavelengths of light outside the visible range that humans see in

Smell

• A Silkworm Moth can detect pheromones up to 11km away
• Snakes smell with their tongue, which collects scent particles in the air, and then makes contact with the Jacobson’s organ, located on the roof of the mouth.

Taste

• A pig's tongue contains 15,000 taste buds compared to the 9,000 taste buds that a human has.

Touch

• Rats use the long hairs in the same way that blind people use canes. By whisking the hairs across objects they come across, rats and other rodents form mental pictures of their surroundings.
• Butterflies have hairs on their wings to detect changes in air pressure.

Hearing

• Dogs can hear sound as high as 40,000 Hz.

Additional Senses

• Migrating birds use the Earth’s magnetic field to stay their course during long flights. One recent study suggests birds might have a form of synesthesia that lets them "see" the planet's magnetic lines as patterns of color or light that are overlaid on their visual surroundings.
• Bats and dolphins use echolocation for movement and locating objects.
• Sharks have specialized electrosensing receptors with thresholds as low as 0.005 uV/cm. These receptors may be used to locate prey. The dogfish can detect a flounder that is buried under the sand and emitting 4 uAmp of current.

A Different Reality

The limitations of our senses raise unlimited questions about what we perceive as our reality. For example, the following questions immediately come to mind:

1. What would our relationships be like if we had a heightened sense of pheromones?
2. What would our environment tell us, and how would we interact with it if we could see polarized and infrared light?
3. How would we interact with our environment if we could hear sounds from far away and at different spectrums?
4. What would it be like if we could use echolocation to determine where we go and how we identify objects?
5. If we could taste like a pig, would we be overly consumed with taste and eating (more so than we are now)?

When spiritualists claim that there is much more beyond what we can perceive, they are absolutely correct. Except in our case, it has more to do with our limitation to perceive our environment and our higher-reasoning’s desire to survive and live forever. Our limited perceptions, coupled with our survival instincts, contribute to our inability to fully comprehend our true reality and fuel our instinctual superstitious behavior.

So why don’t we have these enhanced senses? The answer is simple. The process of evolution decided we didn’t need them to survive and thrive.

References

• Neuroscience for Kids - Animal Senses
• Amazing Animal Abilities | LiveScience