Fear of God - It's what makes us nicer: Study

[rousseau]

I am pleased that you do, I am sure you are also a kind and caring person too.



I find strange coincidences happen with action and prayer.

I find strange coincidences happen with action and no prayer.

The world population is about eight billion. One-in-a-million chances will inevitably happen to about 8,000 people. No gods are necessary to explain that.

Yep. With a basic knowledge of probability and statistics one realizes that the mind will inevitably recognize coincidences over time, and especially if you're concertedly looking for them.

What's interesting about this particular subject is that when I was verging on mania induced psychosis in 2006 I had adopted a belief in God because I started recognizing coincidences and attributing them to some concept of God. Eventually, I started looking for the coincidences and so they became more frequent. Anyway, it's interesting because I've literally experienced the process that believers go through. Turns out all it is is a cognitive bias and failure to see the coincidences that we notice as basically random and selected by us as meaningful.

Nowadays, I still notice coincidences, but I've gone a step further and am now aware of the things that my mind naturally points out and deems meaningful when they happen, rather than attributing them to some grand purpose.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I couldn't do the voluntary work of being a Street Pastor without prayer, last Friday we tried bringing calm to a large crowd of drunks who were fighting at 3 am. There were no police, and we spent about half an hour with a volatile crowd.

Hmm... what do you mean by prayer? Praying together works, in the sense that people spending time together acts to strengthen social bonds. I'd argue that is why it exists at all. But people praying in the privacy of their own homes is simply wasting time. It's worse than wasting time, because it might give them the delusion that they've actually done something for someone. Which might prevent them actually doing something useful.

I suffered from a lot of discrimination at work because of my faith, there were a dozen other employees with no faith, and I certainly did not try to convert any of them.

Well... adults having invisible friends will have to face distrust. Who knows if it's just religion or some sort of serious mental problem? So I understand them. Theist faith IS weird. I suggest keeping quiet about it. Sure, it's your right to free expression and so on. But why make life difficult for yourself?

 

[OLDMAN]

Belief in punitive deities key factor in more co-operative society, study finds.

Scientists have found a long-awaited explanation as to why humans have for centuries maintained orderly societies: the fear of an angry god.

This is true, unless you really think about it....but people who really think about things aren't the problem.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I find strange coincidences happen with action and no prayer.

The world population is about eight billion. One-in-a-million chances will inevitably happen to about 8,000 people. No gods are necessary to explain that.

Yep. With a basic knowledge of probability and statistics one realizes that the mind will inevitably recognize coincidences over time, and especially if you're concertedly looking for them.

What's interesting about this particular subject is that when I was verging on mania induced psychosis in 2006 I had adopted a belief in God because I started recognizing coincidences and attributing them to some concept of God. Eventually, I started looking for the coincidences and so they became more frequent. Anyway, it's interesting because I've literally experienced the process that believers go through. Turns out all it is is a cognitive bias and failure to see the coincidences that we notice as basically random and selected by us as meaningful.

Nowadays, I still notice coincidences, but I've gone a step further and am now aware of the things that my mind naturally points out and deems meaningful when they happen, rather than attributing them to some grand purpose.

I've observed identical behavior, namely mania inducing belief, which is why I hold that at some point in our distant past this behavior was much more common if not universal in humans, and that the beliefs, gods, spirits, religion we have today, are simply a legacy of those times.

Beyond that I consider myself fortunate in knowing that behavior induces belief, and not the other way around. Language is neither important nor necessary in understanding this aspect of being human. We simply act out mental behavior. And Language and writing is just putting a label on behavior. "Fear of God" is just another one of those labels, and quite meaningless I might add. All that matters is what people do. All beliefs are labels, which is why seemingly contradictory labels can describe identical behavior.

 

[Eric H]

Yep. With a basic knowledge of probability and statistics one realizes that the mind will inevitably recognize coincidences over time, and especially if you're concertedly looking for them.
.

I have found that good things happen with prayer.

I was verging on mania induced psychosis in 2006 I had adopted a belief in God because I started recognizing coincidences and attributing them to some concept of God. Eventually, I started looking for the coincidences and so they became more frequent.

In times when I should be feeling worried, fearful and anxious, I have found instead a profound sense of peace with prayer. A few years ago, I had tests done for cancer, about a month later the doctor phoned and said he urgently wanted to see me, it was non – Hodgkin Lymphoma, this was a name I recognised, our friend had this cancer, and died a few months later. I prayed for the wisdom, strength, peace and serenity to do God’s will, whether the cancer was a death sentence, or just an inconvenience. I can only say that from the moment of making this prayer, I have experienced a profound sense of peace, and the thought of cancer has never troubled me for a moment.

Cancer can be a truly worrying process, you wait a month or two for tests, you wait for the results, and you wait for more tests, but the prayer to do God’s will sort of handed the problem to God, and I have never had to worry. I have never once prayed for healing, at the age of 62, the prayer for healing seemed too complicated, it might or might not be my time to go. Recognising this profound sense of peace comes from God, gives me reason to be thankful.

I could not imagine this sense of peace without a faith and trust in God.

Nowadays, I still notice coincidences, but I've gone a step further and am now aware of the things that my mind naturally points out and deems meaningful when they happen, rather than attributing them to some grand purpose

What sort of coincidences happen for you?

 

[OLDMAN]

Eric: So you convinced yourself that you were going to die a physical death but not a spiritual one. In other words, you no longer believe in death or dying. Once convinced of this, it seems reasonable that you would have a sense of peace. But believing things to be true without proof is really a human personality fault. It leads to all sorts of bad behavior. It also makes the truth matter less. The real problem is we don't talk about death and dying like adults should. Every living thing dies, it is all around us, and yet for no real reason other than fear, we pretend it doesn't apply to us. Even the laws of thermodynamics conclude all energy must eventually fade. God is simply a security blanket for adults.

 

[Eric H]

Eric: So you convinced yourself that you were going to die a physical death but not a spiritual one. In other words, you no longer believe in death or dying. Once convinced of this, it seems reasonable that you would have a sense of peace. But believing things to be true without proof is really a human personality fault. It leads to all sorts of bad behavior. It also makes the truth matter less. The real problem is we don't talk about death and dying like adults should. Every living thing dies, it is all around us, and yet for no real reason other than fear, we pretend it doesn't apply to us. Even the laws of thermodynamics conclude all energy must eventually fade. God is simply a security blanket for adults.

If you say it is reasonable that my beliefs should lead to a sense of peace, why would you want to try and take that away from me? The way I understand my faith is, I cannot be at peace with God, if I do not try and be at peace with my neighbours. This should not lead to bad behaviour as you suggest.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Eric: So you convinced yourself that you were going to die a physical death but not a spiritual one. In other words, you no longer believe in death or dying. Once convinced of this, it seems reasonable that you would have a sense of peace. But believing things to be true without proof is really a human personality fault. It leads to all sorts of bad behavior. It also makes the truth matter less. The real problem is we don't talk about death and dying like adults should. Every living thing dies, it is all around us, and yet for no real reason other than fear, we pretend it doesn't apply to us. Even the laws of thermodynamics conclude all energy must eventually fade. God is simply a security blanket for adults.

If you say it is reasonable that my beliefs should lead to a sense of peace, why would you want to try and take that away from me? The way I understand my faith is, I cannot be at peace with God, if I do not try and be at peace with my neighbours. This should not lead to bad behaviour as you suggest.

I'll take a stab, because it's childish? It's one thing telling a child, "grandpa is now in a better place". But it's another believing it as an adult. The whole Christian concept of Heaven is preposterous. It's a convoluted idea that makes zero sense. Here's something I was told when growing up, "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is". How about applying that idea to the Bible?

The stubborn unwillingness to accept the obvious reality can lead to all manner of unhelpful and dangerous situations. The world is full of good examples of it. And we have a psychological bias towards this behaviour. So it's something we need to be aware of and constantly work on. The last thing we need is an organised religion validating the silly and dangerous beliefs.

I think there's two major ideas that we need to accept before we are truly adults. One is to accept that the universe doesn't give a fuck about us. It frees us from trying to please some imaginary father. It allows us to look inward and work on ourselves instead. The other is accepting and embracing the inevitable death. Too many people work incessantly on trying to distract them from this fact. Or as in Christianity, deny it outright. It's fear. It's not wanting to look at the scary thing and pretending it's not there. Like a child putting their fingers in their ears going "I'm not going to listen LA-LA-LA-LA". But fear is a prison. When you stop fearing death it frees you. It allows you to be happy for the the time we've got. That is true peace of mind, and true freedom.

Denying these two will make you a fearful slave, unable to cope with living a full life. The most tragic thing is that you'll be a slave to nothing and no one. Your head will be your own prison.

It's not easy doing this work and being Christian isn't helping things. It's making the world a worse place. Lies are always bad. No matter your good intentions.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Eric: So you convinced yourself that you were going to die a physical death but not a spiritual one. In other words, you no longer believe in death or dying. Once convinced of this, it seems reasonable that you would have a sense of peace. But believing things to be true without proof is really a human personality fault. It leads to all sorts of bad behavior. It also makes the truth matter less. The real problem is we don't talk about death and dying like adults should. Every living thing dies, it is all around us, and yet for no real reason other than fear, we pretend it doesn't apply to us. Even the laws of thermodynamics conclude all energy must eventually fade. God is simply a security blanket for adults.

If you say it is reasonable that my beliefs should lead to a sense of peace, why would you want to try and take that away from me? The way I understand my faith is, I cannot be at peace with God, if I do not try and be at peace with my neighbours. This should not lead to bad behaviour as you suggest.

I think you've basically got it. IMHO you don't seem to understand that religion is a vehicle for transferring cultural and societal values, and you've just taken the myths literally is all.

Adding to Zoidberg's two I propose a third way you've cheated yourself, and that is that you have not seriously thought about the human future.

Do you think there is a devil, the quintessential evil spaceman? If you do not, if you think that is a bunch of hooey, then kudos to you for breaking ranks with the Christian zombies.

 

[Eric H]

If you say it is reasonable that my beliefs should lead to a sense of peace, why would you want to try and take that away from me? The way I understand my faith is, I cannot be at peace with God, if I do not try and be at peace with my neighbours. This should not lead to bad behaviour as you suggest.

I'll take a stab, because it's childish? It's one thing telling a child, "grandpa is now in a better place". But it's another believing it as an adult. The whole Christian concept of Heaven is preposterous. It's a convoluted idea that makes zero sense. Here's something I was told when growing up, "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is". How about applying that idea to the Bible?

The stubborn unwillingness to accept the obvious reality can lead to all manner of unhelpful and dangerous situations. The world is full of good examples of it. And we have a psychological bias towards this behaviour. So it's something we need to be aware of and constantly work on. The last thing we need is an organised religion validating the silly and dangerous beliefs.

I think there's two major ideas that we need to accept before we are truly adults. One is to accept that the universe doesn't give a fuck about us. It frees us from trying to please some imaginary father. It allows us to look inward and work on ourselves instead. The other is accepting and embracing the inevitable death. Too many people work incessantly on trying to distract them from this fact. Or as in Christianity, deny it outright. It's fear. It's not wanting to look at the scary thing and pretending it's not there. Like a child putting their fingers in their ears going "I'm not going to listen LA-LA-LA-LA". But fear is a prison. When you stop fearing death it frees you. It allows you to be happy for the the time we've got. That is true peace of mind, and true freedom.

Denying these two will make you a fearful slave, unable to cope with living a full life. The most tragic thing is that you'll be a slave to nothing and no one. Your head will be your own prison.

It's not easy doing this work and being Christian isn't helping things. It's making the world a worse place. Lies are always bad. No matter your good intentions.

I think it is wonderful that you voluntarily help in a homeless shelter. My beliefs lead me to search for the good in all people.

 

[bilby]

I'll take a stab, because it's childish? It's one thing telling a child, "grandpa is now in a better place". But it's another believing it as an adult. The whole Christian concept of Heaven is preposterous. It's a convoluted idea that makes zero sense. Here's something I was told when growing up, "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is". How about applying that idea to the Bible?

The stubborn unwillingness to accept the obvious reality can lead to all manner of unhelpful and dangerous situations. The world is full of good examples of it. And we have a psychological bias towards this behaviour. So it's something we need to be aware of and constantly work on. The last thing we need is an organised religion validating the silly and dangerous beliefs.

I think there's two major ideas that we need to accept before we are truly adults. One is to accept that the universe doesn't give a fuck about us. It frees us from trying to please some imaginary father. It allows us to look inward and work on ourselves instead. The other is accepting and embracing the inevitable death. Too many people work incessantly on trying to distract them from this fact. Or as in Christianity, deny it outright. It's fear. It's not wanting to look at the scary thing and pretending it's not there. Like a child putting their fingers in their ears going "I'm not going to listen LA-LA-LA-LA". But fear is a prison. When you stop fearing death it frees you. It allows you to be happy for the the time we've got. That is true peace of mind, and true freedom.

Denying these two will make you a fearful slave, unable to cope with living a full life. The most tragic thing is that you'll be a slave to nothing and no one. Your head will be your own prison.

It's not easy doing this work and being Christian isn't helping things. It's making the world a worse place. Lies are always bad. No matter your good intentions.

I think it is wonderful that you voluntarily help in a homeless shelter.

This is a nice thing to say.

My beliefs lead me to search for the good in all people.

This is not a nice thing to say. This is passive-aggressive bullshit.

Your beliefs (so you are not doing it to be nice, or because you want to, but because it is required of you) lead you to search for the good in all people (because clearly it will need careful searching to find any good in people who don't share your beliefs).

This kind of passive-aggression has been honed by the church over at least a couple of thousand years, to give maximum coercion, while maintaining a plausible deniability that you have said anything unkind or unpleasant at all. You probably don't even notice that you are doing it - after all, it is designed to pass unnoticed by the conscious mind, and to worm away at the sub-conscious, making it clear that the person being 'praised' could be so much BETTER if only they conformed; This poor evil sinner has a germ of goodness in him, that he is sadly suppressing by his lack of faith. It is an awful thing to say; made worse by the fact that it is so difficult for the target of the back-handed insult to even articulate the reasons why he feels bad after hearing it - after all, on its face it is a complement, so he should be pleased, right?

But it's NOT a compliment - your second sentence negates your first. You should have quit while you were ahead, and just said "I think it is wonderful that you voluntarily help in a homeless shelter".

At that point, it was time to stop, lest you appear to be less charitable than you think you are being.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'll take a stab, because it's childish? It's one thing telling a child, "grandpa is now in a better place". But it's another believing it as an adult. The whole Christian concept of Heaven is preposterous. It's a convoluted idea that makes zero sense. Here's something I was told when growing up, "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is". How about applying that idea to the Bible?

The stubborn unwillingness to accept the obvious reality can lead to all manner of unhelpful and dangerous situations. The world is full of good examples of it. And we have a psychological bias towards this behaviour. So it's something we need to be aware of and constantly work on. The last thing we need is an organised religion validating the silly and dangerous beliefs.

I think there's two major ideas that we need to accept before we are truly adults. One is to accept that the universe doesn't give a fuck about us. It frees us from trying to please some imaginary father. It allows us to look inward and work on ourselves instead. The other is accepting and embracing the inevitable death. Too many people work incessantly on trying to distract them from this fact. Or as in Christianity, deny it outright. It's fear. It's not wanting to look at the scary thing and pretending it's not there. Like a child putting their fingers in their ears going "I'm not going to listen LA-LA-LA-LA". But fear is a prison. When you stop fearing death it frees you. It allows you to be happy for the the time we've got. That is true peace of mind, and true freedom.

Denying these two will make you a fearful slave, unable to cope with living a full life. The most tragic thing is that you'll be a slave to nothing and no one. Your head will be your own prison.

It's not easy doing this work and being Christian isn't helping things. It's making the world a worse place. Lies are always bad. No matter your good intentions.

I think it is wonderful that you voluntarily help in a homeless shelter. My beliefs lead me to search for the good in all people.

As do my beliefs. Well... sort of. I don't believe in good or evil. I believe that we're all just trying to get by in life. We all tell ourselves lies to help us cope. Some lies are more destructive than others. Whether an act is good or evil is an after-the-fact assessment. But I don't think people are motivated by either good or evil. Which means that people aren't inherently good or evil.

So I'd reformulate it. My beliefs lead me to search for the scared little confused child who years for love in all people. We've all got one. The hard part is to connect with it. That's what motivates me to volunteer at the homeless shelter. I think it's ultimately about my own exploration of myself. I do it to try to find what I have in common with these people. Turns out, quite a lot. And if it also leads me to helping people, great. I've a career climbing the corporate ladder, and I've been (in the middle-class capitalist sense) successful in life. I'm surrounded by people who struggle with staying humble and it limits them. It makes them fearful and weak. So work very hard on humbling myself. So volunteering at homeless shelters help. I approach every homeless person I meet (at the shelter) with the attitude that they can teach me things. In my head I elevate them above me. Makes my job there a hell of a lot more interesting, fun and rewarding. All this as a result of my faith (ie no faith).

And to yammer on about goodness. I think there's a danger in using the term "good" to describe people's nature. The way language works is that it works in dichotomies. As soon as you delineate and define you also exclude. If you call people good, you're also calling some people evil. It's impossible not to. It's just the way language works. If you say that all people are good, then you're saying nothing. If you have nothing to say, better to shut up, since you're just wasting everybody's time with nonsense.

This brings me to the category, of platitudes. I think they are extremely destructive. It allows people to believe they're doing good when they are doing nothing. It allows people to think of themselves as good people, even while they're hurting others. I'd put calling all people "good" in this category. There are better ways to say the same thing that doesn't exclude. Calling people good you start a mental exercise in people where they start looking for counter-examples, ie evil. Believing is seeing. If you give people the idea of good people they will start looking for and finding evil people all around them. And the worst thing is that it is automatic. We can't shut this off. So we should stop using the term good to describe people IMHO. People just do stuff to get by. It's motivated by neither good nor bad. It just is.

 

[iolo]

I think it is wonderful that you voluntarily help in a homeless shelter. My beliefs lead me to search for the good in all people.

As do my beliefs. Well... sort of. I don't believe in good or evil. I believe that we're all just trying to get by in life. We all tell ourselves lies to help us cope. Some lies are more destructive than others. Whether an act is good or evil is an after-the-fact assessment. But I don't think people are motivated by either good or evil. Which means that people aren't inherently good or evil.

So I'd reformulate it. My beliefs lead me to search for the scared little confused child who years for love in all people. We've all got one. The hard part is to connect with it. That's what motivates me to volunteer at the homeless shelter. I think it's ultimately about my own exploration of myself. I do it to try to find what I have in common with these people. Turns out, quite a lot. And if it also leads me to helping people, great. I've a career climbing the corporate ladder, and I've been (in the middle-class capitalist sense) successful in life. I'm surrounded by people who struggle with staying humble and it limits them. It makes them fearful and weak. So work very hard on humbling myself. So volunteering at homeless shelters help. I approach every homeless person I meet (at the shelter) with the attitude that they can teach me things. In my head I elevate them above me. Makes my job there a hell of a lot more interesting, fun and rewarding. All this as a result of my faith (ie no faith).

And to yammer on about goodness. I think there's a danger in using the term "good" to describe people's nature. The way language works is that it works in dichotomies. As soon as you delineate and define you also exclude. If you call people good, you're also calling some people evil. It's impossible not to. It's just the way language works. If you say that all people are good, then you're saying nothing. If you have nothing to say, better to shut up, since you're just wasting everybody's time with nonsense.

This brings me to the category, of platitudes. I think they are extremely destructive. It allows people to believe they're doing good when they are doing nothing. It allows people to think of themselves as good people, even while they're hurting others. I'd put calling all people "good" in this category. There are better ways to say the same thing that doesn't exclude. Calling people good you start a mental exercise in people where they start looking for counter-examples, ie evil. Believing is seeing. If you give people the idea of good people they will start looking for and finding evil people all around them. And the worst thing is that it is automatic. We can't shut this off. So we should stop using the term good to describe people IMHO. People just do stuff to get by. It's motivated by neither good nor bad. It just is.

Quite. As Jesus said, there is no one good save God - and gods are unlikely. We should all be helping one another to get by, until either we make a better world or - more likely - capitalism boils us and removes the problem.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

The whole good evil thing is quite destructive. It isn't really a good vs evil observation but rather perfection vs vile, disgusting, nasty, etc.

Christianity would have us believe that in the end there are these two stark choices and that everyone and everything is one or the other. I don't know how anyone with any intellect at all can live holding to that as it is so obviously impossibly fucked up. It stunts critical thought and observation, like some kind of drug, so easy that it can't possibly have value except perhaps to illuminate its own obvious lack of value.

 

[iolo]

The whole good evil thing is quite destructive. It isn't really a good vs evil observation but rather perfection vs vile, disgusting, nasty, etc.

Christianity would have us believe that in the end there are these two stark choices and that everyone and everything is one or the other. I don't know how anyone with any intellect at all can live holding to that as it is so obviously impossibly fucked up. It stunts critical thought and observation, like some kind of drug, so easy that it can't possibly have value except perhaps to illuminate its own obvious lack of value.

I was brought up an Anglican, and I never heard anyone talk like that. Don't you think that's just American excitability?

 

[migrant]

Although neither American, nor particularly excitable, I agree with joedad.
And I was brought up as Anglican.
I find it excruciatingly embarrassing to think that some of my contemporaries worship a defunct Israelite tribal war-god.
It's their inalienable right ---
But really....

 

[Kharakov]

That explains why Christians are so underrepresented in prison populations.

I laughed until a Christian slapped the soap out of my hand.

 

[Lion IRC]

...I agree with joedad.

You do? Which part?
He said...

The whole good evil thing is quite destructive.

But he didnt explain how or why it's "destructive". He just made a blunt assertion.
I would have thought it quite helpful to have a framework for moral ontology. (Whether you're an atheist or not)

He said...

It isn't really a good vs evil observation but rather perfection vs vile, disgusting, nasty, etc.

But surely evil is vile, disgusting, nasty, etc. Isn't it?
And if there is such a superlative heirarchy as 'good, better, best' why shouldn't we think of such a thing as perfectly good in the same way as we speak of such a thing as pure evil?

He said...

Christianity would have us believe that in the end there are these two stark choices

Surely the differences between right/wrong, good/evil, moral/immoral, heaven/hell, lawful/unlawful are so stark that we can reasonably label these words antonyms, opposites.

He said...

I don't know how anyone with any intellect at all can live holding to that as it is so obviously impossibly fucked up.

Well I hate to disappoint you but millions of pages have been written by intellectuals, philosophers and ethicists on the subject of living a moral life.
And they certainly don't dismiss it as an 'effed up' concept "which stunts critical thought".

...I find it excruciatingly embarrassing to think that some of my contemporaries worship a defunct Israelite tribal war-god.

"excruciating"?
Really? Your sense of embarrassment is so severe that you can liken it to crucifiction?
WOW. How do you cope?
Maybe you shouldn't pay so much attention to the beliefs of a few billion monotheists.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Fear of God certainly didn't make you nicer, Darth Lion RC

 

[migrant]

Darth Lion RC, thanks for paying so much attention to me.
Would it help you to remember that certainty is just a feeling?
Rather than a vantage point from which to attack others' views .......