Fear is a powerful emotion. It can completely change the way our brain functions. When an animal is running for its life from a predator, it’s sympathetic nervous system takes over and changes the functioning of its body. The brain hopped up on fear shuts down regular functions such as digestion. It raises the heartbeat, dilates the pupils, and directs blood flow away from other organs and tissues and toward the lungs and limbs. Suffice it to say, it’s difficult to think clearly during fearful situations, let alone rationalize.
When we feel scared we lean toward automatic reactions. That’s been programmed into our brains thanks to our instinct of self-preservation. Our brains tell us “Don’t think! Just be safe!” and that is why making decisions based on fear is not always a good idea. If your being chased by a mountain lion, then by all means, don’t think–just run away. But what if the thing causing your fear is less concrete, empirically speaking, than a charging cougar? In those instances we have to tell our sympathetic nerves to shut up for a second while we asses the situation. We have to examine the basis for fear before we give in to it.
A lot of arguments for putting faith in God are based on fear. Pascal’s Wager takes advantage of fear by claiming it is better to believe in God just in case, so that we can avoid the punishment of hell if, by some chance it exists. Likewise many Christians cite Hebrews 6:4-8 as a reason to continue their belief. The verses are considered a threat to deter wayward souls from apostatizing. It warns that a person who was once a Christian and has fallen away may never be redeemed ever again. It asserts that there is at least one unpardonable sin, one thing you can do that will get you into hell for sure: renouncing your faith in the Christian trinity.
If we want to think critically, we have to ask ourselves if fear is ever a justifiable foundation for belief. Is fear a good reason to believe in anything?
When I was a kid I had an older cousin who told me electric eels lived in the pipes of my pool, and that they would bite me if I swam past. For days I was scared to go into the pool because I really didn’t want to get bitten by an electric eel, but finally I decided that I could either keep being scared forever, or look in the pipes and see if there were really eels hiding there. So I looked, and guess what, no eels! I learned that the basis of my fear was false.
As rational beings, we must examine critically the basis of any claim before we give into its fear mongering. As a Christian, when I began having doubts about the existence of God I was scared by Hebrews 6:4-8. I was scared of the threat of hell, scared of letting down God, scared of disrespecting him, scared that I was spitting into the face of Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice for me, scared that my name would be written out of the book of life, and scared that I was wrong. But I decided, rater than give into that fear, I had to examine the basis. I looked for empirical, non-emotional proof for the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful creator God. I found nothing. No proof of something called a “soul,” no proof of bottom-up design, no proof of anything supernatural. My fear was without basis, and no longer became a source of fear at all.
I found no proof of eels in my pool, but I could have continued to be afraid. I could have insisted that the eels were invisible, that my eyes weren’t well-equip to see them, that they were really there but I had failed to notice. The next time I went swimming I still avoided the pipes. I still had the emotional fear that the eels were there, even if I could find no proof of them. But that emotion didn’t make the eels real, and I decided that I had to let go of the fear because I really wanted to enjoy swimming that summer. Likewise, I decided I had to let go of God, despite my inner fears, because there was no proof of him either.
Aside from figuring out that eels don’t really live in swimming pool pipes, there are several areas of daily life where we must be critical of our fear. For example, the fear of vaccines has been perpetuated by the media to a great degree, but before we decide we’re so scared of vaccines that we aren’t going to vaccinate our children, we have to first make sure that vaccines are actually harmful, that our fear as a legitimate foundation. You don’t have to look very hard to find out that they are incredibly successful and incredibly safe.
My post yesterday was about obstacles to critical thinking, including emotional thinking. In my opinion, fear is the most powerful emotion that can obscure our powers of reason. We have to constantly rise above our evolutionarily programed instincts and rationalize in the face of fear.
August 22, 2008 at 10:36 pm |
Fascinating post! I’d love to hear you distinguish between fear “as a foundation” for Christian belief and fear as a motive for belief. I don’t know any christians who BASE their belief on their fear like its a fundamental tenet (or if that’s even possible), but I know many who are motivated to believe from fear (and even admit it). Thanks for an interesting post.
August 22, 2008 at 11:06 pm |
exxn-
I don’t know any christians who BASE their belief on their fear like its a fundamental tenet (or if that’s even possible), but I know many who are motivated to believe from fear (and even admit it).
I would agree. I think that it’s really rare for a person to say “I accepted Jesus into my heart because I was afraid of the torments of hell.” Usually people cite feeling the love of God or realizing his kindness through sacrifice as the basis of their faith, but I still think that fear has a lot more to do with Christianity than many people want to admit, or maybe even realize. The process of becoming a Christian is often one of self-preservation in the face of the doctrine of hell. If you consider the steps that a person is “required” to go through in order to be saved, fear is always hiding underneath the surface. The tortures of hell are implied by the very notion of savior and heaven, that is why I believe fear can be found as a foundation of faith (although it’s largely subconscious).
1. Realize you are a sinful person needing salvation- There is the underlying fear that those who are sinful, bad, or immoral are punished, fear that you’ve done something bad enough to warrant punishment. Why else would we need salvation? What are we being saved from? This forces us to consider hell.
2. Realize Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose again- There is the underlying fear of what it means to sin again, and the idea that such sin is bad enough that it requires a sacrifice, and fear of what may wait after death-hell again.
3. Accept Jesus as your personal savior to receive eternal life- There is the underlying fear of the negative: by suggesting “saved” we are forced to consider the negation of saved, “damned.”
I know I’m reading pretty deep into the psychology of it all, but as a believer, even though I would have NEVER cited fear for a reason of belief, fear was always on the back of my mind. My Christian life wasn’t ruled by fear, or even consciously based in fear, but I was often gripped by the fear that I hadn’t done it right, that I hadn’t fully accepted Christ as my savior, that I somehow missed a step and wasn’t saved. That fear resulted in me praying “the sinner’s prayer” and asking Jesus “into my heart” more times than I can remember. Fear had a lot more to do with the foundation of my belief than I realize.
I do think, however, that conscious fear is more often applied to keep people in the faith, rather than convert them initially. It’s more often directly used as a motivation for continued belief.
Thanks for your comment! I hope I answered your question.
August 23, 2008 at 7:15 am |
[...] what action am I alluding to? Thinking critically in the face of fear. Do you have friends who are afraid to have their children vaccinated? Show them articles like [...]
August 23, 2008 at 8:45 pm |
I agree with you entirely. When I was a Christian, I think I had much the same psychology you describe. For an interesting admission of some of this psychology, one could point to John Piper’s “Christian Hedonism” at desiringgod.org
Also, while it’s not orthodox, some Christians don’t believe in the existence of hell. I think Rob Bell is an example of that camp (although part of the brilliance of Rob Bell is that he never actually says what he believes). Denying hell should do some interesting things to this psychology of fear!
August 25, 2008 at 6:10 pm |
I’m a bit familiar with the “hell isn’t Biblical” crowd. They show up from time to time on the de-conversion blog I frequent. While they deny hell (by cherry-picking Bible verses), they still believe that there is heaven. The alternative is something along the lines of a void or non-existence. That can still be scary in contrast with the concept of heaven. I mean, which would you pick? Nothingness or an eternal party with all of your deceased love ones and all all-powerful deity who really likes you. The idea of non-existence is still a scary one, even if it’s less scary than the idea of eternal torment.
I’ll check out Piper’s article, thanks for the suggestion.
August 28, 2008 at 8:40 pm |
Wondered if you’d had a chance to read Chris Hedges’ article (for Search magazine) and what you thought of it:
http://www.searchmagazine.org/May-June%202008/hedges-on-god.html
Or, for a laugh, PJ O’Rourke:
http://www.searchmagazine.org/On%20God/orourke-on-god.html
August 29, 2008 at 2:33 am |
I hadn’t read those articles specifically, but I’m well aware of those arguments.
August 29, 2008 at 5:32 pm |
I don’t know if they really count as arguments. I appreciate Hedges’ opinions in some measure. As someone dealing with loss of faith myself (I’m a sympathetic reader of your blog), I think it’s wise to retain a fair amount of skepticism toward all pretensions to knowledge. In science there is a measure of certainty within bounds, but there really are bounds. Those things which science is sufficient to comprehend and explain are not in themselves sufficient to a truly human life. I imagine you’ll agree. Art, for instance, speaks to something in the human heart which is not properly contained within the scope of reason or experimentation.
August 29, 2008 at 6:02 pm |
By “argument” I was referring more to the second article. I’m more than a bit bothered when science is called a faith or a belief system.
As for the first article, I agree completely that science is morally relative, but I also agree with Dawkins’s God Hypothesis, that science can have a little bit to say, speaking in the language of probably, about the existence of God. I’m not really sure what Hedges was getting at with the bit about humans trying to perfect themselves and find happiness through science. I can’t say that I’ve ever come across a person that holds those beliefs. Not that they don’t exist, but I’m not sure what they’re getting at. Yes, science can eradicate diseases and find ways to feed the hungry, but to say that science can bring humans into some kind of Utopia or Golden Age is very short-sighed, even slightly irrational, and surely not something that the majority of scientifically minded people would subscribe to.
And in reference to the “cult of science,” every true scientists and even interested science lay-person knows that science does not deal with absolutes, merely probabilities, so I believe that attributing cult-like worship of absolutes to science is a bit of a straw man. As you say, science has its bounds, and those who know anything about it are very aware of them.
In the last paragraph Hedges writes, “Science does not attempt to address, nor is it capable of addressing, the mystery of our existence, our moments of transcendence, our search for meaning, love, or our mortality.”
I both agree and disagree. Science can indeed address the mystery of our existence, and it already has through evolution, cosmology, neurology, and even biology. I actually don’t consider my existence very mysterious. Aside from some of the “where did the matter for the Big Bang come from?” questions, I feel like I have a handle on how I got here and what I’m made of. I marvel, of course, and the statistically improbability that I, as I know myself, would exist, in the sense that my exact genes had to be passed down for so long, and half of my chromosomes had to out swim thousands of others, but that’s where the mysticism regarding my being ends.
The search for meaning and morality are indeed things that science can’t really comment on, nor does it attempt to. So with that point I agree.
Esoteric and personal emotions like love, and even appreciation of art, indeed are removed from the realm of science in many ways. You can say that the love I have for my husband manifest itself in my brain chemistry, but you can’t use that chemistry to explain why I love my husband and not someone else, and you can’t use that chemistry to quantify the depth of my feelings either.
September 1, 2008 at 2:20 am |
Fear is a feeling that all living things have and use so as to survive!
Being fearful could be rational or irrational depending on your true understanding of the true nature of what you are fearful of.
The objective notion of what is moral could be scientifically determined by understanding the objective conditions, situations, and total relevant environment that exists at a particular point in time.
October 21, 2008 at 10:12 pm |
Actually… If you’re being pursued by a mountain lion, you don’t have a snowball’s shot in hell running. Your safest bet is actually to try to scare it away.
See what happens when you let fear think for you? :D