The NYT Health blog has an article on how most Americans think a god is involved in our personal affairs:
When the “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell recently predicted the departure of the contestant Jermaine Sellers, the young singer shook his head in disagreement. “I know God,’’ he replied, pointing upward.
Two days later, when Mr. Sellers failed to make the cut, he still had faith. “What God has for me is for me,’’ he said. “In God there is no failure.’’
Mr. Sellers is not alone in his belief that God pays attention to reality television contests. New research shows that most Americans believe God is directly involved in their personal affairs, and that the good or bad things that happen are “part of God’s plan,’’ according to a report in the March issue of the journal Sociology of Religion.
I wonder if the day will ever come when most Americans will not believe a god is involved in their personal affairs? I think it will. Do you?
I hope that day comes, but I’m not sure if it will. If, as Michael Shermer says, we’re pattern-seeking animals, and we’ve evolved a “belief engine” that helps us figure out the world but sometimes mistakenly leads us to believe “false positives” (i.e. ascribing intentions where none exist), it may be hard to get a majority of people to overcome their natural biological and psychological tendencies. I think the key is education, as Joss Whedon says. But secular folks have their work cut out for them in that field as well; the Christian fundamentalists on the Texas Board of Education seem to have the upper hand right now.
Great blog, by the way. Thanks for all you do.
Thanks for the Whedon video link.
I was annoyed by his rhetorical trick at the end:
It’s pretty funny as a joke, but he clearly didn’t mean it that way.
I don’t know what it would take for that day to come. Even a lot of people who say they are not religious or don’t have a fully developed sense of any particular belief will have a vague superstition that everything happens for a reason, everything that concerns them personally, anyway. If they don’t exactly believe in the Judeo-Christian model of god, they feel as though there is a force working and manipulating events, maybe they believe in astrology to some extent, knocking on wood, lucky numbers, birthday candles, soul mates. Their secret wishes and neuroses and preferences have the illusion of chanting to the universe, I am special, and expecting some recognition for their rituals and habits and customs.
Albeit, everyone does have the right to feel unique, to have what might be called a “path” to their “destiny.” If you read a biography of someone, it might include details of their upbringing, which the reader will infer had a mysterious yet plausible effect on what person they turned out to be interesting to read about, that if they had been born somewhere else, they would be some nobody. When we relate these details to our own lives while having particular goals, it seems to matter and then it starts to resemble a “plan” if your imagination is vivid.
Most of us also tend to remember meeting someone (who might not remember us) or reading something, and the day “everything changed,” the moment when you stopped wandering in a fog, and your life took direction and you knew exactly what you wanted to achieve from then on, you know, for example. Those coincidences may happen when you are young or old, say, being born at the right time and place to attend a certain school and assigned a particular teacher who really blew your mind, or watching something on tv that opens your world to some obsession’s worth of a hobby that later becomes your career. Hey, that’s an inspirational moment! Things click. What made that click, and who would I be if not for that moment? Yeah, a lot of people hammer these moments into what they identify as a divine plan. Maybe they even set these goals aside and forge ahead as an ordinary worker bee until one day, you have an accident, and it doesn’t claim your life. Let’s call that a “wake-up call.” That’s not merely moving about in the world where these things happen to everyone, let’s label this an intervention, a message. Remember the plan! Your whole life was going ok, but not wonderful, because you forgot the plan. It’s time now to pay attention to the plan, which, without a strong hint, you were content enough to ignore.
I think in the case of the American Idol contestant, his parents probably encouraged him a lot to think of himself as god’s perfect little whatever, to keep going, ignore the critics, you are going to make it, you are so talented, god has given you this gift, and you are beholden to share it, don’t blend into the background. It’s not the only scenario, but it seems pretty likely if not extremely common. The thing that strikes me as strange about this whole topic is that everyone who thinks god has certain reasons for themselves do not seem to have a sensible justification why god would plan for them to be more special than someone else, or what reason god plans anyone’s life to go in a particular direction. It is like they are saying everyone has a really awesome plan, but few are special enough to recognize what that is and go for it, or whether god plans for most people to lead ordinary lives of unfun labor or pencil-pushing, the cooperation of such actually making the planet livable. Art is nice, and if someone tells you you aren’t a great artist, they may be lying or wrong, or that may be god’s way of telling you to go back to waiting tables. People do need their eggs and coffee, why don’t you listen? I’m not saying anyone shouldn’t “go for it” in terms of unusual success or training their talents in other ways, but I don’t categorize that as planned by a supernatural entity. That’s just doing what you want to do and are good at. If you are good, people will pay you to do it; if you get rejected, maybe that’s not what you should do. That’s how that works.
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If people believe God is the cause of all good things and the cause of all BAD things, then there is really nothing that can be done to shake someone’s belief. It’s completely illogical, and there is nothing to separate their good God’s “plan” from that of an indifferent God’s inaction, or from a completely indifferent, God-less universe.
Good people suffer and good people prosper. Bad people, likewise. But, if God’s ways are so inscrutable, and we have to no way to prognosticate how God would act in a given situation or towards a given person, then why even bother with relating to such a being, since we should expect to get the same results as we would if there was no God.
It’s just wishful-thinking, if you ask me.
“I wonder if the day will ever come when most Americans will not believe a god is involved in their personal affairs? I think it will. Do you?”
I think it will take at least a few more decades before we progress that far, but for now I’m praying Kate Gosselin will be eliminated from the DWTS competition early on in the show! =P
I myself believe in a God just not the traditional ones. I love this site BTW. Ive been reading it for about a year now, and I find the atheist side of the fence much closer to my understandings than most would think …that being said here is one of my favorite sayings: Gods greatest moment is when we realize we need no God…
I’m an atheist or a Buddhist, depending on which side of the bed I get up on. Sounds to me like you’re the same way. I still see no evidence for “fate” or any supernatural influence in our lives, however.
People will not suddenly start to not believe.
If I see around me old people still believe in the devil but most young people are not real believers anymore. They tend to replace it with some alternative way of thinking and have no clue about what is in the bible anymore. Lord of the Rings and Avatar gets mixed up in the alternative ways of thinking. The old bible is being replaced with some new fictional stories which makes nore sense and become reality.
It takes many generations to lose the religion because the believers that keep the religion by brainwashing others have to die out.
Complete atheists world is impossible. Evolution has programmed us with some god gene so we are still stuck with it for another few thousands of years.
Don’t hold your breath. Most Americans are not willing to give up the comfort of being able to sink back into the oblivion of prayer and a loving god. Perhaps in a few hundred years this may happen, but, I doubt that the human race has a few hundred years of viability.
“I wonder if the day will ever come when most Americans will not believe a god is involved in their personal affairs? I think it will. Do you?”
Perhaps, but I don’t think it will lead them into the arms of atheism as a result. I think that despite the weak tea (lack of any depth or substance) we see with most professing Christians, most people will still be unable to accept the core atheistic tenant that their universe sprang into being ex nihilo or from some unguided magic, mystical universe that defies all natural laws.
Brad – I’m so glad that you understand all natural laws. There are some fairly stupid people at the Cavendish lab, Cambridge University, who could do with some education on this. For some moronic reasons of their own they seem to have no problem with ex nihilo creation and obviously need your superior knowledge on the matter.
This is why the rest of the Western world looks at the average American and says “The stupid! It burns! It burns!”
Of course, I am generalising. I accept that some of you are very intelligent. It’s just that your thickies are more numerous. And vocal. And tollerated.
I don’t think there will. This goes back to Marx believing that religion works as peoples opium. It will never fully be gone. For some people, they just need it. Even though you and I believe them to be fundamentally wrong about this view I believe that religion and this view of a god helping people in their personal lives will always be there.
I think, to some extent, it’s hard for some people to believe that it’s up to them, or that they can even accomplish whatever they want to by themselves, and when coincidences are personal, they are given a status of order. I think most people have the experience of trying and failing, knowing themselves well enough to know something is not worth trying or won’t work, and chaos, which they don’t attribute to god’s plan, or they make it fit – a lesson to be learned, or to hang on and wait for better times (faith that better times will come, faith that this is on god’s to-do list).
The world can be confusing, a person can lack confidence or ability, compare themselves to others who get things handed to them, appear effortless and/or tireless, and feel they have no direction or will to choose one thing or another. This is nature, disorder, feels kind of crummy. I mean, when people talk about chaos, and how evolution is implausible, I get the sense they are familiar with how tricky that can seem.
And then suddenly, things are straightened out again, calm, smooth, some reason things today aren’t as hard as they were yesterday. Because we can’t see anything has actually changed in the atmosphere, that is the invisible god at work, fixing everything again, appearing to put things in order that were not in order before.
I really don’t think this is something humans are, on the whole, addressing as a problem they need to quit.
Hopefully not, I think that if we manage to stay alive long enough to start evolving out of religion, eventually the density of those needing said opium will be too low for significant spreading. The result would be religion existing on individual level, and die as those individuals pass away. Like a fire trying to percolate through a forest, if the densities of trees is too low, it will burn itself out without harming the forest.
I watched The Blind Side on an aeroplane recently, and it was great until the VERY end of the movie. She thanks god. I can see how it ties in with the culture of where she’s from and everything, sometimes you’ve just gotta have those references, but she does it right after talking about a poor young bloke who was killed in the projects. She’s thanking god for helping out her adopted son, but I guess she’ll forgive god for killing the other bloke.
Regarding Daniel’s question as to whether Americans in particular– and I will add humanity in general– will ever reach a day when they do not believe that god is involved in their personal affairs, several people have suggested that we will hopefully “evolve” out of the need for god in the next few decades, centuries, or millennia.
The problem with this view is that as UCLA psychologist S. E. Taylor has pointed out in her book ‘Positive Illusions’,
“self-enhancement, exaggerated beliefs in control, and unrealistic optimism typically lead to higher motivation, greater persistence at tasks, more effective performance, and, ultimately, greater success. A chief value of these illusions may be that they help to create self-fulfilling prophecies. They may lead people to try harder in situations that are objectively difficult. Although some failure is certainly inevitable, ultimately the illusions will lead to success more often than will lack of persistence.” p. 64
Later she cites numerous studies along similar lines which show that furthermore,
“Belief in a sense of personal control, then, appears to have a direct and positive impact on health, just as the experience of lack or loss of control has an adverse effect on health. What is clearly implicated in these studies is the importance of beliefs concerning control, not simply whether control is in fact present or absent in these stressful situations. Studies in which people have been led to believe that they have control over stressful events (even when they, in fact, have no control) demonstrate that the belief in control produces dramatic effects on neuroendocrine functioning. Compared with those who believe they are undergoing the same events with no control, people undergoing stressful events that they perceive as controllable look little different in neuroendocrine functioning from people who report that they are under no stress at all. However, among people undergoing stressful events that they perceive as uncontrollable, neuroendocrine functioning is dramatically altered in ways that can have a direct impact on immune functioning. It is no wonder, then, that controllable and uncontrollable stressful events have such different effects on health. Moreover, it is the belief or illusion of control, and not simply the existence of control, that is implicated in these relationships.” p 108
So, according to these two criteria– actual performance of difficult tasks in the real world, and immune response to stress-inducing experiences encountered in the course of completing such tasks, those individuals who hold to illusory beliefs in such things as gods, whether the gods exist or not, may be on the receiving end of a two pronged advantage in terms of evolutionary selection vis-a-vis those individuals who do not.
Evolution cannot act upon “better ideas” (in terms of post-scientific logic) unless those “better ideas” lead to the survival of more offspring in the next generation of those holding the “better ideas” than survive among those holding “worse ideas”. Since for the greater part of our evolutionary existence knee-jerk reactions and blind belief in traditional responses to danger and threat, i.e. circling the wagons or pointing all spears out while saying the traditional prayers and invoking the traditional spirits– have helped us reach the point where our population is doubling every generation (while “enlightened”, post-Christian Europe is seeing its population decline and importing labor from Muslim countries to make up the difference), I am not optimistic that evolutionary selection can be counted on to make irrational, though unfortunately in some ways beneficial, beliefs in unseen forces and influences as rare as wooly mammoths and trilobites.
If God created a universe with free will, one which allows me to choose our path, how can I then say that God interferes? does God go against his own rules (free will)??
I don’t know all about God (as a straight reminder, I don’t believe in god) but I’m familiar with the reasoning people use and it doesn’t conflict with “free will.” God manages to set up opportunities. Sometimes he would make something happen so you are late somewhere just so you can bump into that guy you end up marrying (or whatever). You will run out of milk at just the right time and have to run to the store, and he will hide one of your sneakers so you take a pass into the bathroom and see you are kind of unkempt beyond social minimum, so you put on some real clothes and brush your hair and maybe some lipstick to go to the store, which catches the eye of someone who is standing at the deli counter buying ham. If god hadn’t used up all the milk (by making you hungry for a second bowl of cereal), you wouldn’t have changed what you were wearing to go to the store and met your husband, who wouldn’t have seen you if you went earlier and looking like you just rolled in dirt. I’m projecting.
In most of the examples I can think of, god doesn’t directly manipulate people’s will, but he does screw with time, change clocks and traffic lights, hide things, send messages, and coordinate you with the people you’re supposed to meet and the things you’re supposed to remember to do to stick to the path. He may even get you fired from your job so you can see how stifling it was and remember to start that business you’ve always been meaning to do, etc.
Free will allows you to ignore all the “signs”. He may also do a few interventions along the line of moving parts of your body so you hit the brake before you know you needed to stop to avoid that accident, or misdial the phone so you call a friend who you haven’t talked to in a while and happens to need someone to talk to right now and would be so glad to hear from you, instead of your mom. Do you also think it’s purely “accident” that your friend’s name starts with an M? All these are “clues” LOL. I don’t believe in this stuff, but none of it really conflicts with free will. You can go to the store looking like hell in two different shoes if you want to, or blow your friend off like you’ve been doing anyway for the past 4 and a half years. I’m projecting. :)
It’s quite obvious to me that god loves American Idol. We can use inference to determine this. So, we start by listing places where god ISN’T (or hasn’t been):
1. New Orleans (during Katrina)
2. Southeast Asia (tsunami)
3. Africa (AIDS, starvation)
4. Darfur
5. Haiti
6. America (millions of people become ill, are abused, murdered, raped every day).
So, as you can see, god is busy watching american idol.
I have certainly heard less reasonable arguments put forward in all seriousness….
Those disasters and diseases were supposed to be punishments obviously. American Idol is a gift and one of our earthly rewards.
Oh, right. Clean living, and all that. Wow, I’m in trouble…..I think I better go to the storm cellar right….NOW!
Kodie, you clearly haven’t seen this season’s crop of pathetic baby warblers. ;-)
Those are all parts of “God’s Plan.” Everything is, even this comment. No… wait. . .
Mark Morford’s “God is not your bitch” This is a classic.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/07/24/notes072409.DTL
Most also believe their own shit doesn’t stink!
I would add to this that most belive that God has feelings… yes, human emotional feelings. He gets angry, sad, offended etc. When you ask how an omnipotent being, that can do anything, create/destroy anything, knows the past, present and future, could possibly get angered at anything – well……..
Yes, he seems to have an extremely short fuse – a real temper issue. I suggest anger management for that, at the very least. He may not be able to get to the core of his anger (pissed off at his kid, maybe? 33 years old and didn’t even give him a grandkid? I’m guessing here…). Also, I notice that he is exceedingly jealous also. Jealousy is an ugly emotion, and comes from a deep sense of insecurity and inferiority. I think if god were to attend some group therapy sessions with humans, he would find out that we’re, well, only human and he wouldn’t need to feel like he doesn’t measure up. This technique has worked for many other mass murderers, like god, although for safety’s sake we still keep them locked up for life. But god still may have a chance for a healthier relationship with others. I would suggest he get laid too, but because of all the murders I would think he’ll be in prison so I hope he’s gay…oh, yeah, he’s gay!!!! That would explain the anger – just like any other hypocrite, he proclaims loudly how TERRIBLE sodomy is, because he wants to do it himself! I feel pretty good – I NAILED it!!!! So jail, with appropriate therapies for his character and personality issues, could work well for him. Doncha love it when problems have solutions???? And here we’ve been dealing with this monster, terrified of him (he’ll send us to hell, he’ll flood us, kill us all!!!!) when all he needed was a little professional help.
‘Ghourd’ can do whatever the HUMAN IMAGINATION can dream up for him being able to do! It’s so easy…. since he’s a FIGMENT of the HUMAN IMAGINATION from the very beginning!