I hear the heavens calling
Providence, no evidence
There's no confirmation
And only silence remains
Madonna - Queen
Essential reasons for denying
that religion really comforts
those who fare badly in life
We can feel okay about something we perceive as acting as if it loves us even though we are not sure if it does or even if it is a person. Thus there is no overriding need for belief in a personal God. It is enough if it acts like it cares. It is those who are greedy for love who need God to be personal and loving. They think themselves too wonderful for anything else.
Is God's love comforting?
A relationship with God is said to be good for us and helps comfort us in bad
times.
But God does not need us nor is he vulnerable. He is said to be all-powerful and
all-good and all-perfect. A true relationship is based on mutual need and
vulnerability. God does not have a relationship with us. We are having a
relationship with a God in our heads even if there is a God. The God in our
heads emerges from our need for escapism and transcendence.
God does not literally love. If you love, you want that love to be reciprocated.
God and man cannot have a true relationship.
GOD HOLDS YOUR HAND?
Religion says sometimes the only thing God will do is hold your hand. It says he always holds your soul in the sense that he will help it to stay good and loving despite the evil circumstances. He may even make it more loving. Religion says the thing that ultimately matters is that he has not left you alone but is with you even if that is all he is doing. He is open to helping if it is possible. It may be what matters under the circumstances and what can be done. What is wrong with that? If you really are abandoned then feeling you are not is not going to help. The pain of feeling that you might be abandoned or on your own can be worse than actually knowing. And you fear people thinking they can get away with not being with you enough for you think you have God anyway. There is a problem and even hopeless problems need diagnosis. They are “more” hopeless without the diagnosis. Without reading the problem you cannot read any possible solution or the best solution. There is no dignity then in feeling God is with you if he is not. There is no dignity in others letting you feel that there is.
Suffering is changing and lessening which is why there is
the illusion of being comforted. There is no such thing. Your suffering was not
comforted before the comfort began so there is such a thing as uncomforted
suffering. A bit of comfort now hardly matters in the big picture when there was
so much torment before. Suffering is the experience of useless and worthless
existence so it is God calling you worthless or letting you feel that way so how
can you find comfort in him?
Compassion means seeing the person has no supporter or sympathisers on any
level, the natural or the supernatural. You are the only one who can hold their
hand. Even holding one’s hand in spirit counts when the person is aware. The
support is no help to the person being helped if they feel they are not being
helped at all. True and deep compassion belongs to the atheist. Believers either
do not realise they are in atheist mode or they are just going with the motions.
Having the serenity to accept the things you cannot change or that nobody or
nothing can change for you requires atheism. If you feel alone no matter what
then you have to accept it and you cannot have people rubbing it in telling you
that Jesus is carrying you.
MORE THOUGHTS
To think that God looks after you or that he will establish a limit on how
terrible life can get for you is a risk. If the thought is wrong then we
need to know. False hope will hurt us more than the truth. All
believers in God and his importance do show that they think that the belief or
God will enable them to cope reasonably well no matter what. It is 100%
certain that a person who tells others God will never disappoint has no right to
say that. If you seem to be okay that does not mean somebody else will be.
Belief is a man-made thing so it is dangerous to try to use belief to persuade
yourself that things will never be totally bad. Keep it zipped if you
really care. Promoting God or belief in God is a disgrace.
Dr Allen Sherman of the University of Arkansas for
Medical Sciences said: "We found that patients with stronger spiritual
well-being, more benign images of God - such as perceptions of a benevolent
rather than an angry or distant God - or stronger beliefs - such as convictions
that a personal God can be called upon for assistance - reported better social
health. In contrast, those who struggled with their faith fared more poorly."
His argument is probably the main reason why religion gets such respect and
influence. It is the reason the governments of the world often give religion
special rights and religious people get more respect than non-religious. It is
the reason why people who see organised religion as crafty and divisive and
bigoted are afraid to challenge believers.
Whatever nature is going to do, it is going to do. You can do your best but your
best is not always enough to prevent terrible things taking place. With God, it
is no different. What God is going to do God is going to do. No sane person
thinks they can control a God or tell him what to do. A prayer then that is
about trying to change what cannot be changed is an insult to God and yourself
for you will be disappointed. The doctor's argument talks about how praying for
assistance is good for you but that turns prayer into a delusion and a placebo
and not a real connection with God. His argument is an argument for idolatry not
God. If people are happy that you are praying for them then it is the good
wishes that are implied that benefits them not the praying as such. It is
Christian teaching that any joy got without God will turn to sorrow and
maladjustment and misery.
If you read his argument closely, it fails to show that generally speaking
belief in God is a good thing. It is not generally a good thing if most people
tend to think God does not care or is angry with them. If the belief is untrue
then people doubting it is understandable. It follows that those who told them
that God exists are to blame if it is really the case that doubters do not do
well in coping with the agonies of living. They are to blame for society mostly
sees such doubt as natural and understandable. There is no mention of people who
believe in a caring God and upon enduring terrible things decide that he does
not care or is punishing them. Those who allegedly benefit from faith in a nice
God could just be about to decide based on evidence and their experience that it
is wrong and God is bad.
Belief in a God who does not care or has it in for you is worse than simply
thinking the terrible things that happen to you are down to random mechanical
nature and not to any supernatural agent. However the person who is happy and
believes in a God like that is far more heroic than an atheist!
Some questions – if a person of faith is seriously ill or dying how likely are
they to be afraid to say if their faith is not really helping them? Don’t
underestimate what people who fear meeting God after death are capable of
saying.
They could be mistaking the feeling of support and love from others for support
and love from God. These are people going through a lot and confusion would be
expected.
The notion that God alone is a comfort is absurd. Nobody wants to spend their
lives in isolation with only God for company. The comfort you experience in
times of trial comes from a lot of areas. It is very complicated. You could say
God is a comfort while meaning that the other things, the love and care from
others is the important comfort.
If you have gone through something terrible, any comfort will be seen as a huge
thing. You will want to forget the pain and see the good so you are biased. You
are not reliable on how effective the comfort has been.
You could say you are comforted by faith and still feel comforted or even more
comforted without the faith.
How many will say faith in God makes them feel worse? Some do. But there are a
lot more who don't say simply because they are not asked. If you are worried
about how your family and friends are coping as you suffer terribly you will
want to give the impression that your faith is helping you even if it is not. It
is about telling a lie to comfort them.
It is interesting that with superstition, people think they can stop bad things
happening when the bad things are not inevitable. But when death looms, it is a
different story. Their superstitious faith does not help them then. It does not
help with what matters most.
Not all believers will feel that calling on God for assistance is a comfort. It
is only a comfort if results start to happen. If there is no God there will be
no results for many people. The others didn't get results - they were just
lucky. And luck is fragile.
What about very sick or dying people who hope there is no God? They are left out
of the picture.
And if your faith helps you, you may never know if another kind of faith could
have helped you better.
People should be comforted by, "I am suffering. It may soon be time to go. I am
willing to go so that others can enjoy life in my place." That makes sense and
gives meaning to suffering. It expresses a willingness to accept what comes and
give your life for others. God does not come into it. There is more giving if
you think death really is the cessation of existence than there is if you think
you are merely going elsewhere.
Believing that your suffering is somehow indispensable for the greater good in
some divine plan though there is no way of showing how or even if it is the case
might comfort some. But it contradicts the notion of an all-powerful God. If God
is that powerless over evil despite being almighty then there is no way to be
sure that any human being will fare okay after death. Believers who feel
comforted by faith are confusing faith in the greater purpose with faith in God.
Faith in a Christian God is a fragile crutch because what happens when one finds
out that this God told his son to get murdered and commanded murders in the Old
Testament? Gay people and adulterers were stoned to death. Jesus knew this and
did not repudiate those murders. He went as far as to say that people who do
little harm will end up in Hell forever unless they repent. In fairness,
Christianity teaches that you have to live by faith not feelings and Jesus
promised a cross in this world not a crown. Do you really want to meet a God who
makes viruses to torment babies to death? If you want to meet this bad God, then
it is not faith that is supporting you but arrogance. You are very sure he will
not punish you or send you to Hell forever. You are very sure he will not send
you back to earth as an animal or a child in a famine country. You are very sure
he will not take the comfort you so desperately need away from you as a test.
All that is arrogance and you think it is up to God to please you instead of you
letting him do what he believes is right in the big picture.
People in terrible trouble hope that something magical will happen to rescue
them from it. The comfort they get is not worth the disappointment that is
risked and that will come. And what if this false hope makes them lazy? If it
does not then that is down to luck not design. They might refuse to build
bridges with estranged friends and family for they no longer feel that they are
dying though they are.
The research that faith in a nice personal God helps vulnerable people is a
disgrace for it is too anecdotal and does not take account of how complex each
person’s psychology is. It does not regard the fact that the sick person will
doubt God one day and hate God the next and love him the day after as worthy of
thinking about. If there is any value in the research, it is that the placebo
helps some people. If God is a placebo then it is not really God that helps but
the placebo. The research is basically exploiting people’s pain to promote
religious faith. It plays right into the hands of religious manipulators. Every
religion from ISIS to Catholicism or Scientology to Satanism plays the same
card. All these faiths cannot be equally beneficial, good, honest and sincere.
The religious person is trained to say that things that happen naturally are
down to divine agency. Thus when they say they are comforted by what happens
they are talking about what can and should be seen as natural not divine. The
religious person then is prone to exaggerate God's role in her or his wellbeing.
It is irresponsible to encourage faith in God for even if it helps some it is
going to make others fear God or feel punished by him. It could make things
worse in the bigger picture.