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I remember going to church as an 11 yr old. Local church rounded up some of us kids and told us about the lord and our savior.
I mean no disrespect to anyone or any religion.
I'm an INTJ, alway score that way. Logical science based view of the world. Test for repeabilty, question results, wash, rinse, and repeat.
I could never shake the idea that religion is a psychological way of coping with the inevitable death that finds us all. Roll the clock back several hundred years ago when life was miserable. Disease, death, abject poverty. People died young by today's standards. Life sucked.
The promise of something or someone who cares about you and the idea of a beautiful afterlife that organized religion proposed must of had some appeal.
Every culture across the millenia has similar notions hence why I'm wondering if it's built in our psyche, lizard brain, if you will.
How does a spider weave a web? How does a myriad of natural phenomena happen? Who or what drives this?
Take every question you have and keep asking, why or what.
Big bang? What or who caused that? Just keep going backwards.
I realize this is a bit disjointed on my part.
Did I mention that I'm envious of the believers?
Last edited by Chowhound; 03-30-2024 at 04:05 PM..
I was raised in the Lutheran church but by age 40 my logical mind won out as it’s just not possible for a god to exist. It’s comforting for some people but if you read the Bible and really examine religion it’s just not possible. I don’t envy believers.
I was raised in the Lutheran church but by age 40 my logical mind won out as it’s just not possible for a god to exist. It’s comforting for some people but if you read the Bible and really examine religion it’s just not possible. I don’t envy believers.
It's interesting that you mention your MB Type. I have often thought that different types may find their approach to spiritual needs at odds. Most of us have what one psychological philosopher chose to call a "God-shaped hole." A place in us where certain needs must be met to be considered actualizing, is the theory.
I think that's why we notice that historically cultures have developed a concept of a being, a force, greater than earthly ones. Yes, it has to do with fear, but also with other feelings such as awe, gratitude, renewed strength or hope. I suppose that's one of the reasons that people who navigate mainly with their rational brain have so much difficulty conceiving of the concept. Trying to understand the intuitive with the rational is like apples and oranges.
I've thought a long time about this but it's not an easy concept for me to get across. To some personality types it immediately clicks and for others doesn't appear to make sense at all.
We could take an example from modern medicine and psychological studies that seem to illustrate the intangible needs referenced. When the concept of wholistic medicine was introduced, the realization that simply addressing physical needs were less productive than including "body, mind and spirit" in treatment, we began to see studies of what colors of patients' rooms were more soothing, more healing. Also that music, the universal language of the spirit, improved recovery statistics. What kind of visitation and how much was ideal, and so forth.
And you probably remember the monkey study about baby monkeys without mothers who were offered two "mothers" in the study. One was simply a metal frame but had a nipple with milk in it. The other was a snuggly, furry mother but with no milk. The babies spent the majority of their time with the snuggling mother. And many of us are aware of the orphans who were never picked up because of overcrowding and lack of funds and how these children failed to thrive. Call it lack of nurturing or lack of love. It's that kind of need which is considered a spiritual need in a psychological sense.
Maybe call it something comforting that is always available to us? Life is pretty darn uncomfortable, after all.
How do you measure how much love, gratitude, willingness to do right, dedication and trust is enough? And how does a person get these things? Don't ask science. I don't think the answer is totally in science. I do believe those are the gifts of exercising spiritual muscles that give peace of mind. I guess it's why it's difficult to call psychiatry a science rather than an art.
I feel compelled to say that spirituality is not to be confused with spiritualism, magic, fortune telling or any of that other stuff that so many people confuse being spiritual with. Maybe not even with churchgoing religion. I know how much that sounds like blasphemy. But heck, if people can improve themselves by going to church good for them.
I think, like mentioned here, it's a more primal urge that came before organized religion took over its administration.
I was raised in the Lutheran church but by age 40 my logical mind won out as it’s just not possible for a god to exist. It’s comforting for some people but if you read the Bible and really examine religion it’s just not possible. I don’t envy believers.
^^^ What she said. EXACTLY what she said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chowhound
It's their piece of mind I envy.
If my peace of mind were to come at the price of my intellect, well, it wouldn't be peace of mind at all.
OP, I've posted a few times in the Atheism subforum, once in a thread I called "the false comfort that religion offers" (it's here: https://www.city-data.com/forum/athei...on-offers.html ). That was shortly after my mother died (and no, she didn't "pass," she DIED), and of course her death (yes, her DEATH, not her "passing" -- I really hate euphemisms like that) was very hard.
So I do understand where you're coming from, but I really do not want to turn off my brain -- and that is what (most) religions require.
=====
P.S. IIRC, I'm an INTJ too -- and that type is apparently extremely rare among women.
I read your post and definitely had thoughts. I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to share them, though.
I don't envy believers. Very few of the ones I know really have peace of mind. I mean, sure, when their loved ones pass, perhaps they find comfort in the idea that Grandma is in Heaven, a better place. That a benevolent God has us all in His hand, safe from certain threats, that people get only what they deserve and deserve only what they get, even if it doesn't seem that way...well...God works in mysterious ways, must be something He knew that we didn't.
OK. But for most I've known, where the rubber meets the road in day to day life, they are often much more engaged in digging a chasm between their in-group and everybody else, and being upset about every other person who does not share their beliefs and is therefore a threat.
I had a thought this morning, that 500 years ago give or take, I would surely have been burned as a witch. Not because I actually consider myself to be any such thing. I'm not into wicca or paganism or any kind of witchy stuff, none of that is of interest to me. No, I'd have been doomed because I do not believe in a sacred mandate of authority bestowed upon any other human being, that gives them the right and the wherewithal to tell me how to live my life. I would never gaze beatifically up at a man who stood in a high place declaiming himself to be the leader chosen by God to guide the poor ignorant masses to paradise (upon the corpses of their enemies first of course.) And fundamentally every religious institution I've ever seen that has gained any real traction in any big society has become more a means to control people and empower the guy who claims the mandate to exploit everyone else, than it has been about truly good philosophy and genuine faith. Refusal to submit and obey is probably the most unforgivable act, if one is a figure who knows that only faith driven compliance keeps the mob from overthrowing your life of power and privilege.
It's nothing but a big ol' pecking order of folks needing a hierarchy and to know their place in it, who they have to suck up to and who they get to push around. I'm not into that. Never was. I don't want to lead, I don't want to follow, I just want to live.
I am an ENTJ. A friend once told me that she did not believe this because I'm "not enough of an a-hole to be an ENTJ." I have no idea what that means.
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