(continued)
V
God Working or Placebo?
If it is the case that all the stories of miracles and God’s preference for one person, people, or form of worship are fictions made up to inspire the adherents of those particular religions, then is there any specific way that God can be said to work? There is some research that refutes the effectiveness of intercessory prayer; that is to say, that one person’s prayer has the capacity to heal someone else, for example.
As for the broader philosophical question of whether God will intervene on the part of those who are more righteous than their enemies, Spinoza and Einstein said no, that as the designer and lawmaker of the universe, God is subject to the laws this Intelligence creates. And as to the question of whether God is loving, Spinoza said that God could inspire love, but could not love back,25 and Einstein said that the idea of a personal God was naïve and childlike.26
If they mean by a personal God, one who listens to the pleas of men and interacts with them, altering the course of history according to His whims, then I would agree. Such a God would indeed be inconsistent with the laws of science. Spinoza must be right about this: if God is the designer of the universe and the maker of scientific law, It cannot violate those laws without inherently contradicting Itself, and scientific research does not support the belief that God does so. Moreover, belief in such a Deity is not only naïve, but dangerous in that it gives those who believe license to do whatever they want and say they are doing the will of God, who sanctions their behavior. Give a sociopath religious justification and they are immediately capable of not only criminal, but atrocious behavior.
But the idea of a God who “answers prayer” is dangerous not only for those who would use divine intervention as a justification to mistreat others, but also for those who would seek a genuine connection with a Supreme Being. If God must prove himself to mortals by doing their bidding, then the time must inevitably come when His choice will be other than what humans request, no matter how reasonable or just that request might seem to be. Inevitably, some human wishes requests must conflict with others.
Upon being denied a reasonable request, a human may, and often does, decide that they have been abandoned by God because his request has not been granted. The most common reason I hear for people not believing in God is that God didn’t behave in the way the person thought a Supreme Being should. God was unjust, either to them personally, or to those they thought deserving of better treatment. Such a faith is truly naïve and childish.
But is it possible that God could be both infinitely personal and infinitely impersonal without violating his own principles? Said another way, is it possible that the same mechanism that makes God infinitely impersonal also makes Him/Her/It infinitely personal? In science there is something called the uncertainty principle which says in effect that a thing is changed by the very fact that it is being observed (or, more precisely, but the way in which it is being observed). Isn’t it also true that the observer is changed by the simple fact that they are observing?
It is undoubtedly the case that mature persons of all faiths who do believe in a personal God have always believed that it is more important to find out what God wants than to tell God what they want. The point of the Old Testament story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son is not whether the request was absurd (as Bob Dylan suggests in Highway 61 Revisited27), or whether Abraham was deluded and deranged, it was that Abraham was willing to go to any length to obey God’s will. Likewise, the completely unreasonable suffering visited on Job so God could win a bet with the Devil. The point of the story is Job’s response, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”28
Sufi Poet Farid Ud-Din Attar put it this way: “The way grows longer every hour, and we / Each hour sink deeper in perplexity; / Do you know what travelers see? They see that they / Must go ever further on the way—”29 And Christian writer C.S. Lewis said, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time—waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God—it changes me.”
Jesus said to pray that God’s will be done. But if God’s will is going to be done anyway, is there any reason to pray for the inevitable? And are any changes to the person praying merely placebo effect; that is, because the prayer believes it will have the desired effect, it does? Perception alters reality, but is that the same as prayer and meditation?
As a mental health professional, it is my belief, probably shared by most is my line of work, that perception on the level of psychological insights has more power to impact behavior than a placebo because it changes our cognitive reality. Said another way, to believe that man can fly does not make flying a reality, but to understand that a bird’s wing is curved in a manner as to provide lift may ultimately result in heavier than air flight by man, as indeed it has. Insight has a profound effect on both mental health and effective human interaction, but insights can only come when the mind is open to them.
Psychiatrist Abraham Low once observed that “Temper blocks insight,” and also that “Temper produces tenseness and tenseness produces [neurotic] symptoms.” In those two statements he is saying that our ability to perceive an appropriate response to a situation, as well as our sense of well-being and mental health are tied to the ability to attain a state of calm. Though not a religious man, he shared with religion the belief that our inner environment could be manipulated to enable a healthier and more effective response to external environment, hence resulting in a better quality of life.
Today, most mental health patients expect this to all be done by medication prescribed by their physician and dispensed by a pharmacy, but though medicine may tend toward the reductionist, the field of mental health requires more effort on the patient’s part to achieve any true measure of success. This may be true of medicine also to some degree, but it seems to me truer of mental health/behavioral issues than say, a bacterial infection. For the most part, pneumonia can be cleared up without a lot of effort from the patient, except perhaps the necessity that they not walk around naked in the snow. All they really have to do is stay out of their own way if they expect to achieve recovery.
Mental health requires a great deal more effort on the part of the client, according to available research and in my experience. Medications can be helpful, but they are generally not sufficient, and if they are used as the sole treatment of a serious emotional disturbance, the patient is not likely to ever heal sufficiently to regain his former activities and effectiveness.
So, while there is no evidence that prayer changes external reality, if it produces a substantial change in the psyche of person doing the praying, it is likely to have a much greater impact that the mere feeling of security that one gains from taking a sugar pill, because it also changes the behavior of the one praying; and by reducing temper (which Low defines as both fear and anger) it is also likely to improve insight, and therefore the effectiveness of any subsequent actions taken by the person. In the best case scenario prayer may provide a realistic optimism of the sort described by the proponents of “positive thinking” or “possibility thinking,” and leading one to take meaningful action they would have dismissed as not worth their time or trouble in their former negative state.
When people make what appear to be a dramatic turnaround in their life, it is often based on their seeing a possibility of victory where they previously saw certain defeat. I am not a huge sports fan, but I recall seeing this phenomenon a couple of times in the sports arena, once when Dwayne Wade lifted the Miami Heat on his shoulders to come back from a 2-0 deficit and win the 2006 NBA Championship against Dallas Mavericks; and another time when the Pittsburgh Penguins turned the 2009 Stanley Cup Finals around beginning with a goal they scored shorthanded in game four, with Detroit on the power play (playing with a man advantage because of a penalty). They also came back from a 2-0 deficit to win a championship. And what about the 2004 Boston Red Sox coming back from an unprecedented 3-0 deficit to win the American League Championship, and subsequently baseball’s “World Series”? This happens frequently enough in sports to cause Yogi Berra to have famously quipped, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
In the novel, “The Life of Pi,” by Yan Martel, the author spins a tall tale that is very entertaining, but also makes some serious points. At the beginning of the book the protagonist finds himself alone on a life raft with a Bengal Tiger after the ship he was sailing in sinks in the Pacific. The main character makes the observation that when faced with an impossible task, most people will immediately throw in the towel. A somewhat smaller group will make a half-hearted effort before throwing in the towel. But there is very small third group who will do whatever it takes to survive. He states that he realized right away he was in the last group, and the rest of the story is one of survival against the odds. The author begins the book by saying he will tell a story to make the reader believe in God. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that he was going to tell a story of the kind of mental/psychic power and resilience one may gain through a deep faith in God.
What does it mean ultimately to have faith in God? It means to be convinced of the innate meaning and purpose of the universe. If everything has innate meaning and purpose, then so do I, as an extension of the universe, have inherent meaning and a reason for existence. Even if I am never able to fully define or completely fulfil my life’s purpose it is worth the search to get as close as I can to that meaning. If I believe in an essentially nihilistic universe I may still strive to imbue my life with meaning, but this effort presumes that if meaning is not inherent, it can be created.
What is truly unlikely is that I could believe there is no meaning, either inherent or of my own creation, but that I would still strive to live morally, to achieve something, to want to make a better life for myself, my children, or for future generations. The true nihilist is likely to be destructive to himself and others because it is the easiest way to go, and because there is no reason to want or seek to achieve anything more.
The seeming paradox is that one may be quite religious and nihilistic at the same time, but this points out a fundamental difference between religion as a set of beliefs about one’s superiority and a relationship with the infinite that seeks to understand how one can work effectively within the system of universal moral laws rather than needing to be dominant at all costs. Einstein said that, “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”30 The need to dominate is born of fear and is essentially antithetical to a faith that seeks understanding of or direction from a Higher Being.
We live in a time when the mass killing of strangers has become quite common in our country. These killings seem be driven by three major factors, the media attention they garner, the availability of guns to unstable people, and the lack of any real anchor or guiding principle that so many people suffer from. It is probably also an indication of how difficult it is to conceive of an external meaning in this time and place in history. For all the flag waving Americans do, there is no real evidence that we have a sense of community, or that people are motivated to live for anything besides themselves and whatever seems to make their lives tolerable at this point. For some, this is professional sports teams, their friends at the local tavern, the challenge of running marathons, or working their way up the corporate ladder. Most can find or create meaning for themselves, but those who cannot seem intent on having others notice them for any reason at all.
When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, the prosecutor said in his opening remarks that Mark David Chapman had killed Lennon to steal his fame. In articles covering the trial, Chapman posed for pictures reading a copy of “The Catcher in the Rye,” which he cited as the inspiration for the killing. Chapman seemed to be basking in his ill-gotten fame, and the prosecutor’s words appeared to be at least in part true. It often seems as if the only people valued in our society anymore are celebrities, and that those who are not celebrated for doing good feel compelled to turn their energy to destruction. Perhaps it has always been that way. If Hitler had been a successful painter, would he have reeked such destruction on the world?
In his very popular self-help book, “The Road Less Traveled,” Scott Peck begins by telling us that, “Life is difficult.” And so it is. Not the least of that difficulty is the realization that we can never have total certainty about anything; about why we’re here, where we’re going, how our lives will end or what comes after. We are a long time coming into this world and we’ll be gone a long time, and, as Job observed, “Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”31
Henry David Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”32 Perhaps it has always been thus, but some are able to quiet that desperation and turn their time to good use. How do we find the strength to discover or create meaning and not succumb to despair? How do we learn to live rather than just exist? To find joy amidst all the uncertainty and disappointment?
Faith is one way of doing that, but to be workable faith cannot be built upon illusion; it must square with reality or we are simply turning our back on the real world, and most of us are unwilling and unable to do that. So, we must ultimately work out our own relationship with the forces beyond our control and understanding, seek to find the flow and the frequency that plays our music, and learn the dance that expresses our unique place and time in the endless universe. How well we do that will ultimately be determined by the love we create and the creative energy it releases.
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1 Gospel of Matthew 6:24, NIV
2 Gospel of Matthew 5:44, NIV
3 Gospel of Luke 6:31, NIV
4 The internal strife that would ultimately split India into three separate countries was, of course, another matter, and one that would cause the Mahatma a great deal of suffering. But the English ultimately left as a result of Gandhi’s successful policy of non-violent resistance.
5 Becoming Human, in The Gift, translation by Daniel Ladinsky
6 Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, I
7 Einstein…used variants of this quote…For example, in a 1943 conversation with William Hermanns recorded in Hermanns’ book Einstein and the Poet, Einstein said: “As I have said so many times, God doesn’t play dice with the world.” (p. 58)
8 Ecclesiastes 1:9, KJV, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
9 The Emperor’s Handbook, Marcus Aurelius (AKA, Meditations of the Emperor) “…accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years.”
10 You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe (P. 371), Google Books
11 Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl, Viktor E. (p. 37), “A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
12 The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare; Act 5, Scene 1
13 Gospel of John, 14:10 KJV, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
14 Gospel of John 14:28, “You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”
15 Gospel of Matthew 6:9-13
16 Depending on which translation you read, Romans 9:5 is the first instance of anyone referring to Jesus as “God,” as in, “…Christ, who is God over all.” NIV
17 McGrath, Patrick (1967). Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I. Poole, England: Blandford Press (P. 69),”Regnans in Excelsis (‘reigning on high’) was a papal bull issued on 25 February 1570 by Pope Pius V declaring ‘Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime’, to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her, even when they had ‘sworn oaths to her’, and excommunicating any that obeyed her orders.”
18 1 Samuel ESV 15:2–3, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel din opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
19 Gospel of Matthew 5:28
20 I Corinthians 7:8-9, “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.”
21 A Brief History of Celibacy in the Catholic Church, “580 AD-Pope Pelagius II: his policy was not to bother married priests as long as they did not hand over church property to wives or children.”
22 A Brief History of Celibacy in the Catholic Church, 836 A.D. The Council of Aix-la-Chapelle openly admitted that abortions and infanticide took place in convents and monasteries to cover up activities of uncelibate clerics. St. Ulrich, a holy bishop, argued from scripture and common sense that the only way to purify the church from the worst excesses of celibacy was to permit priests to marry.”
23 A Brief History of Celibacy in the Catholic Church, “590-604 A.D. Pope Gregory the Great said that all sexual desire is sinful in itself.”
24 Gospel of Matthew 6:25-26, NIV
25 Ethics (Part 5), Baruch Spinoza, “Prop. XIX. He, who loves God, cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.”
26 “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an [anthropomorphic] concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal [i.e., intervention] outside the human sphere”…a 1947 letter Einstein wrote to Murray W. Gross, included in Einstein and Religion (1999).
27 “God said to Abraham, kill me a son / Abe said man you must be puttin’ me on / God said no / Abe said what? / God said, you can do what you want Abe but—the next time you see me comin’ you’d better run…”
28 Job 1:21, KJV
29 The Conference of the Birds, P. 12, translation by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis
30 Albert Einstein, The Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press
31 Job 14, 1-2 KJV
32 Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
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Michael G. Brock, MA, LMSW, is a forensic mental health professional in private practice at Counseling and Evaluation Services in Wyandotte, Michigan. He has worked in the mental health field since 1974, and has been in full-time private practice since 1985. Much of his practice in recent years relates to driver license restoration and substance abuse evaluation, but he also consults and serves as an expert witness regarding forensic interviewing and the use of forensic interviewing protocols in cases of child sexual abuse allegations. He may be contacted at Michael G. Brock, Counseling and Evaluation Services, 2514 Biddle, Wyandotte, 48192; 313-802-0863, fax/phone 734-692-1082; e-mail: michaelgbrock@comcast.net, website, michaelgbrock.com.
