If you are a Christian and you have read some of the posts here on this blog, how did that make you feel? Angry? Sad? Frustrated? Indifferent?
And what did it do to your beliefs? Were they severely challenged? Did you lie awake for nights on end pondering whether there is a God after all?
My bet is that it probably did absolutely nothing, or perhaps it made you feel uncomfortable for a little while… but then you moved on. Was my argument so bad? That is a certainly a possibility. But then there are many people I speak to that have said they have no good answer to my questions about the absent character of God in mission (or many other questions). They stand with empty hands and cannot answer most of the deep, profound questions that I have had.
Yet they continue to believe in the Christian God.
…Why?
Is that foolishness? Wisdom? The Holy Spirit perhaps? Humility?
I would now say that if you continue to believe despite (strong) evidence on the contrary, that actually makes perfect sense. Perhaps it is a bit of foolishness, but also wisdom, mixed in. I would call it the web of the mega-belief (credits to YouTuber Evid3nc3 – watch the excellent clip here). It kept me in for a long, long time. And it doesn’t just apply to religious beliefs; it can keep atheists/humanists/socialists/communists in just as well.
The Web of the Mega-Belief
We get down to the nature of ‘faith’ itself. Why do you keep on believing what you believe? What is causing your core belief, your “mega-belief”, to be at the center of your heart and stay there comfortably?
To make a good list of reasons, perhaps it is easier to think of someone who does not share your beliefs, yet still has strong convictions. Let’s take a Hindu in mind, since I bet there are very few Hindus reading this, so that is a safe group to target. Why do they keep believing what they are believing, despite that we all ‘know’ that these beliefs do not align with reality?
- They experience the validity, wisdom or inspiration of their Holy Book on a personal level
- They see answers to prayer to their gods
- They are living in a culture that continuously reinforces their faith
- They experience true community with others, through their faith & rituals
- They interpret everything they see in the Hindu way
- They get answers or guidance through guru’s, who they hold in high esteem
- They live their whole lives to accumulate Hindu wisdom and karma
The thing is: all of this is linked to each other, and reinforces each other. It is like a spider web. If one element falls away, it does not all come crumbling down, but the rest of the web takes over. If prayer does not work, you still have the gurus. If you don’t like the rituals, there is still the karma to think of. If you don’t see the validity of the Holy Book, then there is always the community. And so on.
And although the web of belief primarily relates to religious beliefs, it works just as well for non-religious beliefs. There are many communists who completely identify with communism, and although they may not pray, pretty much everything else is in place in their web as well. Any time you hold to a certain ideology, it is easy to form a community of people, including leaders, rituals, books, teachers, lifestyle, et cetera.
Truth
When looking at other belief systems, it is obvious that it is not very helpful for people to find the truth. I honestly don’t belief that Zeus actually existed, but for the people back in Greece some 2000 years ago it was daily reality. They were in the same web of belief, and although their ideas about Zeus may sound absurd to us now, for them any major argument we could think of would fall on deaf ears. The web would take over, and their belief would still be alive and kicking… and completely false.
Over time I will do a series on this blog how this web of mega-belief looked for me. What were the elements that kept my faith going? Why did I identify as a Christian? What made it so hard for me to step out of it? And how do I now think that I am not caught in the wrong web of belief – that of an “agnostic, atheistic secular humanist who likes to be seen as a freethinker”?
What does your web of belief look like?
Losing Your BFF 
October 31, 2015 at 20:37
Hi EJ. Really interesting blog you’ve got going here, though of course this isn’t an armchair debate, but stems from heart-felt, personal struggle so I don’t want to trivialise it. Thank you for sharing is what I’m trying to say : )
In responding to your initial questions about how this made me feel as a Christian, which I am, I would say that it made me feel sad, and again, I don’t want that to come across in a condescending way. I didn’t feel angry, frustrated or challenged. I have felt challenged by wrestling with doubts at points in my life. There are the everyday doubts, or the micro-doubts as I call them, about whether everyday decisions are the right ones. Then there are the macro-doubts, like how is God really there with those who are suffering? Man, the suffering question is a real killer.
The challenges to my faith came quite early on (I became a Christian when I was 14, ‘officially’) when I was studying philosophy, religion and ethics for my secondary school exams and then a bit later on during university. I remember during college, the bell going and as soon as class finished, just running off to a quiet place basically to break down in tears after my teacher (a former Christian, who had a rough time with his church) mocked Christianity. I hadn’t had a chance to get really entangled in the so-called ‘web of mega-belief’ before the questions came, but they still shook me to the core. That’s why I wanted to know, is this all really one big ‘God Delusion’? I continued to study philosophy and religion, and the more I studied, the more questions I came away with. Could I understand reality using only the narrow aperture of the senses? Can I verify through my senses the reality of quantum-level physics? Can I see, feel, hear or taste sub-atomic particles in themselves? If my thoughts are purely and solely the result of Darwinian evolution, and do not serve any notion of Truth, but are really programmed bio-chemically to serve evolutionary success, then why should I trust ANY of my thoughts, even about the things that are seemingly self-evident i.e. scientific facts like the laws of physics? How can rationality stem from irrationality, mind from matter? Take Lawrence Krauss’s statement: ” science does what it does, and it determines nonsense from sense by testing “. As the apologist William Lane Craig argues: “this is a self – contradictory statement, because you can’t scientifically prove that you should only believe that which can be scientifically proven”. And what is the basis for doing science if we do not first have faith in (a) our cognitive faculties (or those of clever scientists) and (b) that the universe is rationally intelligible? I realised that the issue wasn’t faith-versus facts as faith is involved at every level, hence there is a whole field devoted to philosophy of science. Science then, I realised is one of the best tools we have for understanding reality, but even science has it’s limits. Science could tell me what the chemical effects of putting cyanide in my school bully’s lunch would be, but could it tell me why it would be morally wrong to do so? Science could inform me of the organic matter and chemical compounds in my birthday cake, but it couldn’t tell me the purpose of the lovingly crafted cake. Science leads us to ask more and more questions, but faith in the scientific method paved the foundation for the legitimacy of even asking the questions in the first place.
So perhaps history could help me out. After all, Christianity is rooted in the historical claims of Jesus of Nazareth. Ultimately, the gospels are not proof of the Jesus of the Bible (but then again, there isn’t much in the way of strict proof other than in the field of mathematics). There is good evidence for the gospels if you do the research but again, all that ‘proves’ is that lots of people at the time believed that there was a God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth, who performed miracles, fulfilled Messianic prophecy, was crucified and appeared to many people. So even history is limited, ultimately, if you need the narrow aperture of your senses to verify something. But then I wondered, in 2000 years time, how will anyone prove that two planes collided into a couple of Towers in the New York skyline? All there will be, is good evidence that lots of people at the time believed that to have happened. Will anyone be able to follow the steps of (1) Observations and research (2) hypothesis, (3) Prediction (4) Experiment (5) Conclusion to verify it?
It always comes back to faith. Science and history, among other things, are springboards into the Christian story for me. I would argue that my faith is based on reasonable evidence, but I’ll be honest and say that I still struggle with hard questions, at some times more than others (like when I see another wretched story in the news or hear of a personal tragedy). Perhaps I look at the same information as an atheist does, and he or she will see it as evidence that God doesn’t exist, let’s say for example, parasites, and I will see that as evidence pointing toward the existence of the triune God and the explanatory power of the Christian meta-narrative. Maybe that’s because I think that our minds filter the way we perceive reality based on our heart’s affections. The view of the Soul in Classical Theism conceived of our minds being trust-worthy and being able to overcome our affections. But I agree more with the Biblical view that our motivations are heart-based and provide the guiding values which influence the way we perceive information. In other words, yes, there is an element I think in all our world view’s that we believe what we want to believe. You’re right to some extent when you say that we’re all caught up in a web of belief. The question for me is, which web holds the most explanatory power? You have come to the conclusion that a secular-humanist one does. But how do you know, and how can you be certain of/trust in/have faith in your method for ascertaining that? I will be interested to hear from your upcoming blog posts : ) Also, is your world-view falsifiable? If not, how do you deal with that? I find it troubling when any assertion made in support of a world-view can be shut-down with a response that is essentially a ‘well you would say/think that, being a Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/atheist/Secular Humanist etc wouldn’t you’? Just thoughts to ponder! Sorry for the essay!
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November 2, 2015 at 15:43
Hi Emma,
Thanks for your essay worthy comment :-). Really appreciate how you are engaging with this blog. Hope to hear more from you! I typed a long response yesterday but then the internet failed as I wanted to send it… bummer. So here is a new version.
Next blog post will be about worldview, but it’s a tough one to prepare. I am only now making a mental model of what happened to me years ago; the actual experience was much more confusing. So I hope to get back on those points.
You write some good stuff about the philosophy of science and I agree to a large degree with it. Indeed science cannot answer every question, especially not the beta-sciences that you seem to be referring to. Just staring at gamma radiation won’t teach us the joy of having a new daughter for example. However the field of ‘social sciences’ can help us to give meaning & value to things; like it teaches us that being altruistic is a far better strategy at attaining happiness in your life, than being a selfish & greedy person. The ‘golden rule’ (do not do to others as you don’t want to be treated yourself) is also universally present across many cultures and religions. Here the softer sides of science actually can help us in becoming better human beings.
You also have a good point in that we cannot trust our brains as they were not necessarily programmed to find truth, but rather to survive in a hostile world. This matches exactly my personal experience, where I had a whole belief system based on a host of premises, which then radically changed later on as I was trying to survive in this world and make sense of it. If there was a God who designed our brains, why do we think in such faulty ways, and why are there literally thousands of religions, cults, superstitions, et cetera? Clearly I was either quite deluded before, or I am now (or both). It can’t be that Christianity is ‘right’ and secularism is ‘right’ as well. At least one has to give way. Also, just look at how many people want to vote on Donald Trump and I am convinced that our brains were not designed to think that objectively and clearly about everything 🙂
However I do think that we can evolve a bit beyond that instinctive thought, and critically analyze our own belief systems, which I try to do in this blog. After all, our brains have evolved to do just that, and to improve the way we do things, how we build tools, etcetera. This is actually the reason for my blog; I am trying to see if my ramblings make any sense to others, so I can cross-check my thinking and the state my brain got itself into. As human beings I think it is our privilege and duty to rise above our animal instincts and try to figure out reality for what it really is. Science has gotten us quite far actually, I dare say much further than religion ever has (but that depends a bit on your frame of reference).
I hope to get back on your comments about ‘faith’ later on as well. I am now often presented by Christians with the statement that they ‘chose’ to have their faith, simply because everything is faith in the end anyway, we can’t know everything for sure and you have to make a choice in matters of faith. So why not pick Jesus? I think things are quite a bit more complicated than that.
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November 7, 2015 at 20:30
Yes, I think things are a little more complicated than that too (as in the reasons people become believers) 😊
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November 8, 2015 at 16:33
Hi EJ, I continue to read you blog with much interest. This one I needed a few days to process. I appreciate your point that this “web of belief” makes it hard for people to switch belief systems, and keeps them in this web a long time, even when confronted with doubts and inconsistencies.
What I find really interesting is why there are still people actually abandoning their “web of belief” and embracing a new faith. Your point makes it actually all the more astounding that there are people willing to give all that up and leave behind their gods, their worldview, their family & friends, their traditions, in spite of the huge cost to them. This only makes sense if they are actually convinced of the truth (or value) of this new faith. I have personally seen the transformation in a number of people who have made such a journey, and I would say that these conversions are a powerful argument for the validity of their new convictions.
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November 9, 2015 at 03:47
Hi Arend,
Yes, it is amazing that people change their web of belief for something else. It is an experience unlike anything else, like the spine is ripped out of your body.
But when one zooms into the reasons *why* people change, I find it all the more illuminating. Why are people changing from any other system to Christianity? I heard a teacher say in college “We all come to Christ for the wrong reasons, and then spent our lives figuring out what the right reasons should have been”. In general, most people don’t change to becoming a Christian because it logically all made sense to them, or because an angel appeared to them. It is more like friends/family were Christian as well, or they were in a bad emotional state where they needed a new system because their current situation was not working for them anymore. There are many more reasons of course, but we all have to agree that people do not become Christians because of all the reasons we would *like* them to become Christians as western missionaries.
People turning into atheism is a different story. That is very often by reason alone (not always, of course). I am part of the Clergy Project, where there are 700+ ex-pastors and ex-missionaries who left the faith. Almost all have the same reason for becoming atheist: faith didn’t make sense anymore. Almost everyone has had to sacriface a lot to come to that position, and they gained very little, certainly at the start. Often the only gain was intellectual honesty, to no longer tell yourself to believe things that one truly cannot believe anymore.
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January 25, 2016 at 18:16
This is exactly what i have been watching yesterday an today again! I am afraid (you will understand i am not instantly happy) this might be the last peace of the puzzle, before losing my religion completely… One by one the parts of the web are falling apart…we’ll see how it ends…
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