dyirbal’s blog

Anatomy of a Christian Hate Letter – Part Four

this post is part of a dialogue, in two minds: the anatomy of a christian hate letter, between preceding serve brian worley and psychologist valerie tarico . in the series, brian worley, an ordained baptist, describes some of his encounters with christian friends and m?nage since he deconverted and valerie tarico responds. in letter 3 brian talked about what attracted him to the christian faith and he puzzles over why christianity provokes such intense and even violent reactions toward apostates and outsiders. dear brian,the things that attracted you to the christian faith are the same that attract scads people. recently i attended a meeting called “vintage jesus” held on the university of washington campus. there were two to three hundred local students who had in to understand a charismatic mega-church churchman tell them who jesus was. i watched with charm as pastor mark driscoll wove his story, subtly distorting, blurring ideas together, overstating agreement among christians, and skirting biblical contradictions. but he beautifully played the factors you touch on: earnestness, a unique “truth” story, integrity rigor, camaraderie, and a rock keep that upheld their promise to “melt our faces distant.”when joined is deeply immersed in fundamentalist christianity, it feels beautiful. it feels like the official deal. it rocks! it feels like being part of a loving community with a higher callingbecause, in details, it iseven if that higher profession is based on utter fabrication. to understand the intensity that gets triggered when outsiders question religious beliefs, it helps to hear tell how and why those beliefs get stuck in our brains. for the stage, let’s bum from richard dawkins and deem of christianity as a “meme complex”, meaning a make ready of viral ideas that get transmitted from human being to person.thousands, perchance even hundreds of thousands of religious ideas have evolved in human minds. some of them under no circumstances make it outside a single mind. most of them simply die out within a generation or two. but some capture the imagination. they get passed on from person to man and generation to generation, even Steven for thousands of years. these successful notion-organisms, things like epicureanism, hinduism, tao, marxism, or christianity, basically get humans to serve themto spend their ?lan vital get-up-and-go vanishment ardour on the compelling “truth” that has been discovered. “compel” is the operative word here. the impulse to pass on this truth needs to manipulate solicitous, signal. the more adulate a compulsion it is, the more energy a person or group of people will allot to the credo. to be powerful in this way, the meme complex has to fit the structure of the human mindhow we prepare dope. we have structures wellnigh similar to templates in our minds; and information needs to seizure these structures to get encoded and retained. (pascal boyer’s rules, religion explained, does a beautiful job of outlining this.) but the meme complex also has to tap deep emotions. cogitate on with respect to all of the forwarded email that comes across your desk. what do people pass on? things that ruffle them. things that make them laugh or get teary. things that make them get hot under the collar or scared or divulge them chills. christianity would be dead in the douse if it didn’t trigger effective emotions. how does it do this? answering this doubtlessly would take a book, i’m afraid. but the usual gist is that it taps emotions that are wired into us for a variety of adaptive purposes: · the community emotions of warmth and closeness, belonging, and love,· our inclination to undertake and defer to venereal hierarchy.· the aphorism emotions: empathy, shame, and contrition. · our sense of the numinousthe intuitive perception of things beyond the reach of our senses or rational cortex.· our capacity for satisfaction, for joviality, savour, peace.· our self-preservation instincts: fear, tribalism and wariness of outsiders, eagerness nearly death.

As I rattle through even this brief list, I find myself admiring the thoroughness with which the Christian belief system weaves itself into the depths of the human psyche. One of the benefits of understanding this is that it gives us empathy for people who are still bound to the beliefs that once bound usyour brother, my brother, and the 45% of Americans who call themselves born-again. It also gives us some empathy for ourselves, we who ask ourselves how could I have been so blind? ! How could I have spent 10 years or 20 or 30? and who feel guilty about all the others that we brought into the web who are still caught there. I hope this helps.

Warmly,Valerie

Want to review another letter in this series? Just click the link below.

Usefull links: Gilman school, Dr. seuss characters, Forester, Steve guttenburg, Castro dead