Seven Degrees of Separation from Faith

The House of Faith is often a welcoming host. Whether raised into it, seduced or convinced, the lure of afterlife, the certainty and absoluteness of its claims, the rituals, the embracing social community, good business good politic, one feels embraced by this wide-shouldered,  promising host.   

Once in the House of Faith, however, the door slowly slams shut.  

Odd. After-all, Faith is supposed to be something you either feel or you don’t, just like love, hate, or compassion.

 Faith though, tends to “stick around” long after we think it out.

 Some people who went through this exit process compared the separation to a bad divorce. Their testimonials shed some light on a few Faith-embedded  memes which stand in the way of the detachment process.

1. Lover’s rejection: 

The meme that Faith is a special gift, with which comes an obligation is implicitly and explicitly reinforced through prayer. Losing Faith in some congregations is like returning a gift, like a slap in the face of the giver (God) and of the community embraced and bonded by that Faith. It’s a package that wraps commitment and obligation rather than:  “It’s a gift, feel free to use it as you like, and here is the return or exchange receipt in case it doesn’t fit you…”

Therefore, walking out on Faith, usually entails sacrificing social acceptance and approval by the community on which it is contingent. Fundamentalist communities tend to regard minor “adjustments” of Faith as an act of defection, a serious betrayal calling for penalties ranging from shame to physical harm. Common to less fundamentalist denominations, is schism within the family, ranging from shunning to “we don’t talk about “the topic” sort of acceptance bordering on denial.  

2. Ultimate Reality otherwise unavailable.

  The meme that only Faith reveals the unequivocal Truth cannot be proved nor   refuted. Access to the Truth requires a surrender of any resistance (= critical thinking). Faith denounces the efficacy of Reason as incapable of providing certainty and spiritual understanding of what is and what’s right. The trap here is that to get any closer to capturing the essence of the Ultimate Truth, one needs to  surrender her Self first.

Not too many people can explain what’s meant by “ultimate Truth” or by: “Reality beyond reality”, but the vaguer such promising wholesome concepts are, the stronger their attraction. Yet, failing to grasp these slippery ideas tends to  intimidate one into believing that she lack “spiritual  depth” . 

3. Remedy doubt by praying all the way back.

Entertaining doubts is attributed to either the work of the devil, or to human lack of attention, straying or resistance. Doubt stands as a flaw of character, ranging from vanity to sin. It can only be conquered via hard prayer and a conscious refusal to listen to the nagging skeptical voice in your head.  The trap here is that the presence of doubt is not addressed as a potential flaw in Faith, rather, it is attributed to a flaw in the Self. Therefore doubt has no credibility and should be eradicated by the very same Faith it doubts.  The remedy: When in doubt –pray.  This indoctrination  to get it “out of the head”,  by  repetitive prayer is compelling.  As a form of self- hypnosis it is likely to numb the critical Self  by praying all her    way back to acceptance. This practice resembles what some psychotherapists call: “Fake it till you make it”.

 This practice may be agonizing, as she may feel “locked in”, guilty or frustrated about her inability to shut off her resistance and pray “the right way”. Sometimes she carries on in denial or stays in the closet.

4. Faith as a necessary moral supervision.

 A widely popular belief in the  necessity of Faith for  moral development explains why many agnostic parents of young children who claim no faith themselves, still raise their children into a Faith. The belief in the necessity of Faith for moral and social survival often deprives the pious from entertaining optional moral supervisors such as natural conscience and compassion, or social contract, norms and laws. Since Faith entails a feeling that one has nowhere to hide from God’s piercing eye, accompanied by a potentially eternal harsh punishment it is believed to be the most invasive and effective supervision possible.

Therefore, loss of faith is regarded as an act of insubordination, deification and moral disintegration.  Similarly, a secular society runs the risk of social chaos. The meme that lack of Faith implies human autonomy hence moral fragmentation, seem to have widely replicated by the story of the forbidden Fruit. That influential story has made an irrational, yet powerful equation of with Morality Obedience.

5.  Faith as the ultimate emotional crutch.

Quite often, after a debate with a believer in which the argument is lost, she brings up her conviction in the critical role of Faith in her emotional survival. She may provide several examples to demonstrate the way Faith has carried her   through rough times. She doesn’t need proof, as without her faith, she feels, she is likely to lose hope and fall apart.

     This sense of Dependency (on Faith) is reinforced by causal attributions of omnipotence and of ultimate benevolence, followed by a sense of bottomless gratitude to God for everything (natural), from waking up in the morning to being able to escape a fire that claimed other lives, not hers. It often entails a belief in being in God’s grace, or on his “preferred” list. Those attributions tend to be self- centered,  ignoring less fortunate folks who didn’t make it to safety, while maintaining faith in God’s absolute benevolence. When bad things happen to the pious, they are blamed on straying thoughts, impure intentions, weak moments of doubt, or slacking on the display of gratitude and devotion.

 Hence, in spite of a mixed bag of life experiences, the attribution is always to a God who takes care of her and on whom she can and should depend as long as she lives. That feature of Faith as self- feeding by a selective attribution pattern, making detachment increasingly more difficult to achieve.

In addition to the sense of dependence, Faith does provide a relief from uncertainty, a cognition not well tolerated by most people. Therefore Faith may indeed lower uncertainty-related anxiety although some religious based certainties may be quite scary.

Last but not least powerful is the emotional attraction of the After-life, a myth that seems to stem from  human eternal struggle with the tragedy of forced departure. Separations (from what is) have always been difficult for human- kind, let alone the idea of the ultimate separation from life. For many, abandoning Faith means facing an inevitable morbidity, giving away any comforting fantasies of Self- continuity or reunion with loved ones. Unsubstantiated as those ideas might be their appeal keeps the flocks in. 

6. Pascal wager, or “maybe somebody knows something…” 

Blaise Pascal pointed out that:  "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then without hesitation …"

What if God does exist? What if Hell exists? Since God’s existence cannot be proved or disproved, it can’t be ruled- out. The cost for disbelief can be substantial, while not subscribing to Atheism appears to be non-consequential.

Hence, Pascal suggests, it is safer to stay in the House of Faith just in case.

As a reform Rabbi explained to me : “My faith is a cheap insurance policy…it’s not about what’s right…it’s about authority and trying to go with the flow…Billions believe…are they all wrong? What makes you so sure? What if he does exist and is listening to our conversation Now? Perhaps we should stop before he gets pissed…”

7. PFSD ( Post Faith Stress Disorder):   Familiarity and Hypnotic induction.

The idea of  a Monotheistic God  has been widely embedded in Western Culture, as well as in the Mid- East, with replicating memes (images, stories, rituals, norms, language) that kept invading the collective mind (culture) under the radar.  The more familiar some (implausible) stories became to the conscious and subconscious mind, the more credible they turned out to be.

 Separation from a familiar situation has never been easy for Mankind. Quite often one prefers to stay within a familiar context just to avoid the pain and uncertainty of separation. Similarly, the human brain gives preference to familiar rather than to foreign information, endowing familiar stories with a sense of realism and conviction. Hence Many Christians will brush- off old Testament or Quran stories as fairy-tales, while accepting the  virgin birth, and Jesus resurrection as a historical fact. Jewish pious may discard the“ Jesus walking on Water” story as fiction, while accepting Moses parting the sea story, and all monotheistic believers regard the Greek Gods epics as pure mythology.

Rituals, communal bonding, incense, music, prayer, carried out repetitiously, are the mechanisms by which religious memes replicate and operate. Being highly hypnotic, they invade the mind at a deeper state in which the boundaries between reality and non- reality are blurred.

 Under those states imagined or preached scenarios become vivid, “alive”, and sometimes carved in memory as a subjective experience.

Images, olfactory memories, emotions associated with Faith are likely to stick around for an indefinite stay. It’s the “defector” who is the host this time around, rather than the House of Faith.

 Tom, for example, an ex- Catholic friend, discarded the idea of Hell as irrational and primitive. No matter, he admitted to suffer from flashbacks years after he left the church. His upbringing and Catholic education seem to have given “Hell’ an illegal yet permanent residence in his mind.

Other ex-Catholics admitted feelings of shame and images of Hell creeping in whenever they violate what they previously were taught was sin; masturbation being a common one. People who left other religious denominations compared their inability to shake off emotional and visual memories to flashbacks.

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The term PTSD refers to past visual memories or emotional responses being experienced in new, different situations and time.  PFSD (Post Faith Stress Disorder) is my response to  Faith outlasting its expiration date.

 It is ironic that Faith, widely regarded as a virtue, has been employed with practices of mind manipulation and control to such an extent and success.