How to lose faith in God

Moving, causing, surviving. That’s why animals have a central nervous system. And that’s how a religious person ought to lose faith in God: on the move.

Simulation (mimicry) is included under ‘moving’.

The best way for a religious person who already doubts his faith, but doesn’t know how to go on, is to enter into learning relationships with atheists. Such relationships, mediated by goodwill and the sincere desire to learn, allow the religious doubter to ‘try out’ atheism, to simulate it for its effects on self and others. Multiple simulations should be attempted.  Slow cure is all important. These experiences must be largely positive to induce attachment.

Sudden and dramatic loss of faith almost never happens, if ever, for the reward system in the brain needs to re-tune itself out of the current attractor-category (religion) and into the new attractor-category (atheism). This change takes time; sometimes years.

To lose faith in God, you need to do something. You do this by first copying others who are already masters of the game.

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More good news

John Donne was partly right: A person is an island. But – every island is surrounded by water.

I am half myself, half you.

I am surrounded by your facial expressions. I adopt them as my own.

There is good news here

I cannot predict your every thought and action for the simple reason that most of my own thoughts and actions are completely spontaneous.

I cannot predict what I will do in most instances. I cannot know myself, so I cannot know you. True enough? We are both in the dark, it seems.

That sounds a bit bleak.

Is there any good news?

Yes: A person is not a vacuum. Human thought and action is shared. Shared, copied, modified, suppressed, distilled – we live in each other’s facial expressions.

Music and human imitation

Apparently, human beings who wish to be only happy in life, are the same people who the next moment willingly listen to sad music and make themselves become sad. Why?

Does such a person think to himself: ‘This music is sad; I want to be sad; therefore, I listen to this music to be sad’? No, of course not. A person in this situation does not need to inform himself why he acts as he does. In addition, there is typically no such thought process preceeding a musical experience, during it, or following it. It is not characteristic of listening to or performing music to bethink to oneself such motivating factors as if the experience must be accompanied by a spoken soliloquy to make sense. Isn’t this true of routine human behaviours generally? Second, such a thought process cannot inform me in the same way as it informs you. For you, it is information. For me, a point of emphasis? Let me develop this last idea.

A human being may talk to himself inwardly while the music is on, but not to give himself information. Then, what is the meaning of this internal monologue, and how should it be described? The words used may convey the the level of interest in the music (a melody, a recurring theme, how the trombones sound, etc), and may function more like an exclamation than a descriptive statement. Certainly, one can imagine this occurring in upbeat or joyful music. In sad or melancholic music, self-talk is expressive of the sad quality perceived in the music. Again, it stresses what is noteworthy in the music. The music merits attention. It really did amaze me.

We want to be sad for a time; at least, sad for as long as the music lasts. The listener follows the sad music as he follows the sad face which changes expression. Music is like a familiar face, and we resonate with it in understanding as long as we are interested. The music plays on, the face moves predictably. On occasion, the music is too predictable. So, we stop it in mid-flight, like an uncomfortable human conversation, and move to something else. Typically, however, the sad piece of music I know completely by heart is a rewarding experience as though I listen to it for the very first time. It really is like empathy for a fellow human being, or parity in facial expressions exchanged between close friends during conversation. Now – is your closest friend entirely predictable? No. Even deep rapport between human beings harbours dark regions. I do not even wish to say that we aim in music listening to recreate sadness, happiness, or any such fleeting emotional response. What human beings do, I believe, is empathize with what is perceived in the music as expressive of our shared human interests, wants, desires, hopes, etc. We find it there in music, and return to it habitually, just as we find it in the faces of other people.

A living human being can imitate a human corpse

A human corpse cannot respond to a living human being, but a living human being can respond to a corpse. For example, a living human can imitate a corpse, can show to others that a corpse cannot respond to questions put to it, and so on.

A living human may address the corpse of a loved one in speech and speak of the suffering and grief of personal loss. Is the person speaking to the corpse itself? No. But, the living human animates the corpse with personal memories, sensations and emotions that instead replace the corpse with the living, dynamic person that once was, and give the spoken words their point. I don’t think this is an act of make-believe, since the memories are real.

‘Is the person speaking to the corpse itself?’ What does the child address when it talks to dolls? Is the child engaged in make-believe? My hunch is that toy-play is imitation: the child animates the toy with human behaviors and thoughts.

Human grief and imitation

Living and shared human experiences. Is living based on shared human experiences? Why do human beings grieve the loss of a loved one? 

Here is one reason: A living human being cannot imitate a corpse.