Vj288. I agree a lot with what you said... I always find it mildly frustrating that "God" implies a religious god, when there are plenty of people who believe in a god and yet hate religions. It used to be more common for people to accept the idea of a god existing outside of religious ideas, but it seems very rare now... People simply equate God and religion as the same thing.
I also agree with what another member said about not understanding why people think science and religion cannot coexist. Or rather, I do understand why (crazy over-the-top religious people trying to fight against science which goes against their beliefs, along with some anti-religious atheists who want to bring down all religion and demonise it... Both fighting against each other...), but there are plenty of scientists who are religious or have belief in a god of some form.
Ideally we ought to look at evidence and decide where that takes us.. That's what I do and that's where I get my beliefs from. I take nothing on faith, including what "science" says... After all, "science" (I hate the way it's spoken of as though it is something in itself rather than a method... it would be much more helpful to speak of the scientific consensus.) was wrong in the past, things considered true now may well be proven wrong in the future... Therefore, I believe the sensible thing is to search for yourself and see where your search takes you, never believe something just because a scientist says it, anymore than you would because a vicar says it.
I agree with vj288 and Starry, and Gazelle. It made me think of and article form the book The Road Less Travelled:
The Baby and the Bath Water
The foregoing case histories were offered in response to a question: Is belief in God a form of psychopathology? If we are to rise out the mire of childhood teaching, local tradition and superstition, it is a question that must be asked. But these case histories indicate that the answer is not a simple one. The answer sometimes is yes. Kathy´s unquestioning belief in the God her church and mother taught clearly retarded her growth and poisoned her spirit. Only by questioning and discarding her belief was she able to venture forth into a wider, more satisfying, more productive life. Only then was she free to grow. But the answer also is sometimes no. As Marcia grew out of the cold microcosm of her childhood into a larger, warmer world, a belief in God also grew within her, quietly and naturally. And Ted´s forsaken belief in God had to be resurrected as an essential part of the liberation and resurrection of his spirit.
What are we to do with this yes-and-no answer? Scientists are dedicated to asking questions in the search for truth. But they too are human, and like all humans, they would like their answers to be clean and clear and easy. In their desire for simple solutions, scientists are prone to fall into two traps as they question the reality of God. The first is to throw the baby out with the bath water. And the second is tunnel vision.
There is clearly a lot of dirty bath water surrounding the reality of God. Holy wars. Inquisitions. Animal sacrifice. Human sacrifice. Superstition. Stultification. Dogmatism. Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. Rigidity. Cruelty. Book burning. Witch burning. Inhibition. Fear. Conformity. Morbid guilt. Insanity. The list is almost endless. But is all this what God has done to humans or what humans have done to God? It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem, then, that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that humans tend to be dogmatic? Anyone who has known a dyed-in-the-wool atheist will know that such an individual can be as dogmatic about unbelief as any believer can be about belief. Is it belief in God we need to get rid of, or is it dogmatism?
Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion. The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah. This is particularly the case when we have come to science from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly associated with ignorance, superstition, rigidity and hypocrisy. Then we have emotional as well as intellectual motives to smash the idols of primitive faith. A mark of maturity in scientists, however, is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion.
I have firmly stated that is is essential to our spiritual growth for us to become scientists who are sceptical of what we have been taught - that is, the common notions and assumptions of our culture. But the notions of science themselves often become cultural idols, and it is necessary that we become sceptical of these as well. It is indeed possible for us to mature out of a belief in God. What I would now like to suggest is that it is also possible to mature into a belief in God. A sceptical atheism or agnosticism is not necessarily the highest state of understanding at which human beings can arrive. To the contrary, there is reason to believe that behind spurious notions and false concepts of God there lies a reality that is God. This is what Paul Tillich meant when he referred to the "god beyond God" and why some sophisticated Christians used to proclaim joyfully, "God is dead. Long live God". Is it possible that the path of spiritual growth leads first out of superstition into agnosticism and then out of agnosticism toward an accurate knowledge of God? It was of this path that the Sufi Aba Said ibn Abi-I-Khair was speaking more than nine hundred years ago when he said:
Until college and minaret have crumbled
This holy work of ours will not be done.
Until faith becomes rejection, and rejection becomes belief
There will be no true Muslim.
Whether or not the path of spiritual growth necessarily leads from a sceptical atheism or agnosticism toward an accurate belief in God, the fact of the matter is that some intellectually sophisticated and sceptical people, such as Marcia and Ted, do seem to grow in the direction of belief. And it should be noted that this belief into which they grew was not at all like that out of which Kathy evolved. The God that comes before scepticism may bear little resemblance to the God that comes after. As I mentioned at the beginning of this part, there is no single, monolithic religion. There are many religions, and perhaps many levels to belief. Some religions may be unhealthy for some people; others may be healthy.
All this is of particular import for those scientists who are psychiatrists or psychotherapists. Dealing so directly with the growth process, they more than anyone else are called upon to make judgments as to the healthiness of an individual´s belief system. Because psychotherapists generally belong to a sceptical if not strictly Freudian tradition, there is a tendency for them to consider any passionate belief in God to be pathological. Upon occasion this tendency may go over the line into frank bias and prejudice. Not long ago I met a college senior who was giving serious consideration to the possibility of entering a monastery a few years hence. He had been in psychotherapy for the preceding year and was continuing. "But I have not been able to tell my therapist about the monastery or the depth of my religious belief", he confided. "I don´t think he would understand." I did not begin to know this young man well enough to assess the meaning that the monastery held for him or whether his desire to join it was neurotically determined. I very much would have liked to say to him: "You really ought to tell your therapist about it. It is essential for your therapy that you be open about everything, particularly a serious matter such as this. You should trust your therapist to be objective". But I did not. For I was not at all sure that his therapist would be objective, that he would understand, in the true meaning of the world.
Psychiatrists and psychotherapists who have simplistic attitudes toward religion are likely to do a disservice to some of their patients. This will be true if they regard all religion as good and healthy. It will also be true if they throw out the baby with the bath water and regard all religion as sickness and the Enemy. And, finally, it will be true if in the face of the complexity of the matter they withdraw themselves from dealing at all with the religious issues of their patients, hiding behind a cloak of such total objectivity that they do not consider it to be their role to be, themselves, in any way spiritually or religiously involved. For their patients often need their involvement. I do not mean to imply that they should forsake their objectivity, or that balancing their objectivity with their own spirituality is an easy matter. It is not. To the contrary, my plea would be that psychotherapists of all kinds should push themselves to become not less involved but rather more sophisticated in religious matters than they frequently are.
