Philosophy, Theology, History, Science, Big Questions
  • Homepage
    • Collections of Works By Great Thinkers
    • How To Become A Christian
    • Apologetics: Who Need's It
    • Ask ?'s
    • Introduce a New Topic to Discuss
    • Other Recommended Websites / Reading
    • 12 Pitfalls of the Foolish Apologist
    • Apologetics 101: The Basics
  • Phil. Theology
  • Phil. of Religion
    • Arguments for the Existence of God
    • Objections to the Arguments for the Existence of God
    • Defeaters of Divine Hiddenness
    • Defeaters of the Problem of Evil and Divine Silence
    • More Arguments Against Christian Theism
    • The Problem of Miracles
    • Incompatible Properties Argument
    • Reformed Epistemology
    • Molinism
    • Primary Sources On Big Topics In Phil. Of Religion
  • Phil. of Science/Time
    • The Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics
    • Fine-Tuning is a Fact
    • Absolute Beginnings
    • God/Time/Cosmology
    • Scientific Realism
  • Biblical Studies
    • Substantial New Testament Puzzles (In Progress)
    • Substantial Old Testament Puzzles (In Progress)
    • Evolution and Christianity
    • Rethinking Biblical Inspiration (In Progress)
    • The Gospels: Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
    • The Historical Case for the Resurrection >
      • Objections to the Resurrection
  • Scholarly Naturalism
    • Paul Draper
    • J.L. Schellenberg
    • Gregory Dawes

Our Cognitive Faculties are Wired with an Overriding defeater to Apparent Pointless Suffering in the World

6/10/2011

0 Comments

 
More support for the post below can be found by listening to the following interview: http://www.thinkatheistradio.com/albums/matthew-hutson/ 

(
Taken from http://atheismblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/we-are-wired-to-resist-truth-about.html)

Here are a couple of conclusions discovered in psychological studies that have profound importance for God believers and non-believers who are considering the question of gratuitous and inscrutable evil and the existence of God.

First, Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness points out that, “research shows that when people are given electric shocks, they actually feel less pain when they believe that they are suffering for something of great value.” The study he’s referring to is P.G. Zimbardo “Control of Pain Motivation by Cognitive Dissonance,” Science 151: 217-19 (1966).
Second, a number of researchers have shown that when test subjects are confronted with puzzling, random, or unexplained sequences of events they spontaneously form hypotheses about a causal relationship between them. They provide causal explanations even when none are apparent, they infer them even when not instructed to, and they remember described scenarios by means of causal cues better than by non-causal memory cues. See B. Weiner, “’Spontaneous Causal’ Thinking,” Psychological Bulletin 97: 74-84( 1985). R.R. Hassin, J.A. Bargh, and J. S. Uleman, “Spontaneous Causal Inferences,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38: 515-22 (2002).

One of the most contentious topics among believers and non-believers is the compatibility of an omni-God with the presence of inscrutable evil in the world. And anyone who has engaged in one of these conversations will note the powerful presence of the sentiment that “everything happens for a reason.” I cannot count the number of times that I have heard people insist on this platitude in response to the question of evil. And it is also obvious how much comfort people derive from that thought alone.

And what these psychological studies make clear is that humans possess a powerful epistemic, and emotional craving a causal explanation for everything they encounter. We find unexplained, random, seemingly unconnected events frustrating to the point of madness. And when it comes to the question of events that create pain, that urge is even stronger. The Zimbardo study shows that the pain actually feel less intense as long as the subject believes that it is occurring for some worthy cause. This sheds new light on the frequent comment by believers, “I just couldn’t face the world or my life if there were no God.” They aren’t kidding. We have a powerful cognitive mechanism that generates causal inferences and explanations even when there isn’t one present.
And in the case of pain, we have an additionally powerful subconscious motive or urge to explain it away in some fashion—it will literally feel less painful if we do.

So the atheist who presses the problem of evil as an argument against the existence of God is up against powerful human psychological tendencies. What gives the problem of evil objection to the existence of God the most force is the line of argument that there are events that generate massive amounts of suffering and death in the world—like the Thailand tsunami that killed over 230,000 people. And that an omni-God would never tolerate such events. So an omni-God doesn’t exist. And if there is no omni-God who permits such events as part of some grand cosmic plan, then those events are in fact random, pointless, and without any sort of redeeming payoff. And it is that last implication of the atheist’s argument that people find so deeply unpalatable. Our cognitive constitution is configured to resist that sort of conclusion, even when it is obviously true, with all its might.

 

Thank you Professor McCormick for your post, although you interpret it differently than me.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed