Over the past few months, a Catholic gentleman, who has been struggling with doubts about Catholicism, has been dialoguing with me occasionally to work through questions and journey as a seeker of truth. Recently, he posed this concern / challenge to me:
“I understand that, yes, we can rationally come to the conclusion that God exists under numerous popes and bishops over the years stating this, but I come to wonder if, emotionally, we desire God to exist because of some subconscious metaphorical hole missing in our lives, and only take the most-likely approach to our research out of an emotional response rather than a rational response.”
AND
“I guess my whole question really started when I kept looking into miracles, and the statement that Richard Dawkins made in his book, ‘The God Delusion’, that the people of Fatima saw what they wanted to see. I wonder for myself; am I only believing what I want to believe, or am I believing because there’s no other way to explain”
Drawing from my email response to my seeker friend, I decided to write this blog post, which I hope will clear up that doubt for him and for anyone else who may watch this video. Moreover, I always appreciate talking with strong seekers of truth, as, in my experience, the conversations tend to be more holistic and productive. That’s because seekers generally want to get to the core of their faith journey and confirm they are on the right path.
Keeping that mind, my answer to the question, “Does belief in God stem from an irrationally emotional need to believe?”, is split into three categories: Evolution / biology, Psychology, and Catholicism. Stick with me here; I think this may help. And if for some reason it does not help you are certainly welcome to message me and we can discuss from there.
Now, let’s dive into the answer:
Evolution / biology
Some people may already be aware of this, but just to establish a baseline of what we mean by being “emotional”: Emotions are as old as creation itself. The amygdala, the part of the brain that helps produce emotional responses and recognize potentially dangerous situations (“fight or flight”), has evolved over time as species have evolved. The human brain has a highly developed amygdala among all species, as we humans are not only extraordinarily social creatures, but we also have had such a severe amount of physical and emotional stress placed on us throughout the ages, that we have had to evolve both physically and socially, as individuals and as a society, to keep up with our ultra-complex social hierarchies in all domains of life.
Now, without getting too much into the science weeds right now, the point is that our emotional well-being (which we now include as part of “emotional intelligence”) is a crucial staple to how we go about life and interact with each other.
Take anger, for example: Yes, while we all have varying temperaments — some people have more control over their cool, some people are habitually hot-headed, some people fluctuate a lot, etc. — it is still necessary to have “anger” as an available emotion. Some people become irrational because of it, while others use it to drive a point home, or to vent a frustration in hopes of finding a solution.
And the examples do not stop there: We could probably think of a dozen reasons why anger is justified in certain situations, yet those situations do not always lead to being irrational. If someone has a chronic issue with their temperament, then they are more prone to being irrational. However, the bottom-line is there isn’t an exact, one-to-one relationship between being emotional and irrational in every situation.
Further, sometimes engaging certain emotions can dramatically mean choosing between life and death, or between fight or flight. Therefore, we must always keep in mind (no pun intended) that our emotional responses can contribute to our survival in life.
Now, while it is easy to witness Christians and atheists being irrational with each other during emotion-filled arguments – all people, from an evolutionary biology perspective, jockey for positions within social hierarchies. Some people are dog-eat-dog about it, others are more cooperative, and still others try to manipulate both sides of the conflicts to gain an advantage. But again, the bottom line is our need to have emotions is much more complex than whether they correlate directly to being irrational. Which leads me to…
Psychology
We all know that we each have our own personality / general personality type. This goes together with our biological makeup, as the combination of genetics and environment contribute to how we develop our personalities. That said, some people are more prone to being emotional, and irrational, based on a wide range of biological and environmental reasons.
For instance, when I have chatted with emotionally charged atheists, I like to get as much background about them as possible, so that I have a better understanding of what is fueling their emotions. From there, we can sort through each emotion and get to the core issue.
In general, many people, Christians and atheists alike, let their emotions get the best of them because of ego: They don’t want to be wrong, they don’t want their thoughts controlled, or they are consciously or unconsciously avoiding an all-out existential crisis: Who am I? Why am I here? Why is anyone here? Why should I believe anything? and so on…
Yet that does not mean they are completely irrational. Most people have a sufficient foundation in logic and reason, even those who are not that articulate. The question is whether they are willing to keep growing in their logic and reason, so that they do not end up in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance and/or confirmation bias.
Now, how does that factor with those people who need to believe in God because it fulfills an emotional need? Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are being irrational. I mean, is it irrational for a man and a woman to fall-in-love with each other because they both feel an attraction to each other’s non-verbal and verbal communication, including their need to feel emotionally connected? Note: I am not talking about any extreme behaviors here, as that is a whole other conversation altogether.
Here is an example: Have you ever had a male friend who said to you, “From the moment I saw her, I *knew* I had to get to know her and see if we had a connection”? That doesn’t sound so rational, right? Yet a combination of instinctive hunches, gestures between the two, and other mysteries about flirting, caused them to form a connection and start incorporating sound logic and reason for why they could be good relationship partners to each, how they set expectations with each other, and what are their shared goals.
This can also apply to a belief in God: Carl Jung, the famous depth psychologist in the 20th century, wrote extensively about the collective unconscious: the idea that all human beings have a built-in need to connect with something transcendent and align their morals and values with it. There is no shortage of studies to support this claim. And even if we were to dismiss it as an emotional need to connect with a higher power so that we ease our fears about death, it still would not dismiss that humans have this fundamental wiring (so to speak).
Which leads to consciousness itself. Human consciousness is still a vast world of unchartered territory: We simply do not know why or how we humans have such an extraordinary, hyper-developed consciousness that has such a deep need to address philosophical questions about life, existence, and transcendence. New Atheists have argued that evolution can explain it — but that is just not sweepingly correct at the end of the day. There is no fantastically direct link between our evolutionary development and why we, over every other species on the planet, have such a gnawing need to be as advanced a species as we have become. That does not mean we just leap to conclude, “therefore, God’. Yet it does mean our emotions are just a small part of why we have a need to connect to transcendence. Specifically — God.
Catholicism
One of the reasons I love being a Catholic Christian is that our whole faith has been built on balancing faith and reason. Think about all of the deeply influential, Catholic intellectuals who have contributed to philosophy and theology throughout the ages: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers (Eusebius, Origen, etc.) who went into painstaking detail to separate the truth of our faith from any ideas that had their own agenda or tried corrupting the faith. Think about Pope John Paul II — why are so many Catholics still enamored by him? Because he was a brilliant intellectual who reaffirmed our 2000-year-old history as a Church and that we truly are a Church of “fides et ratio” (faith and reason).
Which now leads to miracles: As a fellow Catholic friend of mine mentioned to me awhile back, the Catholic Church is all about investigating claims and establishing a burden of proof. In fact, when looking at all claims about miracles that the Church has investigated over time, only a tiny percentage of those have been confirmed as authentic. And that was after a whole lot of rigorous investigation.
That does not mean we eliminate all skepticism about miracles– though it does mean that we need to look more closely at how Richard Dawkins is concluding that the experience at Fatima, for instance, happened because the people there wanted it to happen. Furthermore, just because someone wants something to happen doesn’t make a miracle any less probable. Desire versus something actually fulfilled is a complex, separate conversation– there are too many variables to cover (or at least for now).
Also, something to keep in mind about Richard Dawkins (and other New Atheists): Just like the rest of us, Dawkins is right about some things and wrong about other things. For example, contrary to him presuming he has a good command of Scripture, both atheists and Bible scholars — including secular scholars — have pointed out his misunderstandings about Scripture.
And when it comes to evolutionary biology — even though Dawkins is an expert in this field — he also has questionable views on speciation and how science infers humans’ link to primates. (For instance, scientists rely much more on shared DNA between species than the fossil record, when it comes to primate evolution).
Also note: I am not a science denier nor against the main components of evolution (not to mention that half of my education involves that subject.). Instead, let’s just keep in mind that Dawkins lives in his own vacuum about how to see the world around us. He is the classic “scientism” scientist: “If you can’t prove it with the scientific method, then it can’t be true.” Except that we can prove numerous things in life to be true without using the scientific method. Furthermore, Dawkins also has a burden of proof with his own claims. Namely, if he asserts that the people at Fatima “wanted” that experience, then he also has the burden to prove *how* and *why*.
Lastly, no matter what claims out there try to bring down Christianity and shake up our beliefs, how we view and discuss truth should be the *starting point*. If we believe that things can be objectively or subjectively true, then we have a baseline for discussing it.
From there, do we believe that Christ spoke truth about morals and values, then is it possible that his claims of Divinity are also true? And if his claims are true, then he is truly of the triune God? And if he is truly of the triune God, then so are all Sacraments we receive? And if the Sacraments we receive are true, shouldn’t we live a moral life according to God’s will, as well as build a lasting communion with Him?