Over at HuffPo, “after-hours rabbi” Alan Lurie describes four “impediments” to “experiencing god” that he wishes he’d lectured a skeptical job applicant about.
4. The worry that “spiritual experiences” are just feel-good self-indulgence.
Why would someone worry that something is a “feel-good self-indulgence”? Here are some other feel-good self-indulgences:
- eating cookie dough straight from the tube
- “borrowing” a single-engine plane for a joyride
- the Fleshlight
Each of these is popular precisely because it’s a “feel-good self-indulgence”! If people thought god was a feel-good self-indulgence, he’d be bigger than Jesus! His problem is that he’s (imaginary and) a joy-kill.
3. The fear that god-worship makes people “arrogant and/or sheepish.”
I also have trouble imagining this as an impediment. God-disbelievers do plenty of things that make them “arrogant and/or sheepish”:
- Science Olympiad
- Stage productions of “Little Bo Peep”
- Obama-worship
In fact, I have never heard this used as an excuse not to do something, although I confess that I tend to avoid people who seem overly concerned with sheep.
2. There’s not a two-column proof that god exists.
This is another doubtful impediment. Except for the handful of us who think we’re mathematicians, most people hate two column proofs. I can’t even remember the last time someone demanded that I two-column prove something before he would start believing in it, although it’s likely it was that weirdo on the street corner with the huge “I don’t believe in Pythagoras’s Theorem!” sign.
1. There’s no evidence god exists.
Finally, an objection that makes sense! It is indeed quite tough to “experience” something when there’s no evidence it exists. That’s the reason so few people are able to “experience” the luminiferous aether, N-rays, the Odic force, or phlogiston.
In lieu of, you know, evidence, Lurie suggests that we look for “little miracles” in things like trees and bodily functions and employment.
Now, admittedly I am not a rabbi, but I am pretty sure that “miracles” need to involve happenings of things generally considered unpossible, like the invention of an inexpensive, tasty-when-spread-on-fruit mayonnaise-like “whip,” or a World Series victory over the unstoppable 1969 Orioles, or a synthetic plant fertilizer made of petroleum by-products.
If the fact that I occasionally experience indigestion is a “miracle” that counts as “evidence” for the existence of “the Divine,” then pretty much anything counts as evidence for the existence of anything else.
What about the “little miracle” of my alarm clock going off this morning at precisely the time I set it to go off! Or the “little miracle” that when I turned on the hot water faucet in my sink, hot water came out! Or if that’s not plausible enough, how about the “little miracle” that this morning my shoes were in the exact same place I left them last night. If that’s not evidence for “the Divine,” then nothing is!
I once knew a guy who was totally convinced that he had disproven the pythagorean theorem. He truly believed that it was utterly impossible that he had made a mistake in his proof, and instead insisted it must be centuries of mathematicians that were wrong.
Later, he drank liquid nitrogen because he was totally convinced his understanding of physics would make it safe to do so, and earned an honorable mention for a Darwin award. True story.
Please, sir, tell me more about this “shoes-staying-exactly-in-the-same-place-where-I-left-them-last-night” religion of yours. Do you have any pamphlets I could peruse?
I especially enjoyed this post Joel!!
Your Religion Is False » Blog Archive » The after-hours rabbi, sheepishness, and evidence of “the Divine” – just great!