Why Believing in God is Useful, Even if He Isn’t Real
There’s a possibility that humans created God. He could just be a creation from deep within our unconscious that we pieced together through ancient stories for centuries, until enough pieces came together and the authors of the Bible were able to put together the narrative. We know that many of the Biblical stories aren’t the first of their kind. They seem to have been inspired by ancient mythology. One of the great psychoanalysts, Carl Jung, believed that archetypes steer humans. He thought these archetypes could only be deduced indirectly through the use of story, art, religion, and dreams. To Jung, these archetypes were both universal and archaic. Maybe this what the Bible is? A collection of archetypes from our collective unconscious?
By no means am I claiming that this is what happened — just throwing out an idea. But we do know that humans have seen tremendous leaps in our cognitive and technological abilities. The first airplane was built in 1903, and the first atomic weapon was dropped in 1945. That’s barely 40 years between humans first taking flight and unleashing the deadliest of weapons on our fellow man. And that’s only the beginning of our technological advancements. The way social media and AI have taken over various aspects of our lives, it’s no wonder that Elon Musk and other of our 21st century pioneers believe we live in a computer simulation.
We know that part of the tragedy of life — or reality, depending on how you look at it — is that humans are the only creature that is self-aware and capable of contemplating its existence and mortality. Because of this, we attempt to find answers for such. Finding answers is a tall order. How do we come to terms with something as large as human existence?
Nassim Taleb has a concept he calls the narrative fallacy. Because humans have a tendency toward thinking in terms of stories — a reason why marketing works, why we buy products, and why we believe the mini-story about a product — we’re also susceptible to creating stories to make sense of the world around us.
Here’s how Taleb defines it. “The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.” This is taken from Taleb’s book The Black Swan.
This tendency toward telling ourselves stories causes us to believe unprovable, or inaccurate causes and effects. We see this after tragedy, failure, success, and everything in between. We always find a way to explain to ourselves why things happened to us, even if it’s something as mundane as getting caught in traffic, or something as life-altering as a job promotion. These stories are frameworks to help us get through life, and we need them. But our existence is much more random than we realize. We often have little to do with why things happen — despite how much we feel like we do. Since life happens through our own narrative, of course we find ways to take credit or make sense of things on a personal level. (Yes, there are many instances where we can directly attribute actions to results and it isn’t simply a narrative.)
So the question isn’t whether or not we tell ourselves stories. The question becomes, what stories should we tell ourselves? What stories can we base our lives on?
Do Humans Need Unknown Goals?
If God is a human creation, why’d we make Him, and what’s the goal? Why tell ourselves this type of story that most people chalk up to ancient fairy-tale? There could be many reasons, depending on how you interpret the world, but I’ll give you one that occurred to me recently.
In life we chase after goals. We do this moment by moment during our days. Simultaneously we’re chasing after many goals. We may be building work relationships at the same time that we’re raising kids, trying to get promoted, implementing a new diet, fixing a car, and building a desk. There can be a number of goals that are all cataloged and taking place at the same time. With many of these goals, the physical ones especially, we know that with enough hours, they’ll be accomplished. Building a desk isn’t an abstract aim, it’s just a matter of sitting down and building a desk.
Knowing the result is exciting if we like the outcome. But not everything we aim at allows us to know the results. There’s many things we pursue that’s limits can’t be measured, or where we can’t necessarily determine an end point. Anyone who seeks to improve their marriage, friendships, or their lives are chasing goals that ensue — ones that don’t necessarily have targeted stops.
With these type of goals, there’s no moment where you finally say, ‘ok, now I’m happy with my relationship with my mom’ and you call it a day. These goals without ceilings are also pursued by anyone who does anything creative, like a writer, painter, or musician. These artists probably have tangible milestones to determine success — like getting paid — but in the abstract, they don’t necessarily have a ceiling for what they’re trying to accomplish.
Even in our jobs we sometimes don’t know where the ceiling is, or what it should be. “Is X amount of money enough?” “Should we only aim until X promotion?” There’s many examples. Many things we aim to improve at are operating in the abstract, though we see physical results. But they lack an evident endpoint the way you’d see if you were building a fence.
Maybe our ancestors realized the practical use in chasing the abstract? Maybe they realized through their unconscious that chasing limitless ideals excites humans? Because even if working out gets us in shape, does knowing the result make working toward the task any easier? Or the result more thrilling? Maybe seeing behind the curtain actually keeps us from commitment, because where’s the fun in knowing the outcome? Maybe we realize that their is a joy in chasing things whose results can’t be measured, especially if those things are positive and beneficial for us?
There isn’t a way to estimate how life would be if we pursued morality, virtue, and “God.” Our entire western experiment is based on these principles, and so far it has gone well for the United States. Barring some catastrophe, it will likely continue to go well.
There’s no straightforward cause and effect during a metaphysical pursuit. Built into it is the excitement of the unknown that you don’t get in a physical cause and effect goal. So, we can’t measure how abstract pursuits like virtue and morality will trickle down into our lives. They could better our mental health, our emotional stability, and even improve us as people enough that we perform better at work and in our relationships and hobbies. If these were true — which we can theorize, because there isn’t an objective way to say that applying many of the Christian virtues will yield negative results — then how could we ever possible quantify the outcomes?
Drawing from the narrative fallacy, we’d have an even tougher time measuring success, because any guess might just be us trying to make sense of things. We couldn’t directly pinpoint where the cause and effect lies. But we can objectively say that pursuing something noble — even if it’s something whose accuracy we can’t precisely determine, since so much of religion seems to be borrowed from ancient tribes and stories, and has been shared across civilizations— can’t hurt us. It can only make life more pleasant.
We All Believe in God
You might say that you don’t believe in God, but it’s only a matter of definition. Psychologically speaking, our highest aspiration, that which draws the purpose of our existence, serves as our our God(s). What most occupies your mind? What’s your highest aim?
It’s a philosophical approach to try and mold our minds toward meditating on specifics. But it’s true in a practical sense. We can choose what we pay attention to. Humans aren’t creatures whose minds are forced toward whatever stimulation is in front of them.
From a strategic perspective, if we know that what we put in our minds will come out in our external results in the long-term, why not try and program ourselves with something that can be useful or helpful?
I’ve always found it interesting that people are willing to attend self-help conferences—often lectures and talks that seem to ignore objective reality for positive thinking— but they are unwilling to consider tried and true religious ideas that have stood for millennia. Most of these ideas are what are woven into self-help books, anyways. Why not just go straight to the source and try out religious ideas and virtues? Aiming at these virtues certainly can’t do harm.
The philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal had a much better articulation of this idea. It’s known as Pascal’s Wager. Here it is, as summarized by Nassim Taleb in The Black Swan. “I do not know whether God exists, but I know that I have nothing to gain from being an atheist if he does not exist, wheras I have plenty to lose if he does. Hence, this justified my belief in God.”
As Taleb also makes sure to point out, there is a problem assuming that an omnipotent Deity would be pleased with those who believe in His reality only for the sake of succeeding in life. And that’s a valid point. If you’ve ever learned about God of the Old Testament, he doesn’t take wisely to foolishness, and a foolishness aimed at using Him could be similar to the what He saw as foolishness with false idols. But, that’s a theological argument for another day, and a day where we are assuming that God exists. For today, we’re only assuming that it’s possible to wager that faith is just a strategic sentiment to mitigate the suffering of life.
