Getting Over the Joy of Believing?

A reader writes:

For about three years I was in the baal teshuva world, spending about two of those years in yeshiva. I came to be religious because of "spiritual" experiences, which may have been prompted by unmet emotional needs. When I was in yeshiva, I was told that you could rationally demonstrate (not "prove", sort of) that Judaism is true (and so, I reasoned, that there is a God). After working hard on these pseudoproofs for a while, I became convinced of one. I then believed very strongly that God exists, that He loves me, and that the religion was true.

For some time (days, a week?) after arriving at this conclusion, I felt incredible. More in love than I ever felt about a girl. When they say you should have a passionate love for HaShem, that's what I had. I couldn't sleep - I woke up ecstatic - overjoyed that there's a good, caring God who is looking out for me, helping, etc. One thing I always wanted from a woman was flowers. I've given lots of people flowers, but no one has ever given me flowers. I guess that's just how it is in society. But when I felt this way, I walked the streets and viscerally saw all the flowers as being from HaShem. Not in an intellectual way - it was as emotionally real and believed as if it was from another person. Trees upon trees full of beautiful flowers. I also really love singing. And in this state, I could sing more deeply and passionately, moving the people around me to tears, than I ever have.

About a year after this experience, I left yeshiva and the religious world. I'm still not exactly sure how it happened. I think I realized that I'd come to the religion for emotional reasons, but it really wasn't going to help me with them (in many ways it made my problems worse). That peak experience seemed to be the extent of the love, safety, and acceptance that I was going to get. My doubts about the truth of the religion - scientific issues, immoral behavior of the rabbis, and the whole thing just looking as fake as any other religion, came together. Intellectually it's pretty clear to me now that Judaism is made up and that there is no God.

But I find it hard to let go... at least partly because of the experience that I had of feeling so in love and loved. Even if it was fake, I can't see how I could ever feel that way again. A woman would have to fill a football stadium full of flowers to top that experience. "Maybe one flower from someone real who loves you would be better than a million fake ones," you might say. But I believed that it was real when it happened, so the enormous love felt completely real then. How can I go on in life knowing that I'll never feel that way again? Has anyone else experienced this? How have you moved on?

I never really felt that way to begin with, perhaps because I was born and raised frum. I know that I admired and was drawn to various BTs I knew because I sensed that joy in them, but I never really felt it myself.

I'm not sure what advice I can offer except that I suspect such feelings are always temporary, like the infatuation period early in a human relationship. You don't need to be infatuated with (the idea of) God any more than you have to be infatuated with a human being to be happy. Maybe you can love the universe like you can love a human being after the honeymoon period wears off.

I think most people need to go through some kind of grieving process after they leave religion. Some miss the perceived connection with God, some miss the community, some miss the rituals, and some miss the sense of purpose, but we all have something to grieve.

I suggest psychotherapy for anybody leaving Orthodoxy. It's a traumatic experience even if it's the right decision for you. This is doubly true if you have other emotional/psychological issues.

What if there were no God? Politically conservative and liberal Christians imagine their lives without faith

Interesting:

A sample of devout Christian adults, ranging widely in political orientation, described what their lives (and the world) might be like had they never embraced faith. Politically conservative Christians (also scoring high on right-wing authoritarianism) tended to imagine a life deficient in impulse control, wherein unrestrained sexual and aggressive urges, addictive behaviors, and human selfishness undermined the social good. By contrast, politically liberal Christians (also scoring low on right-wing authoritarianism) imagined an empty and barren world, devoid of the emotional intensity that makes life worth living. Gender differences were also observed, but they did not interfere with the relation between political orientation and the narrative themes. In accord with theoretical writings regarding normative and humanistic ideologies, the findings suggest that, at least among American Christians, political conservatism may entail a fear of, or strong sensitivity to, the prospects of conflict and chaos, whereas political liberalism may entail an equally strong fear of, or sensitivity to, emptiness.

Via Razib.

I've noticed the conservative fear of an anything-goes world without God, but I'd never associated a fear of an empty, meaningless world with liberals in particular.

It does seem to fit nicely into George Lakoff's model (YouTube) of the two parental metaphors that underlie conservatism and liberalism in America: that of the strict-father family and the nurturant-parent family. Take away the strict father for conservatives and we're Sodom and Gomorrah. Take away the nurturant parent for liberals and we're at a loss for what we should do.

Links: Intermarriage, Atheism, Ron Paul

1. Orthodox Rabbi turned secular humanist defends interfaith marriages.
2. Ask Metafilter: "Religion fulfills certain psychological needs. How do non-believers manage without it?"
3. Ron Paul: "It's a theory, the theory of evolution, and I don't accept it as a theory."

Death, Marriage, and Orthodox Judaism

Abandoning Eden is having a bit of a hard time dealing with her father's religiosity following his mother's death. This reminded me of some of the frustrations I've felt over the years regarding deaths and other lifecycle events in the Orthodox community.

Once, I attended a funeral of one of the most loving, cheerful, generous, and entertaining men I'd ever known. Even as he got older and less well, at a time of life when many people become cranky and irritable, he went out of his way to make people smile. One of his children got married when he was quite elderly and having trouble moving, but the way he got out there on the dance floor and put on a show for the kallah (bride) and crowd was something I'll never forget.

During the eulogies at his funeral, I was dismayed to hear nothing about his kindness, good cheer, or overwhelming generosity. All of the speeches were about how religious he was and how devoted to learning Torah. Those things were also true about him, but they didn't reflect what he was like as a human being and I was sad to know that what had been to me his most unique and affecting qualities were not even related to the enormous crowd that attended.

When my paternal grandfather was gravely ill, there were some tough decisions to make regarding his end-of-life care. Instead of coming together as a family and deciding what we thought was best, my father started calling around to find an available rabbi to tell him what halakha (Orthodox law) demanded in this situation. This may indeed have been what my grandfather would have wanted, so I cannot criticize my father's actions, but it felt inappropriate somehow to entrust the most personal of decisions to a man who was a stranger to us, who based his advice on an impersonal interpretation of halakha. This was before I had realized that I was an atheist and I clearly remember thinking, "This is too important to start worrying about halakha stuff." I think that was the first time I realized that I was no longer an Orthodox Jew on the inside.

Even some of the traditional Jewish gestures that had the potential to be meaningful were robbed of their authenticity by the focus on the letter of the law. For example, while I can clearly see the meaning and importance of a symbolic action like the rending of clothes, the fact that the mourners donned old suits, carefully ripping them according to specific instructions, made the action formulaic rather than moving or cathartic.

I found the practice of sitting shiva itself to be profound and psychologically helpful to the mourners. They were forced to face their grief and they were surrounded by people who loved them for an entire week. The adherence to formula raised its head here only when people were leaving, when all repeated the same sentence, rather than using their own words: Ha-Makom y'nachem et'chem b'toch sha'ar aveilei Tzion v'Yerushalayim. May God console you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

That was my father's shiva experience, but it isn't everyone's. A family friend was a convert, who was unable to sit shiva when his father died because his father was not Jewish. Others lost family members a day or two before a Jewish holiday, which cuts the shiva period short, sometimes to less than a day. These, too, I think, are example of the focus on formula taking away from meaningfulness.

At some weddings, too, I've been disappointed in the importance given to the religious over the personal. At one wedding of a dear friend, I wouldn't have even known whose wedding it was if I'd walked in off the street. My friend the groom walked down the aisle (having fasted all day) with unspeakable solemnity, reciting tehillim (psalms) under his breath. The Rabbi sped through the ketubah (marriage contract) in Hebrew, a few distant relatives I'd never met before gave religious speeches in English and Yiddish (a language few in the crowd understood) and the brachot (blessings) were muttered under the chupah with no explanation or elaboration given to the attendees, as is usually done in less right-wing services.

There were few if any smiles and no genuine joy that I could detect during the ceremony. Part of this was no doubt due to the fact that the groom and bride had not known each other very long, as is customary in more right-wing Orthodox circles. It appeared that they were painstakingly engaging in some religious activity wholly unrelated to notions of love and the joining of lives.

During the reception, there was separate seating and dancing for men and women. I could tell that many of the dancers were having fun, but they did not seem to be participants in the wedding of a close friend so much as random yeshiva boys out having a good time.

Make no mistake, I have attended Orthodox weddings that were full of joy and love and Orthodox funerals that were meaningful and heartfelt. It's not that Orthodox ceremonies necessarily miss the point, but that in some of the more right-leaning ones, so much attention is paid to the elaborate rituals and assuring that everything is done perfectly according to halakha that the big picture is almost completely lost.

At least that's how it seems to me.

Atheist FAQ

Via the other Jewish Atheist, the Atheist Jew, an atheists' FAQ by the Friendly Atheist.


Why do you not believe in God?

Why do we believe anything? After much investigation and thought, the idea that there is no God strikes me as more plausible than the idea that there is one. (The two primary reasons for this are that nature and human history are "red in tooth and claw" and that the scientific method has explained more things more satisfactorily without resorting to "God" in a few hundred years than religion has done in a few thousand or more.)


Where do your morals come from?

From a sense of empathy, which itself is probably partly innate and partly cultural.


What is the meaning of life?

What is the meaning of a Wednesday morning? The question is nonsensical.


Is atheism a religion?

Not by any reasonable definition of "religion."


If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?

I talk to friends, loved ones, and professional therapists; I write; and I eat too much.


Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?

Define "should." Personally, I feel a need to explain myself, which is part of why I have a blog. I also enjoy debate. I don't think an atheist has any particular responsibility to Spread the Word or anything like that.


Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?

Yes, but I do not believe the link is causal.


How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?

That billions of people are wrong there can be no doubt, since there are over two billion Christians and over one billion Muslims and billions of others and religions are for the most part mutually exclusive. How can so many people be wrong? Because it's human nature to believe things without adequate cause.


Why does the universe exist?

No idea.


How did life originate?

On Earth? Probably with the whole primordial soup thing, followed by descent with modification. If life exists elsewhere, I imagine it started the same way, although I imagine there are or will be plenty of forms of life that are created by intelligent lifeforms as well. It's also possible that there are forms of life we haven't yet imagined.


Is all religion harmful?

Like everything else, it has good and bad. Some forms of religion are much more harmful than others. On most issues, you'll find religious people on both sides, because religions are not well-defined. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fred Phelps are/were both "Christian." I will say that most religions are harmful with regard to uncovering empirical truths.


What’s so bad about religious moderates?

Sometimes, they make it possible for religious extremists to do bad things. Other times, they themselves do some (usually lesser) bad things because they are religious.


Is there anything redeeming about religion?

Religious people have provided great things to the world as well as horrible things. I don't think it's possible to know whether the world would be better or worse without the influence of religion.


What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)?

If he's a reasonable bloke, I imagine we'll have a good laugh. If Pat Robertson is right, I'm going to burn.


Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?

Mencken said it best: "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."


Are atheists smarter than theists?

According to studies, atheists in America have on average higher IQs and more education than theists. Whether that's the same thing as being "smarter" is left as an exercise for the reader.


How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity?

I haven't studied the subject much, but I suspect that there was a charismatic Jew named Jesus (Ίησους/יהושע/ישוע) around whom the mythology and religion of Christianity was later erected. I wouldn't be shocked, though, if it turned out "Jesus" is really a composite of several actual or mythological people or demigods.


Would the world be better off without any religion?

Impossible to know.


What happens when we die?

We decompose.

Pleasure vs. Happiness

Louie of Everything is Pointless wants to know why most of us aren't allowed to have a device implanted to directly stimulate our brain's pleasure centers:

A woman of indeterminate age lies on a narrow cot, a giant bandage covering her skull. At the start of the film she seems locked inside some private vortex of despair. Her face is as blank as her white hospital gown and her voice is a remote, tired monotone.

"Sixty pulses," says a disembodied voice. It belongs to the technician in the next room, who is sending a current to the electrode inside the woman's head. The patient, inside her soundproof cubicle, does not hear him.

Suddenly, she smiles. "Why are you smiling?" asks Dr. Heath, sitting by her bedside.
"I don't know … Are you doing something to me? [Giggles.] I don't usually sit around and laugh at nothing. I must be laughing at something." "One hundred forty," says the offscreen technician.

The patient giggles again, transformed from a stone-faced zombie into a little girl with a secret joke. "What in the hell are you doing?" she asks. "You must be hitting some goody place."

...

Today, medical technology allows such electrodes to be completely implanted into the human body, including a battery pack the size of a book of matches. But these are a rarity, used only in very specific and extreme cases. Not even victims of intractable neuropathic pain or depression are permitted to have their pleasure centers wired. Individuals with happiness deficits are instead treated with drugs, which are both more and less invasive, depending on how you look at it. Medications don't involve holes drilled into the skull, but they do act upon the entire body, causing a host of unwanted chemical side-effects. Often they also result in a lifelong expense.

Some bioethicists feel that ESB technology should be made available to everyone, protected by the "pursuit of happiness" clause in the Declaration of Independence. Are there dangers in having euphoria just a click away, all the time? Would it be bad thing to have intense orgasmic pleasure at the push of a button?

It seems clear that the pleasure center of the brain evolved to guide our actions and to motivate us, by rewarding us when we do well. This is evidenced by the fact that the primary activity that living things have evolved to do– to mate and reproduce– brings more pleasure than any other natural means (of course I'm referring to the mating part). Therefore, it may be that a pleasure-giving device would detract from our ambition and good judgment. Some people also worry that individuals who are raised without unhappiness and heartache would lack the "character" that makes us human. There is also the concern that most rewards decline in value after prolonged exposure, and some claim that this sort of technology would slowly erode a person's ability to feel good.

But these are all guesses, there is no way to know for certain how a human might change in response to such technology. One could also point out that many people never tire of other stimulations such as sex or pleasurable foods, and that while many people will naturally partake of those pleasurable activities a lot at first, most will gradually moderate the usage to times when it is most needed or appropriate. But nothing would stop an ESB-wired person from taking a day off work, putting a brick on the button, and enjoying an afternoon of bliss. As an added benefit over sex and chocolate, this technology isn't likely to result in unwanted pregnancies, disease, or weight gain.

From a philosophical perspective, the existence of such technology is fascinating. For the first time in human history, we can call hedonism's bluff, as it were. Some would, no doubt, accept such a machine and stimulate themselves for the rest of their lives. Perhaps in some of my darker moments, I'd be tempted as well.

There's something unsatisfying about the idea of pure pleasure on demand, though. I'm no puritan, but the kind of pleasure offered by this machine seems shallower than the happiness that we can sometimes achieve the old-fashioned way -- happiness that includes within it notes of sorrow and pain the way chocolate includes the bitter and the sweet, sex combines tension with release, and great movies make us laugh and cry.

Of course, scientists could eventually create a device which perfectly mimics the experience of a life perfectly lived. What if I could feel at the touch of a button the complete inner experience of a person at the top of the world, whether that person is a grandfather surrounded by family or the man currently having the best sex in the world? Is a perfect life experienced artificially better than an imperfect one honestly lived?

There are obviously a lot of implications in this line of thought as to how we should lead our lives. I'm fascinated to hear everybody's comments.