656. The Placebo Church

656.   The Placebo Church

In entry 441 I was expressing how a weird institution called Unitarian Universalist Church (UU) puzzled me, because it makes no rational sense.    They claim not to be a religion but they behave like one.  

In entry 589 I defined religion by also showing behaviors based upon irrational beliefs other than only the one in the existence of a deity.    These behaviors can be seen as rational methods of coping with irrational beliefs, while without such beliefs, the behaviors themselves are irrational.


In this sense the UU is a placebo religion.   

A person, who has by own experience or by reliable observation learned, that taking a painkiller brings relief from pain, can often experience the relief from pain by unknowingly taking a placebo, which is a pill without any chemical content.    It is a placebo by still looking like a pill, only the active ingredient is omitted.    

The christian religion has some psychological benefits for some people.  Their imaginary god's attributes help them to cope with human suffering.   The christian religion is especially attractive to victims finding an alleged sense in their sufferings and to perpetrators and evil doers finding alleged justification for harming others.   

• The belief in being rewarded by the alleged god in the alleged afterlife misrepresents senseless suffering as if it were a valid method to earn such a reward.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom being beyond human comprehension attributes hidden reasons to suffering.
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged wisdom and rewarding in the alleged afterlife allows the perpetrators to harm others without a bad conscience.   They perceive the alleged god as the proxy, who is considered the one responsible for the harm. 
• The belief in an alleged god's alleged reward for forgiving is misused as the unjustified demand for being forgiven for unforgivable harm.  

The only active ingredient of any christian church is the god's impact upon the endurance of suffering and the inflicting of harm.   By being interwoven with the entire culture the christian religion has over its long history incorporated the additional supplying of many secular benefits.  As a result, many people completely lost all awareness for the differences between those benefits, which were due to the core of the religious beliefs, and those collateral and independent benefits, which were only added but not religious. 

This vague and indiscriminate notion of a church as being beneficial in a generalized and very special manner is the reason, why so many people experience it is possible to delete the god and create a placebo church, which still appears to be a church.    Just like the placebo pill looks like a pill.  

The placebo effect of a sugar pill is impossible for any person ignorant of the existence of painkillers, like some ingenious people in a remote area.   (Any similar effect would need other explanations like a general gullibility to suggestions and claims.) 

It is the same with the church.   Those, who have never experienced the christian religion as beneficial, are not prone to experience a placebo church as offering any benefits, which cannot be obtained elsewhere.   

But there is one decisive difference between taking a placebo pill and joining a placebo church:  

The placebo pill works, when the person does not know, that the pharmaceutical ingredient is lacking.   The placebo church is chosen for being the placebo, for having the god as the active ingredient eliminated.   

A person without pain needs neither a pharmaceutical nor a placebo painkiller.   The sugar in the pill can be obtained anywhere and in any form, the person without pain eats sugar when he wants to.   He does not make it look like a painkiller first.
I have never heard of anybody eating placebos, knowing that there is no medicine in them, only because of the sweet taste.   They rather eat real sweets. 

A person without religious needs does not need a church, neither one with a god nor a placebo church.  Such a person finds and enjoys the collateral benefits found in christian churches directly in secular alternative institutions.   He does not combine them to appear like a church.    

Self-labeled atheists in the UU are like people, who knowingly eat placebos for the taste instead of getting the real thing elsewhere.   

When a church already exists for those, who benefit from the delusion of the existence of a deity, then the additional use of such an institution for other benefits and also by non-religious persons can be rational.    

All the benefits offered by the UU are benefits available elsewhere, where each by itself can be experienced and enjoyed as secular.   Combining them as a placebo church is a deliberate bias.    Creating a placebo church for only non-religious benefits is irrational.   

I can think of only one explanation for this is a fallacy: 

It seems that there are two distinct types of self-labeled atheists.  

• Those who are independent thinkers, to whom the insight of the irrationality of religious beliefs has come as an unavoidable conclusion and consequence of thinking.   Atheism and feeling free from needing any religion is emotionally beneficisal for them, because it makes them feel good about themselves.  
• Those who have a strong need for the benefits of the delusion of the existence of a god, but who were so much disappointed by some event in their life, that they were unable to continue to believe.   They suffer from their persistent craving for their lost paradise of the delusion. A placebo church gives them the best relief for that craving.   
  As members of the UU they remain fence sitters, who look in the direction of atheism, but their behind is still entangled in christian religious needs.   
  The choice of an institution with the style of buildings and terminology as a placebo church accommodates the fence sitters' needs to remain in surroundings resembling their lost paradise.   
  

An example:  Somebody with sufficient knowledge in philosophy can either be the speaker giving a lecture in an auditorium or he can be the minister giving a sermon in a church with or without a god.   

They may even talk about the same topic, but there is a huge difference:
 

Independently thinking atheists attend the lecture.   They listen to information, which they afterwards reflect upon and which maybe influences their attitudes and their behavior.   But they actively process the information and choose what to make of it.

People, who prefer to attend services and to listen to sermons, do this in a more passive and submissive way.   Naming an event a service indicates, that there is a target, who is served by humble servants, who expect guidance and who are emotionally ready to be told what to do.   They do not choose or process, they attempt to follow, and rarely doubt the wisdom of someone with the halo of being called a minister.  

Becoming an atheist is only the first, but not sufficient step for rational people.   The logical next step is a rational reevaluation of all attitudes, values, opinions.   Whatever makes no sense without the christian belief, of which it had been derived, has to be reconsidered.

  
But the choice of a placebo church indicates the clinging to the values and world view of christianity and the wish to change nothing except having lost or deleted the god.

    

The following is a list of benefits as experienced and perceived by a member of the UU.   With his permission, I am quoting him literally. 

 
All these benefits do not need a church but can be obtained as good or better elsewhere.    My comments point to alternatives.  

1. fabulous live music of all kinds

No church is needed for life music.   There are many secular places offering concerts.    Anybody who wants to play in public, has a wide choice of places.  

2. liberal religious education, fellowship and musical training for children, making them aware of the great variety of religions and non-religious views

The place for education is the school.  Community colleges offer music lessons beyond the level of schools.  Pupils need to be taught scientific and skeptical thinking.   The place for information concerning religion are in history and social science lessons with sufficient mental distance.   They need to be taught, that religion is obsolete and enhances harming behavior.

Pupils also need to be taught interactive skills like communication, theory of mind, and a value system based upon rationality.   

3. fellowship and fun with people of liberal, non-religious and liberal religious views

People need fellowship with likeminded people.     Non-religious and liberal religious are contradictions.   Someone can either belief in a god or not.  This impedes fellowship.   There is a mental abyss between those, who belief in any god and those, who do not.   Something is weird when they join a placebo church instead of associating with their own kind.  

Liberal is a political term and has its place in a political party.  

4. promotion of enlightened values, including earth-friendly values among others, and tolerance for people of differing views.  

Tolerance for differing views (not different needs or tastes, unfortunate life situations or disabilities) is an indication of ignorance, stupidity and/or irrationality.   The careful evaluation of all views leads to the conclusion, which of them is rationally superior or is the only rational one.  From then on, differing views do not deserve tolerance.    Tolerance is the admittance of insufficient thinking.  
Rational non-religious people need secular non-religious and atheist groups, where religious people are excluded as a nuisance and annoyance.    Only fence-sitting atheists have tolerance for delusional believers.  
Enlightenment is the contrary of tolerated stupidity.   

5. social justice activities

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups..

6. places where people can evolve their views as they are exposed to new or different ideas, not to mention help and healing in recovering from past indoctrination from dogmatic theology

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges.     The worst indoctrination is the delusion, that there are deities, afterlife, an immortal soul and such.   Any alleged help, which includes tolerating such insane beliefs would not be a real help, only a slight reduction of the damage. 

7. promotion of an open-minded approach to life in general

This is the realm and task of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and of schools and all educational institutions.

8. non-religious weddings, child dedications, coming of age celebrations, and funeral services

All these celebrations are rituals based upon some interaction with a god.   A wedding means vows to a god, they are obsolete without a god.   People can best organize their celebrations according to their own individual needs.  

9. counseling and support for people going through difficult times

This is the task of qualified secular and rational psychologists.   A minister's kitchen psychology can do more damage than good.

10. community outreach supporting other organizations serving the most needy people in our communities and beyond

This is the realm and task of political parties and task oriented pressure groups.  They have to influence any country's government to fulfill its obligation to care and provide for the needy by getting sufficient tax from the rich.

11. a forum for the free expression of views which sometimes may run counter to those of the populous in general, e.g. opposition to war, oppression, etc.

This is the realm and task of political parties and of task oriented pressure groups.. 

12. an insitution where people can come together on a regular basis to meditate quietly and calmly on their lives and so on

This is the realm of secular psychological self-help, self-improvement and self-awareness groups and courses at community colleges and other educational institutions.    

13. a welcoming congregations accepting of people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, etc.

This is the common ground and every day situation of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

14. all of these things and more available from one organization existing often like an island of liberality in the midst of a land of conservative religious people and their churches

It is pathetic to imitate, what one rejects.   Independent thinking atheists need a real alternative, not a placebo church.    

15. a denomination demonstrating a democratic way of functioning in the midst of many non-democratic, paternalistic institutions

A democratic way of functioning is the common ground of every functional group of people, who have joined it to pursue a hobby, sport, interest of any kind.  

There is no objective need for a placebo church to provide anything from this list.   A placebo church caters only for the need of people with a specific precondition.  

436. Religion As Entertainment

Religion As Entertainment

For those, who are still struggling with getting emotionally free from religion, enjoying other people's religious behavior as a spectacle may be difficult.   But when being completely void of religious feelings, other people's religious expressions and rituals can be very entertaining.    Some religious behaviors are really hilarious.  
 

I experience churches, mosques and temples as museums.   Some of them contain excellent works of art.  Paintings, sculptures, artistic crafts, creative decoration and great architecture are fascinating when looked at only with the perception of their beauty.    Their artistic beauty can be appreciated as detached from any meaning and message only existing for those having the faith.    Pictures and statues are not less interesting to look at, when they happen to represent a mother with a child instead of something else.  
Sometimes there are even weird exhibits like mummies in glass coffins and bones in jars.

Religious rituals are often funny spectacles.   

Lourdes is amazing.   People travel long distances driven by their weird belief.  They buy plastic bottles in the form of a madonna with the lid in the form of a crown.  Then they queue to fill the bottle with water from a tap.

  
The Semana Santa in Seville is even better.  
A crowd is waiting outside a church at midnight.  The door opens.  First comes a band playing sinister sounding music.   Then comes a group of men dressed like Roman soldiers, followed by hooded men, barefoot, with expensive candles and carrying heavy wooden crosses.   Finally the float with the statue of the madonna is carried out, she is adorned with richly embroidered clothes and lots of flowers.   
Everybody shouts: Macarena, guapa, guapa!, until the idol is carried out of sight.    
In a warm night in spring, with no other light except lots of candles, this spectacle has its fascination. 

The day of Sant Antoni in Palma de Mallorca.
Two richly adorned priests, each holds a kind of a silver wand in his hand.   Between them stands a silver bucket filled with water.  

Along the street comes a procession of goats, donkeys, dogs, some with costumes and hats, people carrying rabbits, and mice in cages, cats and chickens in baskets and even something looking like a mussel on a cushion.   The priests are engaged in a vivid conversation, while they routinely dip the wand in the water and distribute the drops over the passing creatures.   
That beats a day at the zoo.

430. Dichotomy, Atheism And The Transition Point

Dichotomy, Atheism And The Transition Point

The following analogy is independent from the subjective human preference for light over darkness. 

Complete darkness is the absence of light.    Light is not the absence of darkness.  
Real atheism is the absence of any faith.  Faith is not the absence of atheism.    

Day and night, light and darkness are dichotomies.   
Faith or the absence of faith, delusion or the freedom from delusion are dichotomies.  

But they are not really dichotomies, because there is a transition phase between them.  
There is twilight, it is either dusk or dawn.  
There is often either a phase of doubts or of the replacement of the content of the faith.   The shift is gradual from the most obvious irrationality like a personal god to more vague irrationality like spirituality, woo-woo, new age beliefs.   

Simple lamps function by the dichotomy, that they can only be either turned on or of. 
Using the lamp requires a dichotomy of a decision, when to consider it as night and turn the light on and when to consider it as day and turn the lamp off.  
The conscious self-labeling functions by the dichotomy of either defining oneself as an atheist or as a believer of something.   In situations, when behavior is either determined by faith or by the absence thereof without any neutral third option, the choice of this behavior depends upon the self-label.    

The transition point is sometimes fuzzy.  

Individuals have different subjective perceptions for brightness, and people linger sometimes before acting, so that they do not turn the light on or off at the same time during dusk or dawn.   
The perception, when rational doubts are as strong as the irrational needs and attractions of faith, is very subjective.   Individuals are under very different external influences, and people linger sometimes before acting.   The trigger for the transition to become an atheist is different for every individual.  

For someone sitting in a room without windows, where the lamps are operated by another person, day and night are truly dichotomous.   That person inside is ignorant of the amount of light outside.   
For a person ignorant of what goes on inside another person's head, this person's belief system is dichotomous according to his self-labeling.   The person either declares to be an atheist or not, but how much or little he really believes is hidden.   

Here ends the simple analogy.

There are many transitions, when proactive behavior, expectations for behavior, expectations towards others and legal rights change in a dichotomous way.    When the transition point is vague and invisible and not clearly defined, this can sometimes cause confusion.    This problem is solved by externally defining and fixing the transition point by a transition ritual.    

Most transition rituals are connected with growing up.   There are initiation rites in tribal groups. religious ceremonies to become a full member of a religious congregation, the reaching of legal age, ceremonies when getting a degree and many more.   

Fixing the transition point by a transition ritual has some psychological consequences. 
1. It defines the subsequent appropriate social role for the individual.  This ends confusion and cognitive dissonance between own inclinations and the role before the transition.
2.  It helps others to know, how to perceive and treat the person.
3.  It hides the information, how much or how little the person really fits the requirements of the new role.    

A transition ritual is helpful also for the transition from faith to atheism.    In Germany, every member of the two major religions is automatically paying church tax along with income tax, until the person formally declares the end of the membership.   Appearing personally in the town hall for this act serves as a transition ritual.  

In other countries, people can decide from one moment to the next to never make use of any religious service anymore, and declare themselves to be atheists at any moment.   But as this is only in their mind, instead of experiencing one clear transition point, they easily continue oscillating between self-labeling themselves as atheists and relapsing to temporary faith.  
 

While real atheism means the complete absence of any faith, the transition point, from where people dichotomously self-label themselves as atheists, is not yet the point, where real atheism has been reached, it is only the point of the predominance of the doubts over faith.    Self-labeled atheists can be either void of any faith or their atheism is only skin-deep, while they are rationally fighting against their wish or need for a faith.      Some of the skin-deep atheists will never really get void of all substitute beliefs, others are still on the way of overcoming all of their previous faith.    

348. Gullibility and Spirituality

Gullibility and Spirituality

Over the years I have been reading many descriptions and definition of what spirituality is supposed to mean or what it means to those, who are attracted to it.   But as much as I ponder over it, it remains an alien and incomprehensible concept to me, when attempting to imagine, how it feels like.  

While being myself entirely void thereof, I am aware, how it obviously has a very real and strong emotional appeal to and power over many people.   In entry 315 I described the encounter with a religious woman, who appeared to me like drugged by her religious zeal.   Something powerful is going on in the brain of these people.

During my own christian upbringing as a child, my belief was void of any emotion (entry 11).  I never had any emotional need for the deity, whom I was temporarily believing in.  Taking the existence of a deity for granted was a child's gullibility as a part of generally never doubting what I was told.    Gullibility during my childhood was an ephemeral and skin deep state, until the maturation of my brain had enabled me to become aware of the irrationality and absurdity of the belief.   

I will never know, what being spiritual means to those, who experience this.   They cannot explain it, because it is so much a self-evident part of their personality, that they lack the imagination of how it is for me to be without.  

But I do not want to be misunderstood.   I do not miss to be spiritual at all.  I do not feel to lack anything that I would prefer to have, if this were an option.    I am a deep thinker, I can feel strong emotions in connection with real people and real life experiences, and being rational and logic is a reason to feel good about myself.   The mental and intellectual freedom from believes and spirituality is certainly the preferable way of coping with life.

Spirituality is like alcohol.   The double meaning of the word spirit is no coincidence.   Alcohol gives temporary relief from the full awareness of a painful reality, while the effect of the intoxication lasts, but as a side effects it also inhibits the motivation to solve the problems.  Spirituality does the same more permanently.   

Therefore neither spirituality nor alcohol are in anyway appealing to me as a means to cope with life.   But to better understand other people's experiences, it is good to know them myself first hand, as long as exposing myself is no hazard.  
There is nothing desirable in being an alcoholic or regularly drunk, and I rarely drink alcohol.  But I do consider it helpful to have experienced myself, how it feels to be drunk and to have a hangover.   
There is nothing desirable in being spiritual, as this means being detached from the awareness for reality and having a delusion instead.   But I am curious and I would like to know, how that feels.  

Getting oneself temporarily drunk is a simple act of one's own volition.  Unfortunately, there is no method in my power to ever elicit temporarily in my rational brain the emotions caused by the spiritual delusions.   
Maybe brain stimulation with Persinger's helmet would help.   But his laboratory is in Canada, if he would even accept me as a test subject, and similar helmets sold on the Internet are very expensive.  

Spiritual people practice their chosen creed by rituals, and there is a wide variety.  As a few examples, they chant in front of a shrine, they kiss statues, they meditate, they follow routines of elaborated body movements, they fast by schedule or live on a very selective diet, they paint or mutilate their bodies.   
Some claim or belief, that those rituals create spirituality.   But it is the other way around.    The presence or absence of a need for spirituality, for believing, for being delusional makes the difference, how the ritualistic behaviors are experienced, perceived and interpreted.  The belief installs sense into arbitrary behaviors.  The rituals only enhance experiencing, what has first been there as the motivation to perform the rituals.

Unaffiliated and unafflicted observers perceive those ritualistic behaviors as weird, preposterous and absurd hocus-pocus.   Imitating these rituals does not supply a temporary delusion leading to spiritual emotions, when such emotions are alien to the personality.  

Tai chi is an example.   For the spiritual, it creates the delusion of having or learning how to gain control over some alleged life force called chi, of which the existence has so far eluded any scientific evidence. 
Watching people performing tai chi is as hilarious as watching apes in the zoo.   It remotely looks like dancing without the music.      
Once I was obliged by circumstances to participate in a tai chi lesson.   I was bored and in a state of cognitive dissonance.   It just made no sense to make ritualistic movements to honor same non-existent chi.    I asked myself, why I should imitate dancing without music, as music is the trigger to dance.   Just as I cannot see a reason to write without paper, as wanting notes on the paper is the reason to write.    I felt as if I had joined the apes by what is called participant observation in social science.  


While I am ignorant of what people do experience, when they claim to be spiritual, I have a speculative explanation for the causes of their affliction.

Gullibility is reactive.   A gullible person it the passive target responding positively and often strongly to external influences proffered or forced upon him without his initiative.   
Spirituality takes it one step further, it is proactive gullibility.   A spiritual person is an active target feeling a strong need to be influenced and therefore searching for influences.  
In entry 345 I gave a few examples, how people choose the specific believes fitting their particular needs.   But choosing a belief means, that it is already available as an option.  It is presented as the claim of it being the solution to a specific trouble.   Spirituality is the process of first feeling and perceiving some vague, unspecified, undefined, immaterial and strong need, and then searching for some way to fulfill it.   If nothing suitable is found in the scope of known quackeries and deities, then the choice is for the delusion of the existence of some unspecified entity or power.    

All standard religions are specific instances of spirituality, but those, who do not like the rules and restrictions of standard religions, enlarge their search to other forms of spirituality.    In their search to fulfill their spiritual need, some people test several creeds, until they find the one, that suits them best.  Whatever effect is experienced due to the particular ritual is not recognized as a  personal preference, taste or inclination, instead it is attributed to the connected belief system.   

They participate in the creed's specific rituals.  By trial and error they discover, to which they react with the strongest emotions.  There they remain, tied by the delusion causing the emotions.  The absence of rationality makes them susceptible to be delusional, but they can easily replace one delusion by another.    

 
I have speculated before, that the strength or absence of unconscious instinctive urges determines the conscious basic values and the identity of a person, and that breeders have a different identity than non-breeders.    Non-breeders consider the baseline of correct behavior as the fair exchange between themselves and their social environment focusing on individual people living now.   
Breeders are driven to make huge sacrifices for the survival of their genes and the species.    When they are exhausted and stressed, when they are disappointed by their children, when child rearing is a burden beyond denial, they have to deal with the unavoidable question, why they have deliberately brought this upon themselves.   There is no rational answer from the non-breeder's point of view.  
Spirituality serves to supply a satisfactory answer to soothe the breeders.    The unconscious representation of the eternal chain of genes never dieing in contrast to the individual bearer can be modified into the belief in the vague entity or power beyond the individual particle.   Breeders perceive a connection with their spiritual power, but unconsciously it is the connection with their eternally living genes.   This cause of spirituality is not restricted to actual breeders, it appeals to all, who by their implicit identify perceive themselves as less important than the species and the genes.  


I am void of both, of the instinct to breed and of any spirituality, and I think that both are connected.   
Some people call themselves spiritual but not religious.   To me, this distinction makes no sense.   Someone, who is spiritual can never be a real atheist, because the real difference is between either being being rational or being afflicted with any belief immune to rationality.  

The insurmountable ditch is between brains like mine, guided and determined by rationality, logic, consequencity, skepticism and brains afflicted by gullibility and spirituality in any variation.   

Therefore my mindmate is not only an atheist and skeptic, but also as void of spirituality as I am myself.