It’s very easy for me, as a skeptical kind of person, to find fault in religion and to criticize it as more about the placebo effect than some kind of benefit bestowed by a powerful ally in the sky. However, religious and faithful persons have demonstrably improved and advantageous lives either due to or at least associated with their belief in a higher power. That much has been shown by social science. They can even find evidence of various beliefs and states in the brain when a person undergoes an fMRI and such. There is a huge functional brain effect from mediation, for example.
As long as faith doesn’t act as a substitute for rationality, and doesn’t squeeze one’s other values out, I am okay with it. My wife, for example, is a practicing (but fairly open-minded Catholic) and she has a relationship with “the Sky God” as (I think) Bill Maher calls him. It usually doesn’t really interfere with her other, more terrestrial capabilities and values. Sometimes, though, she kinda chills out, believing that someone very powerful and very benevolent is looking out for her. It’s like having the world’s best older brother as you walk around on this crazy planet.
There is a story that I don’t think is apocryphal that ends with a dynamite quotation illustrating the effect of religiosity or, at least, a very deep and rich spiritual perspective. It takes place in 1943, and involves the Allied troop transport ship The Dorchester. It left New York harbor with 902 soldiers for Greenland. On board were four chaplains: Rabbi Alexander Goode, Reformed Church minister Clark Poling, Catholic priest John Washington, and Methodist preacher George Fox. 150 miles off the coast, U-boat 456 found The Dorchester. Water pouring in, men tried to make it to lifeboats as the ship began to sink. Though the ship had escort vessels, the submarine struck surreptitiously and it was a dark, moonless night, thus leaving the ship to deal with this emergency as best it could. As social psychologists David G. Meyers and Jean M. Twenge put it, “On board, chaos reigned as panicky men came up from the hold without lifejackets and leapt into overcrowded lifeboats.”
As the four chaplains made it to the deck of the listing ship, they attempted to be of help in various ways. In the frigid, oil-laden, flaming seas, the chaplains were heard preaching courage, encouraging survivors to swim away from the ship to find a lifeboat. Meyers and Twenge continue: “Still on board, Grady Clark watched in awe as the chaplains handed out the last life jacket and then, with ultimate selfishness, gave away their own. As Clark slipped into the waters, he looked back at an unforgettable sight: the chaplains were standing with their arms linked, praying in Latin, Hebrew, and English.” This display encouraged men without life jackets, still on the sinking wreckage, to join in a huddle as precious sand slipped through the hourglass. John Ladd, one of 230 survivors, recalled: “It was the finest thing I’ve ever seen or hope to see this side of heaven.”
This story brings a tear to my eye to recount it, to consider the courage and strength and solidarity it took to slip beneath frozen waters to one’s death, killed by Nazis while trying to remain faithful and free human beings. It also, however, demonstrates that faith often brings out the best in people. Whether or not the God of the Abrahamic religions exists in the real sense of the word – if he was looking on as his creations both murdered men for evil purposes and displayed startling humaneness – is not as relevant to this story as the fact that the men of faith believed that God exists and that they ought to help each other instead of saving themselves; to leave valuable space on lifeboats to others. It is as though they found meaning in self-sacrifice, in altruism, and in guiding others to their safety.
Here is another blog on this subject.
Here is an apropos book by Michael Shermer on “the believing brain”
I also welcome you to look up quotations about faith, religion, spirituality, fulfillment, and freethinking here, in The Wisdom Archive.
A few more thoughts in the form of quotes about religion and quotations on God, spirituality, and faith:
“Prayer does not change God, but changes he who prays.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
“Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view and demand they respect yours.”
~ Chief Tecumseh
“Right now, for the first time in history, the line between science and religion is starting to blur. Particle physicists exploring the sub-atomic level are suddenly witnessing the interconnectivity of all things, and they’re having religious experiences. Buddhist monks are reading physics books and learning about experiments that confirm what they have believed in their hearts for centuries but have been unable to quantify.”
~ Dan Brown
“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
~ Pearl S. Buck
“People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalization.”
~ Arundhati Roy
“We must remember that the different religions, ideologies, and political systems of the world are meant for human beings to achieve happiness. We must not lose sight of this fundamental goal and at no time should we place means above ends; the supremacy of humanity over matter and ideology must always be maintained.”
~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
“Most religions encourage us to take responsibility for ourselves but to refrain from judging others. Is that because our natural inclination is the opposite: to excuse our own failures while blaming other for theirs?”
~ David G. Meyers and Jean M. Twenge
“The ethical conduct of man should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.”
~ Albert Einstein
“I have no objection to churches so long as they do not interfere with God’s work.”
~ Brooks Atkinson
“There were signs on every street corner saying, “This town is Jew-free. Whoever will help Jew descendants is dead.” So I knew what could happen. But that doesn’t matter; they were human beings. I knew I didn’t have to help [save Jews from the Nazi concentration camps]; I took the responsibility. And I believed so strongly that God put me there, so everything will be fine.”
~ Irene, rescuer of Jews during WW II
“Our language lacks words to express this offense [Auschwitz], the demolition of a man.”
~ Primo Levi
“Our task as men is to find those first few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century.”
~ Albert Camus
“The spectacle of the Christians loving all men was the most astounding Rome had ever seen.”
~ Jane Addams
“No new chapter in human civilization will ever emerge if we just sit around with our hands in our laps waiting for a holistic convergence to foster a new way of thinking. A critical mass of people in society must stand up to make it happen. That means you and me, and many others around the planet. And now is the time to get started.”
~ Ervin Laszlo
“A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“This experience of feeling important but not being treated as important by the universe is the source of much woe. Religions thus advise their followers to feel what they logically know to be true: that our self is not the center of the universe.”
~ Jennifer Michael Hecht
“I don’t care if gay people get married. If they do, it is none of our damn business. Our country was established to maintain a separation of church and state. Translated: the personal practices of the people in our country cannot be dictated by the right wing moral leaders of this country.”
~ Patrick Beemer
“Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian.”
~ Robin Meyers
“The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings appeared justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period. Science seemed to have disposed of the Creator God, and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine. As an epileptic, I had flashes of vision that I knew to be a mere neurobiological defect; had the visions and raptures of the saints also been a mere mental quirk?”
~ Karen Armstrong
“We can conceive of a world in which God corrected the abuse of free will by his creatures, so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when used as a weapon. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and therefore freedom of the will would be void.”
~ C. S. Lewis
“Fanaticism of any kind, especially religious fanaticism, has clearly produced, and in all probability will continue to produce, enormous amounts of bickering, fighting, violence, bloodshed, homicide, feuds, wars, and genocide.”
~ Albert Ellis
“It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator loaded with all the contradictions of the world.”
~ Simone de Beauvoir
“The person in our day, therefore, who seeks values around which he can integrate his living, needs to face that fact that there is no easy and simple way out. He cannot merely ‘return to religion’ any more than he can healthily return to his parents when the freedom of responsibility of choice becomes too great a burden.”
~ Rollo May
“Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion – it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more like Christ.”
~ Billy Graham
“Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a flea, yet he makes gods by the dozens.”
~ Michel de Montaigne
“I’m a Christian and a proud Christian. I read the good book and do my best to live it. I have never read the verse where it says, “Gay people can’t marry.” I have never read the verse where it says, “Thou shalt discriminate against those not like me.” I have never read the verse where it says, “Let’s base our policy on hate and fear and discrimination.” Christianity is to me love and hope and faith and forgiveness—not hate and discrimination.”
~ Senfronia Thompson