Zoe (from the blog, Zoe's Wings) has put up a short, powerful post dealing with the frequent charge, leveled at atheists, that they left Christianity for "emotional reasons". Zoe counters that charge by pointing out that her decision to accept Christ as a thirteen year old was at least as emotional as her decision to leave Christianity. Consequently, she implies, you cannot have it both ways. Either it is legitimate to make a decision on an emotional basis or it is not. But it cannot be that it is legitimate to make a decision for Christ on an emotional basis, while it is not legitimate to make a decision to leave Christianity on an emotional basis.
By coincidence, Hausdorff (from the blog, Hausdorff's Bible Blog) put up a post on much the same topic and on the same day as Zoe. In his post, Hausdorff points out that he got started on leaving Christianity because of emotional reasons, but that his final reasons for leaving were nevertheless grounded in logic and evidence.
Both Zoe and Hausdorff strike me as raising the broader question of what is the relationship between thought and emotion?
Now, I do not pretend to have a thorough answer to that question, but please allow me to begin my approach to it by referencing yet another blogger. Sabio Lantz (at Triangulations) sometimes points out that the Western dichotomy between thought and emotion is baseless. That is, the two are not dichotomous, but inextricably wound up together.
If Sabio is right -- and I think he is -- then we cannot reason without there being some emotional component to our reasoning.
In the first place, emotions can, and often enough do, motivate us to think. This seems to be especially true if we do not immediately act on our emotions.
In the second place, many -- perhaps all -- emotions are not merely feelings, but are also perspectives. For instance, they might broadly focus on certain aspects of our environment. Or they might focus us on a certain line of reasoning. If I feel fear I become acutely aware of the object, if any, of my fear. If I feel love, I become just as acutely aware of the object, if any, of my love. And, if my fear or love has no immediately identifiable object, then I am likely to go in mental search of one.
In either case, emotions have focused my perception. They have created, as it were, a perspective. Because of my emotions, I am now paying attention to certain things and not to some other things.
Of course that perspective is a two edged sword. On the one hand, I am focused on something that's going on -- the better to deal with it. On the other hand, I am more inclined to ignore the rest of what's going on -- and I may miss something that's important to me.
I think it is the latter edge of the sword that gives emotions their bad rap. For example, because of my negative experiences of, say, Christianity, I might overlook positive aspects of the religion. I think, when many of say that we, or someone else, is being "too emotional" we are intuitively pointing out that we, or they, are in danger of overlooking something of importance.
Because emotions can mislead us by focusing us too narrowly on one thing, or on one aspect of something, we should be cautious about thinking they are sure and certain guides to the truth of a matter. But that does not mean we can live without them.
A few years back, some California based scientists conducted a study of people who had been in accidents that left them with a certain kind of brain injury. Specifically, the injury was to a part of their brains that allowed them to feel emotions. Consequently, these people were about as close to what anyone of us will ever get to being Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. That is, they were able to reason just as well as they ever could, but they were not able to feel emotions.
What the scientists discovered was illuminating. The people in the study could not prioritize. And because they could not prioritize, they often enough had laborious difficulty making decisions.
For instance, one of the subjects had significant money invested in the stock market. One day, the market plummeted. As it happened, he had a choice that day between getting his stocks out of the market and going to lunch. But he couldn't decide which was more important to him. He couldn't prioritize.
What the scientists called "prioritizing" I have called "creating a perspective". But regardless of what you term it, at least one function of emotions seems to be to allow us to focus on certain things while disregarding or back-burnering the rest.
I would submit that capability seems vital, not just to prioritizing actions, but also to focusing our thoughts.
At least, that's my take on it. There seems much more to it than what I've laid out here. So, what do you think is the relationship between emotion and thought?
I think emotions are an important part of our decision making process and as your post demonstrates, a lack of emotional investment (no pun intended) in a decision can lead to unfortunate results. It is my emotional response to human trafficking that leads to me make sure my clothing is manufactured in the U.S. and my coffee is fair trade. It is similar emotional responses which lead me to shop at independently-owned businesses, etc. It seems to me that morality is impossible without emotion, which is why so many people are so emotional about their faith or their lack thereof. As a practicing Christian, it tugs at my emotions when I see people leave religious practice. I think this might turn into something different, but I think it's sad that people back away from religion because they have trouble believing in X, Y, or Z. I don't think the value of religion is so densely tied with "believing in" that we need to believe in the virgin birth or the trinity or the resurrection to call ourselves Christians. I don't believe in any of those things, but my emotional connection to Jesus and his ministry means that I am a practicing Christian. I made efforts to find a church where such dogma isn't a part of our faith. This is turning into a different comment, so I'm going to leave that there, but I think that emotion is an important part of the human experience and it's as important to religious experience as to every day experience. Emotion and opposable thumbs are kind of what we have going for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteMy dad claimed to make decisions based on facts, yet many times emotions were the driving factor. My mom was more emotional, yet she frequently had very solid facts to support her decisions. My sisters make decisions primarily by emotions while my brother makes more decisions due to facts. My sibs tell me that I am the 50/50 emotions/facts decision maker. I think they are correct.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that our emotions give weight to our "facts" - at least in our own minds. I really enjoyed this post. Most people don't think about this.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Sabio . . . they are "wound up together."
ReplyDeleteWhen I was first accused of leaving the faith because of emotions I balked at the idea. I did this because of the intellectual journey I had taken and I knew I had actually left the faith due to study and research. Emotionally I could have held on but intellectually I could not. Either I believed in the tenants of my faith as I once did or I did not. I did not. Just hanging on for the sake of "emotion" made no sense at all to me.
"Emotion" did play a role in me leaving the church. The "emotion" rose out of the trauma I experienced. Those events spear-headed an even greater effort in study and research and that is what eventually led me to my intellectual decision that I simply did not believe any of it any more. That process took years.
One could say that I left the church (still a believer) for both emotional and intellectual reasons. I left the faith for intellectual reasons but in a way if it had not been for the "emotional" part I might not have ever questioned and studied to the degree that I did. I might have just kept a "Jesus loves me" Christianity and left it at that.
I really appreciate your post and the discussion on perspective.
Great post. I think that emotions and thoughts are very much related. It is incredibly hard to keep strong emotions at bay. They certainly affect our thoughts. However, when it comes to major decisions and beliefs, such as theism or atheism, I think it is important to try and be as objective as we possibly can. Facts are facts, and we must strive to keep our emotions from clouding them. While this is difficult, it is not impossible.
ReplyDeleteWhat troubles me most about this topic in regards to theism/atheism is often how it is meant. When I encounter the line of thinking you described in your first paragraph, it is usually meant to imply that I left Catholicism because I was "mad" at the church, priest, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. I may have had emotions, but anger was not one of them. I was committed to learning the truth about myself, life, this planet, the universe, etc. While science does not yet have all the answers, it was clear to me that religion had none. Was that an emotional realization? You bet. But it was also based on a lot of reading and learning, that, at least at that time, was not really biased. I didn't "set out to be reject religion" or "to become an atheist" it sort of just happened. It most certainly was not a knee-jerk emotional reaction.
I think what leads to the "bitter" accusations that are hurled at former fundamentalists by their former friends comes from the experiences of "re-converts", the people who leave, and then return. If you asked some of those people why they left for a while, many of them will say that they were "angry with god", or some other emotion driven reason.
ReplyDeleteI think those kinds of people is what leads to fundamentalists painting of all of us with the same brush, they think there's no difference, we left out of emotion. However, for many of us, emotional reasons is what caused us to drift away from the church, but once we started learning more, and finding out the truth about fundamentalism, then there was no turning back.
Emotion led to fact, and fact is what kept us from going back.
A very thought provoking post Paul, that stirs emotions of all sorts in all sorts of folks. I definitely believe the thought comes first, and then an emotion follows...whether it's in an instant or takes years to jell into a reason you can explain. Most of us know what drives our own reasons and emotions...most of us have little idea what drives it in others. Most Christians can't understand why another Christian would stop believing...but then they haven't walked for miles in those shoes.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, I completely agree that emotion and thought are interconnected. I actually reminds me a bit of preparing my math lectures when I was teaching. I could just show that cold hard facts, but that is really hard for the students to absorb. If I could find a way to make it fun or unusually intriguing in some way, I have a better chance to make the students care about it. Once I get them emotionally invested, even just a little bit, then the underlying math will come much easier. A lot of my prep time went toward presentation and trying to work in some kind of wow factor.
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