For quite some time, I’ve wondered why so many people can believe in God (or god) and yet we have such a strange disinterest in a relationship with Him. Experimental philosophy has given us clues.
In a recent article from Scientific American Mind, Joshua Knobe an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, wrote an article entitled, “Can a Robot, an Insect or God Be Aware?: Our intuitions about consciousness in other beings and objects reveal a lot about how we think. In the article, he looks at the new field of Experimental Philosophy and how it sheds light on how we think.
According to the author, “experimental philosophers continue the search to understand people’s ordinary intuitions, but they do so using the methods of contemporary cognitive science — experimental studies, statistical analyses, cognitive models, and so forth. Just in the past year or so, a number of researchers have been applying this new approach to the study of intuitions about consciousness. By studying how people think about three different types of abstract entities—a corporation, a robot and a God—we can better understand how people think about the mind.”
He then describes a recent study he and a colleague completed considering the intuitions people feel about corporations. He states they,
looked at intuitions about the application of psychological concepts to organizations composed of whole groups of people. To take one example, consider Microsoft Corporation. One might say that Microsoft “intends to adopt a new sales strategy” or that it “believes Google is one of its main competitors.” In sentences such as these, people seem to be taking certain psychological concepts and applying them to a whole corporation.
But which psychological concepts are people willing to use in this way? The study revealed an interesting asymmetry. Subjects were happy to apply concepts that did not attribute any feeling or experience. For example, they indicated that it would be acceptable to use sentences such as:
- Acme Corporation believes that its profit margin will soon increase.
- Acme Corporation intends to release a new product this January.
- Acme Corporation wants to change its corporate image.
But they balked at all of the sentences that attributed feelings or subjective experiences to corporations:
- Acme Corporation is now experiencing great joy.
- Acme Corporation is getting depressed.
- Acme Corporation is experiencing a sudden urge to pursue Internet advertising.
The study showed that while people were “willing to apply some psychological concepts to corporations but that they are not willing to suppose that corporations might be capable of phenomenal consciousness.”
A similar study described how people viewed God. A recent study by Harvard University psychologists Heather Gray, Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner looked at people’s intuitions about which kinds of mental states God could have. People were content to say that God could have psychological properties such as thought, memory and planning.
However, people could not think that God could have states of feelings or experiences like pleasure, pain or fear. In other words, God is simply a machine. In doing so, people have de-personalized God. This appears to me to imply God cannot empathize with his own creation. It also helps us understand the aloofness of people toward the conception of a relationship with God. He is not thought of in that way.
We Christians speak of a relationship with God, but I wonder if we really can conceive of that? Last year, I was working with a pastoral counselor who is a former pastor and now a licensed psychologist. I was having a particularly bad day, and he asked me to close my eyes and imagine I am walking into a palace. I was asked to imagine the throne room with the red carpet and seated on the throne was God. I was told to walk up to the throne and when I got there, to visualize God picking me up and sitting me in his lap and telling me He loved me. I could get to the throne but not visualize God picking me up in his lap. Honestly, I was devastated, because what it told me was that I could see God as king and master, but not as Father or Daddy. Later in the day, I tried that again, and God picked me up and we laughed and talked and loved. Now, when I sense the need for a hug from God, I go through that process again. It reminds me of the relationship.
But I fear that many Christians have God at a distance, possibly because we cannot conceive of a personal, emotive God.
I am afraid we have lost the mystical and experiential in our faith that helps us experience and relate to God. Would that we could see the sheet come down like Peter, or the third Heaven like Paul. Would that we could embrace the mystical and not be afraid. I understand the role the enemy can play. But scripture is very clear that God speaks through donkeys and dreams. May we let God speak to us any way He chooses, and may we re-embrace the Person of God!
