False Beliefs About What God Loves and Hates

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“Judaism, Christianity, and -- to a lesser extent -- Islam have all developed the idea of a personal God, so we tend to think that this ideal represents religion at its best. The personal God has helped monotheists to value the sacred and inalienable rights of the individual and to cultivate an appreciation of human personality.  The Judeo-Christian tradition has thus helped the West to acquire the liberal humanism it values so highly. These values were originally enshrined in a personal God who does everything that a human being does: he loves, judges, punishes, sees, hears, creates and destroys as we do.” 

~ Karen Armstrong, A History of God, pg. 209

It is funny to realize that this same personal God can also put people at a great disadvantage. Yes, this symbol of supremacy and transcendence, whose thoughts and ways are not ours, can put us at a disadvantage. Unconsciously, we can easily believe that our personal God owns our unwanted emotions and traits. This is a form of projection. When we assume that God loves what we love and hates what we hate, we mistakenly think God publicly approves our preconceived notions instead of exhorting us to rise above them. We can easily trick ourselves into accepting unconscionable nonsense when we accept a calamity as the will of God. We can become complacent and condemnatory toward each other instead of exercising the compassion that is said to be characteristic of religion (Karen Armstrong, A History of God, pages 209-210). 

I have spent many years wondering why humans have psychological projections and preconceived notions about the desires and plans of God. I think it might be related to the mental chatter always occurring within us. When planning how to act and move forward in the world, there is a lot of background noise that makes us misconstrue cause-and-effect and the nature of morality in the world. 

This is analogous to what often happens with our ears that can hear faint signals generating uncertainty. Our ears are ceaselessly sending background information to the brain that can make us hear nonexistent sounds. Sometimes, our ears fail to identify what is truly there, too.  

This is exemplified by people’s responses during a signal detection analysis, used to ascertain a perceiver’s ability to distinguish true signals from background noise. A hit takes place when the listener correctly responds “yes” to a sound that is present. A false alarm takes place when the listener says “yes” to a sound that is not present. The listener can also incorrectly say “no” when a signal is present and correctly say “no” when a signal is not present.  

This is relevant to a field of psychology called psychophysics, founded by German psychologist Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), which looks closely at how sensory perceptions and mental states are impacted by physical stimuli. 

Perhaps the false alarms and background noise of our hearing can teach us an analogous lesson about the illusions and projections of human minds trying to comprehend God and religion.

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