Matthew 6:9 (RSV) (Jesus teaching his followers how to pray) Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. …
This is Ellie, a character in the movie “Contact” having a quasi-religious experience.
It appears to her for just a minute that she is seeing her loving father who had died and had come back to life (God). The surroundings seem like paradise (Heaven). She momentarily gets caught up in the emotion of it as she sobs on his shoulder.
This is the essence of the religious experience. A loving parental figure is subconsciously imagined, although the experience seems very real to the believer.
In the 1960s Dr. Eric Berne authored several books concerning the way people interact with each other at the subconscious level. He labeled his theory of social intercourse "Transactional Analysis".
As infants we experience intimacy with our mothers in the form of physical stroking. Infants deprived of this stroking go into a decline physically and mentally.
As the child gets older and this intimacy is no longer appropriate, the child substitutes recognition for this stroking. This is called symbolic stroking.
This recognition can be merely acknowledgment of existence such as "hello" or consistent attention as in play or companionship.
We retain this need for intimacy whether literal or symbolic the rest of our lives.
Dr. Berne describes three ego states. We are only in one of these ego states at any given time. They are the Parent, the Adult, and the Child.
All three states are of equal value and can be beneficial or destructive socially.
In our Child ego state, we are imaginative, spontaneous, emotional, and fun. Everyone carries within them the child as they were when they were nine years old.
In our Adult ego state we take care of business dispassionately and accurately. Buying a ticket is a good example of us in our Adult state (provided it goes without incident).
In our parental state, we act as we observed our parents acting as we were growing up. A person in their parental ego can be nurturing, correcting, or controlling.
If we ignore other interactions of ego states, we see that the child generally seeks out a parental figure for intimacy or symbolic stroking. As a person matures, this need for parental intimacy can be shifted or expanded from our biological parents to include friends, teachers, sports figures, employers, politicians, pastors, and even music celebrities.
This need for parental intimacy, real or symbolic, never leaves us our entire life.
Our child forever feels inferior and in need of a "higher power", the way we did when we looked up to our parents in awe of their abilities. Needs for approval and recognition or attention are also retained into adulthood.
Our parental figures are usually people who seem to have these "higher powers" beyond our present abilities such as knowledge, strength, authority, experience, wisdom, talents, etc…
A believer has found an ultimate parent by unknowingly and subconsciously imagining a parental figure (God) of infinite abilities or a "higher power". The parental figure is imagined to be all forgiving of the inferior (sinful) child, attentive to every detail of their lives, giving of stroking and intimacy (which although imagined is just as real to the believer as any flesh and blood parental figure) and seemingly providing security and purpose under the imagined parental figure’s guidance.
In short, there is a nine year old in everyone we retain into adulthood that still needs a "higher power" or parental figure just as it did when we were a child. For believers, that "higher power" is imagined as God.
Material derived in part from Dr. Berne’s book "Games People Play".
Interesting, but certainly not definitive.
Dude, you gave up your faith because of this theory?
What happenned?
Definitive or not, it appears to make sense to me and others. I’m sure there are people who are Christians for other reasons such as tradition or appearence?
I think you’ve already read my other article about how I awoken out of Christiantiy. It was not any particular thing although the realization of the psychological part was an “Epiphany.”
All of the murder and other primitive behavior ascribed to God and the heroes of the Bible as well as the failed prophecies, errors, contradictions, borrowed mythology, etc… was a big factor.
Fair enough. to be honest with you capella I respect your genuine quest for the truth. May He guide you into all truth ^_^
christians are so fucking stupid. people believe in christianity: Fear of being tortured in hell for not “bowing the knee to god”.
I wasn’t aware of this theory in any kind of formal way until I just read it, but I’ve always intuitively understood it to be so. In fact, I recently posted a thread on a christian forum interpreting Star Wars as an Atheist film, because it’s a story of Luke rejecting the “destinies” his father (and assorted would-be father figures) insists on naming for him. I made much the same case that Dr. Berne makes using the popular saying, “you aren’t a man until you bury your father.”
i think that may be one reason and there are many others..like the when you grow up with a very i mean very christan family they fill your head with bible and everything else so by the time your lets say 20 you’ll believe that because that was pounded in you head that you had to be or you were going to die young and burn in hell for eturnity..yea that sucks. anyways its like pouring something into a mold they have to form to it or else..well i have desited to take my chances and brake the mold and everything that was tought to me the pass many years. i think that being a christain is bull-shit..and i cant stand it. i respect thoes people in it but i want nothing to do with it.
At least try to stay in school Rachel.
Right on–be sure to get your education. I’d like to add, Rachel, that I hope your personal search leads you toward a code of ethics or something vaguely spiritual, rather than (eventually) back to an extreme-type organized religion such as you were brought up in.
Do you ever think you were created to NEED him.Him as in God. HAve you ever want to feel needed? By anyone? Why do you think that even though you find the perfect girl/ guy, or your parents are all you could’ve ever hoped for, or you find your best friend(or have many close friedns for that matter, that there is still a deep longing for more? for those who don’t know God, don’t accept him, or just can’t seem to understand him and thereofre refuse him in their life, that emptiness is there….just pause and think. Maybe you were really created in his image more than you realize…..don’t be mislead…think for yourself…please
I’m sure Eric Berne and every human that exists or has ever existed has had a deep longing for someone to love and be loved by.
This sort of thing is most likely the result of the advantages of mating, living in clans (families and tribes), and bonding with parents during a very long gestational period. In short Humans evolved with social needs because it gave various survival advantages.
Are you suggesting that this has somehow tainted his work on the human psychological condition?
I believe that any christian that visits this site does it for one of two reasons. One being, that they have their own questions (feelings of emptiness for the life they could live without all the damn rules), or, to act as a recruiter to all of us so called (damned) individuals that prefer to live in a world believing that faith is animated- fictional! Christians are required by the “WORD”, to be non-judgemental, yet, you are the most judgemental people in existance!
You are also called by the “WORD” not to kill!
Yet, strangely enough, more people die as a result of religious belief than of any other way of death including, cancer, aids, car wreck, heart attack, MS, MD, (general deseases of the body), shootings, poisonings, snake bites or animal attacks all combined!
Your (sinful), judgemental (holier than thou) attitudes are a huge turn off to more sensable realistic individuals here on this Earth!
And if you want us to have a lick of faith ever,! Stop contradicting the “WORD”, and stop the killing over religious belief! Just let people be who they want to be without attempting to force your opinion upon them.
I assure you the world would be a much better place if you would heed my advice!
An interesting theory. I just wonder about the following:
When a Christian dies and it turns out that he was wrong in his believes it would not be such a big deal.
On the other hand when a atheist dies and it turns out that his theories such as this one stated is wrong MAJOR PROBLEM!
But you are ignoring other possibilities. What if the Muslims are correct and the Christians wake up in Muslim hell? What about the Krishnas, the Hindus, etc…?
See my article on \”Pascal\’s Wager.\”
CAM,
To state that all religious structures that were invented by man are the direct result of an impulse within humans to long after the Christian God, is to admit that this self-same impulse, which is to “lead” men to their heavenly reward, has an inherent capability to likewise mislead them to their hellish doom. For after all, if man desires the Christian God in an unconscious way, and misinterprets such longing as a desire to adhere to any religion which is not Christian, has he not damned himself for his belief in falsehood?
But the greater difficulty for the Christian theologian, is in explaining why, on the one hand, the Christian God wishes to reveal himself to his creation; and why, on the other, he chooses to remain hidden, indeed, seems to will that men must adhere to tomes of speculation if they are to believe in him at all! Why does an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent intelligence who demands that his human creatures adhere to his authority or else suffer damnation, actively deny them the irrefutable evidence for his desires that their reason and logic, which he has created, thrive upon? Is that demand too unreasonable? But moreover, why does he refuse obvious evidence, but only offer evidence which is ambiguous and crude, and which requires not reason or logic to assent to, but rather, the desire to adhere to speculation for the emotional benefit such speculation may give?