I'm not a Christian.
I was educated by Sisters of Mercy nuns, Marist brothers and Marist priests, was an altar boy and, at college, a sacristan but none of that 'took' and consequently I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any gods as championed by all the religions on earth.
Some readers will have noticed that, on this blog, I challenge the silly things that Christians (particularly Catholics) and people of other religions say and do. One particularly silly thing said is how religious people thank their god(s) when they make it through some misfortune or, if they don't, claim that it was god's will or some other arrant nonsense.
A big word to apply to this is 'cognitive dissonance'.
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.
- Wikipedia
Some examples are:- praying to god for something good to happen.
- thanking god when you are a survivor and everyone else dies.
- an army fighting another army and saying that god is on their side.
- thanking god for finding lost (misplaced) car keys.
- etc.
My first thought was that, if Robert really had a 'guardian angel' this being should have prevented the damned candle falling over in the first place just as any god shouldn't need to save some people from wars, earthquakes, plane crashes, floods, disease and other disasters if he/she/it didn't create the damned things in the first place.
Sheesh!
Sheesh!
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Well that really changed my thinking!
ReplyDeleteIn musical terminology dissonance applies to clashing frequencies, so if I was guilty of cognitive dissonance I might be thinking of Stravinsky?
DeleteYou could do worse.
"Stravinsky was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church during most of his life, remarking at one time that, The Church knew what the psalmist knew. Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament." - Wikipedia
Why pick on Stravinsky and not Webern or Stockhausen? In most music dissonance is resolved. There again, there was a time in history when the major 3rd. was considered a dissonance. Music is evolving.
ReplyDelete