Faith Through the Prism of Psychology

A New Framework for Existentialism

Eugene Subbotsky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000528695
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Faith Through the Prism of Psychology introduces readers to the structure and function of the inherent ability of our Self to invest objects with reality — existentialization (EXON). The author moves away from traditional ideas of existence and faith, arguing that it is an inherent ability of an individual mind to invest entities (both objective and subjective) with reality.

The book treats faith as a psychological ability of the mind to upgrade the existential statuses of imaginary entities, such as ghosts or gods; the working of faith is operationalized and analyzed in empirical psychological studies. It presents a new model of investing objects with existence, with such structural elements as the belief in object permanence (BOP), magic/ordinary distinguisher (MOD), magic/trick distinguisher (MTD), imaginary/perceived distinguisher (IPD), BOP defense mechanism (BOP/DM) and realities distinguisher (RD).

It will be essential reading for anyone interested in existence from psychology, philosophy, art, theology or psychotherapy backgrounds.

1 Facts we perceive, maxims we trust: Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003219521-1

1.1 Catching the uncatchable

Existence. Is there a simpler and at the same time a vaguer term in our language?

In fact, all we can think and speak of, see and hear, feel and experience exist, but everything exists in its own way. There exists even something existence of which we deny; indeed, by saying that a flying elephant does not exist, we nevertheless have this elephant in our imagination, and therefore, make it existing.

It seems that many issues in life and in thinking bounce into the problem of defining what ‘existence’ really means. The great physicist Albert Einstein gave much of his creative efforts to the problem of finding the so-called unified field theory, in which it would be possible to combine gravitational and electromagnetic fields. Many times it seemed to him that he caught the elusive solution yet each time it turned out that this solution didn’t match physical reality [1]. This means that the solution existed only on paper, in the form of mathematical formulas, but either it was not possible to test the solution's correctness in physical experiments, or the test led to results that refuted the theory. So, did Einstein's unified field theory exist or did it not? Of course, in some way it did, but its existence was partial, incomplete and unreliable. It still exists as a part of physics’ history. In contrast, another Einstein's theory, which predicted that gravity bends light rays, was supported by subsequent observations of the position of stars near the sun during a solar eclipse [2], and such confirmation moved the prediction from the status of a hypothesis to the status of a mainstream scientific theory. In other words, the same theory that previously existed only in the imagination of a scientist, began to exist as a description of physical reality confirmed by experience.

Such ‘leaps’ in the status of existence we constantly observe not only in science but also in life. For instance, we might think that our bank account still has money in it, but when we try to pay in a store we find that the account is empty. This disappointing discovery moves our belief in our financial credibility from the status of reality to the status of a delusion. Note that the belief in credibility did not cease to exist and will remain in our memory; all what happened to this belief after we had discovered it was wrong was that it became less important and ceased to guide our practical actions. Sometimes the opposite conversion occurs: What we have long believed to be a fallacy, suddenly turns out to be true. For example, some smokers don’t believe that smoking leads to lung diseases, but when they got ill themselves the smokers change their attitude to the doctors’ warnings and quit smoking. In this case, the doctors’ statement about the link between smoking and lung diseases has not changed; what changed was the ‘weight’ of this statement on the invisible ‘scale of existence’ in the smoker's mind.

Sometimes we like to play hide and seek game with existence. Thus, going to the performance of a magician, we mentally anticipate the pleasure of such a game. After all, we know that such events as the emergence of a rabbit in the magician's empty hat or the resurrection of a girl who had just been cut in half by the magician's saw could never happen. But for some reason, it gives us pleasure to watch that such non-existing events are really happening. Why? Maybe because non-existing things do indeed exist in our head, in the form of the imagination. For instance, in a dream we can see a rabbit suddenly appearing from thin air, and in most cases it does not surprise us. Unlike a dream, the real world can be a rather dull place, and seeing the impossible thing happening ‘for real’ on the magician's stage may make this place a little more exciting.

So, what does this simple and at the same time mysterious verb ‘exist’ really mean? In this book, we will examine what the concept of existence means, and in what forms or ‘statuses’ our thoughts, images, and perceptions exist; we will investigate how we can transform existing things into illusions, and vice versa, how, with the help of faith, we can literally ‘convert’ non-existing things into existing ones.

1.2 Multiple faces of existence

Some philosophers say that the most important question of all times is ‘Why there is something rather than nothing?’ In this book, we assume that there is a question even more fundamental, namely ‘What does it mean – to be?’

Indeed, when we say that something exists or doesn’t exist, we implicitly assume that the verb ‘to be’ is clear to us, but is it? Certainly, when we say that ‘nothing’ exists, it exists in a different way than does ‘something’. The ‘something’ we experience through our senses or understand via logical proofs, whereas the ‘nothing’ we can only name and keep in mind as a thought. On a smaller scale, we also know that there are things that exist only for a fleeting moment (e.g., a short sound or a doughnut made of smoke), whereas other things exist for centuries (e.g., buildings) or billions of years (e.g., planets and galaxies); some objects exist only for us (e.g., a night dream), whereas other we share with other people (e.g., a perceived physical object or a theory); some objects exist with the high degree of certainty (e.g., a toothache we are experiencing), whereas the existence of others requires the assistance of faith (e.g., ghosts and gods); some perceived relations between objects exist ‘really and truly’ (e.g., that a building is bigger than our palm), and others are illusions (e.g., our palm looking bigger than the building situated on a distance from us); some entities exist as sheer thoughts (e.g., the ideas of ‘roundness’ or ‘triangleness’), whereas others, in order to be there, require assistance of perception (e.g., a circle or a triangle); some objects exist as observable entities (e.g., a tree in our garden), whereas others can only be inferred from observation over other objects (e.g., ‘dark matter’ or some elementary particles in physics).

There are multiple other ways for things to exist. Many people and even some scientists think that the verb ‘existence’ is a commonly accepted notion, while in reality it isn’t. This potentially inexhaustible semantical content of the verb ‘exist’ creates multiple confusions and misunderstandings in our reasoning about the world. There are scientists that claim that God doesn’t exist, but they wouldn’t deny the existence of the concept of God. Likewise, believers in God hold a different view on the existence of God, but they too need to clarify the meaning they invest in the expression ‘there is god’. Physical scientists don’t believe in miracles while superstitious adults do, but who of them do we have to trust? Might it be the case that, due to the different meanings of the verb ‘exist’, both parties are right? Perhaps, in order to upgrade a certain object from the status of ‘not existing’ to the status of ‘existing’, all we need to do is to apply to this object the verb ‘exist’ with a different semantical and psychological filling?

1.3 Faith and existence

Whenever we think about something or do something, we always have some grounds for thinking about or doing this. We think about going to bed because we are tired, we eat because we are hungry, we write a message to a friend because we need to communicate, and so on. Our perception, memory, imagination and sensations are conditioned by certain things as well: we perceive a tree because there is such a thing in the world, we memorize a person's name because we see a person in front of us, we are imagining a horse because we are reading a novel in which a character is riding a horse…There is only one psychological faculty that is not conditioned by anything, and this faculty is faith. So, what is faith?

In his work ‘De Carne Christi’ (Of the Flesh of Christ) the early Christian author Tertullian (155–240 AD), wrote, “It is certain because it is impossible” – the phrase that later transmuted into the famous “I believe because it is absurd” [3]. What Tertullian had in mind was the belief in God's existence, but in essence this statement is true about any kind of faith. Indeed, if there were evidence of God's existence, the belief in God would not be necessary. But so is true regarding any belief. Although we often say, “I believe in what I see with my own eyes”, we don’t really need to believe in something we have available in our perceptual experience. For instance, knowledge about the law of gravitation is supported by our perception of weight, which provides us with evidence convincing enough to render the belief unnecessary. If someone is in doubt, the doubt would fast dissipate as soon as the person jumped from a chair and tried to fly in the air. Belief is different from knowledge. For knowledge, we need to manipulate with perceptions that we receive from the world out there. In contrast, for the belief, we need to imagine something that we can’t possibly have in perception and invest this something with existence by the sheer effort of will. Simply put, our knowledge is conditioned by the external world, but our faith (belief) is being generated by our own Self. What it also means is that knowledge deals with things that already exist, whereas faith literally makes things appear from nothing. In other words, faith is a manufacturer of existence.

“And what about faith absorbed from social environment? – I hear the reader's question. – Indeed, children believe in God because their parents tell them that believing in God is the right thing to do. Isn’t this kind of faith conditioned?” Yes, faith can be influenced by the environment, but this doesn’t make faith an effect of an external cause. Even if your faith is influenced, it is still your faith. Not only gods and other invisible entities have to be believed into in order to exist but ordinary things around us as well. Our belief in science is a product of faith as well. Most people believe in the laws of nature not because they discovered them independently, but because their social environment told them that these laws exist.

Everyone, even the most sceptical person, has to believe in something. But what do scientists believe in? They may not believe in God, but they have to believe in their own consciousness. “I am thinking, therefore I exist” – this Cartesian maxim is the credo of scepticism, yet it demonstrates the faith in personal consciousness. Taking from this, sceptics have to believe in their perceptions of things other than themselves. If I exist, then the perceived object (e.g., the Moon I am seeing in the sky) is a part of my mind, and therefore it exists. And even if I wrongly take the Moon on the horizon for a streetlight, the wrong perception is nevertheless there. As a result, all scientific truths, even logical and mathematical ones, ascend to the basic faith of the sceptical mind – the faith in existence of personal Self.

1.4 The light beam of existence

“All roads lead to Rome” says a medieval proverb. In a similar vein, anything that exists is connected with our Self by an invisible thread. For a thing to exist, we need to be conscious of this thing as existing, and the first thing that we are conscious of is our own Self; therefrom comes the famous “I am thinking therefore I exist”. It follows from this that the only thing that exists absolutely is our own Self. Our Self is the torch that brings forth the ‘light of existence’. All things around us – this computer in front of me, the table the computer is on, the tree in th...