If it feels good...

If there’s one thing that science has taught us, it’s that our feelings have little or nothing to do with ‘reality’ (ie. what is really there). Our five senses and our emotions which help to process the things that pass through their receptors are the point with which we make contact with reality but they do not influence it and they certainly do not define it.

So why do we behave as if they do?

Why do people base life decisions on something they have been led to by their feelings. When I know very well that my feelings can mislead me and even be complete misrepresentations of ‘what is really there’, and yet I still plunge headlong into following them then surely something is not right?

Take the instance of the rather silly, and criminally reckless, man from Oxford who drove a Porsche which didn’t even belong to him at 173mph down an A-road. He certainly couldn’t have been under any misapprehensions about the ‘reality’ of the situation. He knew that the 60mph limit was fixed and would not change for him. The law would disqualify him immediately if it caught him and he would most likely have to pay a heft fine and face a jail term. And of course we are forgetting the damage, destruction and death that would result from any crash (highly likely at that speed, English drivers’ politeness in getting out of the way notwithstanding).

Now I don’t think I know of anyone who would ‘choose’ to sign up for any of these punishments. I think it would be safe to say that he did not get into the Porsche that day thinking, “Oh yes, today’s a nice day to kill some people and lose my license and end up in jail...” No, the key is that, even though he knew the truth of the situation, his feelings shaped a new reality for him. In this new reality, no one would get hurt, he would not get caught and no one would know any better. What the police didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

We must conclude that he genuinely believed that he wouldn’t get caught.

I doubt that he was like the notorious Ghost Rider motorbiker who regularly baits policemen and does wheelies at over 200mph on specially altered Hayabusa motorbike (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud_gXPCMUDw); the man obviously cares little for his own life. No, our friend had a lot to lose that day. His problem was that he had created an alternative reality because of his lust for speed. Let me get this straight. WE ALL DO THIS. To a greater or lesser degree, we are always looking for ways to reshape reality to suit our desires and feelings. But reality is not so amenable! The world does not change to suit our whims.

It might seem that true justice left this world a long time ago; if it ever existed, it died with God. In other words it became outdated and we must now face up to the ‘real’ reality which is that we are finite people in a relative world which is based on one principle - ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’. But this too is a fantasy. People who believe this in all earnesty (like Richard Dawkins), are in the minority. Why do you think that more and more people are buying into Eastern religions these days - apart from it being the fashionable thing to do - it’s because they are looking for justice. They are looking for a ‘right to end all wrongs’, a unifying principle (like Karma) to ensure that those nasty terrorists and paedophiles are not left unpunished.

Once again, then, we are left with just two basic options. We either follow a naturalistic worldview consistently and claim, like Richard Dawkins, that we just have to make the best of life in an unjust and uncaring world, or we commit ourselves to whatever unifying principle of absolute justice we have discovered and hold to be true. (Of course there are those who try and block everything out - probably more people than we’d like to admit - and try to get through life without thinking through these things at all. Their illusion becomes their reality - I assume that simply by virtue of reading this far you do not fit into this category.)

If we really are the product of random forces then they have played a sick joke by ‘leading us’ to sentience and morals, only to discover that justice does not exist.

I can only assume that Dawkins is able to compartmentalise his feelings and his convictions remarkably well because I do not know many normal people who are able to go through this life and retain their sanity whilst still holding to this conviction. And just in case you thought I’d gone completely off-topic, my point is this: this is the biggest illusion of them all! Unless Dawkins wants to deny the existence of the moral plane completely (a length I doubt even he would go to), then he has to deal with the fact that morality is a real part of human existence and that according to his worldview it is simply a cruel joke because actually, the only people who get punished are those who get caught and even then based on flawed and unjust principles. Everything about human history, thought and philosophy screams out against this. If this is true then sentience is a very real nightmare, morality is an illusion and personality is merely a vehicle for 'sentient animals' to understand how they have been divested of their dignity.

So why do we do it? Why do we build a new reality for ourselves? We come back to the point I made at the beginning;

We ‘must’ reshape the world for ourselves because our heart compells us to.

Just like our speeding friend, now nicely holed up in the clink, we find the law to be offensive, in violation of our desires, our autonomy, our very person. And so we enlarge our image of
ourselves (’invincible’, ‘not going to get caught’, ‘not accountable to anyone’ ) and degrade the image of justice that stands before us, airbrushing it out of our perception of reality. We ‘know’ that it is still there but we do such a good job of warping reality that we begin to believe our own illusion...

And the reality of this world is that the figure of justice who stands before us is the creator-God himself.

We look at his world and we know it to be true. We look at ourselves and we know it to be true. We look at the state of our hearts and we certainly know it to be true. Yet our hearts always respond by artfully reminding us of the options we (do genuinely) have - we can either confront this reality (hearts says, “Definitely not recommended!” ) or we can reshape this reality to suit our heart’s desires (hearts says, “That sounds more like it...” ). The irony is that this choice only exists because of the innate human dignity and personhood that this very same creator-God has vested us with... Once we have set off down this path, it becomes easier and easier to deny God, making it a very dangerous path. Dangerous because, whichever path we take, God is no less a God of justice further down the path than he was when we were at the crossroads. Our perception of justice will change but reality will not. Death is the only evidence God needs to put us in our place and remind us of reality - that justice and wrath exist and we cannot escape them.

Now, if this is all there was to it - we die and then we are punished again - then I could understand wanting to blot it out. But this is not and never has been the reality. If you think about it, if God really did delight in our destruction, he would not have wasted any time; he would simply have blotted us out the moment we rebelled against him. God is not a cat to toy around nor a man to have second thoughts and mixed motives!

The fact that we are still here means that either God does not exist or that he does and he has a benevolent plan and purpose for us.

All the while we have been trying to block out God from our thinking, he has been speaking clearly throughout history in the words of the Bible. And his final word is seen in Jesus Christ, God himself made flesh. People ask to see God in order to believe - God says, “Please, be my guest” - let me introduce you to my Son, the very likeness of me, the invisible God.“

If you understand and are frustrated about the way you have been reshaping reality to suit your heart... if you are all serious about ditching the various illusions you have built up around you as protective barriers then my counsel is simply this - go straight to Jesus. See for yourself if he really is the creator-God, the God of justice. Then listen to him and follow him. If he is not then looking after number one is the only thing that really makes sense. Karma is not the answer.

Don’t be an “if it feels good...” person.
Be a “now, that changes everything...” kind of person.