Having spent a lot of time thinking about how to best approach life in the absence of a faith narrative (something which I previously held with great certainty) this book was an interesting intro to the field of existential psychology and how one might go about the task of taking responsibility for ones own life and building a framework of meaning and purpose in the absence of any pre-ordained ideas, religious or otherwise.

According to existential psychology there are certain ‘givens’ in life that we face as human beings, and to some extent, these givens are the same givens that many people of faith would cite, however, it is how we respond to, engage with and enter in to dialogue with these givens that is so markedly different in an existential approach. These givens are what you might call the ‘Structure of Existence’. The most well known, says Jacobsen are those posited by Irvin Yalom: 1) We are going to die. 2) In decisive moments, we are alone. 3) We have the freedom to choose our life. 4) We struggle to create meaning in a world in which our life meaning is not given beforehand. As Jacobsen says, “according to Yalom, these four basic conditions constitute a structure that is our premise, something that all human beings are born into, setting the frame and agenda for the life of each individual.”

There are other and longer lists developed by others within existential psychology that attempt to capture the essential life conditions that we, as Human Beings face. The essence of existential psychology is that “all these conditions are active in our life and influence us whether we want to think about them or not and that evidence suggests we can live more freely and in a more enlightened way if we indeed choose to think about them.”

Jacobsen says that each of the basic life conditions can be viewed as a dilemma representing two opposite poles, between which our life is torn and between which it must find a balance. Subscribing to this view he says “there are a number of given ontological facts (e.g. that one day we will die), but that these facts present themselves to us in the form of life dilemmas.” Most of the book is given to examining six of these life dilemmas:

1) Happiness vs Suffering: How can I strive towards happiness when I know that my life will inevitably contain suffering?

2) Love vs Aloneness: Is it possible to overcome my basic aloneness in a love relationship? Can I still be myself in a love relationship? And is it at all possible to find love in this world?

3) Adversity vs Success: When I find myself in dire straits following an accident or a loss or some other serious life event, how can I deal with that situation in such a way that I will grow from it instead of shrinking or getting stuck?

4) Death Anxiety vs Life Commitment: Knowing that death can arrive at any time, how can I transcend my anxiety and commit myself fully to life?

5) Free Choice vs the Obligations of Your Life Reality: Given the physical, financial and social realities of my life and origin, which I did not ask for, how can I make these realities my own positive and constructive choice? And how can I create a worthwhile future life through my choices?

6) Life Meaning vs Meaninglessness: Given the chaotic character of our present world, how may I define the meaning and values of my life and find a clear direction for it?

Jacobsen says “To the extent that you succeed in finding your own two feet in relation to these life questions and dilemmas, to that extent, the existential psychologists would say, you live an authentic life”.

I’m inclined to agree.

Jacobsen goes on to say that “once you have acquired a minimum degree of clarity about what you are living for, the questions of authenticity and how to take your own life seriously do not appear to be ‘heavy’ questions. It is possible to be authentic and spontaneous at the same time”. To illustrate this, he cites Medard Boss, who conceives of the authentic life as marked by playfulness and humour: “His concept of the ideal state of mind, composed, joyous serenity, entails ease and heaviness going hand in hand. Playfulness and seriousness embrace one another, as do our knowledge of death and our commitment to life.” Boss also expresses the same idea in the phrase “Therapy should enable the client to meet the world freely and openly“.

Jacobsen takes a closer look at these three words, which at first glance “may appear simple, but point to something of the greatest importance”. Meeting the world, he goes on “in the words of Martin Buber means that the person and the world open up to each other and to each other’s being and are enriched by this encounter. Freely means that the meeting or the world relation is unshackled; it is a positive, autonomous choice, something that the individual says yes to. Openly means giving up your fixed and closed ideas and images of what is out there, relinquishing your ingrained prejudices and being prepared to confront whatever you encounter with an unbiased mind. Openly also means to face the facts of our world, whether they are positive or unpleasant, and to find our feet in relation to them.”

This is the state of being I want to find myself in; to meet life freely and openly, as much as possible to live in composed, joyous serenity. I’m looking forward to exploring the ideas in the book more fully and doing some personal work in my own life towards shaping my being towards that state.

“Schjødt says that this explains why certain individuals can gain influence over others, and concludes that their ability to do so depends heavily on preconceived notions of their authority and trustworthiness.”

This reminds me of the Milgram Experiments run in the 1960′s which have been re-run several times since and also a recent variation on Derren Brown’s TV special The Heist. Volunteers were willing to administer what they were told were multiple lethal electric shocks to someone whom they believed was another volunteer in the experiment purely because an authority figure had instructed them to do so… despite hearing what they believed to be the other volunteer’s screams from the adjacent room.

I’m sure the kind of behaviour illustrated in these experiments is endemic within religious environments, especially those considered to be ‘fundamentalist’, and probably shows why people who are more sceptical and rational are not so much found among the religious. However, I wonder how much these behaviours operate in a more subtle way even within the more moderate of ‘evangelical’ religious communities? My own experience and bias leads me to think they are weaved in to the very fabric of religious and faith based communities.

There are a number of these kinds of behaviours that interest me a great deal; one more case in point being illustrated in this warming post by Dale McGowan which suggests that “It’s not that true believers of various kinds don’t ask questions — it’s that they so eagerly accept poor answers to those questions in order to preserve belief”

I summarised that I had so far been able to navigate around apparent conflicts between the theory of evolution and my understanding of the Christian narrative for two reasons. Firstly, I had a strong feeling of disbelief that complex organisms could evolve over time and account for the myriad diversity that we see in nature. Although my understanding of the theory of evolution was rudimentary and superficial perhaps, the theory did appear to have some plausibility. There was, however, enough disbelief to leave me questioning whether things could really be so. Secondly, not feeling the need to take the Genesis creation narrative literally I conjectured, as many do it seems, that perhaps evolution was the ‘method’ god used in creation. For example, perhaps if life did evolve there was some ‘guiding hand’ of god involved in the process.

I indicated in the previous post that I no longer feel able to hold that second view, and I want to explore why in this post.

The first epiphany I experienced was the realisation that the processes by which evolution is understood to work (and the evidence seems pretty clear on this) are firstly random (genetic mutation) and secondly, quite mercilessly brutal (natural selection). This is big. If the processes by which all life on earth (which includes us humans) evolved are entirely random then that surely dispels the idea of there being any kind of  ’guiding hand’ involved in the process, god’s or otherwise. Further, if the processes of evolution could also be described as brutal, then that surely raises very serious questions about the ‘nature’ of god in creation.

My question here then is this: ‘How could it be possible to claim that nature, (by which I mean the world, all life and our universe) is a loving god’s good creation, created in his perfect love and goodness when the processes of that creation are firstly, entirely random and secondly, mercilessly bloody and brutal, ‘red in tooth and claw’?’.

My second awakening was this: Ignoring the wider ‘creation’ for the moment and looking at humanity specifically, the creation narrative within Christianity (whether you believe it literally or metaphorically) tells the story that within this world god created mankind, in his image and after his likeless for a special relationship with himself. Now, whilst (as mentioned previously) I didn’t feel I had to hold to a literal reading of the creation narrative, I was very much holding to a metaphorical reading (i.e. the universe wasn’t created literally in the manner described in Genesis – maybe god did it using evolution, but the overall meaning of the story is what is important). This metaphorical reading is heavily dependant on the ‘guiding hand’ idea since it requires a plan and purpose envisioned by god in advance so is already considerably discredited based on the previous comments which show that evolutionary processes are entirely random. However, even ignoring this it now clearly seems to me that the evolutionary narrative is diametrically opposed to the ‘Genesis narrative’ not just in its literal form, but also to a metaphorical reading. It is clearly opposed to a literal reading for obvious reasons, but here’s the rub.. If humankind are just one species of primate on a single branch of the tree of life, related to all other primates, (and by extension all other life on earth) by common ancestry, evolved to this point via a random, brutal and bloody evolutionary struggle then does that not stand in complete opposition to the idea that humankind have been deliberately and purposefully created ‘special’ and different from all other living things by a loving, all knowing, all powerful god to enjoy a loving relationship with himself and serve and glorify him or whatever his requirements might be?

We are special, as in that we have developed highly complex language and sociopolitical and cultural frameworks and recently a burgeoning understanding of the universe we live in, but as Tim Minchin sings (with a wry smile).. ‘We’re just fucking monkeys in shoes!’. There was no guiding hand, no purpose, and no end result in mind, just the long, brutal, bloody history of life fighting for a chance to live and reproduce along with random genetic mutations that occasionally afforded a benefit to a particular species allowing it to gain an advantage.

This might sound depressing. Perhaps it is. But whoever said the truth had to make us feel warm and fuzzy.

More thoughts, some hope and positivity in the light of this cold scenario and an exploration of how some people attempt to address these challenges in order to preserve faith will follow in the next post(s).

The subtext of the show appears to be a strong pro-evolutionary agenda and Richard  Dawkins (somewhat less fanatical in his presentation than is often the case) makes frequent appearences for what is a combination of ‘The Science Bit’ and a pitch for how the various parts of the creature’s anatomies show, not deliberate, intelligent design (and therefore a designer), but rather the legacy of the random processes of evolution.

This has got me thinking quite a bit and I want to outline some of that thought here. What I want to explore here, perhaps over a series of posts is how the idea of evolution sits (if it can) with the idea of God, but more specifically, and personally, the Christian narrative. I don’t want to get deeply in to the whole creationism/evolution debate, but I do want to take an honest look at some of the issues as they appear to me and work thorugh some challenging thoughts that come to mind.

I’ve had a Christian faith in varying flavours that I’ve engaged with seriously since about the age of 17 and the idea of evolution had never caused me too much trouble for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was not wholly convinced by the theory of evolution. On considering the wonders of nature and how we and other species are so wonderfully and intricately made, I found it extremely difficult to comprehend how complex structures like the eye, wings, brains etc. could ‘evolve’. Even given the millions of years that evolution is said to take it still didn’t feel like enough time to allow for the huge amount of change and diversity that we see in nature to have taken shape. A superficial look at the science seemed somewhat plausible and often convincing, but this was countered by an equal measure of disbelief, incredulity – not because of my faith per se, but, because there was something in me that just found it implausible.  Secondly, (and this is the reason which allowed me to put the whole lot on the shelf and leave unpacking the first reason for some future time) I’ve never held to a literalist reading of the creation narrative in Genesis. A basic understanding of the universe, for me, makes that option a non-starter. I considered that even if life and therefore humans had evolved, well, maybe that was just the way God did it… until now.

It is this second reason that has been shaken and dislodged for me and which I can no longer hold to which has been the trigger for these thoughts and I’ll open this up further in the next post.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/faith/heaven-a-fools-paradise-1949399.html