My mother, for most of her adult life, was a Jehovah's Witness. Every day, I realize how fortunate I was to have not been raised by her. I know I would have freaked out over their cult-like ways.
As it was, I received plenty of their literature in the mail. Mother would send it to me across the miles, not knowing just how different my views were from hers.
When the day finally came (and I was in college by this time) that I told her I was an atheist, I assumed her mailings of The Watchtower and other publications would cease.
Silly me.
Mother was convinced that my atheism was due to my scientific background. I'd begun my college career as an astronomy major and she assumed that because I couldn't detect God, I concluded that there wasn't one.
In point of fact, I was an English major by this time and my atheism was just as firmly based upon emotion as upon science. The concept of a Creator just struck me as ridiculous even aside from science.
But Mother continued to send literature, and once even mailed me a cassette "letter," in which she and a JW friend tried to convert me. Much of their conversation revolved around the fact that there were many scientists in the JW organization, all of whom have proven the existence of God.
Say what?
Yes... They've "proven to themselves that God exists."
Ah.
Proving something to oneself is meaningless except with regard to one's peace of mind. But that's all she needed, it seems.
My ex-wife, as a girl, was very active in her church. She went on many retreats and such. One thing she would often see was people who were "filled with the spirit of the Lord." She told me she envied these people and wanted to feel what they felt. But she couldn't, no matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she wanted that spirit to visit her. Deep down, she just had too many doubts about it.
Her father once told me a story about an exorcism that he'd taken part in. A girl, raised in a strict religious environment, found it physically debilitating to enter a church, having all kinds of fits and pains and so on. She was sent to doctor after doctor, none of which (unsurprisingly) found anything wrong with her.
I noted that none of the doctors she was sent to had a degree in any psychological field...
At any rate, an exorcism was called for. Several people, in addition to the individual performing the ritual, gathered in a circle around the girl, holding hands. The exorcism was performed, at the climax of which all participants allegedly felt a sudden wash of heat. After this, the girl could enter churches painlessly.
The participants in this arcane rite, as well as the spirit-filled retreat members and the scientists who "proved" God's existence to themselves, all suffered from the same sort of delusion. We humans are a gullible lot and we have a strong tendency to believe in our wishful fantasies.
It's harder to believe that there's no God, more difficult to believe that nothing but ourselves can fill us with purpose, more painful to believe in psychological ills.
But the truth hurts.
