Religious Conversion and Psychological Dynamics: Analyzing Familial Shifts and Cognitive Dissonance

Often I Feel Like Obi-Wan Kenobi Who Lost His Padawan: When Relatives Go Holy—Turning to the Dark Side? 

Real-Life Stories and Personal Experiences

We have all encountered religious zeal in our families to some extent. I enjoyed listening to biblical morality stories in my school assemblies; I do still value them, but I say let's keep everything in moderation. When my fathers side of the family attempted to exorcise me though, I began to draw a few lines! 

I'm not alone. 

It's frustrating to see another relative turn deeply religious and scriptural. He considers himself a humble philosophy enthusiast and speaks highly of modal logic, as well as the philosphy of moralty, and cosmological arguments, and theories of time—you might know where I'm going with this. He and I might spark up a debate, and often, it will seize up, because my eristic socrates will even deny established fact or adopt futile pedantic semantics solely to be right. 

Not a compelling character for fiction, but people like this can bring potential intensity or fear if you add a dimension of intracranial narcissism or vengeful machiavellianism. He does openly admit his dishonesty and enjoys playing the contrarian. His reading of philosophy is admirable, but he undermines it, as he does with the core virtue of his religion, namely, the teaching on honesty. Harmless biases we recognise in others can inspire fictional work by defining characters. The headstrong or proud can become disorderly sinister traits. 

The online Cambridge definition of 'Philosophy' and 'Christian' are:

Philosophy: the use of reason in understanding such things as the nature of the real world and existence, the use and limits of knowledge, and the principles of moral judgment. 

Christian: of or belonging to the religion based on the teachings of Jesus Christ: 

    ● a Christian charity/organization

    ● the Christian faith

My kindred thinker is not impartial to dismissing science, even after nudging his scientific data to promote prayer potency on poorly patients. Anti-science rhetoric is mostly thrown around by those who confuse science with anti-theism. I'm not anti-spiritual or an atheist, my own personal path simply isn't a mainstream religion. I'm just saying, reason and faith can be opposing attitudes, just as Christian Moral Realism is illogical. Imagine the conflict of being gay and Muslim. Our main characteristic as human beings is imperfection, we are flawed characters. 

I don't accept unwavering religious conviction it is quite 2-dimensional in most stories. In life we tell each other that we 'ought' to do something, simply because it's 'good' but the concept of unwavering genuine belief in God, would, if it worked, remove most peoples fear of death, and our abject terror of eternal damnation would prevent all crime in the clergy. Not realistic. Such logic would put endless crowds of us across cities and streets desperate to save the non-believers who are friends and loved ones from the nearing nightmare of hellish unending hell, but where are these believers? Strings of belief animate us, but here, they droop under laissez faire puppetry. The dance of religious mania and level headed doubt is an ongoing dynamic. 

When I ask myself what strengthens wavering faith in a world of natural disasters, horror, war and madness, I put it down to bravado and self-deception a cognitive dissonance against our terror of annihilation. My blood, who turned to religion also once recognised that the theology of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Israeli God (omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent) is devoid of philosophical thought; people promote their God's unchanging nature, immutability or everpresence. How a person can just change so quickly is baffelling. 

However, there's a conspiracy of silence in churches. They aren't inclined to explore any of the key religio-political transformations of the God of Israel, from a god among many others, married to Asherah, tribal, lost at war to Chemosh. The ancient North Syrian Yahweh without his Hellenic developments are shared. Theology and historical sciences are still dancing around. 

      'This wrathful and jealous lord of the old testament has gone all 'love and peace' clearly quite a significant change in just two testaments. Where's the unchangeability here?' 

                                                                                                       Me ranting. 

Free Will, Omniscience, and the Illusion of Choice

Judeo-christian theology lays it all out; Yahweh gave us free will and we defied him—we ate from his fruit tree! Undoubtedly, these theologies have also respectively been developed, every Abrahamic religion acknowledges that our free will does continue to lead us into sin or wrong doing. Level headed doubt might say it does follow that Yahweh, the unchanging, all-knowing, all-powerful and now, benelovent God (who walked amongst many gods), knowingly let humans fall into their own quagmire. 

This all-knowing God, would, by his nature, have known that humanity would choose to commit sin after creating us; so here's the question begging to be asked: does this mean free will was always just an illusion? If so, in this tradition, omniscience has undoubtedly facilitated sin, and it has nurtured human evil, even priming its ideal breeding grounds in that garden! 

What punishment did this loving god create in order to steer us away from the sin he enabled? Banishment from paradise? or even eternity in hellfire? Does it seem right? What an irrational theological burden! It goes too far, loses coherence, detracts from its own concept of divinity. Surely better ideas exist elsewhere? So why has my relative fallen for all of this nonsense?

The Sacrifice That Did What? 

The agnostic will wonder, and then think, when Yahweh lovingly appointed his so-called son, Jesus, to be tortured and then, to die for a weekend, no evils ended. What is going on in my own bloods mind? The death didn't even alleviate the Roman occupation, nor did it avert our twentieth century wars for that matter. The problem of evil was not resolved by Jesus Christ.

Christianity was persecuted at one point like most groups are really, let's face it! However, see an increase in interesting church-made, brain derived theologies that introduced consequences equally as cruel as Rome's contributions to others. Fair dues, there are fantastic Jesus moralty stories, maybe they are best left as morality plays, or is that avoidant?  I doubt many individuals have read about the jewish trials and tribulations that followed the crucifixion, such as the seige of Jerusalem. Rome slaughtered ridiculous amounts of Jewish people, just like in the Bar Kokhba revolt. I asked my religious convert to tell me his thoughts on how the God of Israel's chosen people lost Israel. I explained that Jewish people endured centuries of crap from Christendom, how is that not a sign something is off with that God? The horrors of the holocaust go without saying. I was given no worthy answer, which is sad, all the honesty and critical thinking was gone. The dance continues. 

After running both modal logic and Bayesian analysis, mundane removal of the body is the likely explanation for the historical events that inspired the resurrection story of Jesus, but the philosophical, rational christian will still likely disagree. The results are complimented by contemporary grave robbings and confiscation measures to prevent religious dispute. Scripture is understandably pro resurrection, but its objectivity is very much questionable. The story is central to the Christian Church, despite its improbability from an entirely historical perspective. As a myth, it is wonderful and packed with ethics and wisdom we should embrace. 

A Dialectical Narrative

When the debate of a story becomes the central characterisation, like disbelief vs belief, for example, you can turn it into a dialectical narrative, a personification, then and focus on shaping your abstract ideas and direction. You might be inspired to do a horror following a religious relative like me: 'instructed by a dark order, an unreachable lost mind, strips, tortures and unpicks the heretical logic of the uninitiated who are trying to save his life'. Dialectical narrative like this is about conflicting sides. George Orwell's 1984 is an example of such writing. These techniques often make complex philosophical or moral issues accessible. 

Yes, I struggle with the existential realignment of my recently indoctrinated family member. On a positive note, I could re-invent him into my story as a criminal! Recognising the contrast in our worldviews puts meat on the bones of any possible character model I create. His self confessed hypocrisy and dishonesty can make a stir in my dystopian future setting. Not all is lost; he shaped this blog, providing me an example of a textbook tranformative character!