Here is an excerpt from the introduction (please read the entire article and respond with your comments):
"If emotions evolved to make us care about and respond to important events in our lives,then what are the emotions that underlie spiritual life? And what exactly are these emotions telling us?
Some emotions tell us that we live in a world of enormous beauty and complexity, a world that feels to us to be full of meaning and design. The emotion of awe, for example, seems to be a response both to direct encounters with divinity and to encounters with nature,art,or music,in which we are transported out of our everyday selves and feel in some way to be nearer to heaven (Keltner and Haidt, 2003).
Other emotions tell us that we live in a world of bounty and generosity. Gratitude may have evolved as part of a suite of emotions that help humans engage in trade and long-term reciprocal alliances (Trivers,1971),but many people feel what McCulough et al. (2001) call “cosmic gratitude,”that is, gratitude for the simple gift of life and for all the good things in it.
Still other emotions tell us that we live in a world where people show greater or lesser degrees of divinity in their actions. This essay is about a pair of opposing but related emotions—disgust and elevation—that help us navigate the social world by providing us with spiritual information about our fellow human beings and what is noble, decent, and virtuous in ourselves and others."
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posted
I thought that I'd share a little bit more on what elevation is:
quote: Psychologists generally define emotions by their component parts, such as eliciting conditions, physiological changes, facial expressions, and motivations. Elevation can therefore be defined as follows: 1) Elevation is elicited by witnessing acts of moral beauty (e.g., compassion, courage, loyalty). 2) Elevation is experienced as a physical sensation of warmth, glowing, or openness in the chest, and sometimes as a tingling in the skin, particularly along the back, neck, and head. 3) Elevation motivates people to move towards higher moral ends, e.g., to help others, or to become a better people themselves.
posted
I think it's interesting and partly true. The problem is that some people feel disgust of black people, or Jewish people, or homosexuals. Some people feel disgust of knowledge and learning, or uppity women, or ... what were all the things on that guy's sign? ... false religions, pencil necked weak men, rebellious women, and Mormons?
Disgust is not an inerring moral compass, I guess.
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"Disgust is not an inerring moral compass, I guess."
I could not agree with you more. I think the same goes for elevation experienced as a warmth in the chest or tingling along the back.
Feelings don't reveal truth and should not be solely relied on for decisions. Feelings are there to cause us to take notice; we have to decide what it is that we should take notice of and what meaning we will give to the event and what to do about it. Emotions can be trained to respond to or stop responding to certain stimuli; as a psychologist I do it all the time.
I believe our moral compass needs to come from logic and reason whether it is character and virtue based or based on the consequences of behaviors.
The reason why I brought elevation up is to offer another interpretation for the feelings of warmth in the chest other than the Holy Spirit.
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posted
I don't see the fact that some people find different things disgusting as a threat to the theory. It still would hold that those people find those things or people as examples of what is degrading and primitive in human nature and as the opposite of moving towards the divine.
I am deeply disturbed that some people might think that of "black people, or Jewish people, or homosexuals", but it does not pose a threat to the theory. No one is claiming that those emotions are a compass for truth.
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posted
Okay, and I think you and I agree that the feelings need to be guided by the intellect, and the intellect needs to be awakened by the feelings. There doesn't seem to be much difference in our two approaches, other than the conclusions we drew.
Except....
I am daily fed by the spirit, and it urges me and lifts me to be more than I am, to grow and learn and improve constantly. If you felt this feeling that I feel, this sound nourishment, then you could not but believe.
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posted
Tatiana: I feel the feeling I formerly called the Spirit all the time, even now. It really is not tied to a belief in God for me.
As quoted above: "3) Elevation motivates people to move towards higher moral ends, e.g., to help others, or to become a better people themselves." It does that for me.
I am so glad that we both have this in our lives. The only difference is you interpret it to be from the Spirit and that it is testifying to truth, whereas I interpret it as a very normal emotion that comes from our brains just as all other emotions do (joy, peace, love, awe, anger, fear, disgust, etc) and I do not believe it reliably tells us anything about what is true.
I am sorry that you had a tough time before you believed in God. I am confident that the change you experienced was a real change and a good change and has made you happier. If it works for you, stay with it.
Belief in the gospel worked for me as well. I was happy, I enjoyed believing that I had an intimate relationship with my Father in Heaven. There were times when I was so full with sweet gratitude that I was moved to tears. I believed that my prayers were answered. I was certain Jesus lived and was the Savior of the World, that the standard works were the words of God, that the power of God had been given to mankind again and to me. I loved using the priesthood to give blessings. The gospel made sense in my mind, I felt it in my heart, I lived it and experienced the promised blessings, I thought I had examined the fruits of Joseph Smith and found them to be good, I had revelations and just knew that there was no way that the Church could not be true because I lived it and saw that it worked.
I was as true blue as any Mormon you ever did see and deeply spiritual. I taught at the MTC and was in the Bishopric when I left. I never "lost the Spirit" at anytime while I was losing my testimony. I have not committed any grave sin. I did not stop reading the scriptures until (in my opinion) I found out that they were fraudulently produced. I was not offended. IMNSHO, I had a fantastic ability to accomodate difficult events and doctrines into my orthodox views.
Just like everyone else, sometimes I felt like God helped me and sometimes he left me to my own devices; sometimes the people I gave blessings to got better and sometimes they did not even when I was certain that it was God's will and that he would heal them. Sometimes the blessings that were predicated upon obedience to certain laws came when I was obedient and sometimes they did not. But, I found a way after much struggle to accomodate most things. There were other things that I could not figure out and so shelved for another day to wait for further light and truth. I can live with ambiguity and without having all the answers.
But, there was one thing for which my orthodoxy could find no accomodation. One thing that was so clear and so important that I could not shelve it. It was paradigm shifting. I had to revisit all my personal spiritual experiences and reinterpret them because they could not be what I thought they were.
People have "atonement level" changes without a belief in Christ. I see it first hand as a psychologist and it moves me to tears. It is wonderful that you have found something that works for you. But, don't assume it is the only way or the best way.
Just because it works does not imply that the beliefs that enabled you to change are true beliefs. The belief in the atonement may have made it possible for you to accept some difficult things in your life, the belief may have made it possible for you find the strength in yourself to go on and improve. But, that does not mean that there really was an atonement. But, it does mean that something that you did works. I posit that it was your letting go of something (resentments, expectations, self-deprecating thoughts, etc) and your willingness to accept life on its own terms and your hope that you could this time succeed that enabled you to make the change. Now it was your BELIEF (in Christ) that flipped the switch and enabled you to do it this time around.
Those principles of letting go, accepting, hope, having peer support, etc, work for people no matter whether they believe in God or not. But, sometimes people can't get started doing those things until they are given something to believe in. I think that is why nearly all cultures have medicine men, shamans, or religious leaders, because they can provide something for the person to believe in that can get the whole ball rolling for a person.
Good psychologist take advantage of that. Did you know that depressed patients start experiencing the benefits of cognitive therapy before they even are taught and start using what is believed to be the active ingredients? It is because during the first session the psychologist sells them on the idea that cognitive therapy works and that they are going to get better because they are going to receive this therapy which has scientific research to demonstrate its effectiveness. The therapist is doing nothing more than inspiring hope through belief that this therapy will help them get better. That is what religion does as well.
Cavet: If after giving hope and inspiring belief the "healer" (therapist or religious people) do not somehow teach those healing principles (acceptance, support, etc) then it will not work over the long haul. Also, cognitive therapy does have "active ingredients" that really do help people apply those principles; in other words it does do more than just inspire belief.
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