Christianity is Therapy For Learned Helplesness

Learned Helplessness vs Christianity I will accept Pro’s example of Learned Helplessness with the tethered elephant. It will be interesting to see how Pro can demonstrate that this scenario can be paralleled with the crux of Christianity - (that is to say where Christianity has been understood correctly.) I do not doubt that there are people out there who do use Christianity as a sort of crutch, meticulously following a load of religious man-made rules to try and earn favour with some invisible sky-bully - but I do not believe that this is a correct understanding of Christianity at all. Faith vs Love I contest that the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels can be summed up with Matthew 17:20, as Pro claims. Whilst faith is an important facet of Christianity, Christ goes out of his way to demonstrate that Love is of at least equal (if not greater) importance. Staying with the Synoptic Gospels to begin with, we see in Matthew 22:36-40: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [all Bible quotes will be New International Version (NIV), unless otherwise stated] Luke 10: 25-27 is another example of Christ affirming these same two examples of Love. Then looking outside of Christ’s teachings, St Paul in one letter to the Corinthians also underlines the importance of Love - see 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: 1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Then he finishes with a clear statement as a form of corollary to the above, in verse 13: 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Intent of the Gospels I do not consider that Pro has gone anywhere near far enough to demonstrate that Christ intended the passages he quoted to be taken psychologically rather than supernaturally. Perhaps Pro can cite some evidence for this assumption? I can give counter-examples where Christ appears to not only believe in, but also directly interacts with, a supernatural realm: Matthew 12:43-45; Mark 5: 1 -20; Mark 9: 14 -29; Luke 4: 33-36. As such, I find it difficult for Pro to argue that there is no need to view the Gospels supernaturally, akin to the cited example of Homer’s Odyssey. One only has to compare the literary style of the Odyssey versus the Gospels to realise that the Odyssey is meant to be read as a great epic tale (like an ancient "Lord of the Rings" if you will), and that the Gospels are intended to document the life and actions of a historical person called Jesus. Lord of the Rings opens with: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” Would you infer from this that a historical person called Bilbo Baggins existed, lived to be 111 in an actual place called Hobbiton? Hopefully not, and it is all to do with literary style. The story sounds like an epic tale, not recorded history. Compare this to, say Luke 1: 1-4 1 Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us,2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.3 With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. And Luke 3:1 3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene… Does Pro really consider that this sounds like a piece of writing not intended to be taken literally? Yet instead to be taken psychologically? The author of Luke opens chapter 1 stating that the purpose of his writing is to be a historical account based on an investigation, and in Luke 3 we see him citing the specific timeframe these events occurred. That which is to be demonstrated In closing this section, I’ll get right to the heart of the argument. In very simplified terms, Martin Seligman’s original experiment regarding Learned Helplessness involved dogs receiving electric shocks at random. Some dogs could press a lever to stop the shocks occurring, and some dogs also had a lever but it did nothing. The group of dogs with the dud lever eventually demonstrated what Seligman concluded to be Learned Helplessness – in that they just lay there resigned to taking the shocks, helplessly whimpering – even if they were later given a lever that did actually work. [see annual review of medicine: http://www.annualreviews.org...] In order to succeed with their argument, Pro will need to demonstrate two things at a minimum: 1) That proponents of Christianity can fairly be compared to the helpless elephant or the helpless dogs in the scenarios of Learned Helplessness above. 2) That on the balance of evidence the teachings of Christianity are exclusively about remedying the problem in point 1, and that it doesn’t cover any other religious tenets about which Learned Helplessness is clearly irrelevant. Early Rebuttal Christianity does not teach that we are helpless beings resigned to our fate and completely powerless to stop it. Quite the opposite, Christianity teaches that we are autonomous beings with genuine free will to choose for ourselves how we will lead our own lives. [The necessary downside to free will is of course that we are genuinely free to do bad things too – but that is a whole separate debate!] And conversely to being pitiful creatures wallowing in despair, the Bible actually shows our immeasurable worth. In heaven we are adopted heirs of God, higher than the angels (probably because we have had to transcend this fallen existence first to get there). Just look at the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, it teaches precisely that we shouldn't feel like we are worthless just because we’ve messed up, but that our heavenly father forgives us and welcomes us with open arms showering us with gifts. The great irony here is that Christianity teaches us that we are beings of great worth, and that we have a hope, a future, a purpose, a destiny, a reason for being here on this random planet etc. That is not a position of Helplessness, learned or otherwise. If anything, by contrast you could argue that it is the doctrine of secular atheism that might very well suggest we are helpless beings - just a random by-product of a passionless universe – and no matter what we do, we are doomed to die one day then never exist again. And even if we are lucky and some record remains for a few thousand years after our death (like Rameses or Caesar or someone else like that), eventually the universe will expire and there will be no record of anything that anyone ever did, good or bad. That would be a far better example of Learned Helplessness to my mind – but again, that is for another debate! Also, Christianity doesn’t just talk about matters of faith, sin and salvation, but covers a multitude of wider moral scenarios eg doing good to your neighbour, feeding the hungry, looking after widows and orphans, the fruit of the spirit – love, joy, peace and so on and so forth. Pro would need to show that these wider points don't constitute a "religion", which Pro has claimed.