ASM148 Prayer

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you got questions he's got answers even though he may not understand he'll talk anyway he got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face [Applause] [Music] well hello everyone and welcome to another episode of ask science mike i'm the host of the program my name is mike mccarg i'm called science mike a lot on the internet and i've been playing with the format of ask science mike lately which you've noticed if you're a regular subscriber or listener so the normal ask science mic episodes involve four questions and me researching answers to the best of my ability and citing my references and i answer questions about science faith and life and it's lots of fun and then we added a live version of a science mic that is actually more popular than uh regular episodes of fast science mic those live shows are consistently more listened to but lately based on the feedback from my supporters on patreon we've added a couple of different formats as in addition so we're not getting rid of the normal studio format or the live format but we've added some conversational or interview style episodes which are extremely popular and then also some topical discussions where i just kind of go into a topic that i've been thinking about and that's what we're doing this week i think what i'm going to go for is like 50 50 between the normal q a as science mic and then you know topical and uh interview based episodes but we'll see i don't know if that's sustainable yet or not what you will get is regular episodes from me and by the way this episode's coming out late uh on this monday because there's been some construction by my house and it's been really noisy that i can hear when i try to record there seems to be a break right now but if a jackhammer starts up in the background i'm sorry um there's nothing i can do about it i've been waiting five days to record this episode so i apologize for the delay now what topic is it that i want to talk about today well it's a topic that i've covered a lot in my career that i've written about in my book finding god in the waves that i've literally released video courses on and numerous podcasts and yet people still ask me about it all the time [Music] and in fact i was at a dinner party last week with some really good friends and we were it's a book club so we were reading a book together and in the the the course of our conversation together this you know table full of you know post evangelical maybe even post-christian folks started talking about prayer and many people were moved to tears as they discussed how much they miss praying now these are people who have you know a meditative practice who regularly meditate who find grounding and centering and meditative practice but who dearly and deeply miss prayer and when i do live events and i meet people afterwards many people at every event tell me how much they miss prayer people are moved to tears when they talk about prayer so i think for some of us in our life of faith prayer was a ritual it was formal it was something we heard other people do and it wasn't like a big part of our faith journey but for other people losing prayer is a big deal i'm one of those people by the way my entire faith was built around a personal god i encountered in prayer and admittedly the bulk of my spiritual activity at this point in my life my exercise my my disciplines is in the form of meditation or centering prayer but i'm a person who again talks to god sometimes now and that is actually a very difficult thing to do on the other side of some kind of theological deconstruction where you've examined you know what you believe about god and why for whatever reason curiosity emotional trauma um it could be anything any reason you start to kind of look under the rug of what you believe and why and what many people find is that if you look theologically or philosophically or scientifically a god that is a being doesn't make any sense in the world we live in you know you imagine a powerful benevolent god and then you imagine children with leukemia and that's hard to reconcile or a benevolent loving god and children who starve to death or who are tortured who are trafficked into sexual slavery and these horrific things are very difficult to reconcile with a loving god who can act in the universe the problem of evil i think is one of the the main things that creates this questioning this concern this unraveling of god in our lives now sometimes this unraveling is related to personal circumstances where god fails to act in some key moment in our lives or the lives of someone that we love and so we begin to question god's presence god's existence or simply god's responsiveness to the needs of humanity and our loved ones or ourselves specifically if that's you take some comfort in that all of this makes a lot of sense when you look at human beliefs and behaviors through neuroscience when we look in the brains of people who have a sincere and genuine faith in a personal god and you ask those people to think of that god brain imaging studies show that their understanding of god is much more of a feeling or an experience than an idea or a noun or some sort of more concrete form of belief god in your brain is very much more like love than your understanding of the universe which is very much a noun very concrete left hemispheric you know brain structure in fact for many people when they're asked to think of god the language centers of their brain don't really respond at all and so when we enter into seasons of deconstruction or doubt we fundamentally reorient the way that our brains respond to the word god and this will all come back to prayer in a moment so if we're asking questions if we're doing rational analytical thinking in response to the word god we start to re-bias our brains away from that kind of experiential emotional brain state more toward a noun and without any emotional response and so we arrive at a place where cognitively we've made a decision about our theology but that decision generally corresponds to a lessened or lacking emotional experiential response to the idea of god we we in the west have a tendency to over emphasize our cognitive experiences and ignore the degree to which our emotional brains are running the show and our cognitive brains are just trying to tell a story that explains what our emotions are doing so if you miss prayer in some way you have seen a change in your brain state conjunction with the word god so whereas god was once personal to you whereas god was once a being and there was great affection or love that you experienced in conjunction with that idea that is not present anymore and that creates a grief a loss a longing and i know the the easy thing would be if i could make some rational scientific case for a personal being god that could convince your rational brain and eureka the light comes on god's personal again and you can re-enter into a prayer relationship but i can't do that other people claim they can but they've not been able to do so to my satisfaction and in fact if you know my work i don't identify as a theist or an atheist the theist is someone that asserts that god has a specific identity that is a being that is a plan for humanity that's not me but an atheist is someone who lacks a belief in any god or gods and that is also not me i identify as a non-theist specifically because i think those aren't the only two options but i i don't have a philosophic scientific belief in a personal god and yet i pray i don't just meditate i specifically pray i talk to god in fact i would say sometimes that i talk with god how on earth is that possible because i understand that all of my beliefs are brain states everything that i believe is a survival adaptation that's what brains are for to help organisms survive as we view them scientifically and i also understand that although enlightenment thinking western thinking philosophic thinking scientific thinking rational analytical thinking have some wonderful problem-solving capacities they don't encompass the entirety of the human experience there are huge regions of my brain that are unlocked and responsive only when i view the world in more holistic ways in more mysterious ways and that's why i identify as a mystic i sit in the experience of god much more than i sit in ideas about god and let's be honest a lot of that is simply my response to atheism my personal experience of utter and complete loss of faith i'm not saying mysticism or non-theism are the correct options they are the ones that i understand best at this juncture of my life what does this have to do with prayer well if you long to pray again if that's important to you there are things that you can do to bring prayer in your life but we've got to acknowledge that you know intercessory prayer has some problems now i think you can have a prayer that involves talking to god that's not intercessory meaning you're not asking god to act but i think most christians especially evangelicals or former evangelicals they understand prima primarily that prayer has this transactional nature we ask we make requests of god god responds but gosh if that's true we get back in the philosophical quandaries like is god listening what prayers does god answer why does god say no sometimes and i think this is really well modeled in the biblical narratives i think we see in the hebrew bible cases of people wondering about the effectiveness of prayer if god is listening and i think in the christian scriptures the new testament jesus himself wanders the desert searching for his purpose and relationship to god jesus on the cross wonders why god has forsaken him so wondering about prayer is not on the margins of the christian tradition so don't let anyone shame you if you're going through some season of doubt or concern related to prayer many people do but let me talk to you a little bit about how i became not just a meditating person again but a praying person again the first thing that may surprise you is an imaginative form of play so if you're having trouble praying it means that most likely you're at a place where you don't have well-defined ideas about god anymore and where you probably are highly doubtful that god can listen to you that you can relate to god personally and you need some some foundational idea in order to start forming this god network in your brain again this emotional experiential response to the idea of god and so i often recommend that people simply pretend or play imagine a god that is comfortable for you literally any image will do it can be a face it can be a light you don't have to imagine a lot of attributes or specific theological ideas towards this god simply imagine god for me god was a bright light at first when i needed to talk to god i imagined a bright light and it might feel silly to talk to an imaginary construct children don't struggle with this at all but adults do we have sadly lost so much of our play capacity but just imagine some image of god and at first if you can't talk and you feel too strange talking sit in the presence of that image in silence this will be very easy if you have a meditative practice and after you've practiced presence with your god image for some time the next step is to express gratitude so sometimes when i'm stuck in traffic in los angeles and i roll the windows down and i can hear everyone's cars and i can hear the music that i'm playing and the weather is beautiful the sun is shining there's a cool breeze and i realize that here in this city where i've lived less than a year i'm surrounded by people and specifically i have close community here i have good friendships intimate sincere honest friendships i have a partner in my life jenny my wife whom i love deeply and who loves me deeply in return i have a good relationship with both of my children how fortunate i am in my life sometimes i'm moved to such gratitude that tears will roll down my face and by sometimes i mean several times a week and in that moment i say two words thank you the center the grounding of my entire prayer practice is those two words because so often in this life i am fulfilled with such profound sense of gratitude that it must be expressed and i express that to god as a non-theistic mystic i express that to god with confidence that god hears me is it ridiculous of course it's ridiculous and it's also incredibly fulfilling and incredibly healing to say thank you for this life that i am so grateful to have and here's a funny thing about regularly expressing gratitude you see life differently is 2018 a deeply troubling year well of course it is of course 2018 is a troubling year and yet i'm still happy to be here and to be a part of it thank you now you may think mike are you actually asking me to say thank you to a god i'm imagining yes i am if prayer matters to you i'm offering this as a step to retrain your brain to respond to the idea of god and i'm telling you that there is research to support the idea that this is a deeply beneficial practice for your brain health and your emotional health and thank you is not words that require a deep sense of intimacy or knowledge to whomever you're speaking you say thank you in a drive-through to someone you'll never see again you say thank you when someone bags your groceries you say thank you when a stranger opens the door and you're able to walk inside that small gesture of kindness now sometimes the repetition of those two words thank you makes them hollow and empty what i'm saying is finding yourself that deeper well of gratitude and express it with words thank you you'll find that in time it becomes easier just and i i don't mean in any ritualized way i mean any moment when you just notice beauty when you notice love when you notice in some way that you are fortunate simply say thank you to the god that you're imagining and that god will become more real and once that god begins to become more real now you can begin to share your hopes your dreams and your fears with god god is a great listener god never mocks my ideas god never tells me i'm being silly or superstitious when i begin to speak with god i imagine god reflecting on our time together with gratitude or compassion or both that god is grateful to spend time with one that god has created when you share your hopes and your dreams and your fears with god on a regular basis studies have shown that this can be as effective in improving mental health as seeing a therapist i'm completely serious here that's phenomenal and it doesn't cost anything so we start with gratitude and we move into a conversation with hopes and dreams and fears those hopes can be that you hope god is real those fears can be that you're afraid that god is not as you begin to develop this intimacy with the god you are imagining as your brain begins to respond more genuinely you'll find that it's possible to engage doubt in a way that is more experiential and less corrosive to your spirituality now don't hear me wrong i don't think there's anything wrong with people who don't want to be religious or who don't want to be spiritual i think atheism and humanism are completely valid world views if there are any atheists and humanist listening i'm glad you're in the world and i'm glad you have such a commitment to truth through rigorous intellectual inquiry and by looking at the world through a lens that is evidence-based i think that is deeply valuable and i am a fellow skeptic but for for people who long for spirituality centered around a personal god and i am one of those people this action of prayer tills the soil of our of our minds in a way that allows god to grow there and this is especially helpful in times of crisis a few years ago my father had a stroke and i can remember walking into the hospital room seeing his face etched in incredible pain which is a terrifying sight because my dad has hurt himself so severely and so often and powered through it that to see him in pain is is terrifying but not quite as terrifying as seeing half of his face completely slack and free of any muscle tone it was a major stroke the doctors weren't sure if or for how long my father would survive and this was in a period of my life when i deeply wrestled with the idea of a personal god or god who listens to prayer but in that moment i asked god to comfort my father and i asked god to heal my father now there was a time in my life when such a prayer would have been a transaction i understood god as some great cosmic vending machine where i put in my obedience and my righteousness and my devotion to christ and in return god in his grace and generosity and at that point god definitely was a he that god would deliver a miracle sometimes but in this moment in the room with my dad in so much pain my prayer was not to a vending machine it was a conversation with a deer an intimate friend it was an admission of my hope and my hopelessness and my power and my powerlessness what power did i have well i could put rags in ice water put them on my father's head after ringing them out and as they would warm up i could get additional towels and keep a rotation going to try to soothe his symptoms i could hold his hand i could tell him that i loved him and all these things were important and necessary and incredibly difficult because it meant confronting his mortality and i could only do that by turning around and asking for god to support me and god did all these years later sitting alone in my office talking to all of you and tears roll down my face because i remember so clearly god's presence in that moment he would say but mike what if that was just your brain then i am so grateful for god in my brain if you miss prayer i want to challenge you to stop trying to solve god stop trying to make a unified theory of god that explains all the variables you will never understand god i think the only reasonable conclusion if you try to understand god is atheism i would challenge you instead to sit in god's presence in the same way that you sit in the presence of friends and loved ones without understanding what makes them tick either and may you find that as you do the intimacy of friendship and relationship with the divine brings forth peace healing love and compassion in your life now if you'd like to learn more i did a whole chapter on this in my book finding on the waves and i've also got a video course on prayer and meditation that i did with the liturgists and i'll put links to both of those this week on this episode of ask science mike which will be titled prayer and honestly i know for some of you this is probably like not an interesting topic you're done with prayer and if you sat through the whole thing thank you if not i totally understand but you'll never know i said that but for those of you who are in this place of longing and craving and hunger i sincerely hope that in the days weeks and months ahead that you find comfort in the presence of god thanks for listening everyone and i'll talk to you next week