This sounds like it's just an emotional script, a trained mental routine to feel a certain way and fire a few mental nodes in reaction to certain types of events. IME, there doesn't really need to be any real belief or even an alief in some "God" for someone to have the experience of being thankful towards (MentalNode-34223359 | Pointer error, no data at requested location), as a simple result of the way one's brain has currently configured itself.
In many cases, I've felt something similar where to the best of my knowledge my brain is simply firing the exact same patterns as when I'm thankful to someone in particular (a real other human being) for a specific action (e.g. reminding me of something important), but without actually finding a referent for the (ThankfulTo()) function, simply as a matter of this being by default what my brain considered the appropriate follow-up pattern to my experiences.
I'm perfectly fine with these empty pointers/referents, which may be partially thanks to learning about Lojban and its grammar, but most people feel differently with them and this and similar mental experiences will often be tagged "spiritual" - from the inside, it feels like they're actually thanking something, so there must be something to thank, and therefore this is evidence of a supernatural higher power ("God"). I've seen many (more than I care to count) instances of people having experiences I would pattern-match to this brain behavior claiming them as evidence for God or other spiritual entities. This was, in fact, one of the reasons I used to classify myself as "spiritual but not religious", and believed in some kind of cosmic mental universe that could think about itself and which we lived inside of.
This sounds like it's just an emotional script, a trained mental routine to feel a certain way
This makes sense. I'm just wondering whether this script (something/someone is responsible for the good/bad stuff that happens to me) is equivalent to an alief in supernatural.
it feels like they're actually thanking something, so there must be something to thank, and therefore this is evidence of a supernatural higher power
Maybe I wasn't clear. Of course I understand logically that the target of gratitude does not exist in this particular case. (On an unrel...
Well, I used to think that I do not believe in anything supernatural that affects what happens to me, but I'm wondering if maybe I actually do alieve in it. For example, a few days ago I had a close call in traffic, and when a collision I fully expected to happen just a second prior did not transpire, I mentally thanked... whom? I definitely had a clear feeling of gratitude for escaping, and I don't normally mean it literally when I say "Thank God!". So, who or what did I feel thankful to? I've never been religious, and I got rid of most of my superstitions over the years, but apparently there is still something there, and I do not know how to react to this knowledge.
What would be the proper reaction after a close call? Shrug and say "got lucky this time, should be more cautious next time"? What about when waiting for a diagnosis, what does sort-of-praying "please, please, let everything be OK" say about one's true beliefs? I know that I am much better at not blaming the world when something bad happens to me by chance than at not thanking the world when something good happens. Should it not be symmetric? Which part of a normally non-religious person wakes up and asserts itself in a crisis situation out of their control? Should it be embraced, suppressed, worked on?