Ed Yong at the blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science, discusses a recent study:

For many religious people, the popular question “What would Jesus do?” is essentially the same as “What would I do?” That’s the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs.

Psychological studies have found that people are always a tad egocentric when considering other people’s mindsets. They use their own beliefs as a starting point, which colours their final conclusions. Epley found that the same process happens, and then some, when people try and divine the mind of God. Their opinions on God’s attitudes on important social issues closely mirror their own beliefs. If their own attitudes change, so do their perceptions of what God thinks. They even use the same parts of their brain when considering God’s will and their own opinions.

The source of Ed Yong’s criticism centers on the presumption that God and his mind are objective, human-independent objects that can be more or less accurately inferred by faithful seekers. Yong says that the study found that different people in different places and from different communities “divine the mind of God” differently. Yong interprets these findings in negative terms and so do other commentators.

The variation in divinations of God’s mind was described by PZ Myers, a professor of biology, active blogger, and self-described atheist in these terms:

In tests that asked people what god’s opinion of various matters was, the unsurprising discovery was that it was the same as the individual’s opinion — and of course every person’s opinion was different. You’d expect some consistency if they were all hearing god’s word, you would think!

Would you think? Not necessarily. What if your faith in God was not susceptible to this criticism?

Don Cupitt offers an alternative to an objectivist theology. In his words:

Religion requires a peculiarly complete inner transformation of human nature which cannot be brought about from outside. No external pressure upon us can make us completely disinterested…. No, the power that brings my inner transformation must be fully internalized until it springs up at the very source of my own affections and will. Hence it was said that the law written on stone tablets must be changed for a law written directly in our hearts, that our hearts of stone must be changed for hearts of flesh, that we must be circumcised inwardly and that God must put is spirit into our hearts. In the New Testament it is claimed that these promises and hopes are at last fulfilled….

If there is a way to achieve this, then God and the human individual are no longer to be thought of as two beings in opposition. God indwells the believer, enlightening his understanding, kindling his affections and enabling his will…. God’s spirit enters the believer so intimately that it is the divine spirit that prays within him. The love with which the believer loves God has become identical with the love God has for the believer. I and thou are no longer numerically two but a kind of resonating one (5-6).

Because God indwells in different people living in different places and among different communities, Cupitt says that “God is inevitably thought of in different ways in different cultural settings” (39). To put this a bit differently, variation in how people understand their relationship to God and variation in how people act in the name of God should be expected. Variation in discernment is not necessarily an indication of or warrant for the “sock puppet” criticism; just the opposite, variation should be a puzzle for PZ Meyers to explain (and not explain away with a clichéd reference to manipulative individuals).

Since there are no objective limits, are all discernments of God equal? Are all interpretations possible? Are there no limits?

Even with no objective God, there are limits. Not all interpretations of God’s spirit in one’s everyday life can be accepted by all faithful communities and all faithful individuals. People draw limits and they act in the name of God—just as a number of supporters did when they signed The Manhattan Declaration, just as Dietrich Bonheoffer resisted the Nazis, just as Martin Luther King spoke against the Vietnam War and in support of civil rights, etc, etc, etc… These limits are not objective. Rather, these limits are made and sustained through the work of combinations of people joining together—like when US Representative Patrick Kennedy was excluded from communion in Rhode Island because of the decision by Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin.

*Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God. London: SCM, 2001.