Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann studies how an invisible God becomes experientially real to people, distinguishing between propositional belief (“is real”) and felt experience (“feels real”); religious practice is often what makes God come to feel real, not the other way around.
The “Teddy Bear” God and Modern Belief
The more lovable and comforting God is presented as a “great big teddy bear” who guarantees happiness, the more unbelievable God becomes to modern skeptics; this “buyer’s market” Christianity emerged post-1950s when belief became optional for respectable citizenship.
Many modern people find the promise of a God who loves you and makes everything go right implausible precisely because life is no longer so precarious for the middle class; the therapeutic framing backfires as a credibility problem.
Spiritual-but-not-religious (roughly 28% of Americans) want meaning and a sense that the world is more than material, but reject traditional theologies; they want “the more” (William James’s term) without the “overbeliefs” — specific doctrinal claims that feel unbelievable.
Vague concepts like “ground of being” or “vibrational energy” are more palatable because they lack clear theology; mysteries are less open to doubt than specific claims about talking snakes or virgin births.
Secularism, Doubt, and the Structure of Belief
Secularism (per Charles Taylor) carries built-in doubt: exposure to other sophisticated religious traditions makes it hard to hold one’s own as uniquely true; the most faith-shaking college class is often religious studies, not biology.
Feynman’s dilemma: how to sustain both scientific adventure and Christian ethics when they feel logically consistent but emotionally divided; this anxiety characterizes the spiritual-but-not-religious.
Many churchgoers are functional atheists or treat God as metaphor; conservative communities attract those who want to commit despite doubt (“I don’t believe Mormonism but I like the community”).
Belief operates at different “frames of commitment” (analogous to Tarski’s hierarchy): one can know a teddy bear isn’t alive yet relate to it as emotionally real; God lives in this liminal, in-between space — real but not real — which can be powerful for health, creativity, companionship, and hope.
Secular commitment can be firmer than religious commitment: Sam Harris may be more committed to “nothing but the material world” than many believers are to God’s reality; believers often hold complicated, metaphorical, or mystery-embracing stances.
Practices That Make God Feel Real
Apophatic practice: emptying the mind, disattending to the world (whirling dervishes, Zen, mindfulness); can produce mystical or presence experiences.
Cataphatic practice: filling the mind with images, stories, and relational dialogue (Ignatian exercises, guided meditation, conversational prayer); easier for most people and makes God feel like a person who speaks and is present.
Ignatian exercises: vividly imagine oneself inside a Gospel scene (e.g., the flight to Egypt), shifting perspectives among characters; the sensory vividness, not historical accuracy, generates felt presence.
Paracosms (richly imagined worlds like Middle-earth) can function similarly; the difference is that faith communities hold their stories as myth rather than fiction, allowing deeper immersion.
Practice precedes belief: paying attention to inner sensory experience while representing an invisible other trains the mind to experience that other as more vivid and present; non-natural experiences (hearing a voice, feeling presence) follow.
Placebo, Hypnosis, and the Reality of Effects
Placebo and hypnosis are real effects: belief in a treatment improves physiological outcomes; focused attention alters time perception, diminishes ambient awareness, and makes the attended content feel more real.
Prayer and spiritual practice improve medical outcomes and longevity (churchgoers live 2–3 years longer); they complement rather than replace medical treatment.
The teddy bear analogy: the child knows it’s cloth but feels it’s alive; this liminal capacity is a human resource for comfort, purpose, and resilience — not a delusion to be debunked.
Community and Conversion
Community amplifies experience and commitment (like Duolingo’s social features); many non-believers join churches for the social world and structure.
Spiritual-but-not-religious people often resist joining; their individualism is both a cause and consequence of their stance.
Conversion from atheism to theism: no simple formula, but sustained spiritual practice (attending to inner experience while representing an invisible other) can generate vivid experiences that feel like God; some are mundane (hypnagogic hallucinations), others transformative.
Luhrmann’s team is developing meditation practices for spiritual-but-not-religious people to cultivate a sense of presence without requiring doctrinal commitment.
