Where does the urge to believe come from? Why do people not only believe but also want to believe? I knew I did. Its what made me a New Ager. Its what made it difficult to let go of my faith, even more so than the fear of hell or the taboos against religious critique. I may want to garnish this with some context. Well, it was dinnertime and I was talking with my parents when the question of prayer came about. Now, to my knowledge, I accepted my atheism on the 5th of december, 2011 and revealed it to my parents in the following January. So it has been a year since they know I do not believe. But they were shocked, dismayed even, to find I did not pray - hadnt prayed - for over a year. I did TRY praying as a control to see if my "answered" prayers as a theist were placebos [I seems they were], but those dont count. Now the main reason I dont pray is not that I dont believe. I wont pray even if I did, because to me there is nothing more selfish than to pray for some money, some luck, some healing and so on - things which may occur anyway [I have always wondered why God helped only those who helped themselves. If they helped themselves anyway, what exactly did god do? And why would someone who doesnt or cant help themselves not deserve equal opportunity to happiness, especially from an omniscient, omnipotent being?]; while people die of hunger - DIE OF HUNGER in some places. How dare you ask for the supreme being in the universe to heal your broken ankle rather than feed the starving.
Anyway, this lead to two interesting situations when I managed to corner my mother into two notable statements - first was when she said "I believe with the deepest conviction in my heart that at some state in your life, you shall believe". [Me - Thats entirely possible, but so far no such evidence has been -]. Mom - "Why are you so extremely immovable and closeminded? I have personal experiences, call them placeboes if you like, but even if they are an illusion, they are enough for me." At this stage, you could better imagine my surprise if you understand that my parents are moderates and my mother is quite rational in general. I wonder less why she believes [most probably because she was raised to. I told her she would be just as sure about any other god of any other locale or time when she said, "one must have faith". I asked her why is that so, she asked me why I did not want to have faith. Sensing it go nowhere and puzzled by her desire to believe I countinued, which led to the second situation]; and more about why does she WANT to believe. WHY did I want to believe in God, in horoscopes and Fung-shui? How did this arise and what function did this serve?
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Now I break the paragraph here because the rest of the discussion isnt relevant to the point I am trying to make here, but for those interested in the conversation, read on.
Now, onto the second situation, which for the first time in my experience, lead me to come face to face with breathtaking compartmentalism - approaching Doublethink in its intensity [recently read 1984. Awesome book.] and this was the assertion that ONE MUST HAVE FAITH in something, anything; while also asserting that whether or not I was a believer in anything doesnt matter, NOTHING I think matters as long as I was a good person. I asked her again, seperately each and together and each time her answer to both was yes. I asked her whether see saw the contradiction in it at which stage after a long silence [during which my dad would have stormed out of the room if he hadnt done so already, but my mother, the more rational of the two, hung on and] finally admitted - "well I guess you could say that being a good person is more important, but that in no way removes the need for faith."
I told her, "Here's why I think one can dispose of faith. First, no miracle can ever be a proof of the divine. Any unexplained event simply means that there is no explaination to currently explain an observation - and this doesnt mean that "god did it" thereby becomes the answer BY DEFAULT. Second, I agree with Nietzsche when he says [via a character, tellingly enough of the modern world, in a marketplace, not a church] "God is dead and we have killed him." What that implies is simply that we have created a world today where not only does religion have no place but also that it has no significane or meaning at all. When you look out the window and see the city sprawling outside and try to take in that the buildings, each one of them, where put in place by humans and their construction envisioned by humans, ditto for cars and tvs and trains and medicine and ditto too for philosophy and social and political rules - all secular, all entirely deviod of any idea of religion or God, in a world like this, a world which we currently inhabit, what PURPOSE does religion serve? Is that small assurance of safety in peril or the occasional placebo enough reason anymore for 9/11? Was it enough reason for the Partition of India or is it now for the troubles in Ireland? Can you abstain from the responsibility when a christian kills an abortion doctor or some Arab group bombs a city? Is it not religion itself, even if as a perversion of its true self, it such a self even exists independent of its believers, the root of this?
For me, its not worth it. Something like this, which does far more harm now than it can possibly do good, is simply not worth the cost to human happiness, property and life. I will admit that religion may once have been a useful crutch and that the scriptures have quite a bit of literary value and even some philosophical one, but it no longer cuts it. And while some God may exist and their existence made evident by the future expansion of our knowledge, we can be sure that self-contradicting concepts such as the Christian God of the Old testament do not represent reality. Its the simple question of "Why be religious at all, what function would that serve?" in the context of the modern world that has lead to the popularity of the New atheism movement. IMO" As per the norm, we soon laid our differences to the side and thereafter drifted into an existential discussion of our daily problems, but that is for another time. I must admit however, that I am lucky to have someone to talk to. I dread to think what I would have done were I some teen in an Arab theocracy. Anyhow, I still puzzle over how someone who thinks the way my mom does and is so rational about most things then also hold a belief in Feng-shui and horoscopy? So in conclusion, we come back to the titular question: WHY DO WE WANT TO BELIEVE?
Ps. A sister thread on this secondary discussion can be found here :
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...-More-Harm-or-More-Good&p=3046049#post3046049
Anyway, this lead to two interesting situations when I managed to corner my mother into two notable statements - first was when she said "I believe with the deepest conviction in my heart that at some state in your life, you shall believe". [Me - Thats entirely possible, but so far no such evidence has been -]. Mom - "Why are you so extremely immovable and closeminded? I have personal experiences, call them placeboes if you like, but even if they are an illusion, they are enough for me." At this stage, you could better imagine my surprise if you understand that my parents are moderates and my mother is quite rational in general. I wonder less why she believes [most probably because she was raised to. I told her she would be just as sure about any other god of any other locale or time when she said, "one must have faith". I asked her why is that so, she asked me why I did not want to have faith. Sensing it go nowhere and puzzled by her desire to believe I countinued, which led to the second situation]; and more about why does she WANT to believe. WHY did I want to believe in God, in horoscopes and Fung-shui? How did this arise and what function did this serve?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I break the paragraph here because the rest of the discussion isnt relevant to the point I am trying to make here, but for those interested in the conversation, read on.
Now, onto the second situation, which for the first time in my experience, lead me to come face to face with breathtaking compartmentalism - approaching Doublethink in its intensity [recently read 1984. Awesome book.] and this was the assertion that ONE MUST HAVE FAITH in something, anything; while also asserting that whether or not I was a believer in anything doesnt matter, NOTHING I think matters as long as I was a good person. I asked her again, seperately each and together and each time her answer to both was yes. I asked her whether see saw the contradiction in it at which stage after a long silence [during which my dad would have stormed out of the room if he hadnt done so already, but my mother, the more rational of the two, hung on and] finally admitted - "well I guess you could say that being a good person is more important, but that in no way removes the need for faith."
I told her, "Here's why I think one can dispose of faith. First, no miracle can ever be a proof of the divine. Any unexplained event simply means that there is no explaination to currently explain an observation - and this doesnt mean that "god did it" thereby becomes the answer BY DEFAULT. Second, I agree with Nietzsche when he says [via a character, tellingly enough of the modern world, in a marketplace, not a church] "God is dead and we have killed him." What that implies is simply that we have created a world today where not only does religion have no place but also that it has no significane or meaning at all. When you look out the window and see the city sprawling outside and try to take in that the buildings, each one of them, where put in place by humans and their construction envisioned by humans, ditto for cars and tvs and trains and medicine and ditto too for philosophy and social and political rules - all secular, all entirely deviod of any idea of religion or God, in a world like this, a world which we currently inhabit, what PURPOSE does religion serve? Is that small assurance of safety in peril or the occasional placebo enough reason anymore for 9/11? Was it enough reason for the Partition of India or is it now for the troubles in Ireland? Can you abstain from the responsibility when a christian kills an abortion doctor or some Arab group bombs a city? Is it not religion itself, even if as a perversion of its true self, it such a self even exists independent of its believers, the root of this?
For me, its not worth it. Something like this, which does far more harm now than it can possibly do good, is simply not worth the cost to human happiness, property and life. I will admit that religion may once have been a useful crutch and that the scriptures have quite a bit of literary value and even some philosophical one, but it no longer cuts it. And while some God
Ps. A sister thread on this secondary discussion can be found here :
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread...-More-Harm-or-More-Good&p=3046049#post3046049
