Friday, September 14, 2012

I'd like to believe, I'm just not sure I'm wired that way

I keep coming around to the problem of belief, in terms of faith mostly, but belief in general as well.

I want to have it. Not in some burning, I *need* to believe in something or my life is empty! sort of way, but in a way...I feel like I should believe and yet I feel as though I don't. I've been reading a couple of books about the science behind belief, about the biological, evolutionary and chemical reasons for why humans believe and why belief in deities is so persistent. And I think it would be very nice if I was able to say, 'Well I'm just one of the people who isn't wired for belief. That's why I never have these revelatory experiences. That's why I have such trouble just taking that leap of faith.'

Which would be all well and good, and true, except that I have no trouble believing in other things that are often ranked along with God/s. Ghosts, for example. I believe in them. I know that they exist because I have had experiences with them. Or so I believe. There are also, I acknowledge, explanations for what happened that do not involve the spirits/imprints of once living beings being left behind. However I believe that I have seen and interacted with people who were once living in physical bodies and no longer are. And, so far, nothing has convinced me otherwise. I have had one or two experiences where, for a period of time, I believed that it was a divine entity of some sort trying to communicate with me. But in those instances, I've always gone back and rethought. Re-evaluated and found a lack of faith in the experience.

Why is that? Why will my capacity for belief go only so far?

16 comments:

  1. Maybe the concept of a deity is just too foreign, whereas ghosts are (or were) human and so don't seem so strange? All it takes to believe in ghosts is to think that some sort of impression is left by a person's life. You don't even necessarily have to believe in souls or anything like that.

    I realize you're probably not actually asking for speculation from readers, only you would know how you think. But I like to speculate.

    So, related question...what makes the idea of gods less likely for you? Is it just that it's something foreign and therefore requires extra evidence to believe in it? Or is it maybe that we can see where myths and beliefs in gods come from so that it seems more likely to just be something we've developed rather than something we actually experience? I think those two factors are ones that are a big issue for me and make it difficult for me to be sure of what I believe.

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    1. Oh, speculate away! If I didn't want speculation I wouldn't put this stuff up on the web. :)

      I've been thinking about this and I think that, for me, it's because I feel like a god, any god, should *be* more foreign than I see in the religions of the world. They all seem too human, too much of their creation in them. And yes, part of it is that we can trace the myths back and back to older forms that have (in many cases) since been villainised by their descendants.

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    2. But maybe they seem so human because that's the only way we can really relate to them - through human terms and emotions. What if instead of the gods being too human, it were switched around and we act like the gods. Meaning we have emotions and rational thoughts and whatever else you deem human, but those are really godly traits.

      Another thought that crossed my mind, I wonder if this is why Jesus said we have to become like children. Of course you were probably the child who questioned the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, right? :)

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    3. Maybe. I really don't know. You'd think having a deity that I could relate to would work for me. But it just somehow...doesn't. Which brings me back to, well maybe I'm just not wired for belief.

      Also, man, if I'm god-wired, I demand super powers of some sort. It's only fair.

      Yep. That was me as a child. I got into way too much information way too early because the kid answers did not work.

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    4. That makes sense. I do think we over-humanize deities sometimes. It helps me to relate to them, but it can become sort of a stumbling block too. It's not something I've encountered a lot, but I've seen some older and more experienced pagans complaining that the newbies think the gods are human and treat them more like a best friend they can drag all over the place and ask for an opinion and help relating to every little thing in their lives. In my opinion, the best we can do is metaphor, and there's nothing wrong with metaphor as long as we remember that's what it is. If the metaphor doesn't work for you, scrap it. When people get too tied into their metaphors and think they're objective reality, we get dogma and unnecessary lines drawn between groups, and it also blocks growth and learning.

      To an extent, I think even the idea of "gods" is a metaphor, if only because different people would describe that word differently and have different ideas about what a god is and does. I know quite a few people who worship the gods but believe that the gods are just names we put on natural forces to increase our understanding and appreciation of them. They practice paganism as a way to recognize the natural world and emphasize that the world isn't some created thing that exists entirely for our use, that we're just a part of a much larger community. And then I know quite a few Christians and Jews who are basically atheists and use God as a word to mean the world or universe as a whole. And when it comes to that, there are probably a lot of people who don't "believe in" anything and don't get the reason to use god-language but who wouldn't question the existence of the world as a complete ecosystem or the existence of forces that other people call gods, such as the sun or wind.

      I think you could probably follow a spectrum from complete atheist to agnostic to pantheist to theist, etc, through a whole bunch of minute changes in words and interpretations. I personally don't think belief and non-belief are so different, it's just that religious people prefer to throw themselves into the language of metaphor and to act as if it's true, and so it becomes true to them.

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    5. I don't know why it's such a problem for me, or even if I've identified what the problem really is. It's...I understand that even if the god/s are completely inhuman, we would perceive them and label them with human labels because that's the only way we can really comprehend things. So either we've made the god/s look like us or we look like the god/s in the first place. So why is that a problem for me?

      I think even the idea of "gods" is a metaphor, if only because different people would describe that word differently and have different ideas about what a god is and does.

      Maybe it's the cold talking, but why would the fact that different people describe something differently make the something they're describing a metaphor?

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    6. I don't think I said it well. Let's see if I can do any better this time.

      The idea of gods seems to be more metaphor than fact to me because the understanding of what that means is so different from one group to another that it ceases to be the same thing. We might use different terms to describe something we all experience, like the sun, but ultimately we'll see more commonalities than differences and we can all recognize that we mean the same thing.

      As far as I can tell, that's not the case with God or gods. It's not that we're experiencing Apollo in different ways, most people aren't experiencing Apollo at all. Now it could just be that those people haven't met him, but it could also be that the idea of gods is a metaphorical one that is created when people who tend to think in emotional/personal terms experience impersonal aspects of life. I feel fairly confident in saying all us religious types are experiencing something real, but much less confident in saying that the way we would describe it is objectively accurate. I think it's more likely that it's the closest we can come to understanding it. It isn't this thing with this name and these characteristics. It's not personal. But it's like that. So we phrase it in those terms and view it as a personal being rather than an impersonal fact, and that helps us to form a relationship with it and understand it on our terms. But I think there's a lot of ourselves that goes into that, and the idea of the thing that we come up with is not its true form, but rather a symbol of how we relate to it.

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    7. Got it! Okay, yes, that makes sense. Thank you!

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  2. Miss Amber

    on the thought if an imprint left behind. you can approach that from a religious side. Angels. or there is more my OH thoughts, based in science. Energy can not die it can only change from. Even leaves become compost...

    some people come by religion through a revelation, some by ingraining from birth, some by searching. and some people because they are at a low point, something bad has happened and they find it that way.

    There are many ways of trying to find "the religion". There is nothing wrong searching and evaluating. you are learning stuff all the time by reading and looking. I dont see how that means you have a limited capacity. maybe none of the ones you have looked at fit with your ideals... dont be disheartened.

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    1. Sol,

      Yes, there's that as well, in the back of my mind. There's a possible scientific explanation for how ghosts can exist. So maybe I feel like it's less of a leap of faith than a deity?

      I think I just get frustrated that so many people seem to know, however they came to that knowledge and whatever that knowledge is. They know that there is a God, or gods, or that there's no deity at all. They have a certainty that I lack.

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  3. I used to want to believe really badly too, but honestly, today I'm much more comfortable not believing. It's just the only thing that does not give me cognitive dissonance.

    As a side note, I just bought a book the other day about science behind paranormal experiences.

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    1. Maybe I'll hit that point one day, where I'm happier embracing non-belief. I'm just not there yet, I guess. I still have this nagging feeling that I *should* believe.

      Ooohh, which book is it? I'm reading one called 'The Believing Brain' by Michael Shermer.

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    2. It's called Paranormality and is by Richard Wiseman.

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    3. *jumps* Hey! You scared me with the speed of your reply! :) You'll have to let me know what you think of it once you're done.

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  4. Hahahaha I'm at work and I've gone above and beyond my daily target so I had time to reply. I will let you know although it is not top of my list right now, tbh.

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    1. I'm not going anywhere. :)

      I'm at work too.

      Hard at work, clearly. ;P

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