Why Believe? [View All]

[TygrBright]

In response to this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1311138

and the discussion therein, along with many thoughtful threads today about the nature of war, death, belief, sacrifice and other serious topics, I’m moved to (probably futilely) make one more attempt to explain religion (from MY perspective, I don’t claim this is Revealed Inerrant Truth) and its function in human life. There is so much misunderstanding around the topic, and it seems so potent to move us to revile, disrespect, and try to hurt one another. Anything that powerful deserves some serious examination.

Many who consciously reject religion have focused on its potency as a justification for terrible evil. Rejecting religion on that basis is easily understandable. That understanding also helps explain why anyone who sees religion only as a fabrication for the justification of evil would be willing to provoke, ridicule, and revile religious people and their beliefs. Religion’s power over people is nothing to be taken lightly. Those who are frightened by it have reason. Great evil has been done in the name of religion.

And since the historical record is so short, and so scanty, it is impossible to set the evil done in the name of religion on some kind of ethical scale, and balance it against the force of religion for good in the course of human evolution and civilization, and reach an objectively verifiable conclusion. Those of us who believe that religions have provided much of the structure that enabled the evolution of human society and civilization cannot call forth incontrovertibly clear records from a time before record keeping and identify the exact point at which some proto-prophet pointed out that some proto-God demanded of humans that they refrain from vile acts, and commit acts of an altruistic nature. (Even if we could, the anti-religionists would point out, probably accurately, that some substantial benefit was likely to ensue to the proto-priestly class, tainting any such altruism!)

Yes, the weight of actual evidence is heavy against us believers. Yet there are millions of us, all the same, even today, in a world equipped with tools to measure the physical universe that our ancestors could never have imagined. And many of us believers have been among the finest intelligences that humanity has produced. There’s a paradox for you: The man who conceived and developed the first arguments for Big Bang physics was a Catholic cleric. Scholars, humanists, philosophers, diplomats, scientists… they are not absent from the ranks of believers, indeed they are extraordinarily present.

How is this possible? How can fine minds allow themselves to be deluded by fairy tales and myths and allegories, obsessed with rituals that have no objective result or function?

Perhaps, as some have posited, it’s all brain chemistry. Perhaps religious prayer/meditation practices and rituals function to release brain chemicals that produce beneficial results for the practitioner. The evidence supporting that hypothesis is strong, everything from longevity among certain eastern monks and orders of Catholic nuns, to the EEG traces of TM and Zen practitioners. Perhaps some believers are driven by an addiction, if you want to call it that, to the physical effects of rigorous religious practice.

But there are so many more of us who never experience and do not seek such effects. Yet we spend large amounts of time on it, or as Robert Heinlein put it, “But, like dandruff, most people have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.” Indeed. We think about it, read about it, write about it, argue about it. We support entire castes of individuals who take on a period or even a whole life’s work of examining the practice, theology, and implications of our religion in depth and share what they learn with us. If you are not a believer, it must look like complete lunacy!

So… why? Why would intelligent individuals who surely should know better embrace belief? When belief has demonstrably brought such misery and evil to the world, has no objective evidence to validate or support it, and demands of us resources that could surely be better spent for the good of humanity elsewhere? Even if the non-believer is willing to stipulate our lack of conscious evil intent, how can we maintain this terrible destructive delusion in the face of their entirely rational and kindly intended exposition of the folly and damage our belief perpetuates in human societies?

What are we, nuts or something?

How can we reconcile, for example, a concept like “religious tolerance” when the theologies of most religions explicitly denounce all other religions as false, evil, delusional, etc. How can we not blush for our own intellectual contortionism and disingenuousness as we rationalize the proto-theology of our religions as “allegorical” or “conceptual” in the face of their clear scriptural claims to literal truth?

I cannot speak for other believers, although I know that there are those who share some, perhaps all, of my beliefs. Do not assume, therefore, that my explanation is based on the dogma or theology of any specific sect, and don’t impute my generalizations or thoughts to any scripture or official exegesis. I can only try to put into words what a lifetime of study and thought and prayer has produced in the way of observations and conclusions.

Scripture, dogma, theology, etc. are tools. Ritual and practice are tools. The structure of a religious community of believers is a tool. These tools function within the matrix of their particular religious context to enable believers to explore That Which Cannot Be Explored by physical means. But they function only for the believer. Yes, it is a tautology. It is non-rational. It requires a leap of faith. Roughly, it requires a realization that That Which Cannot Be Explored by physical means exists, it requires that the impulse to explore deepen into desire and further ripen into commitment, and it requires the would-be believer to find a belief matrix that “fits” them.

Thus the religious imperative to perpetuate itself through indoctrination serendipitously provides humans an opportunity to “fit” a religion. In my own case, the indoctrination I underwent in childhood to Catholicism turned out not to “fit,” but it gave me experience and insight that made a different variation of Christianity a perfect “fit” for me.

That Which Cannot Be Explored by physical means (‘That Which’ for short, in future,) forms the bedrock of my faith. I KNOW That Which exists. Human experience documents it if only because we are constantly gaining new capabilities to explore things which were formerly unexplorable. We know that the Universe cannot be described and measured physically by beings (ourselves) bound within a four-dimensional matrix of ‘reality.’ We know that there is That Which we do not know, and That Which we cannot know, based on our sensory equipment, no matter how technologically augmented or enhanced.

Believers like myself choose to see this as a gateway. Religion is a tool for constructing hypotheses regarding what is beyond that gateway, and testing them. Very specifically, it is a way of placing ourselves, as human beings, within a matrix vastly larger than physical reality, and trying to understand our relation to that matrix, our function and our potential. Yet because we are bounded by physical reality, we must use these tools within the context of what we can grasp physically: our physical universe, our history and future, and most of all, our relations to each other, the meta-organism that is humanity.

We can’t operate on the lofty metaphysical plane I’ve just described: not only would we starve (which might facilitate our translation to the vaster universe but would rather defeat the purpose of learning about how we relate to this one) but we’d eventually be unable to hold rational converse with other people. Some believers have achieved something close to such a state. We observe and learn even from them, but it’s too advanced for most of us. We have to simplify, we have to bring it into the context of our physical existence and our interactions with each other.

If we simplify it too far, of course, its utility as a tool becomes problematic. Oversimplification results in much of the evil attributed to religion. Simplicity has many virtues (and can even be a powerful tool,) but unquestioning simplicity may be the root of much evil. So we look for a happy medium. We codify our tools into scriptures and documents and exegesis, and in almost all religions, we continually examine and refine them, adding to our understanding by sharing our experience and insights with each other. Those for whom a given religion “works” in its current form provide the skeptical sieve through which new hypotheses and insights are strained for value. The straining process can be severe and painful. When it’s combined with the human evils of self-interest and fear, it can become vile, indeed. Few evils can compare with intrasectarian strife for sustained viciousness.

The roots of intersectarian strife lie here as well, in oversimplification, self-interest and fear. Placed within the matrix of any religious belief, they will produce a terrible poison. Yet I believe the price is worth it. I believe that yes, much of human progress, much that makes us worthy of living, results from the efforts of believers to explore That Which cannot be explored by physical means. Indeed, the very search to define and expand that which CAN be explored by physical means results from this impulse as well. The striving to understand what was once unknowable (why are there lights in the night sky?) is part of the straining process. The assertion of hypothesis, the search for tools wherewith to prove or disprove the hypothesis, the collection of evidence, the analysis, the drawing of conclusions and the presentation of the conclusions to a hostile, skeptical audience, the refutation of the conclusions, the re-testing… the whole process is integrally linked to the human need to explore That Which.

Belief is human progress. Belief is, in a very deep and real sense, humanity itself. We can choose to ignore belief, defer it, or reject it—but ignoring, deferral, rejection, do not make That Which cease to be. We may find any and all religions to not “fit”—therein lies both agnosticism and the roots of religions not yet born. These, too, are part of the process of exploration of That Which. Ignore it, reject it, deny it… That Which remains.

My faith calls it That Of God, and believes that it resides within all of us. My faith demands that I respect it. I hope that I have been able to express that respect clearly for everyone here on DU, believer and non-believer alike.

reverently,
Bright