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Recently I was visited by two nice, but deluded people who wanted to convert me to their favorite mythology. When I explained to them that I don't believe anything they were incredulous. "But everybody believes in something. You must believe in something."
I was puzzled -- still am. Why do people feel they need to believe something? It's something I never understood. Why this desire to believe unlikely or impossible things? The universe doesn't change itself and its history to suit mistaken human whims or desires.
Religious beliefs are some of the weirdest examples of this. Wanting there to be a god does not make it true (especially considering all the evidence against the existence of such a being).
But the desire to believe is the part I find hardest to explain. Why would anybody want to corrupt their understanding? Most religious people appear to have so damaged their critical faculties that they don't even realise their view of the world is broken, even though it takes very little effort to get them to admit that they want a god to exist. Occasionally you can even hear them utter that most idiotic of statements, that they wouldn't want to live in a world where their god didn't exist. Don't they realise how incredibly stupid that is? No. I guess they don't... but I wonder why they don't. Bear in mind that these are often people who are otherwise quite intelligent and rational. For some reason their ability to think clearly just dissolves when matters of belief become involved. Why is that?
Somehow the religious meme so damages thinking, that wanting something to be true becomes indistinguishable from being true. There are many ways this presents, and a lot of them are at the root of mankind's greatest evils. I've already mentioned the multitude of conflicting beliefs in gods, but they are not the only ones. There are beliefs that one race of people is superior to another (whatever "superior" means). There is the belief that some political system is "superior". There is the belief that people should conform in dress, speech, sexuality, aspirations, and so on. Some believe stars and planets guide their and others' actions, that telepathy exists, that aliens are among us, that we are reborn after we die, that homeopathy works, that they can judge a person's nature based on a superficial meeting. All around the world people are utterly convinced that their particular prejudice is correct, without, or even in spite of, evidence. People are incredibly quick to believe absurd things. Why, when it is so often shown to be wrong, and when they are so often the victims of others' prejudices? Why are they still so eager to believe?
Wanting to impose any belief upon reality is dangerous, even when the belief appears to coincidentally fit. The real world is always changing, but a person's beliefs tend to be static (the most powerful and influential might dress this way today, but not tomorrow). Also, getting the right answer for the wrong reasons is still wrong (spitting is a bad idea, not because it is rude, but because it is a way to spread tuberculosis).
Wherever it touches on our lives belief seems to damage us. So why are people so enthusiastic about embracing it. Why do they feel it is necessary? I manage fine without it. What the heck is going on?
When I was a kid I had a blackboard on my bedroom wall. One of the first things I wrote on it was "What is belief?" It remained there, bugging me in the corner of my blackboard til I left home. Now it is more than forty years down the track and I feel like I'm still no closer to answering that question.
What is most scary though, is that in spite of the extensive social damage it causes, most people don't even realise there is a question there to be asked.
I was puzzled -- still am. Why do people feel they need to believe something? It's something I never understood. Why this desire to believe unlikely or impossible things? The universe doesn't change itself and its history to suit mistaken human whims or desires.
Religious beliefs are some of the weirdest examples of this. Wanting there to be a god does not make it true (especially considering all the evidence against the existence of such a being).
But the desire to believe is the part I find hardest to explain. Why would anybody want to corrupt their understanding? Most religious people appear to have so damaged their critical faculties that they don't even realise their view of the world is broken, even though it takes very little effort to get them to admit that they want a god to exist. Occasionally you can even hear them utter that most idiotic of statements, that they wouldn't want to live in a world where their god didn't exist. Don't they realise how incredibly stupid that is? No. I guess they don't... but I wonder why they don't. Bear in mind that these are often people who are otherwise quite intelligent and rational. For some reason their ability to think clearly just dissolves when matters of belief become involved. Why is that?
Somehow the religious meme so damages thinking, that wanting something to be true becomes indistinguishable from being true. There are many ways this presents, and a lot of them are at the root of mankind's greatest evils. I've already mentioned the multitude of conflicting beliefs in gods, but they are not the only ones. There are beliefs that one race of people is superior to another (whatever "superior" means). There is the belief that some political system is "superior". There is the belief that people should conform in dress, speech, sexuality, aspirations, and so on. Some believe stars and planets guide their and others' actions, that telepathy exists, that aliens are among us, that we are reborn after we die, that homeopathy works, that they can judge a person's nature based on a superficial meeting. All around the world people are utterly convinced that their particular prejudice is correct, without, or even in spite of, evidence. People are incredibly quick to believe absurd things. Why, when it is so often shown to be wrong, and when they are so often the victims of others' prejudices? Why are they still so eager to believe?
Wanting to impose any belief upon reality is dangerous, even when the belief appears to coincidentally fit. The real world is always changing, but a person's beliefs tend to be static (the most powerful and influential might dress this way today, but not tomorrow). Also, getting the right answer for the wrong reasons is still wrong (spitting is a bad idea, not because it is rude, but because it is a way to spread tuberculosis).
Wherever it touches on our lives belief seems to damage us. So why are people so enthusiastic about embracing it. Why do they feel it is necessary? I manage fine without it. What the heck is going on?
When I was a kid I had a blackboard on my bedroom wall. One of the first things I wrote on it was "What is belief?" It remained there, bugging me in the corner of my blackboard til I left home. Now it is more than forty years down the track and I feel like I'm still no closer to answering that question.
What is most scary though, is that in spite of the extensive social damage it causes, most people don't even realise there is a question there to be asked.