Believe

I could ‘astral project’, if I really wanted to call it that. This is merely an extreme expression of Theory of Mind: to be able to imagine another person’s life, thoughts, feelings, location, experiences, circumstances… You paint a vivid picture of a life, a place, a thought, an experience not your own. Does your ‘Spirit’ travel to another place or time? No, of course not. But the ability just to imagine it exemplifies an impressive Theory of Mind, and in turn an impressive sort of empathy.

I could be psychic, if I chose. I’ve borderline-disturbed some people with my ability to notice, in particular, what others do not. Some have even suggested I had various kinds of spiritual or celestial abilities, which is inherently absurd. During a chronic period of psychosis, such suggestions led to the delusion that I was communicating with a witch whose image I saw in the woodgrain of my bedroom door, at the time.

I wanted to believe. Growing up, I wanted to believe in all the silly, extraordinary, supernatural things others did. I wanted to believe… simply because others did. I wanted to believe because my mom did, and she taught me it was good to believe. But whenever I asked people questions about religion, I either got no answer at all (if not admonishment) or an answer which simply led to another question.

As I approached my teens, I began studying theology. Not just the theology I was raised on, but as many as I could cram into my skull. I saw pattern after pattern, and for much of my adolescence, I thought there must be something to it. The sheer number of believers, how fervently people believed, and the power their beliefs seemed to have over them suggested it wasn’t like fairytales and fiction. I observed the most truly outlandish real world events, all attributed to something spiritual and invisible.

I was actually taught very, very early on that doubt was simply a packaged deal with the supernatural. One could never objectively know if it did or did not exist, but to believe anyway was called faith, and faith was good. To say the least, I am habitually more obedient than I would honestly desire or think good for me. I was taught of sacrifice, martyrdom, and that giving was inherently better than receiving. Selfishness is sinfulness, and a natural, faithful death leads to the ultimate prize.

But I just never really believed. As much as I tried, as curious as I was, as faithful as I tried to be… I suppose something never quite clicked with me like it did so many others. I even tried Universalism: the idea that all faiths, beliefs, and interpretations were at least a bit right. That led me to Pantheism: the idea that all existence IS God. Which led to the most deceptively fragile belief system, which was the closest to my beliefs now. One thread was pulled to unravel it all: “Doesn’t that just make God a metaphor?”

I go back through the different theologies, religious texts, historical contexts and I just saw metaphor, metaphor, metaphor… Early in my pantheistic stage, where I had worked up to the logical reconciliation that all existence must be God for God to exist, I had begun watching the show Bones.

I really related to the stoic, opinionated, know-it-all lead character with a hyper-rational, critical view of life. She, an anthropologist, and lover of human culture, regularly dismissed the other lead’s Catholicism, and all other religions, as myths. Other characters would often react (ironically) in disbelief, shocked at her blasphemous use of ‘myth.’ She’d reason that all modern religions were fundamentally like the Roman and Greek myths now studied (and occasionally still believed.) She also dismissed psychology and philosophy as soft sciences, though she gradually changed her stance after observing their proper applications.

Bones, and the religious discussions had all over the world all throughout all kinds of media, had their impacts. I saw arguments from so many different sides, it’s easier to reference degrees than sides. I was not so insulated. In fact, particularly given my early attachment to the electronic world, and given my own eccentricities, I was bound not to be incredibly insulated. And I gorged on the information, the cultures, languages, the different views, opinions, interpretations, circumstances… It got absorbed, digested, and organised (through a much-more-gruelling-than-that-sounds process.)

And then the thread got pulled. “If it’s all a metaphor, what’s the point?” That was a good question. I was the kid who, at a tiny elementary school Christmas play in the country, said to all the other children, “Santa’s not real. No, Santa doesn’t really exist.” One of my friends, at the time, asked how I could say such a thing, appalled at my behavior. I just thought, “It’s wrong to lie.” My own fundamental, religious teachings - combined with my unusually rationalistic and logical mind – had begun the very dismantling of those very religious beliefs. Santa wasn’t real, therefore saying Santa is real is a lie. Lies are bad, therefore saying Santa is real is bad. That’s how my mind always worked.

I saw the value in fantasy, fiction, metaphor, story telling… I just could never quite see why, for instance, Harry Potter was any different from the Bible, or vice versa. Both stories, filled with metaphors which intuitively resonated with many. Or cults – what distinguished a cult from a religion other than number of adherents or their extremity? History told me people believe things until they find more socially compatible or scientifically provable things. ‘Greek myths helped less sophisticated men understand the world. We know better, now.’ This is what most everyone seemed to agree with.

So why was religion – modern, anyhow – so special? With this religion, we ‘know better’? With these religions? Instead of literal, it’s just figurative, now? Are we just waiting for our next prophets to usher in the new edition of the one and only version of the real faith, in an endless cycle of new faiths and interpretations to better fit the times? Will we ever know? If religion is just the unknown, does it, or God, become less and less as we learn more (the so-called 'God of the Gaps.') Does it even matter?

‘Does it even matter’… I’ve come to develop this view that I digested religions, deciphered their metaphors, sifted for the nuggets of wisdom and common sense, and just washed away every single supernatural, mystical, divine, spiritual element. It feels like I solved the riddles, or completed some kind of training, and now I’m ready to move on. The more I learn of the sciences, the more awestruck I am by nature, and the more baffled I am that anyone needs to believe in more.

Based on the evidence I’ve come across, I would say that more often than not, people all see the same reality, but all people speak mutually unintelligible languages. We say different words for the same things, and then argue which word is the actual, correct word. We kill; we condemn; we brutalise others because we can’t translate; we confuse our subjective experience with objective fact, and assert that upon others.

So, again, I ask this rhetorical question – does it even matter?