Faith Part Three

In Faith Part One I discussed the cultural influence on people's perceptions and upon their decisions to hold religious faith. One cannot completely escape the opinions and viewpoints of the dominant culture or its impact upon our thought patterns, and any supposed thought-through decision will naturally occur within the context of the majority culture. An example in my own life is my time involved in The Way International. I broke with my family religion, Catholicism, and congratulated myself on my critical thinking skills that I employed to question many of the assumptions of that faith. However, I left unquestioned and unassailed the premise that the bible was a holy book given or inspired by God. All of my questioning was predicated upon the basis of the existence of a God whose attributes were laid out in the bible. Even now, having left Christianity behind, I puff out my chest, impressed with my own logic that leads me to conclude that the bible is myth, yet I still cling to the belief in gods, spirits and an afterlife. Go figure.

Part of what motivates spiritually minded people is laziness. Sticking with your family's religion doesn't really take a lot of effort. How tough is it to just stay on the family faith train without investigating other religious systems, or for that matter, atheism? Lazy...I've never thought of it in those terms until today, but that's what it is. How do you know that [fill in the blank with your favorite religion] is "the truth", is the best way to go, is the ultimate moral authority? You don't, because you've never checked! 

A similar phenomenon occurs when a person with no apparent religious faith, or for that matter any visible moral or ethical compass of any kind, encounters a challenge or change in life and suddenly, magically becomes a religious person! Usually a reversion to the family faith takes place, mainly due to the reason I mentioned earlier - laziness. The change or challenge varies - sometimes it's the birth of a child, an illness, the death of a loved one or some other crisis. they wake up one day and decide that their life "lacks meaning" - and what defines "meaning" better than religion?

The ease with which someone slips back into the familiar religion makes me wonder about what was going through their minds while they were wandering away from the family faith. Were they truly rejecting their parents' god during that time? Or did they just reject the consequences? Or perhaps they were rolling the supernatural dice, hoping that they could do as they pleased without divine retribution? At any rate I have seen enough people who were completely secular run back into the arms of religion later in life to cause me to scratch my head in wonder.

A different type of non-religious person that I find fascinating are the ones who flout the rules of religion, perhaps they're binge drinkers, or drug users, maybe small-time criminals; at the very least they don't go to church! They are not "God-fearing" and seem to hold those that are in contempt, reveling in their  rebellion, yet they will make statements about "going to Hell", or getting struck down by lightning. I'm sure some of these people are just using religious jargon to mock the religious, but I'm fairly sure some of them are serious and have decided that a religion-free life is well worth an eternity of divine punishment. 

Finally, there's the religious people who feel the need to "prove" the existence of their god and the truth of their religion, despite saying that they need no proof. They pray - when things go according to their prayer, then their god is praised, but when things don't go as prayed, then an excuse is made. Coincidences that work in the believer's favor are touted as proof that their god is acting in their favor. Vague feelings are interpreted as a message from the divine. In my observation, the same feelings are interpreted differently depending on ones preconceived notions of spirituality, incidence of answered prayers are never statistically analyzed.

Laziness, wish fulfillment and confirmation bias.