Tuesday, March 17, 2015

God is Simply Incomprehensible to Me

Some time ago I reached a point where the idea of god isn't just something I find implausible or incorrect, but the concept is simply incomprehensible to me. I can no longer relate to the impulse or desire that other people have to believe in a supernatural being. I think I can understand why some people might believe, but the concept is so alien to me now that when people talk about their belief in a god my internal reaction is "really? how? what? why?". It is not my intention to be condescending to people that do believe and I apologise if that is the way it sounds, but this is how I feel, and I have no choice in the matter.

There is no way that I could possibly choose to believe. It would take a miracle inside my brain at this stage to even cause me to comprehend the existence of a supernatural being, let alone believe one exists. Some non-theistic people might be able to relate to these feelings I have, and perhaps theists or deists could relate to the converse, where they couldn't comprehend a universe without the existence of gods, but to bring this back to the topic of this blog, these feelings are the same feelings I have towards notions of meaning to life, purposefulness in the universe and objective value.

Curiously enough, because all of these feelings are essentially intuition, I feel like I can relate somewhat to people who hold demonstrably false beliefs. When belief (or lack of) is inculcated in one's mind so strongly, it becomes incredibly difficult to see the world through different lenses. So while belief in things like Creationism, Homeopathy and Astrology among others seem patently absurd to my mind, these things shape the way others see the world. These cognitive biases and flaws in human belief only further reinforce my unwilling lack of faith in the future of humanity. I want to believe that human progress (not technological progress) is possible, but these seemingly inherent flaws in the way our human brain functions prevent me.

This rambling train of thought was brought on by watching the following video: 'The Norden - Religion' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-kANR1vJkM

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