![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
firecatThis was originally posted as a comment in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vito_excalibur's journal here; it's slightly expanded here.
Whether or not deity exists, it seems clear that a lot of people have a lot invested in deity's existing (believing or hoping or acting-as-if or...). I'm probably just not looking in the right places, but sometimes I wonder why more attention isn't paid to why so many people invest so much in it. Most of the speculations about that I hear are insults or dismissals from people who don't have the investment and who think that having the investment means you're deluded. That may be so, I suppose, but I also think that throwing away some pretty amazing (and yes, also some pretty horrible) human accomplishments as entirely based on delusion is depressing and reductionistic - kind of like saying oh, thoughts and feelings are nothing but electrical signals in the brain. Yes they are, but they aren't "nothing but."
Can you think of any neutral-to-positive and non-insulting reasons that many humans have a lot invested in believing in the existence of deity? What do we get out of it; why do some of us need or strongly want it?
(Disclosure - I need/strongly want spiritual experience and have had spiritual experiences [that could also be explained in non-supernatural ways, but I choose to experience/remember them as spiritual]. I neither believe nor don't believe in the existence of deity. I usually boil this down to "I believe in deity on alternative thursdays.")
vito_excalibur's journal here; it's slightly expanded here.Whether or not deity exists, it seems clear that a lot of people have a lot invested in deity's existing (believing or hoping or acting-as-if or...). I'm probably just not looking in the right places, but sometimes I wonder why more attention isn't paid to why so many people invest so much in it. Most of the speculations about that I hear are insults or dismissals from people who don't have the investment and who think that having the investment means you're deluded. That may be so, I suppose, but I also think that throwing away some pretty amazing (and yes, also some pretty horrible) human accomplishments as entirely based on delusion is depressing and reductionistic - kind of like saying oh, thoughts and feelings are nothing but electrical signals in the brain. Yes they are, but they aren't "nothing but."
Can you think of any neutral-to-positive and non-insulting reasons that many humans have a lot invested in believing in the existence of deity? What do we get out of it; why do some of us need or strongly want it?
(Disclosure - I need/strongly want spiritual experience and have had spiritual experiences [that could also be explained in non-supernatural ways, but I choose to experience/remember them as spiritual]. I neither believe nor don't believe in the existence of deity. I usually boil this down to "I believe in deity on alternative thursdays.")
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2 Aug 2005 07:18 pm (UTC)It also seems to give people a sense of belonging, a sense of community, and an answer to the question, "what is the meaning of life?" Well, they don't get the actual answer, but they ARE told that there IS an answer, and that alone seems to be enough for many (I've noticed that being able to say, "I don't understand, but GOD understands, so it'll all be okay in the end" is a great source of comfort to some people).
It gives them guidelines to live by when societal laws or rules of etiquette don't apply, and a framework for how their individual lives are supposed to fit in to this great, big, giant world.
I do not have such an investment, but these are observations that I have made from talking with others who do. My sources are nothing more than "people I know," so I claim no accurracy or expertise in the topic.