![[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 07:54 pm (UTC)1. Believing that there is a purpose behind my existance other than just to be part of a functioning ecosystem makes me feel good.
2. Believing that I exist as part of a god's grand design in creating for himself a friend makes me feel really good.
3. Believing that there is an explanation behind the unexplained makes me feel secure.
4. I can't imagine that I am the biggest sort of mind in the universe.
5. I can't fathom that our universe just "happened."
If I had to dissect it down to the secular for why I believe in my particular faith it would be because:
1. If there are going to be rules, I can't think of any better than Love the Lord your God with all your being and Love your neighbor as yourself. Kind of covers everything when properly applied.
2. I can't live without the idea of redemption.
3. My faith is built on the idea that a god wanted a friend, so he made mankind, then when mankind screwed up, that god still loved his imperfect little people so much that he went out of his way to give them a way back into his arms. I screw up a lot, so I need that kind of a god.