“I was Catholic, until I reached the age of reason.”

George Carlin

“‘I don’t believe God is some old man with a white beard who sits on a cloud.’ Well, no one believes that, you condescending dick.” 

Paul F. Tomkins

I’m not a religious person. Technically, I’m a non-practicing Catholic. I don’t know if I believe in God, though, I wouldn’t call myself agnostic. And I’m willing to admit that there may be no God and that the universe is mere chaos but I’m not an atheist.

I can be a little frustrating when it comes to religion. I’ll play devil’s advocate with whomever is around. If I’m in the room with an Evangelical Christian, I turn into a science professor. If I’m talking to an atheist, I’ll defend one’s right to practice a religion without being told they believe in fairy tales.

Ultimately, I believe in belief.

I’ll be talking about religion and, just for the atheists, let me get this out of the way. Yes, I recognize the evils done in the name of religion, from wars and genocide to sexual abuse and institutional misogyny. I also recognize that as a straight, white, western male, I am not part of any group that has been targeted by organized religion. A true discussion about these points is beyond the scope of this post but suffice it to say that I believe that a world without religion would not have been a peaceful one. Other man made constructs besides religion have caused atrocities throughout history as well. Agree or not, that’s the premise I’m operating under, cool?

Cool.

So, I’ve been inspired by another chapter in The Happiness Hypothesis. The chapter is called “Divinity With or Without God.” Jonathan Haidt argues that there are experiences in which we experience a kind of elevation. We witness beauty or an act of kindness, something that inspires awe, something transcendent. Experiences like this are perceived by a moral dimension that he calls divinity. Haidt claims, “my research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists.”

I had never heard it stated that clearly before and I completely agree. Like I said, I’m not a religious person but I believe in belief. I think as humans we need to believe. In something. Anything.

I think that I should probably be an atheist. I’m a left brained person. I love science and logic and I believe in those things. Evolution exists, as does climate change. Science, logic, reason. These are all good things. And yet I just can’t get behind atheism.

It could be that the Jesuits wormed their way into my brain in high school. That’s entirely possible. But more likely it’s two other things. First, I’m annoyed by people defending their atheism by saying, “I believe in science!” Yeah, I know you do. I also know how much science my friends who cry “I believe in science!” actually know and I’d bet a paycheck that they don’t know the first element on the periodic table. And to quote Richard Feynman, “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”

Second, I can’t get behind the whole, “I don’t believe in fairy tales,” thing. Now, do I believe in a virgin birth? No. A great flood? No. Rising from the dead? No. I don’t. But here’s the thing, even at my most devout, I wasn’t taught to believe that those things are literally true. Rejecting all religion out of hand for that reason is smug and it gets on my nerves.

But let’s unpack the science and fairy tale thing. You don’t believe in Eden and and a burning bush. Cool. Do you believe you have friends? Do you believe you love your significant other? Your children? From a scientific standpoint, love, family, and friendship don’t exist. They can’t be measured. We can measure serotonin, oxytocin, and pleasure centers in the brain, the things that are associated with love and human bonding. But love? It’s a fairy tale.

But we don’t even need to dive that deep. Let’s just take a look at some pretty simple scientific facts. We live in an infinite universe that is billions of years old filled with 100 billion galaxies. We live in one called the Milky Way. There are 200 billion stars in the Milky Way. We live near one, on one planet out of eight (sorry, Pluto). Earth is 4 billion years old. There are seven billion human beings on earth, each of which, if they are lucky, will live around eighty years. Each human is just a carbon based sack of water with a little bit of calcium in it that, for some reason, has some electronic pulses in it that makes it walk around for a while. One day it stops and immediately starts to rot. This is the fate of each one of us until homo sapiens evolve to a new species or the sun burns out, whichever comes first.

We are, each one of us, scientifically speaking, completely meaningless.

And yet we persist. Why?

Because we believe, we believe in something. You might believe in your family, your children, your loved ones, or maybe your country, your heritage, your traditions, or maybe you believe that God had a son or a dude split a sea or another dude ascended to heaven on a horse or another dude left his palace and wandered around for a while until he attained enlightenment. The point is that we believe and why not? We’re literal specks in a vast, uncaring universe, we need something to keep us going, maybe give us a little happiness or direction.

I also have one final paradoxical problem that keeps me from being an atheist. So, just to be clear, religions are all stupid fairy tales and you have rejected them in favor of a pure truth and if only the non-believers would accept your truth, they would be free and – I dunno – saved?

Does that sound like anything to you?