That was a good reply. I tend to lean toward Michael's attitude on this, however. Probably because I wasn't programmed with religion from an early age. I've always thought your lifelong beliefs were pretty much set by the age of three.
My great-grandparents were (non-Hasidic) Orthodox, including rabbis/religious scholars. My grandparents had to make a living in America and were culturally observant. My mother was quite idiosyncratic in her observances.
I went to after-school Hebrew school 3 times a week until I had my bas mitzvah at 12. Until I was 15 I often went to Shabbos services but bit by bit I found the "smite our enemies, Lord!" routine very unpleasant plus the Saturday mornings showing off of finery in the synagogue a little lacking in appropriate spiritual values.
So in great anguish of losing my faith altogether I strong-armed my parents into sending me to a summer camp in Israel when I was 15, where I expected to be overwhelmed with the spiritual truth of my heritage and I found a whole country that was basically obnoxious New Yorkers, more or less, and although I tried to get my parents to let me stay there solely because I'd've wanted to stay in the pits of hell if I could get away from them, they made me come home and that was really the end of me believing in religion.
Then I had my little multicultural adventure in my 20s-30s where I suppressed my instincts and common sense--and I knew I was doing that--and that lingered ridiculously long. Finally I made it back to the aspects of my 15-year-old self that had been right all along.
So I have a very good understanding of what makes people go on and cling to these fits of religious expression.
But the one thing that has never changed for me, as I've said, is that certainty in the Guy Whose Nature is Unknown to Us.
Part of this is helped by the remarkable number of precognitive/paranormal experiences I've had over the course of my life. Those to me are proof that there is Something More, some conduit separate from what we consider natural laws of reality. So for me it's not just wishful thinking/vestigial imposition of belief. There's something, and our human language is not adequate to describe or explain it.
Mystery. So many mysteries? Words fail us. Beliefs are artificial, constructs.
Something so far beyond your ability to understand or to even conceive of, and yet . . Something that must be addressed / speculated about . . Intellectual intuition?
That was a good reply. I tend to lean toward Michael's attitude on this, however. Probably because I wasn't programmed with religion from an early age. I've always thought your lifelong beliefs were pretty much set by the age of three.
My great-grandparents were (non-Hasidic) Orthodox, including rabbis/religious scholars. My grandparents had to make a living in America and were culturally observant. My mother was quite idiosyncratic in her observances.
I went to after-school Hebrew school 3 times a week until I had my bas mitzvah at 12. Until I was 15 I often went to Shabbos services but bit by bit I found the "smite our enemies, Lord!" routine very unpleasant plus the Saturday mornings showing off of finery in the synagogue a little lacking in appropriate spiritual values.
So in great anguish of losing my faith altogether I strong-armed my parents into sending me to a summer camp in Israel when I was 15, where I expected to be overwhelmed with the spiritual truth of my heritage and I found a whole country that was basically obnoxious New Yorkers, more or less, and although I tried to get my parents to let me stay there solely because I'd've wanted to stay in the pits of hell if I could get away from them, they made me come home and that was really the end of me believing in religion.
Then I had my little multicultural adventure in my 20s-30s where I suppressed my instincts and common sense--and I knew I was doing that--and that lingered ridiculously long. Finally I made it back to the aspects of my 15-year-old self that had been right all along.
So I have a very good understanding of what makes people go on and cling to these fits of religious expression.
But the one thing that has never changed for me, as I've said, is that certainty in the Guy Whose Nature is Unknown to Us.
Part of this is helped by the remarkable number of precognitive/paranormal experiences I've had over the course of my life. Those to me are proof that there is Something More, some conduit separate from what we consider natural laws of reality. So for me it's not just wishful thinking/vestigial imposition of belief. There's something, and our human language is not adequate to describe or explain it.
Mystery. So many mysteries? Words fail us. Beliefs are artificial, constructs.
Something so far beyond your ability to understand or to even conceive of, and yet . . Something that must be addressed / speculated about . . Intellectual intuition?
There must be something out there.
Was there ever, in history, a significant civilization that did not have God(s)?
Why do I talk about that hard-wiring for hierarchies?
It's our tribalist evolutionary heritage, literally hardwired, according to Sapolsky and others.