Points

If I had grown up in another time, in another culture, I'm almost certain I would have been a priest. It is the one job that ties together all my myriad interests. Of course, the one (really major) obstacle is my lack of faith in God.

This entry is about faith, my musings on faith I complied while toting buckets and making sure the subloor in an anonymous kitchen did not creak. (Why is that relevant? Well, something about that situation at that time encouraged such musings.)

I. It is not befitting a free people to cower in fear of a partiarchial middle-eastern deity. I would not at all be surprised to learn that the move from polytheism to monotheism coincided with greater political centralization.

II. For all the many faults of democracy, for all its inertia, its stupidity, its mob mentality, it is the way to go if we really want freedom. (Insofar as possible, which, let's face it, is slimmer than we had ever hoped.) We try as much as we can to be free. Are we up to it? Inevitably, some of us will burn our brains with drugs, some of us will commit suicide, some will go the way of Raskolnikov, others the way of the Bodhisattva, and so on. Will some of us "make it"?

III. On the argument that people need something to believe in: yes. Nobody denies that. Faith makes life possible. It's just that I prefer to place my faith in things more likely to be tangible. I think of it as a Pascal's Wager in reverse. When it comes to invisible superheroes in the sky, people really want to believe because the implications that there is something beyond this. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to explain away the utter lack of any credible evidence for such a creature. I prefer to put my faith in the proposition that people are, in a state of nature, more apt to do "good" (as vague as the term is) than "evil".

IV. The biggest problem of the godless existence is the crystallization of abstract ethics. I find it a muddle of faith-based propositions. We end up adopting a tortured working morality that is not all that different from opinion. (Of course, there are schools of thought that asser that God wouldn't help with this.)

And now, someone else's thoughts: "...strong hope is a much greater stimulant to life than any single realized joy could be."