On the Implications of Beliefs

Somethin' filled up
my heart with nothin',
someone told me not to cry.
But now that I'm older,
my heart's colder,
and I can see that it's a lie.
Children wake up,
hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust.
If the children don't grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We're just a million little gods causin' rain storms turnin' every good thing to
rust.
I guess we'll just have to adjust.

-Arcade Fire

Of all the ideas I've had for blog posts in the past year, another one about “Beliefs” ends up being the one I'm motivated enough to write. I think it's mostly because I hardly see it written or talked about anywhere else. Most people don't want to discuss such matters, for reasons that they also don't want to discuss. While it is not the primary goal of this post, I will touch upon those matters. I realize this is a personal and touchy subject, and if you feel offended by any of what I write, or disagree with it, I hope that you are open to discussing why, rather than simply choosing to believe that I am a jerk.

What does it really mean to believe in something? Well, here are the Webster's definitions of “belief”:

1 : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing
2 : something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group
3 : conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence

This probably is in line with what most people think. But whether or not people actually use “belief” in this way is another question. Yet another question, then, is what do people mean when they say that they believe in a particular religion? Do they even know? It seems like a silly question, and it's certainly a bit insulting, but this question has come to my mind recently.

It is my proposition that a large number of individuals have now come to be a part of a religion- and I'm going to stick to Christianity here- primarily as a place that they feel comfortable. Now I don't want this to be confused with an argument that people believe in God just for comfort of it- I am saying that many people in America (and surely elsewhere) are Christians for the comfort of it. These people associate with Christianity as a group whose values they generally agree with, that can serve as a guide in their lives, and that they feel comfortable in. However, they are often inconsistent if asked whether or not they believe in the teachings Christianity. To clarify again, I don't just mean that they don't agree with every single thing that is in The Bible. My claim is that many people don't even truly believe anything that is unique to Christianity. These people simply call themselves Christian over something else because, for the purpose of leading their lives, being a Christian works for them. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. What does surprise me is that few people would admit that that's what they're doing. To try and clarify, let me get into some specific accusatory remarks.

Coming from the NorthEast, I encounter a lot of people who say they are Christian, but at the same time are not particularly religious. When asked if they believe in God, they say yes. When asked if they believe that Jesus was the son of God, the savior, or at least a divine prophet, they give one of the following answers:

A) Yes.

B) I'm not sure.

Now, it's my understanding that believing that Jesus was more than just a good person who spread a good message- that he was in some way divine- is essential to believing in Christianity. To put it another way, if you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus then what you do actually believe is probably essentially believed by all religions. And if you're not sure, then you're lacking that “state of trust” or “conviction of truth” that constitutes a belief.

So what of the people who do believe Jesus was divine? Well, their test comes in a follow-up question: Okay, so then you believe that everyone who doesn't believe that Jesus was divine is wrong? If you believe that Christianity is correct, then you believe that anyone who isn't a Christian is wrong, or misguided, or what-have-you, correct?

And yet, I have been surprised to encounter people who will not say that they believe that people of other religions or beliefs are wrong. Their answer, of course, is that they do not feel they are in the position to tell others that their beliefs are wrong. That each person has their own beliefs that work for them, their own connection to God. I have no problem with that, except in that it isn't an answer to my question. I'm not saying you have to tell anyone that they're wrong, I'm saying that if you believe you are right, you simply must believe they are wrong.

Example: Jack believes that Jesus was divine. Jack has trust and confidence that Jesus was divine. Jack feels a conviction of the truth that Jesus was divine. ...Jack does not believe that it is incorrect to say that Jesus was not divine?

Example 2: Jack believes that A is True. Jane believes that A is False. ...Jack does not think Jane is wrong. Jack does not believe that A isn't false, therefore Jack believes that A is False. ...Jack believes that A is True. Jack believes that A is False. Does not compute.

Now I understand if you take issue with this strict use of logic. A person can believe something, but recognize it is not a fact, and therefore not want to say that an alternative is wrong. But if you believe that that something is true, mustn't you believe that the alternative is false?

I suppose the question is whether someone can say that they don't believe someone else is right, but don't necessarily believe they are wrong either. Well, if someone claims that Global Warming isn't real, and you believe that it is... you probably wouldn't have any problem saying that you believe they're wrong. What if someone believes aliens exist and you don't? If you really don't believe that they exist, then you probably will be able to say that you believe the other person is wrong, even if you admit that you don't know it for a fact. In the end it comes down to your degree of certainty. If you're not comfortable saying that you think the person who believes that aliens exist is wrong, then your belief is probably really something like, “I don't think they exist, but I don't know.”

So would some Christians be comfortable saying this? Are you a Christian if you say “I think Jesus was divine, but I don't know.” It sounds as if you are not convinced. So are you still said to have faith? Is that a belief- a trust or confidence that it is true?

My desire isn't to be a accusatory, but my goal is to make people think. I think that if many Christians are pushed on what they really mean when they say they believe something, when the implications of holding their belief are made clear, they may find they do not truly believe it. When you face the idea that to say you believe that your religion is right is also to say that all others are then in some significant way wrong, it may become a bit more difficult to believe in yours.

I believe that thinking about it in this way provides perspective, and to take in a truly open, broad perspective of everything it means to say that you believe in Christianity (or any other religion) on its most fundamental level, is to plant a seed of doubt. And doubt is not something we want to deal with in these matters, so I understand why some individuals would be reluctant to discuss the implications of their beliefs, but I also believe it to be important.

There are further topics I'm tempted to get into here, but will stick with one more quick one. For those who are willing to say that they believe that all non-Christians are wrong, and there are plenty of them, I ask them as well to take the implications of their beliefs to their necessary ends. If it is one's strong belief and conviction that Jesus Christ's teachings were divinely ordained, then surely they must believe in the importance of sympathy, forgiveness, and love. And yet I see many of these individuals with more negative things to say than positive, with irrational anger towards others and unapologetic desires for vengeance, and selfishness. To expect all Christian's to be Christlike is foolish, but to expect them to be making consistent efforts in that general direction is only logical.

To be clear, this isn't meant to rub it in the face of Christians that they are supposed to be playing by the rules they have set out for themselves. But I am encouraging all people of faith to behave as if they truly believe what they say they believe. Much of the rest of this blog has been geared towards encouraging all individuals, regardless of what they do and do not believe, to behave in what is essentially a more Christlike manner.

To reiterate what I said in the beginning, I think there is nothing wrong with attending Christian churches when all you believe is that there's a God, and you aren't sure about Jesus. You can call yourself a Christian even if all you agree with are the moral teachings of the church, and I won't complain. If you like the way any church does things, and it works for you, I am not taking issue. As I have before, I am taking issue with people who claim to believe things but aren't consistent with those beliefs, and I'm encouraging people to figure out what they really do believe. And for the record, I never claimed my writing wasn't pompous.

Finally, there is an underlying message of tolerance in this post for all people of faith. First, that when a person of faith is questioned far enough about their beliefs, they may find that the only beliefs they hold true conviction for are beliefs that are shared by all religions. Second, that if people truly believe all that they say they do, they will value love and forgiveness over intolerance.

Belief Systems Part 2: To Be, Or Not To Be?

Here we are in the center of the first world
It's laid out before us, who are we to break down?
Everyday we wake up, we choose love, we choose light
And we try, it's too easy just to fall apart...
Oh my baby don't be so distressed
Were done with politesse
It's time to be so brutally honest about
The way we know we long for something fine
When we pine for higher ceilings
And bourgeois happy feelings
The Submarines


In order to get anything that we may want in life, we need to find motivation. In order to live at all, we need to have some motivation to do so. And motivation is something I have struggled with. It has often been the case for me that if I cannot see directly how doing one thing will lead to something good- and furthermore, why that something good is, in fact, good- I have trouble getting myself to take action in the first place. And when you get down to asking the most basic of questions- Why do we want what we want? What makes something good? What’s the point of it all, anyway?- the answers you settle on may not always be the ones you’d hoped they would be.

The purpose of this post is to figure out how to find motivation, purpose, and meaning, even when we can’t force ourselves to believe what we’d like to believe. For even in our deepest and most sober moments of despair, we will desire a reason to go on. I won’t be going into too much detail trying to convince anyone to believe what I believe, but will just be acknowledging different beliefs about our existence, with, at best, a very brief overview of how one comes to believe that, and direction to further reading in the event you’re interested. But all things considered, this post is for me, to serve, if nothing else, as an archive of the work I did to try and figure out life through my early 20s.

First things first: Is there a God? If you’re essentially convinced that there is, and you can find any belief system that works for you, you’re set. Whether your purpose is to serve God, to help others, or even if you choose to worship Satan and harm others, the fact remains: If you have a basic idea of what this being wants from you, you have a purpose. Your exact purpose may remain unclear to you, but at least you know that you have one to search for.

What about those of us who aren't so sure? Or, for that matter, feel convinced that there isn't a God? This means that when you die, it's over. You have kids, loved ones that lived on... but it's not like you're anywhere you can appreciate it. And besides, they'll die too. Within a few hundred years- an incomprehensibly insignificant period of time in the grand scheme of things- not even your most direct descendants will know or care about you any more than you do your grandfather's grandfather. Even for George Washington, the second he died, he didn't care about his legacy. He lived an entire lifetime, full of thoughts, emotions, and actions far more significant than anything the rest of us will ever do, and it all led up to those final moments where maybe, if he was lucky, he got the chance to reflect and feel good about himself. And those moments led directly into every moment since then, when he hasn't felt or thought a single thing. No matter who you are, your life is a series of moments where you feel some type of significance, and when you die that feeling will be gone, and from that moment forward you will feel absolutely nothing and not care about anything, in a way that none of us can possibly comprehend.

Faced with such a possibility, there are two common reactions. Perhaps most common is to say, “Well, maybe not, and there is an afterlife. No use worrying about it, we'll find out eventually” and move right along. But you should at least be aware that the possibility of nothingness- a possibility that I might venture you know is more likely than you let on- is going to haunt you from time to time. The other common reaction is, “Yeah, so nothing really matters, but I guess we may as well enjoy the time we're here.” But if you stop there, know that you are likely to be haunted, from time to time, by the question, “But how can I enjoy it when it's so meaningless?”

Or maybe you won't be haunted, I don't know, but I was, so I decided to try and deal with that issue of, “In the fairly likely event that at some point I will be useless, meaningless, and not I nor anyone else will care in the slightest that I ever existed, what's the point of doing anything?” Apathy at it's finest.

So the first question, at this point, is what are we if not creations of God? Okay, so there was the big bang, the universe operates according to some set of laws, and there's evolution. So we evolved, just like other animals. We are an animal. The most advanced, obviously, because of consciousness, but we are an animal nonetheless. So first things first, the lives of all animals must be at least as meaningless as ours, and they just don't know it. Well- just to interject some optimism into this post- if you were to watch a dog being born, live it's whole life, have puppies, watch those puppies grow up, have more puppies, would you feel that the initial dog's life is meaningless? Just because that dog wasn't there to care about all of his descendants doesn't mean his life was without meaning or purpose. So this kind of puts into perspective that perhaps our feeling of meaninglessness simply comes out of being completely self-centered.

But then again, why not be self-centered? I am myself. I care about what I care about, and if I can't be there to care, then to me, it doesn't matter. …. Alright, I didn't even plan it that way, but after the dog's life analogy, that just sounds absurdly selfish. Like you'd have to have absolutely no perspective to actually feel that way. But nonetheless, I know that I have felt that way, and will in the future, so I'll continue...

I think what leads me to sometimes feel that way is essentially this line of thinking: Okay, so we are a product of evolution. Each person has genes, and a brain. Once we're born, our brain, guided by our genes, leads us to take all that we experience as inputs, and causes us to act a certain way. And gene evolution is important to this as well. For example, it is very likely that the reason we tend to believe in God, the reason we generate feelings of a higher purpose, of a sense of self, of wanting love and sex and children, the reason we feel any happiness at all- is because the genes that promote these things won out over the genes that don't. All of those feelings help us to live. The genes that lead us to feel that “life is good, love is real, there is beauty all around us” are in no way more correct than genes that lead us to feel “Everything is ugly, I hate everyone, and I may as well kill myself.” These are all equally valid statements in that life is little more than the playing out of the battles of randomly formed genes. It's just that those “positive” genes won out in battle because they're conducive to living. But let's inject another positive comment: This also means feelings of hate are no more correct than feelings of love. And one could easily argue that the person spreading love is simply doing a better job at living.

(For more information on how our evolution and genes have led us to become the way that we are, and thus for a better idea of what we really are as humans, I recommend “The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright.)

But I digress, we're not out of the woods of depression yet. It's the feeling of a lack of control that gets to a lot of people. So basically our whole reason for living is that “life genes” are beating out the other genes? The reason I fall in love is because evolution necessitates that it feels really good to find someone to assist me in allowing my genes to live on? Well yes, that is perhaps the most likely possibility. Every feeling you have serves the agenda of your genes in some way or another. That feeling that you have that you're in control of your own life? That's an illusion. It's your brain tricking you, because if you knew that you didn't have control, you wouldn't function as well. There have been studies that show while identical twins may turn out to be very different people, they tend to either both believe in God, or both not believe in God. It's not some decision we make, we all just have different genes that incline us to believe in God to some degree or another. This goes for just about everything. If you look at our genes as knobs, tuned up high, low, or kept in the middle- we're all just creatures with different tunings. Some have genes for leadership and happiness turned up high, and some very low. You really think you somehow chose to be happy while other people chose to be sad, or vice versa? That's just how it turned out. You've been inclined since birth in one direction or another, and on some matters your knob is turned so far that you'll never be able to really change it. The mentally ill are just people whose knobs are turned in such a way that the person is no longer functional in society.

And do you even have any degree of control at all? Determinism is accepted by many of the greatest minds as perhaps the most likely correct theory. With no soul, or “self” that is separate from the body, what are we left with? We are born with our various knobs and tunings. We are wired a certain way. Then from the second we enter the world, our brain is taking in inputs. Our wiring accepts all inputs in a certain way, and then tells you how to act. Just like a computer. Even if what's happening is a million times more complex, you don't have any more control over what your code + the inputs turns into output any more than a computer does. Every thought you have, the feeling that you are making a choice right now about whether or not you are going to finish this sentence, all your subsequent evaluation, consideration of alternatives, and every single conscious and subconscious thought or action you make for the rest of your life is simply reactionary. Initial code + all inputs up until this moment generate all outputs at this moment. Just a brain, like a piece of meat, generating thoughts and feelings that you credit as somehow “your own”, despite the fact that all we are is a brain+body. Yes, that is a very real possibility. If it doesn't feel right to you, know that the way the brain works is that once it gets used to one way of doing things- one thought pattern- the connections get stronger. If you've always believed in free will, you're wired to input this text in such a way that will lead you back to believing in free will. And no, the fact that we can even consider this option, and use the brain to think about the brain, doesn't change anything. The brain doesn't have an agenda to keep us from figuring out how it operates. It doesn't have any agenda at all, of course. It simply is. It has a certain way of functioning, just like anything else in the universe.... but it's all, essentially, reactionary.

(For more information on how the brain works, why it generates the feelings that it does, and for a bit of humility about the idea that you could completely understand or be certain about anything, read “On Being Certain” by Robert Burton.)

However, my conclusion about the idea of determinism, then, is that it is irrelevant. According to determinism, if there were to be an omniscient being, it would be able to correctly predict everything that will ever happen. But there's not. And even if there was, it wouldn't change the fact that whether we have free will or not, we feel like we do. Everything we do uncontrollably feels like a choice. There's no getting around that. Even if you accept determinism and sit around and do nothing, you'd have to admit that by doing so you're just fruitlessly trying to assert some kind of sense of self that you don't even believe in. And you won't be able to get rid of the feeling that you are making a choice... so I say just deal with it and start feeling like you're making choices that lead to happiness rather than depression.

And, it is certainly possible that even if we are just a brain and a body, that the brain is so complex that in a way it does allow for free will. Basically this would mean that the brain has some kind of control center, where decisions are made. This implies that the brain, or some part of it, is the “self”. So while it may be that the feeling that we are something more than our biology is an illusion, this doesn't necessarily mean that our biology doesn't still make us a person with control over our own lives. This is one of the greatest questions facing scientists these days.

Finally, there is a point I have yet to mention that must always, always be kept in mind once you do decide to delve into these topics. And, somewhat ironically, it is the same point that made you hesitant to worry about all of this in the first place: We don't know. And to get a better understanding of that fact, read the book “On Being Certain”. We are built to feel like we're right even when we're not. Most, perhaps all, of our decisions, actions and beliefs are based off of our feelings. Taking in new information, new experiences, attempts at open-mindedness, even the use of reason- these things all help in the quest to hone our decision making, but in the end you decide on what feels right to you. And what feels right to you is just that- a feeling that your brain has settled on. Did reading about alternative beliefs in this post get you to change or re-think any of your beliefs? If not, does that mean that they're in some way less accurate than your beliefs? Or did I just not present them in a way that really had a chance at persuading you? The point is that your feeling of being right hardly makes your beliefs a fact, so be careful in how far you go with acting on that feeling.

Perhaps for those that believe in God, all it would take is just the right series of events to get them to change their mind. Perhaps if enough terrible things happen to them, eventually, they'll give up. Eventually the brain will have enough doubts, and enough contrary evidence that it stops thinking in terms of His existence. It is only when something happens to make the person feel differently that they will change their mind. And if you're an atheist, even an extremely well-educated one, does that mean nothing could happen to change your mind? Are you sure that if just enough things went right, and enough pro-God inputs came into your brain you wouldn't start to think, “you know what, maybe the idea of God isn't such an absurd possibility.” And so as I alluded to in Part 1, I think that if you're somehow absolutely convinced one way or the other on these issues (God, determinism, countless others) then you're pretty darn self-righteous about how evolved your brain is compared to everyone else's.

And so, of course, if I'm going to say that, I must admit that everything in this entire post could be wrong in some way or another. And in fact I do. I can only think in terms of what my biology (and/or God) allows me to... and I'm sure that my beliefs will continue to change over time. Furthermore, I can't rule out the possibility, however slim, that there's another creature in the universe with a completely different biology that in some way or another has everything figured out, and couldn't even explain a single bit of it to me if he tried. It's simply impossible to imagine what it's answers might be. Simply put, we don't know what we don't know.

So now, this has been a very long post, thanks for reading. But I have to get back to the initial point here in order to make a conclusion. In the end, I believe that all you can do is try to consider as many factors as you can, then believe what you believe. So what do you do when what seems right to you is that there is no afterlife, one day it will all be nothingness, and as determinism states we don't even really have control of our time here?

Well for one, stop being so egocentric and selfish. Just because you don't see the point for yourself doesn't mean there isn't one.

Secondly, know that you could be wrong, and you don't understand everything. There is always hope, and you can use that to your advantage.

But nevertheless you feel that you have the most likely answer, and you can't just shake that feeling. Well, as I said earlier, you will always feel that you have a choice, to some degree or another, even if rationally you don't believe that you do. So I say (perhaps only in hopes that it will trick your brain into being happier) make the choices that feel better. It is easy to say that it is pointless to do anything, and pointless to have a positive attitude. But not doing anything, or being negative, is no more correct. If you believe in nothing, you can't believe in right and wrong. A nihilist, goth kid, or anyone who says that everything is pointless, surely must think there is some point to not doing anything, or to anarchy. If you kill yourself, you must think there is a point to killing yourself. So it pisses you off that other people are ignorant and happy while you are knowing and depressed... what's the point of being angry? If the good is pointless, realize that the bad and everything else is just as pointless. So if you have a choice of life or no life... why not life? And if you have the choice of enjoying life or not enjoying life... why not enjoy it? If you have any kind of ideas of what is good and what is bad... why not encourage the good? Even if all life comes down to is the question of “why not?”... why not make a decision on the matter? And as long as you're making one, why not make it a good one? Infinite possibilities of feelings and experiences are open to us... why not take advantage? Seriously, you have a better idea?

So it has come to be my belief that pretty much no matter what you believe, your best options are to enjoy life and to do good. Fortunately, the two tend to go hand in hand.

Figure out who you are, who you want to be, who you can be, and act accordingly.

And yeah, maybe most of us are already doing that, but like I said in the beginning, sometimes I just need to find the motivation.

(For more information on enjoying life, a couple good books are Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman and Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)