Frivology

I am new to the blogosphere, but I’ve enjoyed posting in assorted skeptic forums.

I was raised Catholic, but I’ve always found religion hard to make sense of and angst producing. I had too many questions, and I couldn’t figure out if I was following the right rubric and believing the right thing with the right fervency so that I could pass the “eternity test”. I also couldn’t figure out why scientists weren’t working on the afterlife issue more–since, supposedly, their ETERNITY was at stake too. I wondered why they weren’t trying to test the assorted gurus and prophets to find out who was the truly infallible one so that they could ensure that they–and the rest of us–had the best eternity possible.

I had Mormon friends, at that time, and was alarmed to hear that they had a whole different “infallible” guy then our “infallible” Pope; they called him “The Prophet”. This caused me to realized that I could be believing the wrong thing and suffer ETERNAL consequences! “Don’t the scientists that ETERNITY means FOREVER?” I’d ask myself, “Isn’t this the most important thing in the world to be working on!?”

My Mormon friends would tell me to read the book of Mormon and pray to know if it’s true. Even when I was fairly young, I could see how that could produce confirmation bias (though I didn’t know the term at the time). At slumber parties the Mormon girls would tell me that I wouldn’t go to the “highest heaven” because I had the opportunity to learn that Mormonism was true, but I didn’t accept it. I think it was the notion of God making the descendants of Cain black as a mark against him killing Abel that ruined my acceptance of the faith– or maybe it was the claim that Jesus really turned water into grape juice and not wine. The baptism for the dead thing was freaky too.

I just couldn’t seem to make sense out of any religion–it caused me endless angst and confusion. I thought it would make sense as I grew older, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that people just learn not to ask questions in order to “keep the faith”. From religion, though, I did absorb this idea that one should have an “inner knowingness” about the truth– it should “resonate” and “feel” right. Religion teaches this notion that “faith” is a virtue, and I bought into it. And so I segued in to New Age beliefs at 19. It felt so much better than all that “Jesus dying for your sins” weirdness. Hey, I thought I could create my own reality if I believed it enough.

During my New Age phase I would say inane things like “what does it matter if it’s true or not–it’s how it makes you feel.” I was an affirmation queen ever trying to brainwash myself with empowering platitudes.

But finally it started to dawn on me that it did matter if something was true or not. I’d rather just not know something than to invest in something that wasn’t true. When “belief” didn’t “work”, I ended up blaming myself for not having enough faith or not thinking positively enough or not visualizing with the right fervency. Eventually, I got tired of fooling myself. Wanting something to be true cannot make it true, and faith never has been a means of finding out anything objectively true.

I saw a documentary about this man named Clive Wearing (you can Google his name). His hippocampus was destroyed by viral encephalitis, and he can’t form any new memories. He lives constantly in the now–a very tragic way to live. There’s videos at youtube that reveal his bizarre situation. Clive made me think– if a person can lose so much of themselves by losing a small part of the brain–how can a person be anything without any brain at all? If there is a “soul” what does it do, and why doesn’t it step in when a brain is so damaged?

I stumbled across a Skeptical Inquirer where James Randi was testing those who thought they could use divining rods to find water. I hadn’t thought to TEST this stuff. I thought you just had to have faith, and if it didn’t work it was because you didn’t believe enough!

My husband died of Colon Cancer at the age of 28 despite all our positive thinking, creative visualization, and New Age herbs. I went back to school and studied genetics. I wanted very much to believe he was watching over me as a “soul” or experiencing some other new life… but eventually, I had to admit to myself, that it was extremely unlikely. He was a fantastic human–but he can’t do magic. And the fact that both of us longed for him to have some sort of afterlife and communicate with me, could not make it so. Things happened that I believed to be signs… but as my knowledge of science, genetics, and neurology grew, my belief in souls could no longer be sustained.

And that’s my story in brief for now. I could never make sense of any god to really “let go” of–I mean, how do you know if you really believe in an invisible–seemingly unknowable–person? And how can you make yourself “believe” anyhow? It was my growing understanding that souls were as much of an illusion as gods and demons that eventually lead me to my strong atheist/skeptic position.

Now, I no longer want to be responsible for propping up anyone’s delusion. I don’t want to cater to this wrong idea that “faith” and “feelings” are a means of knowledge. They aren’t. They are just a means of fooling yourself so that you feel like you “know” some “higher truth” for believing the equivalent of a myth… a lie… a delusion.

I am usually silent in real life regarding my beliefs, because people often vilify the messenger of a message they don’t want to hear. But I worry sometimes that my silence may be seen as implicit agreement of a belief I do not share. And so I hope to be able to speak up more. I fear the consequences, but there may be greater consequences in staying silent.