DutchGirl said:
ss7 said:
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
--Bertrand Russell, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
Why must people believe in something? I don't understand.
Here's one important reason: Comfort.
Life is maddeningly uncertain and without guarantees. If you are rich today, there is no guarantee that you will have your wealth tomorrow. If you are healthy, there is no guarantee that you will continue to be healthy. In fact, the only guarantee that we have is an unpleasant one. That guarantee is that of our eventual non-existence. What is certain is that we and those whom we love will die.
The prospect of death makes us uncomfortable because it is the only thing that we cannot encounter with denial. So we invent something and put it behind the curtain. That invention is god.
But simply inventing something is not enough. There is an additional twist. Have you noticed that people don't just believe in god. No, it is rather more specific than that. People always believe in a
good god. Have you wondered why? Why does every religion talk about a good god? Why not an evil god behind the curtain? Or a flawed, ugly god? Or an uncertain god?
Because death is certain and death is ugly. So naturally, god has to be at least equally certain and far prettier. It is redundant and hardly comforting to have an ugly, bland god waiting for us after death. That will simply not do. Ugly is not good; the human mind does not deal well with ugliness. It is ugly to ponder the death of our fathers, our mothers, our husbands, our wives, our sons, our daughters, our friends, our dogs, and ourselves. So it is not enough to simply invent something to put behind the curtain, it is absolutely essential that this something looks better than Jessica Alba in a red and purple tight-suit.
We don't just want god, we want a pretty-boy god. It's more comforting that way.
