DESPARATE NEED

Viva Fresco. Both the original and follow-up poster were outstanding in their insight and terse clarity. Fresco's three points, upon reflection, represent a surprisingly wide number of reasons why humans "believe". Bravo!

The initial question, it seems to me, is loaded. I'm not so certain that there is any natural compulsion to believe, or that (most) "people feel … a desperate need to believe implicit in blithely accepting absurdities and contradictions in" (their doctrinal beliefs). It is true that we are herd animals and are generally uncomfortable (to say the least) when in conflict with "our herd". But humans are not cows, and individuals break with the herd all of the time and take to believing stuff that might get them stoned to death. Root religions evolve, are reinterpreted, and schisms develop into new religious dogma and doctrine that may have little in common with the source. When we become aware of "absurdities and contradictions" in orthodoxy, many abandon the orthodox for some alternative. Others may deny the absurdities and contradictions, but over time those tend to die out. After all, how many people are left in the world who believe it is flat, or the center of the universe? Once the modern world intrudes upon the aboriginal, their religious orthodoxy's are often destroyed in less than a generation.

I'm not even fully convinced that all religions spring from the same well, much less that their followers have the same fanatical attachment to the dominant religion of their culture. Christians and Muslims of the Abrahamic group, for instance, take a very different stance toward one another and Judaism, their common Mother.

The perception that the original question is "loaded" is understandable, but false. The thread was inspired by a comment in another thread which was started by one of the Muslim ranters. (I make no apology for the term, we get threads about both religion and politics which begin with a screed, and continue with ranting unabated.) At the same time, the line from a Rod Stewart song which runs: "Still I look to find a reason to believe . . . ran through my head. (I frequently think in terms of song lyrics--i'm more likely to free associate lyrics to songs than mere words or phrases less melodic.)

Therefore, the question is only "loaded" to the extent that it is not addressed to anyone who does not feel a need to believe. It is addressed to those who do feel a need to believe, or who consider that others need to believe.

Setanta has a point. The evidence of numbers shows that the "need" is there irrespective of the details that Asherman mentioned. Whether this need is "desperate" or not is more interesting. The word implies a "life jacket" rather than a "comfort blanket" and cynics like me might argue that "life jacket" becomes "strait jacket".

Basic believe is not single concept. Believing God,Prophets,Books,Angels,destiny, resurrection and hereafter.
These are generals things...
All of them r useful concepts...

God wanted to introduce himself and his arts to us and created a lot of sensitive surfaces in human being.. He created eyes and many things for to see. Ear and many voices.. Stomach and foods... Brain or mind and science ..

But most considerable was HİMSELF and created conscience and heart.. So believing apparatus is heart..

So every surface want their equivalent.

You admire .. most important necessity is believing..

Look at... our necessities..Radio, TV,food, books, internet..etc.. All of them r so serious needs and also global sectors in the world..

You admire .. most important necessity is believing.. But specialities of believing is not to be
instrument for anything..

Believing is our most natural right as human being.. Faith lives in the heart and no need to force someone to believe. As everybody know world is examination room....

Set - do you look for a reason to believe? And if you find it, or is it out of the question?

Yes, like this.

I believe I will have some vanilla icecream this evening.

Re my own background, I went from "needing to believe" not even being a reasonable question to my mind at, say, ten; being heavily involved many hours of the year in Catholic liturgy, rosaries, novenas, and grammar school education/inculcation, I was trying to be a good girl virtually all the time, and had no doubts. The founder of the Rosary Crusade stayed for dinner when he was in the Chicago area. Various missionaries would come to dinner...

I had some doubts in high school, as I roiled around Aquina's proofs with crossing eyes - and the matter of the Eucharist - but overcame that with fervor. At that point, I think my need to believe was at least in part social - my world was very small, no one I knew disagreed with any of my family's religious beliefs and I hadn't done any real reading on the subject. I had faith but prayed a lot to shore up the shifting sand.

At university, I was suddenly exposed to a wider world of thought. But I didn't walk out on belief, I got more into reading theology disputes... followed Kung and Ratzinger for a bit. At that point you could describe me as needing to believe, as I was working at it.

Time passed. From my point of view now, I would say my tethers unbound themselves. But I remember my period of needing to keep faith.

No, Husker, i do not look for such a reason. I consider that theism is rather like the anxiety of orphans who don't know where their parents are gone--only it's all the grown ups who are gone. So they make up childish fairy tales to account for being alone and the anxiety it inspires. The problem i see with that is two-fold. The first is that it is long past time for the human race to have grown up.

The second is that it is the ultimate abdication of personal responsibility. If there are no deities (and i know of no good reason to think there are), and if there is no afterlife (and i know of no good reason to think there is)--then i am immediately, personally and perpetually responsible for the quality of my life, and the outcome of my actions. No pie in the sky, no god moves in mysterious ways, no when the roll is called up yonder. I am immediately and completely responsible for every aspect of my relationship to the cosmos and everything and everyone in it upon which and whom i impinge, and which and whom impinge on me--for so far as i am able to act.

I consider theism as childish fantasy and a cop-out--the ultimate evasion of responsibility, the complete opposite of a moral stand. It is not out of the question that i might one day have "a reason to believe," but saving the cowardice of senescence, and facing death, i cannot now imagine it.

I'm rather severely disappointed in ye Miss Osso . . . i'll be needin' a dozen Pater Nosters, a dozen Ave Marias and a sincere act of contrition . . . and i don't belayve ye'll be needin' to go to the Catholic Youth dance this weekend, nayther . . .

While I understand your perspective here Setanta I need to just make a few comments if I may. Maybe you are right, it is quite possible that religion is not much more than a made up fairy tale to relieve the anxiety that being alone inspires. Some people need that though. Everyone in this world is so different. I know a lot of people see the religious people as being weak in many aspects, unable to cope. I don't believe all who are religious are this way or remain this way though. I know I was. I don't mind admitting that. There was a time in my life that I didn't believe in myself enough to have even wanted to try to get out of or change my circumstances.

I needed to believe that someone else believed in me. Saw hope in me. Because in my own eyes I was a worthless piece of crap and I didn't have the slightest clue how to even begin to change that perspective. In my world no one could be trusted. No one. I had been failed so many times by everyone that came into my life that I just finally gave up. I needed something that wasn't going to fail me. Jesus was the anchor in my life. He was the one who loved ME. Who I am on the inside. He was the one who saw beyond all the outer layers that had been added on to me because of the things I went through, and saw something beautiful. Something to be treasured, not abused.

So yeah, maybe it was all a fantasy, and maybe living that fantasy makes me a weak person in some peoples eyes. And you know what? That's ok. But it was real to me. It was what I needed. It taught me how to believe in myself. The problem I've seen with religion is when it takes over a persons ability to think for themselves. To make decisions for themselves. To, as you said, take responsibility. There are so many idea's and concepts of what "God" is. How to live a "righteous" life, how to be a good "christian". But it's all a worthless pile of crap if people don't really live what they say they believe.

It is so easy to spout off and tell people how they should live their lives. It is so easy to sit back and be critical of others because they don't live up to your standards. But it is so hard sometimes to take a look in the mirror and see if you are really living up to the standards you set for others. That is the greatest fallacy that I see within religion. To think that you have the right to tell someone else how they ought to live when you can't even live the way you are telling them to yourself.

I like Setanta's last post very much. Hephzibah's response is very good too. Speaking from an unalterable atheist's stance, I must concur and then go on to work this AM.

I do not assert that religious people are all necessarily weak, Miss Eppie. Some of them see themselves as thundering Patriarchs, lording it over their communities. I simply referred there to the likely origin of such superstitions among ignorant and illiterate people. Before anyone jumps on that, an intelligent and capable person can still be ignorant (unknowing) and illiterate (unlettered). Francisco Pizzaro was illiterate, a bastard, and in Spain, was the swineherd in his father's family. He ran away, and joined Cordoba fighting in the Wars of the Reformation. Later, he conquered Peru, and a whole passel of his half-brothers decided bastardy was no bar to setting up a little kingdom of one's own, from which his brothers ought naturally to profit.

My reference to fear and anxiety is referential to the subject matter--those who are desperate to believe.

Edit:

I'm sorry. I've been thinking about this off and on through-out the day. I didn't mean to make it sound like you were asserting that. This thread has helped me to see a little deeper into why I have believed like I do. What you said triggered something in me and that is what I responded out of. It wasn't you, or even me disagreeing with what you were saying, but I guess just me recognizing on a little different level how I got where I am today. What my personal driving force was. I know it's not like this for everyone. I know that I have been a rampaging christain at times, bound and determined to save the world. I feel bad sometimes because I know that I am really hard on christians through what I say a lot and once in a while I will sit back and wonder, am I as hard on them as I think they are on everyone else? I'm sure I am, and for that I am sorry.

I think sometimes that I have stepped on a lot of toes here. Maybe even kicked a few people in the teeth at times. I know I've pushed the boundaries a lot. I know that there have been times I've been talking to people and I have said things that I wished 100 times over I could take back because they were nothing more than angry words. I am sorry for those kinds of actions. Don't be mistaken. I'm not apologizing for who I am, but I am apologizing for some of my actions because I know that I have been wrong about a lot of things lately. Anyway, that's pretty much wraps it up for me. Thanks for letting me voice myself here.