Oct 10, 2012

What we want to believe doesn't always matter


Today, Justin Brierley posted a link to a website from Jeff Cook, a man who considers Blaise Pascal to be a wise man.   The linked blog entry asks the question “Could believing in God harm your soul?” Cook’s claim was that the most important thing to Jesus is that we WANT to believe.

Pascal’s Wager has always seemed asinine to me, because it only works for those who don’t care what the truth is.  It’s the same thing with “wanting to believe.” The idea here is that if you only WANT to believe badly enough, you will. 

It’s a twist on the blame-the-praying-person concept, which says “If you don’t believe you’ll receive a revelation, you won’t get one. “ In this case, if you don’t WANT to get a revelation, you won’t get one.   Here’s the problem in the form of a question: since when has what we WANTed to believe ever made that thing real?

It isn’t that we don’t TRY to believe what we want. Changing our minds on an issue involves a certain amount of internal strife as the old ideas go to war with new ones.  For that reason, we try to stick with the information that confirms what we already believe. We will filter out conflicting information and receive confirmation with open arms.  That isn’t the same, however, as actually believing what you want to believe.

I know from experience that WANTing to believe doesn’t always matter, at least not if you care about the facts.  I was a believer, and now I’m not.  I had invested a lot and sacrificed a lot for my faith, and I certainly didn’t want to believe the claims of my religion were untrue.  I didn’t want to lose most of my friends and part of my family;  I also didn’t want to have to admit to myself that I had been so wrong.  

To people of faith, I was worse than unsaved.  And even if I had met any atheists, they would have  thought I was an idiot for believing so fervently in the first place.  It was years before I found anyone who could relate to my experiences.

Why go through all of that?  Because the facts were clearly against what I wanted to believe, and it bothered my conscience more to embrace a lie than it did to leave my faith.

I’m not saying there are no sincere believers. I know better, because I was one.  I’m not saying that we don’t sometimes delude ourselves.  I’m just saying that what we WANT to believe doesn’t always matter, especially if we care about the facts. 

Day 23: I prayed the usual prayer today. No signs, signals, or revelations so far.