The need to believe?

[The Grand Nudger]

Basically, what have I believed or have been taught to believe?

I doubt I'd be interested in what you were taught to believe.  We both know that shit's bunk.

I'd say the abbreviated version would be ''God is love,'' and with that comes a sense of security.

If god is love, then what is love?  I've always felt that love....was love?

Maybe false security that I've manufactured, but security as I've come to know it. I think what ''suggests'' it is I have spent most of my life convincing myself of that idea. An idea that came from a devout family, and such. An idea that I started questioning fives years ago, when I dissected the Bible, and came away feeling that it's a book basically of rules and such to govern the masses, and the idea of a god orchestrating it all, was a man made fallacy.

Well, I wouldn't comment too much on most of that..but I would say that there doesn't seem to be much love in the bible.  More a tragedy than a romance, eh?

So, logically, I tell myself that what I believe has no basis in facts or evidence, but that faith doesn't require it. (another common mantra in religious circles) There are a lot of excuses made for faith - and I think why I left faith and eventually identified with atheism, is that I couldn't believe any longer in an all powerful god that needed me to defend him. So much of religion is built around your peers competing with you as to who knows god the best. Interestingly, if you visit a Christian forum, the fighting is crazy intense, more so than when atheists and Christians debate. Now that I've healed from my grandmother's death, I'm back to this place of questions, and why am I still carrying around a belief system that I don't really believe in, on a logical level. I think when my grandmother died, I was so overwhelmed by grief, that I did what came natural, and that was to seek something outside of myself to fix it. But, only time can really fix it, and honestly, it's only the unhealthy attachments to situations and people that bring us so much grief in the first place. I'm in a better place now to process this, and I don't want to need this, anymore. 

So...you've been receiving "love" then..from an external source?  Most of us need love from an external source (in a palpable sense, not at all like the euphimism of needing to believe). Thankfully, there's plenty to go around...but, what does that have to do with gods, again?

I think that's it actually - I feel like I could easily identify as an atheist again, but atheism isn't only an intellectual position. Just talking about it openly with you all has been immensely helpful - reading my words back causes me to remove the cognitive dissonance that exists when sorting out stuff like this. I think probably one of the most helpful things I've read from you guys is that you sometimes feel conflicted, and that okay, you deal with it - and you struggle in life and deal with it. There is no escape route, we just have to deal.

Sure, we all feel conflicted..I don't feel conflicted about gods, I feel conflicted about wrenches being intentional beings trying to fuck with me.  No more or less silly than a god, or that "god is love" - at the end of the day. I feel conflicted about the man I am and the man I want to be. I feel conflicted about decisions I've made, "from the heart" as it were..rather than the head. I feel conflicted about what I wish to be true, as opposed to what is.

I think that it would require a far more singular mind than the human one to live without internal conflict.