1/29/24 - 968 words - 4.3 minutes reading time 

Philip K. Dick once said , ” Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

As I mentioned in an earlier post, everybody believes in something. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that everybody puts their faith in something. Following the distinction between belief and faith noted in the previous post, the idea of belief seems to me to be more of an intellectual choice. Certainly, faith can and should be at least partly informed by an intellectual choice. But there are many who put their faith in ignorance rather than intellect. They seem to think if they ignore something it will somehow cease to exist or at least not affect them. We are called upon to place faith in a lot of things, things that we don’t understand but nevertheless can have a significant impact on our lives. We place faith in the people who grow and process our foods. We have faith that they are producing a product that improves our health and does no harm to us. When we invest, we have faith in the company we are putting money into or in the broker who is advising us. We place our faith in automobile manufacturers and bridge engineers and the banks and the government and in salespeople and in the people who build and fly airplanes and doctors and lawyers. When we choose to put our faith in individuals and entities who are not honest or competent, we expose ourselves to the potential for a lot of suffering.  Some of the suffering caused by ill-placed faith could probably have been avoided with a little less blind faith and a little more due diligence. While this dynamic pertains to many things in life, my focus is on the afterlife. Mistakes made in our material life can be devastating for decades. But mistakes made in our spiritual life can be devastating for an eternity. And if you don’t believe in an afterlife, you should ask yourself what level of due diligence you’ve done on that topic. Is your faith that there is no afterlife based on things that you’ve read, things that you’ve been told or on a blissful ignorance that has led to a false hope?

This is where a belief system comes into play. A belief system is like a spiritual stockbroker. It will advise you on how to grow your spiritual wealth in both the short term and long term. Like your financial adviser, a good belief system should be able to give you in-depth details on market conditions, investment strategies and how current events are shaping future opportunities. Unlike your stockbrokers advise, your spiritual belief system should not come with disclaimers such as “past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results”.

Belief systems provide more value than preparing the soul for the ultimate out of body experience, whatever the belief system says that will be. Belief systems can also become the basis for important cultural, social, and governmental standards of behavior. The Judeo/Christian moral standards have been the core value system upon which the Western World was built. And not just the morals and ethics of the people but also the structure and organization of democratic governments for millennia.

The concepts of right and wrong as well as good and evil are taken directly from the Judeo/Christian belief systems as well. The current justice systems of most western countries were founded on these concepts as provided by the belief system.

As a side note, the Jews and Christians have always believed that the laws dealing with good and evil behavior were handed down from God. Since atheists believe there is no God, any authority for substantiating laws or practices that differentiate between good and evil or right and wrong have no authority backing the concepts. This is not to say, by any means, that atheists have no moral standards. I know atheists who are more morally upright than some who claim to be religious adherents. But, without an ultimate authority discerning what is right and wrong the standard becomes arbitrary, and everyone is entitled to their own version. Some may argue that good and evil are determined by what the predominate society or culture chooses as their standard. Looking back on the cultures and societies that have risen and fallen throughout history and their issues of morality such as human sacrifice, slavery, misogyny, witch burning and a host of other moral standards we now find repulsive, it is difficult for me to place my faith in the ability of mankind to make moral decisions. There are some in our current culture who can’t determine what is the difference between males and females. Not only are they going against spiritual, religious, and philosophical realities but against science and nature as well. My guess is that the majority of us in our culture don’t share this perspective, Nevertheless, we are seeing rules imposed on us that not only give those with that viewpoint the right to think what they wish regardless of its veracity (a position with which I strongly agree), but also force those of us with opposing viewpoints to adopt those viewpoints and teach those viewpoints to our children without an equal respect to any opposing views (a position with which I strongly disagree).

As belief systems inform us on issues of morality, they consequently provide us with the foundation of our world views. The result is that everything we observe and to which we react is influenced by our world view, which in turn, has been largely formed by our belief system.

As I have said before and expect to say again, everybody believes in something. Even if you say you don’t believe in anything, belief in nothing is still a belief system.