Let us end belief

Our feelings can be impossible to identify, that is, label precisely or even accurately. They are admixtures of chemicals, created by the infinite shades and varieties of human experience, that cannot be given an infinity of names. Though we give them simple, inaccurate names such as love, pride, wistfulness, hatred (which, for example, we can easily see is built from hurt). These sensations are the body: They are what they are, what we are. Yet we can’t grasp them, we simplify them, dumb them down, misread them. If, then, we can’t know what we are, how can we know what we believe, or what “to believe” means? How can we claim to actually know what inscrutably emotionally laden ideas we believe?

Differentiate believing from accepting. I may say that I accept the “humanly proven” (that is, the best that science can do) ideas about nature. I can accept that the tectonic plates are moving, that Mars has water. Though if science some day has greater evidence that the universe is merely a locked door to something else, or that each quark is an entire universe, I’d accept that. Science accepts dispassionately rather than believes. When people claim to believe an unproven as knowledge, they are naming something impossible. A man “believes” that blacks are inferior and Jews are malevolent and conspiratorial. No, he doesn’t. What he does is feel some chemical complexity, attach some thought that he probably didn’t originate to it, feel some emotional relief or resolution, then proceed from there. If he could be induced to sit still and look inward blandly, he could be broken down, deconstructed. His belief would detach from the feeling and he would believe and know nothing about Jews, or brown people, or women.

There might be other psychological benefits. He could lose his belief that he is a suicidal person by realizing he is depressed, doesn’t love life, but likes it enough to stay in it. He could believe that his marriage is unsatisfactory, estranged, then realize the two are soulmates in love and immaturity. He, a narcissist, may believe he is perfect, then realize that’s only a needful feeling and see that he is only human. It would hurt, but also be quietly freeing. She may realize she doesn’t believe in a God as much as she would like to believe – and find her mind and eyes open to the universe in a new way.

My main point is that the idea of belief is inherently flawed, is not as strong as we’ve always thought, withers in the parsing of it, and may need to be discarded. I recall reading (and memorizing), decades ago, Nathaniel Branden’s definition of faith: “Faith is the commitment of one’s consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational proof.” Can anyone see any sense in the idea of “committing” one’s consciousness to the impossible or unknowable? What is the nature of this duct-taping or brute-forcing of allegiance?

I know a couple Jews who are obnoxious (I am Jewish by heritage). But I believe nothing about Jews, or any other population.