Fate

[Thorne]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Faith can be a bad thing, when you let it control your life. Faith says, "This is how things are, and the gods are the cause." Reason says, "This is how things are, so let's figure out why."

We get by, most of the time, by a combination of concensus (if a reasonable number of people seem to agree with me, it's not just in my head) and pragmatism (if my ideas don't put me dangerously at odds with the world, they can't be that irrational).

This is another danger of faith. How many religions are there in the world? How many different belief systems? They generally all have a "reasonable number of people" who agree with those belief systems. Yet obviously, they can't all be right! So which faith is the 'One True Faith'?

In Robert Anton Wilson's immortal words, only the madman is absolutely sure.

If there's one thing I know it's that we cannot be absolutely sure of anything.

But... have you ever been stunned by something so vast and so beautiful that you could only stare in awe? That is worship, and it's not something you put on in order to beg for helpful miracles: it's something you can't help but feel.

Oh, yes, I've felt awe. Images from the Hubble, Armstrong on the Moon, the births of my children. All were awe inspiring, yet I never once felt any sense of a supernatural presence, or a feeling of worship.

I was right where you are once, apart from a nagging feeling that there ought to be more to it than that.

I can understand that feeling. I've felt it myself. No one wants to believe that this is all there is to their life. But making up some comfortable bedtime story, or buying into someone else's story, doesn't change the reality around you. It only makes you feel better, at best. For the worst, one need only look around at the horrors being inflicted on people around the world in the name of one religion or another.

To paraphrase: all our glasses are empty, your empty glass just has more in it than mine.

No, I see it more like your glass having one drop of god-juice left in it, while mine has all been discarded.

I can and I do. I don't worship any of the others because my Lady is the one who appealed to me when I was studying the subject: so I reached out and found Her (or created Her in my head, if you wish). None of them appeal to you, so you've neither made the effort to find them, nor been seized by one against your will (as happens to some). That's fine: I'm glad it works for you. I have no intention of spoiling it by preaching how much happier you would be with a religion, because, apart from anything else, you might well not be. The mahamantra of eclectic Paganism is "Whatever works," and that includes atheism.

I'm glad to see that you have at least thought about your faith, why you follow your Goddess. For this I give you credit. You are far better off than those who follow their faith simply because it's all they know, the faith they were born into, the beliefs they have had drummed into their minds.

I, too, struggled for a long time with my lack of faith. While I had no interest in the social activities of a formal religion, I somehow still felt it was wrong of me to just toss everything aside. But then I started to really learn about what I had been taught, and I saw how unconvincing and ultimately unsatisfying it all was. And I finally realized that there was nothing for me to believe in, nothing for me to fear, no reason for me to feel empty. There are no gods. We are here by virtue of a series of cosmic accidents. And we help each other along not because some imaginary being tells us to, but because it's the right thing to do. This understanding was liberating.