Not unlike everyone else I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by complexity. Something which, I think, is part of the human need to adapt to things we don’t understand with a degree of ‘creativity’, something that I find myself doing quite a lot. Probably too often.

Feeling your way through life is ultimately far more emotionally rewarding, but at the same time suffers sometimes from a lack of order on a larger scale and indeed control. Freewheeling opportunism has to be one of the best approaches to life and it’s disciples, the freewheeling opportunists, live life in a constant state of winging it. Hopping from one thing to the next, styling it out as they go. Don’t get me wrong, this has it’s place in life, but so does a bit of strategic decision making. Fundamentally, to believe that life is pre-rolled, is fated at a minute by minute level would create an inconceivable amount of pre-emptive planning which ultimately would seem pointless since it would be difficult to learn from something that was already set out from start to finish. So, I believe (wait for it), that part of our purpose in life is to make decisions.

They are ultimately what we have a brain for, whether we decide to dedicate our lives to eating chocolate or serving god, whatever your flavour may be. So, making a decision gives us the ability to affect change upon the world, whether on a small level like our own lives ’shall I get out of bed now or in 5 mins’ or on a grander scale ’shall I martyr myself and become a human bomb’. Ultimately our decisions define us, and the world around us. Ok, I can hear myself telling myself this is all a bit obvious so I’ll get to the point.

To make life easier, we automate things. Our alarm clocks, the time we leave for work, the amount of sugar we put in our coffee, the way we say hello, the way we smile, the brand of clothes we wear, the people we hang out with, the conversations we have. All of this is designed to reduce the complexity of life, make things easier. We are in the habit of reducing things down to the simplest level.

But what if this very tactic gets misused? What if our in-built desire to simplify things sometimes causes us to draw the wrong conclusions and becomes automatic, never to be consciously questioned again. I do it, everyone does it. It’s part of the way we focus on what’s important and what’s not, but unfortunately that very decision making process itself falls pray to the same ill-fate. We end up making emotional decisions about things and feel challenged when those decisions, which we can no longer remember the reasoning behind, are questioned.

I think this is the problem that we face when we ask most people about their religious beliefs why it is that they believe. The question is so big, so complex, that people fall back on an emotional response. I believe because I do. Ultimately, I don’t think asking someone whether they believe in god or not is the right question. Ultimately, there is no real evidence for the existence of god, but that’s not the point. The point is whether or not someone believes there is or not. Therefore in understanding the chasm between atheism and theism, I believe we need to get to the bottom of how people come to believe in anything. How do they form an opinion on whether something is true or not and what is their threshold for pushing that belief into the ‘automatic category’. I have sufficient evidence for me to believe this is true I’m going to accept this is the case now and move on. Similarly, it seems to make sense to become a little more conscious in oneself about when we are making a conscious decision based on the situation or just falling back on the text book answer. Which brings me back to my earlier point which is that if all we were supposed to do was to do what was expected everytime then life would no longer have any inherent meaning.

So maybe the right question is what does it take for you to believe in something? Answers on a postcard.

Though it often makes things easier, I can’t help feeling that sometimes it’s just plain lazy to just nod and agree despite not having a foggy what someone is on about. You know what i’m talking about, you know when someone’s doing it… they nod, not wanting to admit they don’t know what you’re talking about and you don’t know whether or not to challenge them on it or just carry on regardless. Some people do it more than others. I find myself doing it either when I haven’t heard someone or when we’re talking about something that I don’t know much about and find myself not wanting to seem ignorant.

So what’s this got to do with anything? Well, I think it’s part of our nature. It’s part of our nature to want to fill in the gaps

This article was written by: Rich

I'm the author of miune.com. Please get in touch if you are interested in a photobooth or some photography work.

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