Forbidden Fruit

When I am asked if I believe in God, I feel defensive. I feel as if I have been cornered and there is no escape. I feel that if I answer no I am not being truthful, and if I answer yes the person to whom I am answering will assume something about me that is not true. It is a quandary with which I have struggled most of my life. I have resolved it by answering no and accepting the stigma of being an atheist which technically I probably am, though in fact I am not.
I’ll try to explain. I have a relationship with God even though I see no evidence that there is a God. This relationship is partly one I have come to recognize and partly a decision I have made. There is deep within me a realization that I am not alone. There is me and there is not me. This not me is an all-encompassing not me, but not in a kind of inside-outside relationship. It is more an ego-alter-ego relationship extended to what is outside of me and way beyond. In answering the resulting question of where did this extended alter-ego come from, I am forced to make a decision. Is it real or is it imagined?
Since there is no sensory evidence that there is an actual not-me extended alter-ego, I must logically assume this relationship is imaginary. But I can also assume it is not imaginary if I am willing to be illogical (irrational, intuitive), since relationships are not real in any rational sense. They just are. They are imaginary. Rationally, they do not exist. Irrationally (emotionally), they are at least as real as any sensory object. If I try to justify an emotion (a relationship), it is tainted by the very questioning of it. That is what belief does to God. It subjects Him to suspicion.
To believe is to subject that in which you believe to doubt. By its very definition, belief is an expression of doubt. You can believe things about God, but to express belief in God is to deny the relationship which is a kind of knowing God. Be warned that this is a language thing. To claim to know God is beyond belief. It simply is not possible by the very definition of God. My definition of God is “that which cannot be controlled.” Your definition may be quite different, but surely it would place God beyond our limited knowledge.
Thus we introduce betrayal, portrayed quite well I think in the person of Judas. I see Judas a little differently from most. I see him as Jesus’ most dedicated follower. He was so dedicated, in fact, that his fervor betrayed the very object of his devotion. He believed so deeply that Jesus was the messiah, that he sought to put Jesus in a position that would force him to reveal himself to the world as Judas knew him to be. Intending to fulfill prophecy and deeply dedicated to his master, he betrayed him. The result, of course, is that, though what cannot be controlled now (gods) may be controlled in the future, “That Which Cannot Be Controlled,” by Its very nature, cannot be controlled.
By demanding others believe (to express doubt about) what should be a relationship is to introduce doubt about the relationship, thus forcing an irrational (intuitive) apprehension into the rational (dehumanized) realm. A need to be justified forces us to seek, even to demand, verification. We do this by turning to the rational world, the world of reason, the world of sensory experience, and we turn it into our need to prove what we only believe to be true. It can’t be done.
Before we believed, we tried to express our relationship with what we could not control through the use of mythology, assuming others might share these insights, these otherwise inexpressive intuitions. We portrayed feelings through stories, stories that were not necessarily true but had truth in them. In the rational (dehumanized) world, those stories were meaningless unless understood literally. As a consequence of demanding that mythology be literally true, the relationship was lost; a betrayal bred by belief. We have as a result lost the mythology along with the relationship it was meant to inspire.
Having moved from a relationship to a belief, we tend to confuse what we believe about God (which we would naturally feel compelled to deny if such beliefs could not be justified) with our previous relationship with God. The beliefs about God become inviolate, above a need for justification and, being beyond question, often quite bizarre.
Another consequence of our need to validate our feelings through belief and the impossibility of accomplishing that purpose is the attempt to justify our beliefs through sheer numbers. There is a tendency to believe that the more people who share our belief the more likely it is that our belief is justified. And so, when we cannot thoughtfully and rationally justify what we believe, we make things up. Whereas in the past philosophers and theologians thought deeply about such questions and seriously sought to answer difficult questions, most of us find it easier and more productive to invent an answer, assuming that it will be accepted on faith. Once this hurdle is passed, when others actually do accept our fictional rationale, that fiction becomes fact, and then feelings (emotions, intuitions), rather than being expressed, are subjected to manipulation.
An unfortunate consequence of the need to validate our belief through quantity rather than quality is coercion. This coercion can take the form of physical threat, social threat, financial threat, emotional threat (the withdrawal of affection and companionship) or the threat of Hell and damnation. An offshoot of coercion is the consequence of any deviation from the established norms: death, torture, excommunication, shunning.
If we are to have an honest relationship with God, it would seem to me that we need to realize that this relationship is not a belief. A relationship is not subject to doubt. It simply is or is not; I have a relationship or I do not have a relationship. It also seems important to separate what we believe about God as a result of our relationship (or lack of relationship) with Him from the relationship or lack of relationship itself. We can discuss our relationship with God or the lack of such a relationship, but we should not be expected to prove it or justify it. What we believe about God, on the other hand, we should be expected to justify.
I would also like to put in a good word for mythology. When properly used, mythology is a powerful communication tool and should be encouraged. It should, however, be recognized as an art form utilized to expose some of our deepest insights to those sensitive to these insights, not as a substitute for reason or sensory input. Not everyone should be expected to understand the implications of a mythological adventure in the same way. By discussing these differences we have the opportunity to become more aware of who and what we are, our relationships with one another, and our subjective evaluation of what surrounds us.