They say about 85% of the world has faith, and about 7% are atheist. That 8% is probably undecided–caught in the middle. This really makes me wonder about an objective reality. Could there ever be such a thing if that many people believe in the mystical? It seems to be that it is human consciousness that has interpreted our reality. Throughout time and space, this has been the case. It's our conscious interaction with nature that makes up our reality as human beings, and if that lens that we view reality through believes in God, then how could we ever separate that belief and the makeup of our world? There's something to be said about human beings having manifested the current world we live in. There’s a relationship between the observer and measured, and as much as science and mathematics tries to convince us that the bias of the observer is excluded from the results, I just don’t see how that can be completely true. There has to be some influence from the observer on the measured. We cannot take out the human element when trying to understand our reality. We cannot ignore the lens we see the world through. If there is something like a ‘collective consciousness’ or ‘mass psychosis’, then which one is it? Are the majority of us throughout time delusional? Or do we have to take out the beliefs of the majority throughout time and space? I don’t think we can do that. When we look at a man-made skyscraper, have we not come to the point where we are capable of building such things through the collaborative effort of mankind throughout time and space? And how could you overlook the influence of the mystical on the consciousness of mankind?
There’s roughly 4,500 different religions throughout the world today. 6.9 billion believes in something other than the objective and rational. A somewhat rational look at the ‘irrational’ has to be something like, did all these people throughout our earth and throughout history get it wrong? Or could it be that they are all a little right and a little wrong? Could it be that no one religion is completely wrong or right? And that we are interpreting something beyond our senses and that religion is the stories we tell ourselves about a God we cannot see or understand? Maybe these stories are not meant to be interpreted literally but more psychologically, metaphorically and philosophically? Doesn’t that seem way more likely than a few modern atheists having it right? We cannot contribute all the advancements of science, technologically and quality of life, to the purely rational. The math just doesn’t add up here. There has to be some understanding that this world is both mystical and rational. There are things we can probably objectively measure and something we cannot. As long as people believe, then the mystical is always there. And the fact that the overwhelming majority do believe in the mystical, that means it has to have a significant influence on everything. We cannot weed out the unknown just because we don’t know it. We cannot try to fit everything in our rational box. There will always be too much that we cannot fit in it.
It was astonishing to me to learn that 84% of us in today's world still have faith. It seems like that’s not how it is portrayed to us, does it not? I can only speak to the culture of the west, but there does seem to be some drive to disregard mystikal here. Maybe it’s easier to play the game of capitalism if we focus more on the material than the spiritual. It’s my belief that belief is the biggest influence on how someone sees reality. Our beliefs are something like our algorithms that help us process all the data we collect while being alive in our time and place. Belief is the biggest influence on the lens we see everything through. Every experience we have can influence our lens and depending on the experience, the influence can vary. Relationships, trauma, environment, culture, knowledge, etc etc etc, all contribute to the lens but how we see, learn, and grow from all of those experiences, has to do with our beliefs. It’s something like our core level programming.
-C.H.
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