Deleted member 3373
And yet I find my gut instincts are oftentimes more accurate than my brain is. For example I may have just eaten a very small amount of pork blood. It's small enough to where I don't think it's going to do me any damage. But still my body reacts with a degree of fear because it inherently knows it is not good to consume blood. If I listened to an expert telling me to eat blood, well I might be in some trouble. Some knowledge is beyond reason.And it took several thousand years of philosophers to look beyond just accepting. The groundworks for the Renaissance and Enlightenment were laid even by Christian Monks in the 15th century, centuries before it actually happened. I think NOT just accepting what our gut feeling and socio-evolutionary instincts tell us is a huge achievement for us as a species. In my opinion the need for something spiritual is a coping mechanism for our conciousness. We are self aware of our mortality and unlike most animals (I don't want to open that can of worms rn) don't just think about death when it's about to happen. We are self aware of our existence, basic philosphy like Cogito Ergo Sum and this puts a huge stress on us mentally and I think religion and spirituality are man made remedies. Not actually transcendental beings existing but brain made figments to lull us in. And it works so we should accept them in a away but also be aware of the mechanism itself.
In accordance to what I said to Linkat already and your last sentence especially: the design of it all.
I'm just too aware that it IS all designed by humans. I wouldn't even know what God to pray to. Zeus? Odin? Allah? Ra? Some nature spirit from the Germanic Tribes that lived thousands of years before me where I live now? Who is correct? Who would I as a mere mortal be to decide that? The Romans and Greeks looked at the stars and saw a Lion and a Bull, the Indians, several hundred miles and years away saw the very same stars and saw something else. Some stars that make up important constellations in "our" zodiac system are not even recognised in others, so why should they influence my life over the other?
To me, those are all stories. The norse Edda, the Greek Odyssey, the Bible, the Quran. Stories about mythological heroes that show us a relatable characters to idolize and aspire to because stories are the best medium to convey morals and humans naturally gravitate towards characters because of our empathy and general social inclinations and I don't think I will ever be able to shake this view of the instrumental nature of spiritualism. I could suspend my disbelief enough for some escapism but never for serious conviction.
And that's why you are right with it being very personal. For some it just never happens.
And honestly a lot of this issue goes away if you accept a parennialist take. That is that all religions are trying to appeal to the same God and that there are just different understandings of what God is. For example those Pagan dieties you mentioned (for all the problems they caused) are not actually at odds with the concept of God at all. The Greeks reasoned monotheism long before Christianity. In fact Hinduism (possibly the only remaining large scale pagan religion) isn't at odds with monotheism either as they conceive of their gods as just parts of a single overarching essence. They also have the concept of the godhead which is surprisingly similar to the holy trinity. Once you highlight the similarities over the differences you really start to see that there is an appeal to a universal truth in all religions. When you reach that point the concept of God doesn't seem so well, for lack of a better term, scary. At that point you start to see there really isn't this God that is harshly judging you for every wrong decision you make. In fact it's the total opposite.