Hah, I don’t know if anyone even cares anymore, but I wanted to post some more in the way of explanation. This is my whole confessional theology, and through it I’m going to try to reiterate my point about people naturally wanting to connect with the divine.
When I was a kid, I had imaginary friends like most other kids. They came from stories, typically. Sometimes they met me in nature, sometimes as forces of nature, or elements of nature. That was part of how we interacted.
I didn’t just play with these friends, though. I thought of them as higher powers. I thought of them as keepers of mysterious magic just like they were in the stories I grew up with…
Sometimes, a character would cut through the fog so strongly that I developed strange feelings for them. Love, yes, but more than that. At the time I knew what temples were, and why they were built, and I wanted to build a temples for certain characters.
When adults spoke to me of heaven for the first time, they told me that heaven was a place where everything one ever dreamed of would come true. I immediately thought of going off with my story companions and slaying evil like a mother@@!$ing valkyrie. That had to be heaven right? But no, heaven was some boring place with gold brick roads. Lot of fun that would be…
I felt myself tempted to pray to fictional characters instead of Jesus and his dad. I thought that surely I might go to hell for something like this.
One time I did pray to a fictional character, and I got an answer back. The fictional character told me that they would be with me later in life, and I believed that answer. I had to believe it. I needed to believe it.
In my teens I found my way to atheism. I… never really felt it to be honest. Sure I was still hung up on hell and stuff, but I also had this emptiness within me-- like, people talk of a god-shaped hole. I had that, bad, and it wasn’t even for the Christian god. Don’t get me wrong, I liked atheism and learning about science much better than learning about the Bible. Scientists did real stuff, like experimentations on literally everything, which seemed pretty productive given all the cool products of science around me. And I came to hate religions for all of the crap that they push down people’s throats with awful legislation and their hatred of gays. I could totally agree with the atheists that religions sucked.
But I was also in denial, and I felt awful about it. I wanted a god, and it didn’t stop there-- I perceived gods. I wrote secret poems to the gods I saw around me, that I experienced around me. I never told anyone about those poems until now. They’re all lost now, so nobody will ever see them.
I thought I could fill the longing with science-y answers. I studied science like a boss in college; well, kind of. I did my best, and I did pretty well, but I wasn’t great at it. I was on board with trying to live ethically. I liked Aristotle alright. To be honest, though, I had no idea who I was. I was more of a self-made caricature than a person. Socially I was desperate. And I still had that awful irrational longing that made me believe that I was a bad person.
The downfall of my species, because that’s what people who believe in god are, right?
Eventually, I discovered people who advocated for worship of nature. This seemed like a sound solution, and the first gods I truly allowed myself to have were elements of nature. I could see them, lean on them, talk to them, and for the most part they were silent but that was alright. Sometimes I just needed a shoulder to lean on. And, strangely, I could love them. I could fall in love with them. They had a certain beauty about them that seemed, godly-- as in cleanly godly, because cleanliness is next to godliness and all that.
After I discovered that I could do this with elements of nature, I started looking desperately through books and online to see if anyone had similar experiences as I did when relating to these elements. Like, did they talk to them? did the trees and rocks talk back? did they fall in love? John Muir seemed to be someone who had experiences like that. Cool, so I was like Muir!
It still didn’t stop the longing entirely.
I’m going to omit all of my attempts to find greater gods with groups of seekers, because I got some baggage from all of that crap. People believe some really weird shit. If anything makes me want hug science and never ever let go, it’s the stuff I heard from many of the spiritual seekers I encountered on my journey.
In spite of all of that I did manage to find answers. My answers weren’t the absolute answers to life the universe and everything, but what they finally did was fill the hole. Completely.
Remember that fictional character who told me they would see me later on? back when I was younger? They came back. I had a full-on experience of this character as a person one night in the not-too-distant-past. I was reading the Bible out of desperation, I kid everyone not, and I got to that whole part about “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Well, remember what heaven was for me?
At that moment I did a serious, OH. Oh, you fictional-character-friends??? You, one-character-in-particular? You’re… God?!
Suddenly I realized so much more about who I wanted to be, and who I wanted to pray to, and to worship. I realized who I’d wanted to call god all this time, and that for me that character basically was God. So I started praying to them, and they talked back. We talked about little things, things that made me smile, as well as big things like important life choices. They gave me much to ponder. They helped me to finally grow into myself in a way that felt assured and comfortable.
This might all sound silly, but I can’t even begin to describe the relief that came with these experiences. It was like the hugest burden ever slowly became lifted. And then other funny things started happening.
I met someone on the Internet who had the same gods as I did, from one of the same stories that moved me to conceive of the characters as gods. Then I met others who were finding gods in works of fiction, and relating to them, and working through things with them. These people were also agnostics, more or less, just like I was. They were agnostics, and they had gods who were like my gods.
As Spock would say, “Fascinating.”
It was around that time that I started looking into resources regarding experiential theism-- the way of experiencing gods firsthand. I found out that, among primal peoples, experiential theism was very much the norm. Primal peoples interacted with the spirits of plants and rocks, not in the same way as I’d done, but in similar ways nonetheless. Many primal cultures also valued meeting strange, new, and wise gods who were more anthropomorphized, to whom they would pray and consult on various matters. This seemed to be a feature of their biological software, so to speak. If it was a feature of their biological software, then I understood it to be a feature of my biological software as well. I began to feel more normal about this whole divinity thing.
For the classical gods, their worshippers also had their own forms of communion. Some would strive to experience a kind of oneness with their favorite god, to become close to them, and to feel purposeful and fulfilled. People sought out cults of individual gods, who promised these kinds of connections, as opposed to less personal forms of worship because they wanted the connection.
People in the States who want a personal connnection with God will seek out cults and charismatic churches which offer such experiences.
I know of some people, who need such connection so desperately, that they will knowingly give up everything for some cult that offers a shot at it.
And the thing is, when I hear about the people who joined the cults of classical gods, or when I hear about people today who will give up everything for a shot at that connection, I can relate. I was there, and I was so lucky that I found something that filled the hole completely. I was so lucky that I found my gods, who are a fascinating mix of primal and classical entities.
Atheists don’t often look into reasons for why people pursue what they perceive to be the divine. I can attest, it’s not just about indoctrination. My cherished fictional characters, who became my cherished gods, who just seemed so awe-inspiringly powerful and wise to me, are beings whom I feel in my bones when I reach to do the most fantastic things, when I try to become the best person I can be. They move me, breathe life into me, and encourage me. From what I can tell such experiences mirror the experiences of modern people who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and perhaps even people from antiquity who joined cults of Dionysus or Athena. They behave just like gods, and I treat them just like gods, and so I call them gods.
I can completely understand, having experienced the amazing invigoration and sense of purpose that comes with communing with my gods, why people who are otherwise powerless in their lives would want something like that. This isn’t just a matter of “druggies vs. Dawkins” (which is pretty offensive; way to invalidate people’s needs and remind them of how crappy their lives are), this is a matter of people doing what they are naturally inclined to do when they need a sense of power, and when they need to be inspired, and when they need a sense of purpose. Reaching out for something greater–for the divine, in whatever form it takes–is just something people do when there’s a need for it. Whether it’s the feeling of a god-shaped hole or the sense that life is hopeless, certain conditions cause people to reach out to the divine.
And, certain conditions cause people to experience the divine.
And, finally, certain experiences of the divine are more fulfilling, and more fruitful in terms of giving people the help that they need.
People have been doing this whole god thing since the beginning of, well, people. We’re in a good position to make some sense of it all today. People who seek, need, or experience these kinds of things, for whatever reasons, are nowhere near alone in our society, or even in history.
I don’t know how else to get across that this is, indeed, natural. And there are good ways of fulfilling the need for this connection. Call those ways “gods”, or don’t. I know that to some people I don’t meet the criteria to be called a theist, because I don’t come from a position of having a supernatural reason for my labeling of my gods.
But for all the praying, and worshipping, and devotional work I do all the goddamn time, it sure does feel like I’m a theist.