I'm a Believer

I believe a lot of things that your average atheist would scoff themselves to death on. For instance, I believe that an omnicient and omnipotent and immortal God fathered a mortal son with the ability to and for the purpose of living blamelessly and suffering on behalf of everybody else who ever lived, so that justice would be satisfied and imperfect people could learn from their mistakes, rather than be damned by them. I believe it quite literally, and am willing to stand witness before the law of all that I have experienced to that effect. I believe that both God and His son, early in the 19th Century, appeared in rural New York to a teenage boy, and most of the theological kerfuffle that ensued. I believe in the immortality of the soul, life after death, life before birth, and a myriad of other cosmic doctrines.

So when popular television portrays a believer, I'm always on the edge of my seat waiting for them to make this nearly universal mistake: Some wealthy producer somewhere keeps insisting that anybody who believes something will therefore believe anything. It's only logical, right? I mean, If you believe in magical seer stones, then you'll believe in vampires, and if you believe in ghosts, you must also believe in UFOs. I mean, just because it's my truth, doesn't mean it has to be your truth: if you believe it, then it's true for you!

No.

No, no, no.

Nowhere in any kind of philosophy outside of some pretty inclusive speculative fiction has wholesale belief been the equivalent of reality. All TRUTH fits. It makes sense, and lives harmoniously in a remarkable amount of order for a universe supposedly ruled by entropy (have we disproved that yet?).

I've met wholesale believers. The hippies. I've met enthusiastic believers who only draw the line at anything that's been turned into a Disney cartoon or pornography. I've met empiricists who still don't believe in Hawaii, and atheists who worship Chance and zealously spread the word of their scientist-priests. I've met skeptics who occasionally read their horoscopes just for fun.

I don't believe in near-death experiences. I have never seen them result in anything more positive than book sales (as delightful as that is). Truthfully, I'm a little put off by the cliche. I also don't believe in vampires, winged angels, haunted houses, mutant abilities, little grey men, or full-ride fellowships. I do believe in dinosaurs and some (probably metaphorical) version of evolution.

To a universal believer, or universal empiricist, the line must seem arbitrary, but they must understand something about me. While my definition of "possible" is aeons broader than most people's, my universe is finite. If a thing has no place in God's plan (which admittedly, we don't always understand), then it has no place in God's creation. He even said so.

What I find bothersome is the assumption that believing people are always totally credulous. Many of us are simply rational empiricists with a broader range of experiences than others. When I hear an account of a near-death experience that aligns with my experience of the purpose of personal revelation (the story itself and its mode of communication) and it is accompanied by my own spiritual witness, then I will believe. In the meantime, no, I will not buy your book about that time you were medically declared dead and went into the warm light with all of your buried relatives welcoming you, and wondering why they hadn't been baptized yet. Not a brass farthing.