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[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

96. I believe belief or lack thereof are both choices.

And change throughout our lifetimes, depending upon our experiences. I think the way the human brain is structured, we naturally seek patterns, feel that there should be 'meaning', there should be 'reason' for everything. And I think this is how both science and faith arose.

Our ancient ancestors, who hadn't yet conceived of the scientific process, still felt that there had to be connections between things, reasons for things that happened. But they didn't have the tools to understand how weather patterns are created through the interaction of sunlight transforming into heat and differential actions of gases and liquids, so they decided there must be 'someone' or 'something' who had the power to create the storms. Lightning did damage, so it must be a 'weapon' of this superbeing, and a sign of his displeasure (since men were generally the 'warriors'.)

But there were all sorts of things that needed explaining, so entire groups of 'Gods' arose, each with different powers, different personalities, different goals. And because they saw Gods as being like themselves, they decided that they couldn't pay attention to everything at once, and so all sorts of 'minor' supernatural creatures arose, who had less power than the Gods, and were tied to smaller things. And, of course, if they were like us, then maybe we could ask them to use their powers to help us, to hurt our enemies, or at least not to hurt us.

But some people noticed that sometimes these 'prayers' seemed to be answered and sometimes they weren't. While some were content to simply have 'faith' and acribe it merely to the whims of the Gods, or their 'ineffable nature', others decided there must be something that could make prayers more likely to be answered. And experimentation was born, as they began to seek to find out how to get prayers more likely to be answered.

And some of those people eventually realized that the things they'd prayed for happened whether or not they prayed, as long as they did the other things they'd been doing at the same time. And realized that just maybe, there wasn't actually a God involved in what they were doing. That if they did A, B would follow, without any prayers at all. That maybe, man could start simply figuring out explanations for things happening that didn't require creating a God, or a demon, or elves, or nymphs, or whatever.

And that's where I feel the divide comes down.

Some people are still willing to simply ascribe things they don't have an explanation for to a supernatural being or beings. Others say, while we can find explanations, time and again, for things that happen that don't require and supernatural being, we have never yet actually found anything that DOES actually require a supernatural being to happen. As long as we keep studying, and figuring out more and more about ourselves and our environment, there's always an explanation to be found that doesn't require anything 'more'. So why should we even believe in Gods? We first imagined them to exist to explain things we didn't understand, but with each thing we find a way to explain that doesn't require a God, what is there left for a God to actually do? They aren't using lighting as weapons, creating forest fires, they don't cause tides, earthquakes, the movements of the stars, day and night, etc, etc, etc.

So people who see that if we study things we don't understand, we eventually learn to understand them, there is no real attraction in simply saying 'There must be a God, to explain things I don't understand, to give 'meaning' or 'reason' to my life.'

And, BTW, you can choose to be offended at anything anyone says. But it's up to the individual speaking to decide if they're actually trying to be insulting. When I say I consider any belief in the supernatural to be delusional, I have absolutely no intent to be 'insulting', I'm simply stating what I see as honestly as I see it. I'm not insulting drugged up patients when I tell them they're delusional. I'm not insulting dementia patients when I tell them they're having delusions. And I'm not even insulting Tea Partiers when I tell them their belief in 'supply side economics' as being beneficial to everyone is delusional. I'm simply stating what I see. Anyone who wants to can choose whether or not they want to be insulted, I can't control that.