A Reason To Fight

There are many reasons to have faith. There are many reasons to believe in the improvable. There are many reasons to devote oneself to religion. And many of those reasons are ridiculous.

Blind faith is a way to reject the obviously true (e.g. "I don't care that science has shown the earth to be billions of years old, I have faith that evolution is false and the earth is less than 5,000 years old). Following a holy text to the ends of the earth, even when taken horribly out of context, is a way to justify atrocious actions. And all religious experiences are an easy catch-all (due to their improvability).

But even with all the ignorance and stupidity, there is reason to follow what modern man has termed religion.

There's an amazing song by the band Air called "Biological" which gives credence to one of the many reasons I am a Christian. The basic premise of the song is a man declaring his "love" for another. Following a purely physicalist worldview, the best (read: only) reason he can come up with for his attraction is this:

Biological
I don't know why I feel that way with you
Biological
I need your DNA

You can find the rest of the lyrics here (and I definitely recommend checking the band out if you don't already know of them).

So, a man loves a woman. He can't live without her. His very breath depends on her existence. Why? His DNA necessitates his attraction to her. Take Darwinism to the extreme and you have the meaning of this song. A male has a biological need to propagate his line. A female has a biological desire to have offspring. And in some cases, the DNA of the two fits in such a way that the firing of synapses and physiological responses form a stronger bond than is common. This is what we call "love."

But wait, (you might say) I love my girlfriend...and it's way more than electricity running through a warm body! Well, there is where I would agree with you. And there is where the common physicalist has little else to say.

If you deny the supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual, then you deny the existence of love. Let's take this a step further. If you deny the existence of a creative God, then love is merely a physiological response and is, in all respects, nothing special. For the purely scientific and purely scientific-method-provable types out there, love is a means to and end (i.e. propagation).

Let's take it even further. If you believe in spirituality (but not religion), love is some vague force that binds individuals together for some unknown reason. No, you "spiritual but not religious" people out there cannot say that it is 1) to make us happy, or 2) to give us a reason to exist, or even 3) simply because. Why? Well, 1) has firm roots in eudaimonism which feeds directly into Christianity (or Judaism or Islamic culture if you are being picky); 2) is incomprehensible because a reason for existence requires forethought and planning (something that the "let's tap into the spiritual but never admit to God" crew cannot accept). If there is a reason we are on this celestial orb, there had to be someone (or something) behind said reason; and 3) (the "brute fact" approach) is as lazy and undefendible [made-up word of the day] as the right-wing Christians who say, "It just is! Ok?!?".

I happen to follow the Christian worldview. This worldview is not the modern day understanding of Christianity. If that confuses you, ask me, I'll explain it in depth. I also happen to want to believe that love is more than some chemicals in my brain. Following Occam's Razor, the easiest solution to my desire to find love to be something substantial, Christianity fits the bill. If a omnibenevolent being created this earth (and us with it), it is not far fetched to believe that this being wants us humans to feel what it feels. Since this being is (or so argues Christianity) omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, and all other ultimate-good traits, it can choose to create if it so wishes (by the way, I'm using "it" so as not to offend the feminists, race advocates, etc). If this being creates, the creatures it creates will not be as perfect as it is (argument being [simplified]: a god could not create a perfectly analoguous god). Being all good, all loving (etc), this being would obviously want to create said creatures with the ability to communicate, love, desire, (fill in this blank with any good thing...the list is almost endless) just like it does.

Now here comes the specifically Christian part. Since God is triune (you know, the trinity), there is communion and love be†ween the triune godhead. If God (sorry, I switched from "being" to "God," trust me, it will all make sense...hopefully) is perfect in every way, the love and communion between the three parts of the trinity is perfect. Since we (God's creation) are created as inferior beings (out of logical necessity), the best we can hope for is to strive to gain as close an analog to God's traits as possible. If this is the case, our feelings of love, gratitude, hopefulness, etc (once more, the list goes on and on) are directly related to a perfect example that we can only hope to live up to.

This fits in directly with Aristotle's idea of perfection. He argued that the only reason we humans have any conception of perfection in the first place is due to God's perfection. For example: if humans never had eyes (as in, ocular senses never exited), we would never wonder what it would be like to see. In the same sense, the only reason we strive for perfection is because we have an innate sense of perfection (due to the God that created us). In other words, if there is no such thing as a perfect being, how could we even conceive of perfection?

Wow, um, that was a lot more than I intended to say. So what's the bottom line? When I tell Megan that I love her, I want to believe that my words are not simply references to biological (and thusly meaningless (at least in a grand perspective)) imperatives. I want my words to convey what I actually mean: that I reflect the perfection of the God that created me, that God's love, when I say, "I love you." If I give up my faith, my beliefs, my love loses all meaning.

And that is one of the myriad reasons I follow a religion.