My Disease

When I was very young, I was taken to several specialists, both psychological and medical, to try to diagnose some strange symptoms that I displayed. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how hard my parents, family and friends worked with me, I just couldn’t learn how to believe.
The first symptom to manifest itself was the inability to tell one football team from another, or baseball team or basketball team. When watching these games I just couldn’t get past the first ten minutes without my mind drifting off to another subject. Imagine watching a man talking in Greek for three hours. That’s how I felt.
Later, it began to happen at church. The preacher would say important things concerning the world and the afterlife and god and satan and I could not sustain any interest. I figured there was something was wrong with me. Everyone around me found these things to be terribly important but they just sounded like Greek.
Years later I became more and more fascinated, not with god, but with how people believed in god. The numerous ways, ceremonies, rituals, books, laws and systems, complex and convoluted, just amaze me. Following are a few reasons I think people believe in a god. I welcome other reasons that I have missed and would be glad to add any additions to my list.

Transcendence – Surely there must be something more than this: I get up, I go to work, I come back, I eat dinner, I go to sleep, I get up. Wouldn’t it be great if flying saucers landed or we could read minds or do Harry Potter magic or discover dragons or god would talk to us personally and guide us through life?

The Plan – There must be a reason for all of this. Things always have a reason like plumbing or maps or farming. We can’t be here just to reproduce and die, can we?

The Insider – There must be a god who made all this. So I’m going to figure out how to kiss his ass by telling him how great of a god he is and say all the right things. He’ll think I’m really special and then maybe he’ll give me that SUV I’ve been wanting and, oh yeah, maybe he’ll kill that guy I hate.

The Exclusive Club – I have found the One, True Religion and you haven’t. I’m one of the few people in the whole world who found the right one amongst those 4,237 other religions that are obviously stupid which goes to prove have damned superior I am.

The End – I’m me. I’ve known me for a long time. I’m pretty cool. I know things nobody else knows. There’s no way I can just die. It can’t just end. I can’t just end. There has to be more. What would happen to the world if I weren’t here?