Having a personal mythos
I grew up in a Catholic family and one of the things I miss most about being religious was knowing my place in the universe.
There are many New Atheist driven attempts at not throwing the church baby out with the bathwater but they all lack something vital.
I’ve been a scientist for 15 years now and that is in some ways its own place-in-the-universe-giving religion. And there are a number of other possible stand-ins: humanism, politics, sport. But nothing really compares to religion itself.
A while ago I was reading Greg Egan’s book Permutation City. There’s a small side arc about a religion called the Church of the God Who Makes No Difference:
Francesca said, “Don’t you ever want to give thanks to God, when things are going well for you? Don’t you ever want to ask God for strength, when you need it?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Even though I know God makes no difference. And if God is the reason for everything, then God includes the urge to use the word God. So whenever I gain some strength, or comfort, or meaning, from that urge, then God is the source of that strength, that comfort, that meaning.”
–Greg Egan, Permutation City
The adherents have accepted that humans have a god-shaped hole in our heads and just decided fill it in with the most anodyne possible deity.
Humans need a mythos to function and even a completely bare bones one is better than not having one.
So with that in mind I decided to create my own. It’s very simple. I believe that this world is simply a staging ground to refine the nobility of our souls before we graduate to something greater.
It has a number of attractive elements:
There’s a nice Pascal’s Wager flavor to it. If I'm wrong the worst thing that will happen is that I’ll have lived a more virtuous and meaningful life.
It’s strangely very easy to believe.
And it’s very useful in day to day life. Specifically whenever I feel I am acting small in any way: being selfish, encountering various negative intrusive thoughts, being uncharitable towards others, when I feel taken advantage of, etc, I can tap into this belief and it magically re-persectivizes me into someone who not just views, but also deeply feels these things, as food for the soul.