I used to be a rather vehement atheist. I just could not comprehend why anyone would prefer vague, contradictory, and obsolete belief systems to the beauty of science and logic, which are clearly the superior tools for learning about the world and organizing the knowledge. While I think no less of science, I’m beginning to see the value of art and religion when grappling with the human condition.

I started to be particularly interested in less rational approaches when it dawned on me that logic brings me no closer to understanding others or—and this was a shock—even myself.

The beliefs of others

It is always jarring when you meet a person with a worldview wildly different from your own. My instictive reaction used to be “what’s wrong with them?“; this is not a particularly healthy attitude. Still, you can get through life by living in a bubble like this, surrounded by like-minded individuals and hating or ignoring everybody else, and this works just fine for many people.

My first approach to understanding beliefs was through the lens of memes—that is ideas using people as their vehicles to replicate and multiply; not unlike viruses. In this model the innocent minds are unwittingly infected by such memes, no matter their validity. The reasons for this phenomenon include the absence of fact-checking, the inflation of social status, and a sense of group identity.

Beyond memes

While the above paints wide and clean strokes of understanding the picture is far from complete. A person’s worldview is not explained by any particular idea they might believe. It is instead constructed and continually rehashed, largely subliminally, as an an amalgam of all the ideas that come their way; or the ideas they like (given their natural predilections), anyway.

I was happy with this description awhile. It makes it much easier to accept the fact that other minds can be quite different from your own; it can also guide you to a better argumentation by isolating particular beliefs at the root of a disagreement and using them to your advantage (just be careful—as Peterson points out in his lectures on belief systems people become quite sensitive when you poke them at their axioms).

The chaos within

Returning back to science and logic, I have a confession to make: I am as irrational as anybody and more pretentious than most. Grokking how hypocritical I’d been my whole life lead to a bit of an identity crisis. You see, attaining a bit of knowledge and an affinity to formal reasoning makes it rather easy to argue for almost any conclusion, even a wrong one, in some sense exacerbating all the cognitive biases that are so scary to begin with.

This was deeply troubling to me. For most of my life I believed rationality would not lead me astray but I had to admit a defeat; and like the old Lear pray I would not go mad. While rationality is quite desirable there is clearly much more that goes on in our minds, profoundly affecting everything we do.

The elder weapons

Surprisingly and luckily, in some ways I had begun searching for alternatives even before rationality betrayed me.

Religion

I believe religion is one possible answer to these problems. It observes and codifies common patterns of those beneath-the-surface thoughts that our ancestors struggled with no less than we do. They had tried and by and large succeeded to isolate social and psychological rules for a longer and a happier live.

Naturally, many of those rules are somewhat or completely obsolete in the modern world. But many of them are still relevant and all of them offer important insights into the human psyche. That, to me, is the main reason why it’s still important to study religious texts, even after all this time; especially for atheists!

Art

Another way to understand our species is through arts. Now, while art and the process of its creation can be quite logical and scientific, its core— the inspiration that drives it, the sense of beauty when we perceive it, the feelings of divinity and unity when we enjoy it together—lies definitely outside the realm of rationality and in many ways speaks to our animals within.

Narrative

Words, while worth only a thousandth of an average picture, are at the very core of what makes us human. A good story can make you appreciate the viewpoint of people with very different backgrounds like nothing else can. I would venture a guess that the main reason Shakespeare is still so revered is precisely because of his deep insights into the human nature, no matter his wordsmithing skills (unparalleled as they may be).

Conclusion

So this is where I am now, at the crossroads of science and art and religion. There is much that I don’t know but that is okay—wearing my irrational helmet and my algebraic cape I can face the storm.