You'll Understand One Day - When You Grow Up

"Mystery. That is the key. Where there are things not understood, the mind reels in the mystery. It looks for understanding, a seeking of sorts, and finds something in the seeking whether something is there or not.  And the further the mystery travels from the sense we employ to the rest of our experience, the more important and meaningful it is. It is sort of like what happens with gambling; sometimes a few dollars come back in small snippets and it keeps the mind attended, even though most of the time it is draining you dry. Mystery is an addiction. 

It is sort of like homeopathy; the less actual presence of the ingredient, the more potent it is. That is, the more mysterious, distant, and unknowable God is, the more it sticks to the mind and suffuses everything. 

It will skew interpretations, create the presence of divinity in clouds of woo-woo emotional feelings, and it will create a strong sense of divinity in the stillness of calmness and tranquility. It is the smallest, simplest of assumptions that has the power to make the world look mystical, magical, and miraculous.

Yes, our creativity, sparked by the mystery of the divine, brings the divine into everything. It becomes the explanation of everything. God did it. Godidit. It becomes the placebo that supplies meaning and structure to our lives, when it actually does nothing at all.

In the history of human culture our understanding of nature has pushed the concept of gods back to the corners of the universe. We understand enough to know that the concept of miracle is not necessary, so God gets shuffled to the corners of morality, purpose, and gets attributed to the woo-woo feelings we get when we feel spiritual.  And it works because we want it to work; because our powers of creativity allow us to see it working when it very clearly does not. But with the faith blinders on, it is difficult to see what is plain and simple.

Jephthah killed his virgin daughter. God is unnecessary to explain anything. Santa does not exist. Sorry, kids."

-- Shaun McGonigal, bringing the (apparently) satisfying concepts of spiritual belief, homeopathy, placebos, and truth together in one very-unsatisfying piece - finally - and that piece is in The Examiner.