“I Act as if God Exists”

What does it mean to believe?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about beliefs and their impact on how we see and interact with the world.

There is an objective nature to fact and reality. I exist, you, the readers exist. These are scientific, objective facts. We can empirically measure our existence with experiments proving we exist, at least as corporeal beings.

Yet, there remains a level of subjectivity to our existence. Existence is experienced and perceived by a subjective “self.” This self interprets things through its own lens and feels things differently than every other subjective being.

Further, this subjective self seems to be “more real” than the objective fact of our existence, and this is evidenced by the general attitude of life that I have observed when people are asked the question, “How are you?”

When asked this question, do people start to rattle off objective facts about their lives? And I mean this in earnest — two close friends talking, and genuinely asking “How are you?”; not the casual exchanges between strangers who will never meet again.

This subjective self acts (or tries to act) in accordance with fundamental assertions about the world. These assertions are nothing but beliefs, even if they are based on empirical data.

In this essay, I am going to investigate the idea that fundamental beliefs about the world are what guide us through the world, and I am going to try and prove…