Religion is Trending

I'm not a religious person but I do spend ample time ruminating on the spiritual, the unseen. I read books on everything from Viking myths to Buddhism to quantum physics. My husband thinks if our marriage were a high school, I'd be the one voted most likely to join a cult. But he's wrong. I might be most likely to be disillusioned or to search longer than most, but I wouldn't join an actual cult. I'm not great at blindly following. And I don't even like Kool Aid.

I do like to question things. I'm not sure what I’m searching for, really, or why I continue but I just can't stop. I attribute much of this to residual religious teachings from my childhood. Or maybe it's more than that -- a sense that 21^st century humans  can't possibly comprehend more than a sliver of the universe. Modern science theorizes, discovers, alters postulations and theorizes again. But the enormity of what we're theorizing about is unfathomable. And the infinite possibilities thrill me so much that sometimes, when I'm randomly reminded of something 'supernatural' or 'coincidental,' I interrupt writing or grading or texting to reflect. Or maybe even that's not it. Maybe, like Michael Krasny, I don't believe in God anymore but I miss him.

I haven't belonged to an organized religion for twenty years. But for the past few months, I've been attending, not regularly, but any attendance is more than I've done since college, church. I've found a Christian church with humanistic undertones (or overtones) whose services begin with music that is exponentially more joyful and energetic than the melancholic melodies my childhood church congregation sang every Sunday. I think now I mostly attend for the music, the feeling I receive when the twenty-something girl with black leggings and a black guitar takes the mic to sing praises to her God. But I often find the sermons, or what I hear of them since I inevitably doze off twenty minutes after the music ends, inspiring and thought-provoking. And every time the pastor mentions Jesus, I simply replace the word with love and focus on the human message, the one of caring and providing and cooperating and building. Do we really need Jesus to tell us to love one another or the threat of damnation to remind us to be respectful because we're not alone on the planet?

And really – here's where the grain of possible cult membership shows itself – is any of this happening anyway?

I defer to neuroscience on this one, David Eagleman in particular and Eagleman's possibilianism specifically. Eagleman postulates that anything is possible, that humans just don't know enough about the brain to offer a definitive answer to anything. Perhaps all religions aren't right and all religions aren't wrong; we're not knowledgeable enough to say. 

Neuroscience also tells us that a God spot exists in the brain, which seems odd, almost as if it proves the inexistence of God because God is literally all in our minds. But I think this makes sense because anything people can imagine and anything people can experience must be generated in their brains. Experiments proving people believe strongly in God when this spot is stimulated seem logical. What fascinates me the most is the ensuing question: what happens when the spot is no longer being stimulated either by thoughts or laboratory-generated electrodes? Does God disappear? And what happens without God on the brain?

Last month, three days after images of Hurricane Harvey's destruction were shown, yahoo! announced, Religion is Trending. Because all of a sudden, after people's lives had been nearly destroyed and human suffering had been vociferously diffused on all American news stations, people had God on the brain. In that spot. Because they needed something. 

Despite my curiosity, I didn't click on the yahoo! link. In fact, I found the title off putting. I thought religion had been pretty popular before the disaster.  Why was it trending now? Did people really need a natural disaster to believe in community? I was almost offended. Or no – I was offended. This click bait title, based on algorithms or just plain bullshit, made me question more than God; it made me question humanity's humanity.

Which almost brings me full circle, back to high school and the Kool Aid and the cult. I'm not going to join but I'm also not going to stop questioning. I want to believe in something. In goodness. In people. In humanity. But until I figure everything out, I'm just here for the music. I know there's a spot in my brain for that.