for reasons unclear to me, i’ve been thinking a lot about death. not in terms of a self-inflicted death, but rather the nature of death, what it means and what comes next. and in thinking about what comes next, thoughts inevitably turn to notions of faith.

when i was a young child, i may have had faith, but if i did, that faith has long since left me. as far back as i can remember, i’ve never really had a belief in g-d, in the spiritual, in the afterlife. with that lack of faith came a desire to find other means by which to define, to borrow the title of one of my favorite books, life, the universe and everything.

looking back now, i think the drive to understand existence, not to mention my lack of faith, stemmed from deep-seeded self-doubt and the chronic depression from which i suffered.

my initial field of study in college was physics; the science to describe and define the universe. unfortunately, mathematics proved to be a bit much for me and i was forced to rethink my collegiate plan and search for universal understanding. shortly thereafter i landed in comparative religion and philosophy, two alternative means by which to try and define existence.

for this type of search, the study of religion did little for me, as it wasn’t so much a study of faith, but rather a study of religious history: facts and dates and names and the like. philosophy, however, being the humanities answer to physics, proved at least moderately useful. what’s more, the philosophers i studied (the ones i liked, anyway) used a scientific-like, skeptical approach in their work to which i could relate.

i think it was my philosophical studies, more than anything else, that solidified my skepticism of faith as a means to describe human existence….

for me, life is a biological function. human life is the same as the life of a chimp, a cow, a tree, etc. of course what makes us different is also the same thing that produces the notion of faith. we are highly emotional, highly thoughtful beings that struggle to understand and define our lives. for reasons i still can’t quite understand, we (including myself) struggle to answer maybe the oldest of all questions; what is the meaning of life?

while my skepticism toward faith was solidified by my studies, that skepticism has always been, and i think will always be, present in me. i cannot categorically deny the existence of g-d, but i also cannot bring myself to believe in his existence. i lean on the scientific process and lack of evidence i’ve seen in the world to say with near certainty that there is, in fact, no g-d. but i have to admit my denial goes deeper than that.

for all of my young life that i can remember, i was unhappy. i was awkward and sad and oscillated between light self-loathing, to full out self-hatred. i believe these are the main reasons that most of my childhood memories are utterly lost to me; by brain has chosen to forget for my own good. it was this existence that i felt to be bleak, pathetic, and hopeless that first made me categorically deny g-d’s existence. but even in this life, a small part of my brain would take over and, rather than deny his existence, would simply loathe g-d. as i’ve gotten older, as the hopelessness and self-loathing has faded, so has that occasional g-dly hatred. my agnosticism, however, remains.

i wish it didn’t. i wish i had faith, believed in g-d and an afterlife. it would lessen, i think, my utter fear of death. i don’t fear a painful death. i fear the nothingness. i fear going to sleep, as it were, never again to awake. i fear the notion that my life will end with the universe going on without me for eternity.

family members, i think, take some comfort in their belief that our deceased relatives are living happily in an afterlife somewhere and that, someday, we’ll all be reunited in the ‘world to come,’ as it is in the jewish faith. i, however, have no such belief. my grandparents are all gone. i mourn their deaths and miss them terribly at times, but i have no belief in their spiritual existence on some other plain.

i’d be more at ease with death, i think, if i had faith. what’s more, i think my continued struggles with mood and self-confidence, would be lessened, or non-existent if i had faith. i often bemoan my damaged brain when it comes to inter-personal skills, when it comes to intimacy, and sometimes when it comes to faith. what is it in my biology, or in my history, that makes it so difficult for me to find and have faith?