The Need for Belief

Anywhere there is a civilization of humans, there is a belief system. Go back through history, and every single culture that has been on this little green and blue planet, you will find a belief system no matter how simplistic or complicated it may be. People have always had a need to believe in something bigger that Someone had (has) Plans for us, that we were put here for a reason. That’s not to say that there aren’t people who believe with all their hearts that we got here by accident, that nature just plopped us here for no good reason. With nothing else in mind but for us to survive until something came and would wipe us out, leaving nothing but ruins for whatever came next to find. But what a depressing view of life that is! There’s nothing to strive for? There’s nothing but to eat or be eaten? Why strive at all if we have no greater purpose? And yet, it’s human nature to strive, to look for the next best thing that we can find, or create. We are curious creatures, we look at the stars and wonder what is out there, what can we find? We believe that there is something to strive for, something beyond our understanding. That we don’t truly end when we die. We are creatures with the ideas of hope, justice, mercy, good and evil. We have systems of government more complex than the hierarchy of any animal group. And so, we believe. For without belief, we are just another kind of beast, with nothing to hope, live and grow for.