For almost the entirety of human existence, we have been asking the "big" questions, such as "how did we get here?" and "what is our purpose?". However, we rarely stop to think why we ask those questions, and especially why we are so prone to leaning towards some answers innately. For example, the majority of people in the U.S. are Christians, and the when asked why they believe in their, one of the most common responses is that "it just couldn't happen by chance. All of this world, our existence, the love we feel, it can't be random." Many theists cite the their belief that the world is "too complex" to have formed from nature, without being "created".
However, this innate desire to comprehend the world around us as "too complex" is inherently flawed, and I'll show you why:
We attach significance to things that are meaningful to us. For example, my parents are significant to me, because they are meaningful, i.e. I depend on them, I enjoy spending time with them, in fact my existence required them. Therefore, they are very significant to me. Because I see my parents as meaningful, I see them as purposeful, causal, and driven by thought. My parents are not some random, by chance beings that came into existence from nothing. In fact, almost everything we perceive as having "meaning" is because it is not "random" or "by chance". We find faces and shapes in clouds that, to the objective observer, would look like random, blurry shapes. Yet if we realized that they were random, unspecific shapes, we wouldn't find meaning and significance in them. When you happen to meet your old high school friend when you are at a baseball game, you don't see it as random, but you think "what a small world", or "it must be fate".
So, now that we've established that humanity as a whole finds meaning in things they perceive as purposeful, intended, we can turn our view onto religion's role in this. Perhaps the most meaningful "'thing" in my life is my own existence. Without my existence, I wouldn't exist. Therefore, my own current existence is very important and significant to me. With that in mind, consider how we examine the world as a whole with that perspective. Our friends, our family, our pets, our jobs, our planet, our own existence, all of these things are very, very significant to us. Therefor, they could not have come about randomly or by chance. If that was the case, we would think they aren't meaningful anymore, because they are purposeless (the very notion of which I would strongly argue against.
In an overview of above, my main point is that human beings define certain things as meaningful and significant, things which are important to our existence and our lives. We place such import on these things because we see them as intended, purposeful, caused. We do this because almost all of these things are in fact so. My existence was intended and caused, it was not random and without purpose. A couple's love is meaningful because to each person, the other loves them for a reason, with purpose. They love connection was not drawn out of a hat. So when we look at the world around us, our common connection as human beings, and our experiences, we want to find a cause there. Because if it is uncaused, then we would (incorrectly, I would posit) conclude that our lives are meaningless.
One of the best analogies I have ever heard was the poker hand analogy. Imagine you are teaching a friend how to play poker, and you are about to deal them their first hand to explain the game. You shuffle the deck, then deal them 5 cards. To your friend's amazement, your friend has a royal flush, the rarest of all poker hands, the odds of which are 1 in 649,740. The first reaction of your friend will be, inevitably, astonishment, but then suspicion. "Did you plant the cards there?" he will ask, because of course, he is looking for a purpose or a cause, because he sees meaning. This is the most important point, so I will say it again. When someone seeings meaning, they automatically look for purpose or cause. In fact, the royal flush is only the best poker hand because there are rules about the game of poker, which make it so. THE ODDS OF GETTING A ROYAL FLUSH IN 5 CARDS ARE THE EXACT SAME AS ANY OTHER 5 CARDS. The difference is, society has already placed significance, or meaning, on that combination of cards. When we see this meaning, we expect it to be caused.
This is the exact same thing that religious believers are doing when they say "look at the trees, God's hand is everywhere" or "Jesus is love" or "Look at the world. It's so complex and incredible, it can't be random and without purpose". Believers see all this meaning and significance around them, so they automatically expect there to be a creator, a purpose, a cause. They fail to understand that just the meaning and beauty that we see in the world, or in love, or in a newborn child, is there because we've put it there. Society imparts significance into us, along with our own preconceptions. When religious believers claim that the universe is too complex, to unlikely to have come into existence "by chance", they see that as a reason to believe in a higher power.Yet just as with the poker hand analogy, the odds of getting the royal flush are no different from any other 5 card combination, it is only because of the meaning and significance that we already attached to that specific combination that the friend finds it highly unlikely that they actually got dealt that hand, and they suspect planned involvement, purposeful action. In the same way, the religious believer, who of course finds meaning all around them, misplaces the source of that meaning and asserts that it is meaningful for an external, supernatural purpose, rather than the human reasons why we attach significance to certain aspects of our lives.
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