Weekend Mailbag
Interested in what some of the other S.O.G.s are thinking? Time to check the mailbag.

Q: God, you are long-winded. I went to your blog intending to read every word since the Iceland episode but I couldn't do it.
A: It is interesting how the length of my posts is out of control. I think it's because nobody in real life lets me go on for so long. But on a blog, there are no social cues. You just never know when someone gets up and leaves the room.

You don't seem to understand faith. You need to find out what it is like to have really found God and to have lived with faith. Your conclusions about spiritual life seem hastily fabricated out of limited personal experience. If I told you that everyone loved going to Giants games because they liked eating garlic fries and trying to catch fly balls and you had spent your entire life going to Giants games and had never done either - what would you say? If I'm telling you something with certainty about where you get your most powerful experiences in life and you know it's laughable- what would you say?
I've had faith. There was a time when I couldn't imagine what life would be like not believing in God. That's no longer true. But my faith was real -- just as real, I'd argue, as the faith of those who "have really found God." Think about it: When someone falls out of love, does that mean the love was never real to begin with? Of course not. I think it's rather pompous to suggest that I don't understand faith. It's not that complicated, really. But even if I don't, I can clearly observe its manifestations. As for your baseball analogy, I'm not sure I really get your point, but let me try to work it out. I wasn't suggesting that any particular aspect of church makes people believe in God. We humans have a basic desire to understand our purpose -- it's a natural byproduct of high-level consciousness, I think - and "God" is a simple, palatable explanation. Also, as I suggested, we're social animals. Church ties these two aspects of humanity together and in so doing, propagates faith. I don't consider this a controversial notion, really. Let me stick with baseball as the working analogy. You like the Giants. Were you more or less of a Giants fan after the first game you saw at the ballpark? How about after the second game? The third? I suspect that with every game you attended, you became more of a fan...not necessarily because every game was better than the last or because you had an epiphany about the sport and its place in your life, but because you were there on warm summer nights, you had a couple of beers, maybe you were on a date and had a hot dog or stood up and sung a song in the seventh inning or high-fived the guy behind you, laughed, and did the wave. All that ritual made you feel a part of the group all around you. And every time you go back, you like the Giants more. This is not an accident. If going to the baseball park didn't make you like a team more, there'd be no point to the experience, and people wouldn't go. And compared to organized religion, baseball is the minor leagues. Yet it's more controversial to talk this way about religion because people balk at the suggestion that they're being brainwashed or that, somehow, this makes faith seem less real. You can be religious or a skeptic and still appreciate (or loathe) religion for the way it influences people.

I too have a philosophy about religion and God. I think we pray to something bigger than ourselves, but in reality we are only praying to ourselves and relieving all the pressure of being moral and frail. So really churches are like therapy and we're all just trying to build our self esteem. I don't go to church much but i do pray, normally when i'm scared.
I found myself in a similar situation, and that's when i started to wonder about religion. When i stopped believing in God, I stopped praying and lost what I can best describe as a release valve. I began processing stress differently, internalizing it more...and that wasn't good. And then, i remembered how praying would ease my mind. And so I did something that felt almost shameful -- I began to pray. Not because I thought there'd be someone on the other side listening, but because I was trying to invoke that inner calm. It was meditation, really. And that's when I started to think about all of faith in the same regard. Why would 90+ percent of us claim to believe in something so inherently unproveable and unlikely as an omniscient, omnipotent being? (you have to grant me that the notion is unlikely, even if it's true). Maybe the act of believing is a release, a relief, in and of itself.

The blog's been tres amusement, btw. I spit up a little coffee reading the union jack thing. Wonderbras aside (bra metaphors are so cliche, o'brien), your post about religion and separation made me think of something I read this term, from Pierre Bordieu. He talks about a sort of sleight of hand in the way that religious rights of passage like confirmation draw our attention to the distraction in front of us -- between boys and men, say -- when what really drives them is the distinction outside the room, between Catholics and non, for instance.
Interesting point. Another sleight of hand: Have you ever had a couple mormon kids come to your door looking to work their way into your home, do some Bible-reading, and try to sway you? Of course. And you dealt with them by either politely excusing yourself or slamming the door. You've probably wondered, Does anyone actually let them in; does anyone actually listen? Well, the answer is not many, as you suspected. But that's not the point of the exercise. A number of cognitive psychologists have studied this routine and realized that the act of walking door-to-door is less about courting believers and more about strengthening the faith of the preachers themselves. Every slammed door works to stiffen their resolve, increase their degree of separation from the "other" and strengthen the bind to their own community. I was reading about this in a restaurant recently and on the walk home, in a downpour, saw two mormon kids standing in their suits, no umbrella, trying to convince a young woman to come over to their side. She was flabbergasted. Once upon a time, I might have been disgusted. But instead, I was intrigued. So, next time, go ahead and slam the door with a clear conscience.

Just a quick note to tell you I'm really liking your blog -- but mom and dad are pissed about the religion thing. I think you might be OK, though. They just kind of chalk it up to you living on the West coast.
[gulp]