Even though I do not believe in a god, I have found myself being on close terms with very many people who do believe. In fact, of the many people that I have come across, I think I can safely say that it has invariably been those who had some sort of a faith who I found easiest to connect with. These people have tended to have, consciously or subconsciously but certainly very ironically, a better grip on reality than people who profess not to believe. In fact, I'd say that I have had the misfortune of knowing far more atheists than I'd have cared for in this life. Some of them have been most brilliant and interesting people but the vast majority have been absolutely insufferable and embarrassingly simpleminded.

There are two questions which come to mind at this point. What is it about religious people in general which I, being a nonbeliever, find so attractive? I think they tend to have the kind of priorities in life which make for a generally contented and helpful person. These tendencies are deeply ingrained in them as they appear almost as a dictum from the powers that be. They do not have to reason these qualities and reason, in any case, can never be as strong as emotion can be. These people tend to be far less materialistic because they have the luxury of finding meaning in an agency which has little to do with the material world. The upshot of it all are people who tend not to drive me nuts by talking about food, clothing, gadgets, sports, and financial investments. Their lives amount to more than a simple distraction, something which cannot be said about a lot of people knocking about.

The second question which comes to mind is why, if I find the other side so attractive, do I not just join the camp. I think the answer to this is a deep predicament, perhaps the deepest that there is. I think my inability to believe has taken a very deep root and it is connected now to all sorts of other character traits of mine. At some level it is connected to a contempt for authority of all kinds and at another level it is connected to a deep seated lack of sympathy. At yet another level it is connected to my eternal suspicion that people generally do not know what they are talking about and, therefore, cannot be taken very seriously. The latter, of course, comes with the frank admission that I know very little myself, that my faint efforts at coherence are merely the stabs of a blind person in the dark, that life, in general, is merely Brownian motion, the random walk of a thoroughly inebriated tramp.

It is this view which makes it easier for me to connect with people who believe as I do not see any reason to feel smug or superior to them on account of the supposed power of logic and reasoning. Life to a nonbeliever must be arbitrary and it most certainly is to me. Fortunately enough, in the day to day workings of it, I find it not impossible to see it exactly as such and it thus becomes merely amusing. Amusement is my primary reaction to the vicissitudes of life and I think the good souls who do believe are not too offended by it. They are probably amused as well.