Why do you find it so easy?

Often people find themselves relying on faith in life. They can't explain it, they simply believe. They have this feeling, deep down, that they are important, that there is a purpose in all of this. Even the most rational among us are given to bouts of magical thinking.

It's not a bad thing, really. It's a survival skill. The ability to comprehend the concept of our own deaths is a terrifying one to have. It allows us to think of ways to avoid reasonable scenarios, thus living to fight another day, but in exchange for that we're left knowing that everything ends, including ourselves.

The concept of a universe without us in it, is a horrifying thing. It seems impossible, after all, how can the Universe still exist if we are not here to observe it? The natural inclination is to believe that you continue on after your death, just as the Universe and all those left in it do. It's a defense mechanism designed to stop us from obsessing over the end. We are born wanting to believe. Hardwired, if it were, for religion.

Even the staunchest of Atheists occasionally find themselves entertaining concepts of fate, or destiny. Not necessarily religious, but supernatural belief nonetheless. For those who watch LOST, I call this the John Locke Complex. We so desperately want to believe that we are special, that we convince ourselves it is so. We feel it in every fiber of our being.

Toss apophenia into the mix, and things really start to get interesting. Another nifty thing our nice big mammalian brains can do, is make predictions. Essentially we are big probability machines. We take experiences from the past, and clues from our environments, toss in a dash of imagination and out comes a set of possible scenarios. In order to make this process more effective we specialized in a couple of areas. One of these is pattern recognition. We've become quite good at noticing when things are repeating themselves, in fact, we're so good we see patterns where there aren't any. This phenomenon is known as apophenia. So while we're quick to deja our vous and notice when history is about to repeat itself, we're also quick to mistake coincidence for fate.

There's even the audio version of this, pareidolia. That's when one sound is processed by the brain, found similar to another, and interpreted incorrectly as a result. Best known example of this is mistaking the wind for howling or whispering.

Our brains are fairly amazing, on top of predicting the future, conceptualizing the intangible and recognizing patterns, we also come complete with facial recognition softwear. Like our other nifty abilities, this one is also a tad too sensitive. This is why Jesus keeps turning up in grilled cheese sandwiches.

So, to recap, we desparetly want to believe in the supernatural, we can visualize both posible and impossible scenarios, see patterns where there are none, recognize faces where there are none and hear voices where there are none. When all that is taken into consideration, and combined with our curiosity and desire for knowledge, as well as our paralyzing fear of the unknown, really it would be odd not to have religion. People often feel that the existence and prevelaince of religious beliefs, and the similarities within the different religions point toward an underlying truth. Even those who do not belong to any particular religion, the agnostics among us, feel that there must be something out there, even if every religion on Earth is currently wrong, surely something must have inspired it.

And in a way, they're right. Death inspired it, forcing our imagination to create a mental safety net. Over time religion evolved to serve several functions in society as well, but that could be a whole 'nother blog of it's own.

And, you really can't hold it against us. Deep down all we want is a little magic in the world, and when you look at the world today, can you really blame us?