Religion: Losing belief while seeing value
I did my Bar Mitzvah at the Wailing Wall in Isreal — the holiest place in Judaism. We flew there as a family, and I still remember stepping off the plane and feeling an intense warmth. I turned to my sister and whispered, “I can feel God.” She rolled her eyes and said, “That’s not God. That’s forty degrees Celsius.”
My story
How I Became a Man at 13
I grew up in a small town, with a conservative synagogue. Services were always in Hebrew — a language my dad didn’t know, and neither did I. But hearing the words week after week, we memorized the prayer songs by repetition. To me, the words were gobbledygook, but the melodies stuck.
Every Friday night we would walk to services. My dad didn’t believe in God, but he loved the synagogue. For him it wasn’t about belief; it was about community. Because the congregation was small, they often struggled to gather the ten men needed for certain prayers. Most weeks the phone would ring, and they’d ask him to come. We lived just five minutes away, so he always did.
When you’re Jewish, turning thirteen means becoming a man — you study the Torah and have a Bar Mitzvah. My grandparents had immigrated to Israel, so when it was my turn, we flew there. It was my first time on a plane. I had my Bar Mitzvah at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the most holy place in Judaism. Standing there, surrounded by history and prayer, made it unforgettable.
When Proof Became My Religion
I am an engineer: science, cause and effect, proof. If you can’t measure it, model it, or test it, you don’t trust it. No proof, no belief. Stories without evidence - bugs in the system. Miracles? Not reproducible. God? No causal mechanism. The whole thing looked like bad engineering.
Why would I build my life on something that couldn’t even pass a basic test plan?
What I didn’t see then was that religion doesn’t live or die on proof — it lives in practice.
The Day I valued Religion
Just a normal day at work, the phone rang out of the blue. “Igor, please sit down.” My dad was dead. I had no idea what to do, but my synagogue — basically the Jewish version of a church — did. In Judaism, the dead are buried quickly, usually within 24 hours, so there’s no time to get lost in indecision. You just follow the steps.
At the funeral, the rabbi put a tie around my neck, and cut it. Why did that feel important? Who knows, who cares — it just did. Then the congregation sang a song. Even though it was in Hebrew, gobbledygook to me, I remembered the melody from before. It was incredibly comforting, it was right. I just knew everyone was there, supporting me.
At the graveyard, when we were putting him into the ground, I could see the names of his friends from my Bar Mitzvah days on the gravestones beside him. I could picture him laughing with them, and knowing he was with his friends gave me a sense of peace.
Then came shiva, the seven days of mourning. A candle burned the whole time, a quiet reminder that life had paused. For a week, people came, prayed, sat with us. At the end, the candle went out, and the expectation was to begin stepping back into the world. Not to “move on,” but to take a step forward.
After that came shloshim, the thirty days of softer mourning, and later, yahrzeit, the annual prayer and candle to remember. These rituals stretched out across time, creating a rhythm of grief and remembrance.
What I valued most was the certainty of what to do. I didn’t have to ask, “Am I grieving right?” The protocol answered that. And being in community meant I wasn’t alone. Major life events stopped feeling like cruel surprises — I could see that others had walked this path before me.
That was the day religion showed its worth to me: not in metaphysics, but in structure and support when I needed them most.
In my 40s all the other stuff
The Hard Parts for Me
Proof
The problem is proof. I don’t see it. With an engineering mindset, I expect cause, effect, and data — and religion doesn’t give me that. The parts about burning in hell are especially hard to accept. If I can’t see it, measure it, or reason my way to it, it doesn’t land.
To be fair, there are things I accept as good even though the only evidence is personal and experiential. Bringing joy makes me feel happy, so I keep doing it. Gratitude practices lift my mood, even if I can’t prove why. Not everything needs to be double-blind tested to matter.
An incredibly good discussion on belief (easily applied to religion), hidden in a discussion of pychics between the host and Dan Harris. I highly, highly recommend (and much better then the Search engine on religion for the parts that pertain to belief). Search Engine - The Psychic Question
- While I think the tarot people are wrong, they frankly throw much better parties than the fact checkers. So there’s that. But then you spend enough time around the believers and sometimes you feel your own killjoyness more acutely, like you’re on a diet or fasting for reasons nobody else quite understands. Wouldn’t it be nicer to just give in?
- Open is better than closed, right? Fluid is better than rigid. People who are too sure of themselves tend to be alienating to others.
- Dan is somebody who tries not to believe in stories just because they’re comfortable. He doesn’t usually get his aura read. He’s not religious. He does meditate, and he’s Buddhist enough that I’ve heard him use words like dharma in casual conversation. The story Dan tells himself, though, is that he came to Buddhism because he followed the evidence for it, which I’m sure is true, although I also think most of us decide what to believe, at least partly socially. It’s much easier to surrender to an idea if we admire the people who already hold it, if they seem happy, smart, if they fit our arbitrary thumbnail sketch of a wise person.”
- As Dan and I kept talking over the months, I’d noticed how many stories he had about his teachers, memories of the lessons he’d learned by observing them. It’s such a funny thing that happens in the human heart, this decision that you’re going to become somebody’s student, surrender to their ideas or habits
Hypocrisy
The problem is hypocrisy. Religion has plenty of examples of evil done in its name, or leaders exploiting faith for personal gain. To be fair, that isn’t unique to religion — some people are just shitty and will exploit whatever they can.
To be fair, I’ve also seen religion call people to their best selves. In community, people often act with generosity and service, not exploitation. That doesn’t erase the bad, but it balances it.
Pushiness
The problem is pushiness. Again, not unique to religion, but easy to see there. If someone really believes they hold the greatest gift in the world, of course they want to share it. If someone thinks they’re protecting you, of course they’ll try to stop you from doing something dangerous. I get the intent, but it can feel suffocating.
To be fair, I’ve been pushy too. When I care deeply, I want to convince people. If I believe something makes life better, I share it — sometimes too strongly. So I get where the impulse comes from, even if I don’t like being on the receiving end.
Arbitrariness & Literalism
The problem is arbitrariness. I struggle with random literal interpretations, absolute faith, and the inability to question. It feels like being asked to accept rules without context, as if the meaning is locked and you’re not allowed to ask why.
To be fair, I can see the upside. If we really did have a universal standard, there would be no argument about morality. Everyone would know where the lines are, and that certainty would be a relief. It’s also comforting not to have to figure everything out on your own — sometimes having the rules spelled out is easier than reinventing the code of life from scratch.
The Gifts I want
Add stuff here
Appendix and stuff I’m working in …
Why Religion?
Religions persist because they solve hard coordination problems: transmitting values across generations, creating social trust, and providing meaning under uncertainty. They encode “do this, not that” as embodied wisdom, not just abstract rules. My interest is pragmatic: learn from what works, name what harms, keep the parts that build resilient, prosocial humans.
Belief vs Practice
The modern debate over belief often misses the power of practice. You don’t have to resolve every metaphysical claim to benefit from disciplined rituals: weekly reflection, shared meals, service, confession/repair, sabbath-style rest. Practice shapes identity through repetition; belief often follows behavior.
Community, Ritual, and Identity
Healthy communities make belonging conditional on contribution, not conformity. Good rituals are scaffolding: they mark time, create memory, and bind people together without demanding uniformity of thought. The failure modes are obvious—tribalism, purity tests, coercion—so design for generosity, accountability, and repair.
Secular Spirituality
You can pursue awe, humility, gratitude, and service without formal religion. Meditation, nature, art, and shared work provide many of the same psychological benefits when practiced intentionally. The question isn’t “religious or not,” but “what practice reliably opens you to meaning while keeping you kind?”