Belief
I am not a believer, never have been. I can't see how anyone could match up what happens in the world (2 year old Thai orphans with AIDS? 6 year olds with leukaemia? And all the rest of the crap that goes on) with a merciful God. Or even a vengeful one. How does that Thai orphan come to have any responsibility whatsoever that "deserves" getting AIDS?
I also can't bring myself to think that if there were a God, the creator not just of humans and earth, but the whole universe, all the galaxies and solar systems and now, we find, additional universes possibly as well, is at ALL interested in one little individual life, whether I do this or that.
As a child, I felt God would be like if I were a tiny ant, looking up into the sky as a person's shoe passes overhead. What would the ant make of it? A large shadow passing by. A strange shape in the sky. If the shoe should happen to fall on the ground at the wrong time, it represents death, if not, it simply passes. How could that ant conceive of what the shoe is attached to, what is happening in that person's brain to whom the foot and shoe belong, what their purpose is? What concerns and demands they are considering?
Likely, that person has no idea the ant is even there, and cares even less what the ant is doing or has done, and if they should put their foot on the ground, disturbing everything in the ant's little world, this would not represent punishment, reward, or anything to do with the ant whatsoever. The ant just makes meaning out of it to cope with the sudden random appearance of destructive feet from the sky, to make things more bearable.
No, for me, the universe just is, its origin is unknowable. We, as a species, invent religion so that we can bear it. So we don't have to deal with things being random. I think my belief.. that I am just as small as that ant, and that the universe is random and strange and unknowable, is just as difficult to deal with as that randomly acting God who capriciously hands out shingles to a dying woman.
I have no one to blame, no karma to fall back on, no one to thank when things go right. But I also can conceive of myself as a person who must take my own responsibility for everything that happens to me. Some of it is my doing (had I smoked every day of my adult life, I could then blame myself for getting lung cancer, for instance.. though I don't happen to smoke, it's just an example).
Some of it is just random bad luck - I happened to inherit genes that give me a propensity for cancer in response to certain (who knows what) environmental factors. And some of it is done by others, eg the medical profession, who were stifled for centuries by repressive religious regimes from progressing their field at the same rate as engineering. Which is why we can get to the moon, but not cure cancer. We're centuries behind.
I wish I did believe. It would make this journey so much easier, because I'd have someplace to go to, somewhere to be heading towards. As it is, I will simply wink out of existence. There is perhaps something comforting in that though. I also don't have to have my life judged, or listen to crap harp playing! LOL.
In the end perhaps we arrive at the same place. As a believer, you accept this as God's mystery. I accept it as the universe's mystery. Maybe these are the same thing in some important ways. We both shrug and say whatever, and get on with the business of what we're doing day to day.