So, funny story. I answered yes, but not because of blind belief. And when I first realized my answer was yes, nobody was more shocked than me.
I was fortunate to attend Jewish Day School in my youth. And, because we don’t have hell, we were encouraged to look into and understand other faiths to the best of our ability. Not to convert, if we didn’t want. And not to NOT convert. Conversion wasn’t really a part of the conversation.
Being Jewish means emphasizing and supporting your community—not just your Jewish community, but any community you find yourself to be a part of. And we all obviously knew from experience that religious and ethnic groups play a huge role in defining community. Thus, how can we be good global citizens and live up to our responsibilities as Jews if we don’t learn as much as we are able about other religions and cultures as possible?
We had scholars and faith leaders come to our school from a variety of different faiths (yes, including Islam, Indigenous American nations, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and others) over the years to explain the tenets of their own faiths and how they view community and also their own faith’s history with Judaism. We also had atheists speak—secular atheists as well as Humanist Jews.
I’m so glad I had these experiences. It really shaped who I am as a person and how I move through the world. Because there is nothing punitive in Judaism that occurs if you decide not to be a Jew, I genuinely considered each of the faiths presented relative to my own. While I have no view about which religion is “best,” I did determine that I simply vibe best personally with Judaism. There’s a lot in it that really suits how I think and feel and the parts that have challenged me feel like positive challenges that lead to growth rather than points of frustration that I have difficulty reconciling.
But G-d? I wasn’t sure. Was I going to stay reform or be a humanist? I waffled about it for years.
It wasn’t actually until I was in a non-religious school for high school and studying IB Higher Level Chemistry that I decided I really believed in G-d. (Indicating the specific chemistry class, because sleep deprivation may have had something to do with my epiphany LOL. But I promise that upon a good night’s rest I still thought the same way).
I had learned about atoms and such back in middle school. But it wasn’t until high school that I learned about the concept of entropy.
Entropy: The very basic, true, scientific concept that all systems tend toward disorder.
It's why things decay. It's why things die. It's the concept central to everything from thermodynamics to statistical mechanics.
And whatever else I believe, I believe in science. Always.
So, one night while trying to write a lab report on just... so very little sleep. Astoundingly little sleep. How-Did-I-Survive-Level sleep deprivation, I sort of had...an epiphany I guess.
All things tend toward disorder. Things decay. Things die. Things fall apart and lose heat and get messy.
Somehow, from the vast expanse of nothingness, we are hear on a little floating planet in the middle of nowhere outer space...living. And not just that, but we were brought into existence in the first place. And when people do decay and die and turn to dust (and even less dramatically, when someone so much as exhales a breath) the particles and atoms that make up their entire being and spread throughout the world. The air becomes part of wind that blows across towns. Someone cries outside and their tears evaporate into the eye and turn into rain that falls thousands of miles away. People long dead have been buried in the earth and their dust has fertilized trees and those trees provide shade to passersby who breath their CO2 onto it and it turns that CO2 into more oxygen we all breathe. Or maybe the tree has been chopped down to provide lumber for homes that house people. And those people live and grow and fall in love and make more people all from the scattered and decayed remains from a past that fell and decayed so long ago that most if not all of it escapes human and cultural memory.
If all systems tend toward disorder and things are bound to fall apart, then it sure is remarkable how -- despite everything -- they seem to come together again, too.
Even the very concept of objects. We're held together by very small but very strong ionic bonds. none of our atoms even touch each other. On a sub-microscopic level we're held together with, essentially, superglue, air, and hope. It's amazing to me we don't just pass through each other. It's amazing that these loose collections of atoms form whole human beings with sentience and nervous systems and hormones and emotions.
And it's amazing to me that they keep doing it!!!
After a body has decayed and even the atoms themselves have decayed they keep crashing and colliding and forming new bonds and from that chaos comes air and earth and mineral and vegetable and animal and eventually humans again.
How is that possible? In an existence and world and universe ruled by chaos where we are all subject to the inevitability of destruction and decay and disorder, the chaos forms once again to order.
This realization led me to whisper to myself at 5am, "Ah, shit. I think I believe in G-d."
Do I know what that means exactly? No. Of course not. How could i know that???? But at the very least, whatever it is that keeps driving our atoms to coalesce and make us: that's G-d to me.
But why shouldn't it mean some sort of omnipotent sentient higher power? I'm not sure it does mean there is one. But if this random trillions upon trillions of atoms that I call a body can come together and form the person who is typing all this out right now, why can't a whole bunch of other atoms do the same for that higher power?
Why are humans assumed to be the final endpoint of sentience crafted in this way? IDK, maybe we are all just part of a larger system that makes up G-d themself. Maybe Olam HaBa is just us distilling into our purest minimal sentient form. Maybe its our own atoms briefly becoming part of the sentience that G-d enjoys? I truly don't know. Anything is possible. I don't claim to know anything.
I just don't think there's a lot of discussions about faith and higher powers in this way--beliefs not motivated by fear or the unknown, but by the astounding nature instead of what we do know.
So yeah, I believe in G-d. This is why. You don't have to agree. That's also OK. I just had to share this because, as a kid, I didn't really believe I'd answer yes to a question like this. And if I did ever answer yes, I assumed it would be because of something that one of the many, many leaders of all different faiths I'd learnt from said.
I did not expect high school chemistry class to be the reason I believe in G-d. But life's full of surprises that way.
