I do not need religion. I can plug that hole with anything: family, literature, music, medicine. I can distract myself and go along and never look up and die quite happy. The problem is: I want religion. Why? Why do I want this supernatural, irrational hypothesis—if I concede I do not need it?
I treasure my irrationality. (So, whether or not you realize it, do you.) Love is at its best irrational. I do not want to be rationally loved. I want to be irrationally loved. And I want to love irrationally in return. Faith is, like love, one of the beautiful irrationalities in my life. The best things in my life are the things I do not need. (Literature, for example, I do not need. My reason knows that I could live very comfortably without reading and writing books. Yes, reason, but I still want literature in my life!) I treasure reason, too, but logic and scientific study (which I have done all too much of) have never exhilarated me like love or faith. I am a human being; I am by nature a hybrid of rational and irrational. I do not choose between the two; I cannot choose between the two, no more than I can choose one parent’s genes and not the other’s. But I can rank them and live accordingly. I treasure what is irrational above what is rational. This simple hierarchy is why I am a religious man.