"My God, I Talk Too Much" | Slavoj Žižek on Sex, Trump, and Freedom

I recently listened to an interesting discussion between Alex O'Connor and Slavoj Žižek on topics including sex, identity politics, freedom, and religion. I highly recommend finding the topics you are interested in and hearing what Zizek has to say (they are labeled so it's easy to find)

One point that stood out to me was O’Connor paraphrasing Dostoyevsky, who apparently wrote in a letter to a friend: “If I were to discover that all the facts lay outside of Christ, then I would sooner throw myself in with Christ than throw myself in with the facts and reject Christ.”

I reflected on this because it might offer a new perspective on religion's role in today's secular world and in my own life. The West turned away from God due to a 'lack of evidence' shortly before I was born. So, I entered a world where I had to choose between living as an atheist or finding my way back to God. Good luck finding your way to religion in a society that puts theists alongside flat-earthers, dismissing their beliefs without any deep thought and considering them foolish. In my experience, atheists often base their sense of intellectual superiority on arguments that highlight their lack of understanding of religious beliefs rather than their understanding. 

I've wanted to find my way to religion for a long time because I see value in the freedom, order, and moral guidance it can offer. However, it's been challenging for me to come to the conclusion that God exists and become religious. Every path I explore suggests that God is a social construct that helps societies and individuals live better lives. Nothing wrong with that, but not enough for me to pray to a supernatural entity thinking it will have an effect on the state of things in this world. It’s enough for me to respect religious people and see faith as a desirable trait of a society but not good enough to force me to obey this entity and find comfort in it in return. 

Dostoyevsky suggests that even if forced to admit there is no God, he would still choose to live as if God exists. If I agreed with Dostoyevsky, I might have become religious long ago. However, I see that approach as hypocritical and against the principle of God.

Isn't God fundamentally defined by truth? Isn’t believing in a God out of loyalty, rather than justified true belief, going against His very essence? When a loved one is ill, how can you pray to a God you know doesn’t exist? What does God do for you then? Isn’t prayer to such a God a sin as one would be praying ? If there is a concept in the atheist world that resembles God, I would say it is ‘Truth.’ I strive to live according to my truth, believing it's the closest thing atheists have to a moral compass, similar to the theists’ God. For this reason, choosing to "throw myself in with Christ rather than the facts" seems contradictory to the essence of God and doesn't support the case for theism.