The Inescapable Need to Believe

A student once asked his rabbi, “Rebbe, why did God create atheists?”The rabbi smiled. “So we don’t think religious people are always right.”

A simple answer. A powerful truth.

Because real faith isn’t about certainty. It’s about humility. It’s about openness.

The Talmud says, “Who is wise? One who learns from everyone.”

And I have learned—from rabbis, from skeptics, from saints and doubters alike. One of my teachers was Richard Rorty, a philosopher who carried on the work of John Dewey, applying pragmatism to politics, culture, and literature. I took several classes with him in college.

And then—just the other day—I stumbled upon an old essay I wrote for one of his classes.

In it, I defended a statement by G.K. Chesterton—a Catholic thinker, a traditionalist, the kind of voice you wouldn’t expect a future rabbi to endorse.

And yet, I did. Here's what Chesterton said: "When people stop believing in God they start believing in anything rather than nothing,"

And reading it now, decades later, it feels more right. Because something is happening in our world. Something deeper than politics, deeper than trends.

People are leaving religion.

But they are not leaving belief.

The Search for Something More

We all need something to hold onto. A framework. A story. A higher order that makes sense of our lives.

When people step away from their childhood faith, they don’t simply become rational, detached thinkers like Spock from Star Trek. No. They redirect their belief.

And often, what replaces traditional religion is something far more fragile—sometimes even dangerous.

The New Believers

Political ideologies become sacred doctrines, their leaders the new high priests. Conspiracy theories flourish, offering easy answers in a world of complexity.Self-help gurus, tech prophets, and social media influencers step in to fill the void, promising enlightenment in bite-sized pieces.

And what does all of this tell us?

That belief is not optional.

Human beings are not logic machines. We are meaning-makers. We are faith-driven creatures. We do not simply abandon belief—we transfer it.

Chesterton’s Warning

Chesterton saw this coming.

He wasn’t just defending tradition—he was making a bold prediction. He understood that when religious faith dissolves, something else rushes in to take its place.

And often, what rushes in lacks the depth, the history, the moral weight that traditional religions once provided.

The Myth of Pure Skepticism

The skeptic might argue: Isn’t it better to believe in nothing than in something false?

But here’s the problem: Believing in nothing is impossible.

Even the most hardened materialist believes in something—human progress, scientific realism, the power of education.

Even the atheist who declares, “There is no higher power!” is making a statement of faith.

Nietzsche saw this too. He understood that the “death of God” was not just a shift in religious belief—it was an earthquake. A collapse. A vacuum.

And nature abhors a vacuum.

What comes next is often worse.

The 20th century bore this out in spectacularly tragic fashion. When faith in God eroded, faith in new, human-made ideologies took its place—Nazism, communism, totalitarianism.

The consequences? Catastrophic.

So, What Should We Believe?

If belief is inevitable, the real question is not whether we believe—but what we choose to believe in.

I was born into Judaism, and I continue to choose it—not out of blind obedience, but because I believe it creates a more just, free, and humane world.

But my faith is not the only faith.

What matters is this: Does your belief system enlarge human sympathy, or does it narrow it?

That is the question each of us must answer.

Chesterton’s Challenge

Chesterton was not a reactionary. He was not a relic of a lost world.

He was issuing a warning.

The decline of faith does not mean people suddenly become rational, scientific, and clear-thinking. It means they search—often frantically—for something to replace it.

And what they find is often fragmented, unstable, and far less capable of sustaining a civilization.

So, the challenge is clear.

Not whether to believe.

But what to believe in.

And that choice—your choice—will shape the world.