Dear friends, and do hope that we will remain friends after you are done reading this; I have decided to publish why I don’t believe in religion. Though summarizing a lifetime journey in a blog is a difficult task, I made this as poignant as possible. This is not an attempt to persuade anyone to divorce from his or her own theology. My dear friend, I absolutely love you the way you are. This is an autobiographic glimpse into my journey that has formed my belief system. To be, and have friends, we truly must under stand each other. I have been subjected to the unsolicited teachings of religion against my will my entire life, so consider this my little voice of rebellion; to quote the great Shakespeare “To thine own self be true." I am fully aware that in attempt to explain my belief system I will offend people. Though this is not the purpose, it will be a consequence. For this I am sorry, this is not my intention. I hope that you can try to remain objective and follow my thought process through this narrative.
I do not think any less of anyone who does believe in religion. In fact, I am a little bit envious of anyone who can find peace and self-identity in organized religion. I have simply transcended the aforementioned state of mind; I chose the word transcend because I was once a believer in Christianity. To clarify, I do not look at religious people from an elitist perspective, rather; I look at them with compassion and understanding. I used to be there. I am like a globetrotter observing someone who hasn’t traveled much, or very little. I am not smarter, more intelligent, better or brighter than they, I have just been to different places then they have on the spiritual journey. I am fully aware that there is no possible way for anyone to relate to what I am saying unless they themselves have been on an equally diverse journey. In fact anyone who believes anything anyone else says without question, is a fool, and I would be equally as guilty of brainwashing.
I am only going to use Christianity as the subject of contrast and comparison, since this is a primary religion in the U.S. When I say Christianity, I use the term loosely for simplicity purposes. The term Christianity is in and of itself a stereotype more often than not proven false because of the diversity in denominations. While you are reading this, you might think “but I am not like that,” please do keep in mind this story isn’t about you. Whilst I’ve put the cart before the horse, I’m getting on the horse now.
My parents divorced when I was three. From what I can ascertain, my father was a bit of a handsome-popular bad boy turned family man (and chauvinist) and my mother was a wallflower who morphed into an educated, striving, feminist hottie. Clearly this was a relationship doomed for failure. Growing up I was exposed to quite a bit of Christianity, my Great Grandmother was Lutheran, and sometimes I went to church on Sundays and enjoyed it.
When I was around 8 years old, my very cool, very secular father turned “born again.” Shortly thereafter I was exposed a wide spectrum of Christians: Baptist, Non-Denominational, Evangelical, Lutheran and Catholic-Christian. My father insisted that this was an amazing transformation, I believed him --though honestly I rather liked him the way he was before. By the time I was a teenager, I was brainwashed “born again.” I admit that I wanted to believe in the hype that I was being force-fed. I more or less went along with it all as way to please my family, because my goal for the first 18 years of my life was to stay out of trouble. From the pages of Merriam-Webster
brain·wash·ing
1 : a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas
2 : persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship
“…to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas…” that would mean that someone would have to have these things to begin with, indeed I did. I recall being quite young, sitting in church listening to sermons talk about the love of Jesus. The funny thing is -- kids will believe just about anything. I started comparing these stories of this beautiful person (Jesus) and what Christians are, against what I was experiencing in my own life, with Christians; even what I sometimes heard come straight from the pulpit. I deduced that these could not be the same two things. Most of the Christians that I knew said horrible things about gay people, and anyone that wasn’t like them. They told racist jokes, and relished in gossip about each other. They could abuse and manipulate people with their doctrine. They were hypocritical, judgmental and quite frankly seemed to be in the dark, blindly following doctrine, which in and of itself seemed utterly and completely hypocritical. It was profoundly confusing and painful to contrast these ideologies against reality and to come unreconciled. This led me down a long path of analyzing this paradox, was it the Christians or the bible? I’ll save you years of reading the cliff notes, it turns out it is both. I can’t just say that without explaining myself.
As a parent, I would never put my children on planet with my arch enemy resides, who by all accounts, is a far superior contender and undoubtedly will defeat even the most superior human being. This is a scenario that was created to fail. It lacks logic to the extent that even the suggestion of free will is a severely weak point. How do you propose that free will could compete against a god-like creature? From the inception, the bible is an incredulous tale. My next example is how in one passage, Jesus talks about turning the other cheek, in another passage Jesus gets angry and overturns tables in the synagogue. Really, am I the only thinking person who finds this completely hypocritical and by its very nature is an example of “sin?” Wait a minute, Jesus never sinned right?
Let’s recap. God sets his children up to fail, and then punishes them with a life of constant struggle throughout time, until the final act of Armageddon. Then, he rewards people for not using their “God given brains,” and blindly believing these mythical stories, which are inaccurately recorded, because they were verbally handed down from a time whereby people were largely illiterate. Oh, I almost forgot, many of the books that make up the entire biblical volume are not actually in the final bible. The political/church leaders at the time picked which books they wanted published, based on how they wanted to control the masses at that point in history. Furthermore, the “bible” was polluted when Constantine decided to merge the Pagan beliefs in with Christian to bring peace in order to these dueling religions. This is why many Christians believe that Christ died on a cross, instead of a tree (original translation) and we celebrate with a Christmas tree, and the introduction of the trinity concept. All of which are directly stolen from Pagan rituals, as is the Easter bunny, though EB isn't in the b-i-b-l-e, however Easter was planned to overshadow the Pagan spring equinox. Meanwhile, said holy deity refuses to make an appearance to either confirm or deny its existence, yet insist that he is “the only way.” When people choose not to believe these fairy tales they spend eternity in hell. Makes perfect sense. So either “God” is a sadistic asshole, or the bible is a wonderful work of fictitious and factual fables. I choose b. How silly. Why don’t you just believe in Santa Clause, at least he isn’t mean.
The bible is not all bad, it is a nice piece of literature, full of some great stories and common sense rules like “don’t sleep with your neighbors wife.” There are many of these universal truths in many religions and stories throughout time. I do not knock the use of the bible as a foundation for development of good values, morals and ethics, I do not see the bible as a credible source of information, nor can it be a book in which my whole life must revolve around for the aforementioned reasons. I also think the bible is one dimension or one perspective of learning. If you really want to be knowledgeable it is important for one to read from many different sources. I also think that historically the bible was a good way for leaders to control people from self-destructive behavior, otherwise difficult to curtail. If you simply think of the word “sin” as self-destructive behavior it begins to fit better into a modern context. Now that we have laws to protect ourselves and each other form these basic sins, (at lease in the U.S.) this method of control is outdated.
This is just the exploration of one religion. I have done this process with many religions, in an attempt to fill the God void, which by the way is no longer a void. I’ve never heard the uncontested ring of truth upon close examination from any religion. There are some that are close, Buddhism is one I find to be in most alignment with my beliefs, but that would be Buddhism the philosophy, not the religion. Even Buddhism requires a level of isolation and discipline that I cannot embrace. Religion requires a deity to “worship,” I worship nothing. Life it be lived and enjoyed because there isn’t anyone who has come back from the dead to profess that we all are guaranteed heaven if we only believe in “fill in the blank” religion. Furthermore, why would you think it’s ok to discard your own thought process and intuition? Animals in nature do not do this, why would we?
My suspicions about religion were cemented when I took “History of Western Civilization” in college. I learned about the birth of civilization, through history, as we understood it. I learned about all of the cultures and people that shaped our lives, beliefs, progress, and technology through out time. One thing that became clear is that as far as they can trace, we’ve always believed in God. And that our idea of God has always been changing and evolving as we've evolved in our thinking. That’s because people created religion, and their perception of what God is, not “God.”
Continuing on I was finally introduced to perhaps my greatest love in college, “Philosophy of Ethics.” Finally a method of which I could clearly articulate what I had been thinking in my head all of these years about life and religion. I understood how I could be a profoundly ethical person, in the absence of any religious dogma. Philosophy gave me a tool to divide and categorize the hypocrisy found in religion, ethics, morals, values and thought. I fell in love with the study of philosophy, though I had really been in love with it all of my life, and did not know it.
My belief system does come at a cost of alienation from friends, community and relationships. It is the reason my blog is anonymous. One of the reasons I am single is that I find it difficult find progressive minded people like myself to date in the bible belt that I live in. One of my prerequisites is that the person not be religious, and be ethical. While I can respect a person’s choice to be religious, sooner or later this will cause a great deal of conflict in a shared life because either I will have to hold my tongue, and not be myself, or risk hurting their feelings.
There seems to be this misconception that non-religious people have no morals, values or ethics. I hope that this post has made it obvious that the catalyst for my transformation was spawned by my love and reverence for all human beings, my compassion and value for every life, and my desire to be an honorable and just human being.
I am not an atheist, but an agnostic theist, which means I believe a god exists, but I do not claim to know that this belief is true. When I say God, I am using the term loosely because what some people call God I think of as a universal energy source in which all life belongs to. I get excited about the discoveries in quantum physics, specifically string theory. it appears to possibly explain in scientific way, this universal energy, if it can be proven. However, for me it doesn't have to be proven. Love cannot be tested, yet no one can deny its reality, power, or it's effects.
Why do I believe that anything god-like could exist? First, because I am thinker, anything could be true until it’s proven otherwise, or my own thought processes makes a deduction. Second, I cannot explain coincidence, aside from pure statistics, which defies true explanation anyway. Third, personal experiences. I’ve been thinking of someone, and they call. Sometimes I think things, and other people say them out loud, a thought enters my mind that says, “do this, not that” and it turns out to be a great benefit to me. Sometimes I just know something is going to happen before it does. Can you explain “messages from the other side” that seem to work in our favor? We all have these experiences regularly. Serendipity, knowsis, psychic energy, miracles, these are all things we cannot explain. These great mystical and magical experiences in our lives that make us sit on the edge of our seats and give us goose bumps. If we figure it all out, we might not have anything left to feel hopeful about. Which is why I believe there is a God, because I choose to, I just don’t believe in religion. If believing in God or religion makes you a better person, and you do no harm to others in your beliefs, then by all means believe away. I challenge you to explore and conclude why you believe what you believe, and then my friend, we will truly be kindred spirits.
Posts
