I will start this post with the disclaimer that I’m 23 and fully aware that these thoughts come without the perspective of someone who’s been around twice or three times as long. I’m just talking.
So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about religion recently, since a lot of people seem to think that the discrepancies between our beliefs indicate that my life lacks purpose. Agnosticism is not the same as ambivalence; I am often given the impression that just because I think it’s rude to talk about religion outside of a philosophical context, people think I must not be spiritually content. This could not be further from the truth. Religion is a life philosophy just like anything else, and I think it’s just as ridiculous to talk about your religious views as though they’re fact as it is to encourage a friend to quit her job because the stars suggest it’s a great month for Aquarian creativity, or start singing Hakuna Matata to someone who is telling you about their dying mother. Even if I agree with your philosophy wholeheartedly, when making important decisions, I want to examine the things that are concrete to me, the logical things.
Not long ago it was suggested that I might be a Deist. If you’re not familiar, Deists believe that God exists, but a person’s reason for this belief should come from observing nature and all the wondrous things around him, not just because someone told him it was so. No one can really deny that false prophets have presented themselves over the ages, so it makes sense that a god who wanted us to be aware of his/her/its existence would make that fact available to everyone, not just revealed through one special person’s claims. It took only minutes of research to realize that there are significant conflicts between my personal ideology and Deists’, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. I enjoyed what I read and appreciated the attempt to put emphasis on the individual’s ability to reason and the problems with ‘revealed’ religion (where the evidence is based on claims of others rather than personal observation and understanding). Most of our founding fathers were Deists. Thomas Jefferson? Totally punk rock. The literature really paints the faith as the core of the American Dream – don’t let anyone tell you what to think, use your own head, to each his own.
Except oh wait, nope, that’s crap. Because then the next paragraph was about how now that they’ve explained why revealed religion is wrong, it’s time to spread the word and teach everyone else why their religions are wrong (oh wait, maybe that’s totally the American way. Whatever.). So in the end, Deism is just another religion that promotes itself as a revelation and not a point of view. The revelation is that there are no revelations. Now go tell everyone.
I’ll admit that sometimes I do have disdain for religion, even and perhaps especially my own. Human spirituality is mysterious and powerful…I think many people feel as though they have a new lease on life after getting in touch with their spiritual sides, and of course after such an experience you would feel passionately about the route that took you there. It upsets me though that it doesn’t seem painfully obvious to everyone that spiritual contentedness doesn’t require a specific belief system.
I’m sure the religions that stick around are the ones that provide a service to their members, the ones that make some lives more meaningful. But captive audiences are petri dishes for corruption—intentional or otherwise, we all have agendas. Why does the Catholic church take a stance against birth control? According to my religious education, sex is about you, your partner, and God, and when you practice birth control, you kick God out of your love party. Which sounds good and all, but I’m pretty sure that bigger Catholic families also means more Catholics running around, which is a pretty sweet ancillary bonus. I mean, the Virgin Mother didn’t even have a party and God still crashed her shindig, so I don’t see what the big deal is. Most Catholics I know can’t justify it either, so they pretend it isn’t a rule. Not because they’re selective about which of God’s laws they obey, just because they’re reasonably sure that one was made up by a bunch of dudes in robes who meant well but don’t have much experience to drawn on when the discussion turns to how families should be raised.
So I’m not telling anyone anything new when I talk about the inherent problems with organized religion, and although I think religion holds tremendous value to some people, I don’t perceive the religious people I know, on average, to be more spiritually aware than the nonreligious ones. If I can’t believe that all people are equal, I don’t know how to believe in anything. So if I assume that that core belief is true, I assume that if there’s a God, he’s there for everyone. Whether you were born into a Christian family or a Muslim family or a family with no faith, whether you picked up a new faith along the way. I have no use for a god who creates eternal suffering for victims of circumstance. And anyway, in the domain of all things possible, chances are good that we are all hilariously wrong. All we can really do is try to find equilibrium – the kind most people acquire by learning to think beyond themselves. If Jesus teaches you that, or Moses, or Joseph Smith…as long as you’re happy, you’re doing ok.
My mom recently noted a Jesus quote, where he says that no one gets to the Father but through him. Maybe that, like everything else he ever said, was a metaphor. If you can find happiness without humility and service, I haven’t seen it happen. I’ve had enough of Christians thinking they have the charity game on lock. Someone told me recently about a very generous woman who “didn’t even believe in Jesus,” and I’m very grateful that my head didn’t explode.
So I’m thinking about all of this, getting progressively more disgruntled about being judged for reserving religious judgment, and it occurs to me that for all this bitching I do about religions and their revelations and need to evangelize, what with their complete and perfect faith systems that you know to be true only if you’re enlightened enough to be part of the club… for all that seems preposterous about these assumptions, I’m part of such a group.
I feel so passionately that science and logic are perfect systems that make the world make sense without speculation or voodoo. They’re unbiased. The universe is a puzzle and scientists know that what they ‘know’ is tentative at best. The puzzle isn’t done; we don’t know everything and we don’t know anything for certain—we only know how much evidence we have to support any given theory. If you disprove a scientific theory, the community revises it’s opinion. Where can agenda hide in mathematical proofs?
But let’s be real, plenty of scientists have their names on crap theories that aren’t really fought because no one is interested in challenging them. Freud is the father of psychology, but everyone in the field knows that not one of his theories has ever been supported by a scientific study. If you were sure that gravity was a hoax, you probably would have a rough time getting funding to prove that. But if you plant that seed of doubt, eventually people will accept it as a possibility, and in a couple decades everyone would understand because in the end, what matters to scientists is the truth.
But as far as I can tell, that’s all that matters to anyone. People just go about it different ways. Even by my own faith system I can’t justify why I’m any more ahead of the game than anyone else, and I think I like that.
When I can stop reading trash long enough to finally finish the memoirs of this former Catholic priest, you’ll probably see another annoying religion post. And then I’ll try to practice what I preach and stop preaching.
(Don’t forget that it’s World AIDS Day.)