[Editor’s Note: This piece was one of my earliest editorials, speaking on a topic that first challenged me growing up in a small, midwestern town where being different wasn’t really something that was accepted…]
Seemingly one of the most controversial topics of all time, the reasonings and ramifications behind organized religion have puzzled scholars and bewildered the true fanatics for as long as anyone can remember. Soaring high above political affiliations and sexual relations, the discussion of ones religious views seems to be the easiest and quickest way to get under anyone’s skin these days, making it virtually impossible for the curious minds to even get the questions out in the open in the first place, let alone begin to uncover any real answers. It seems as though most mainstream denominations are horribly self-absorbed, considering themselves to be the only true faith and striking all others as wrong simply by default, so the concept of their own system of beliefs being considered false could result in only the most disastrous of results (i.e. going to hell).
Before I proceed, however, it’s important that you understand a bit about my own background – I was by no means raised a religious boy. My entire childhood was lived out in that same house with churches at both ends of the street, and the only time I ever visited either of them was when the hospital was giving away free immunization shots there…and as the story goes, I ran screaming all the way home both of those times, too! It’s not that I wasn’t given the opportunity to experience and appreciate all that religion had to offer; it’s more like the topic never really came up around the house and as we never found ourselves without anything better to do, it wasn’t that big of a deal to be lacking in that particular area. Besides, it gave me the wonderful opportunity to sleep in on weekends, which is a tradition that I still honor to this very day…
Now I find myself all grown up and during those occasions when other people do ask me about my own religious beliefs, they’re actually expecting an answer – apparently giggling and running circles around the room with inane glee just doesn’t cut it anymore when you’re 22 years old. The problem with answering the question now is that the bearer doesn’t necessarily want to hear the details of my own thoughts and feelings on the subject, but usually just that I’m a good Christian who attends services every Sunday and that I prefer the Old Testament over the New Testament. (Note that I use the term Christian here simply as a filler, so feel free to substitute in the affiliation of your choice…even though I’ve yet to have been approached by anyone curious about my rich Buddhist beliefs.) Of course, you now know the previous sentence to be completely false, as I just went over how I prefer to spend my Sunday mornings sleeping, so therein lays the real question – what are my true beliefs?
So much to the dismay of religious friends and family everywhere, I personally consider myself to be agnostic, meaning that I believe that it is impossible to know whether or not there actually is a God. It’s important to notice the difference between agnosticism and atheism, which is the flat-out belief that there is no God – while I realize that they’re awfully close, atheism just has such a tainted clout already from the whole anarchist movement that the term agnostic is much preferred by anyone with similar beliefs at this point! As with most others of this variety, I’ve come upon this choice due to a deep respect for the sciences and their own explanations of how we’ve come to be in this world. Although evolution and Darwinism in general played the strongest roles in influencing these beliefs for me, I still think that it’s more important to examine the aspects of organized religion which turned me away from their own methods, reinforcing alternatives such as agnosticism and its counterparts…
Don’t get me wrong, though – religion has played an important role in the shaping of mankind and our society itself. Thousands and thousands of years ago, our ancestors were faced with countless strange and new anomalies day after day which they could neither explain or nor even comprehend, so eventually they chose an alternate method of understanding that our own children still practice to this day – they created stories. Ranging from such topics as how trees grow and why the seasons change to even some of the most complex phenomena like life, death, and of course, the original creation of it all, these stories and tales continued to develop over the years and eventually grew into the very legends that early humans used to understand the world around them. An eclipse of the sun was actually the work of an interstellar dragon attempting to eat the giver of life; the daily and nightly coming of the tides were the result of a trick played on an old woman who happened to control the tides to ensure that the beaches would be bare long enough for villagers to gather their foods each day. These legends became the cornerstones of primitive religion, as the people believed that it was important to keep the heroes of these tales happy so that they would in turn continue their own jobs and see that life on Earth continued.
Even now, religion continues to give both relief and hope to masses of people who seem to have a gap in their life that makes their general, day-to-day existence very unnerving. The concept of a higher being to ultimately explain and resolve and lead is very important to a lot of people, millions upon millions actually, who for one reason or another need this in their life, and I can understand that because we’re all different physically, psychologically, socially. We don’t even need to go into these reasons because that opens up a whole new can of worms, but I both understand and accept the religious beliefs of others for whatever reason, yet herein lies the bigger problem – just how many of those people do you think understand or accept the reasoning behind my beliefs?
If you answered a resounding none, then you’re absolutely correct, thus leading us into the first of my many pet peeves about religion – the iron-clad mindset that any differing beliefs contradict the validity of our own, by default, and therefore must be false. Put in more layman’s terms, “You don’t believe in my God, so regardless of what you do believe, it’s wrong…” and although some may consider that nothing more than a strong show of faith, as far as I’m concerned it’s just plain rude. If you were given the opportunity to make your own choice, how can you hold that against others who’ve merely come to a different conclusion? Just because we have differing beliefs doesn’t make either one of them more important than the other…
But sadly, it even goes a step further than that when patrons deem it necessary to force their beliefs on others in an attempt to “convert” or “save” them…as if they were more or less perpetually doomed until this alternate savior came along. While I can understand this desire to share a good thing in one’s eyes with others, it frightens me with the level of devotion that many people put into “sharing” their religion with friends and family…and even complete strangers. Ultimately, choosing your religion, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal decision and should be left at that, so why doesn’t anyone respect these boundaries anymore? You’d certainly be offended if I challenged your faith, so why is it so difficult to respect my own decision? I’ve witnessed old friends distance themselves because of differing view-points, men and women immediately cut themselves off from a section of the population because they’re only willing to enter into wedlock within their own faith, and even parents disown their own children because of contrasting religious beliefs. All of this and more, simply because of varying ideas about the sanctity of life and the great beyond – it honestly just seems like both a waste and a shame to me.
I guess when it all comes down to it, though, I’ve got to admit that I don’t believe that religion, as a whole, is either good or bad. Everything has its ups and down, and as I’ve just pointed out here above, from direction and devotion to persecution and bloodlust, spirituality certainly has seen its share of both ends of the stick. Regardless of what time has taught us about theology, however, I do think it’s important for each of us to take a good, hard look at what truly makes up religion before we make our own decisions because despite what you’ve been told by your parents or heard on the news last week, it’s still your own choice to make. Perhaps you won’t see things in the same light that I have or maybe you’ll completely agree and utilize some of the points I’ve made here to come to your own conclusion, but whether or not you choose to believe in a God, multiple Gods, or even none at all, do so because you want to, not because everybody else is doing it.
An idea can’t be held responsible for the people who believe in it…