Saturday, February 14, 2004
One of the greatest internal debates I have had in my head is where I stand on religion.
I've been all over the map. When I was in elementary school, it was "Christian, I guess." High school, I turned to atheism. After I graduated, I came to the conclusion that I was a theist- that is, I believed in God, but not in a doctrine.
My history and family have a lot to do with my beliefs. See, my mother came from a fanatically Christian family. Her parents and siblings are the kind of Christians that don't want you to go trick-or-treating because it's the devil's holiday.
Most of the time, my parents didn't bother indoctrinating us with any religion. Sometimes, though, they relented under the pressure. My mom made my brother and I spend one Halloween with my Aunt Biddy (All of my aunts aren't called by their names. They're called by the most asinine nicknames you could think of, such as "Pig" and "Chicken".) in a church. I'm not sure why exactly my mom wanted me to be there. All we did was sing songs that glorified God.
Karl Marx once wrote that religion "is the opium of the people". Being around 10 at the time, I hadn't read this yet. However, when I watched the face of my Aunt Biddy as she sung of God's glory- eyes closed, hands out, gently swaying, an unnaturally blissful look of peace- the seeds for my own exploration of that idea were planted.
My extended family made attempts to convert us occasionally. My grandma tried to give my brother an exorcism because we were playing with toys made by the devil- that is, of course, Power Rangers toys. My aunt convinced my mother to wipe my Dungeons and Dragons game off of our computer after she saw me playing it during a visit, a memory which irritates me to this day. These are actually the more harmless examples: they said things about our non-religious nature that are so horrendous that I won't go into them here. Needless to say, the example of my extended family was a deterrent to my ever joining a religious denomination.
At one point, my dad became convinced that we hadn't been taught proper morals or something, so he deemed it neccessary to start taking us to church. (For the record, we didn't do anything particularly immoral. The main problem was that our teachers complained about us a lot. They particularly took offense to my sleeping through their class, although I could easily absorb the material public schools teach in my sleep. In the 12th grade, I proved this theory, as I would answer the questions my teacher would pose to the class while my head was buried in my hands.) This newfound belief that a good-sized helping of God would cure our social ills was reinforced after our first church visit, when my dad declared that it went so well that we'd be doing it every week.
The next week, they starting preaching that the unbelievers would be going to hell when Judgement Day came, beliefs my dad apparently finds to be silly. Thus the great church experiement ended.
In high school, I started reading about all of the injustices the Church of the Middle Ages had done to the people. This combined with my personal experience with my family, as well as those Christians who had attacked my religious reluctance in the past, led me to conclude that religion was silly. Thus, I became an atheist.
At least, I thought I did.
However, whenever I would go through a hard time, I found myself talking to God. I'd ask for answers, solicit his help, or even sometimes damn him outright.
This threw atheism out the window.
After trying on the agnostiscism label and realising it didn't fit, I realized that I was going about it the wrong way: I was trying to find one of society's designated labels to see how I could define myself. I decided that everybody had the whole God thing wrong.
These are the core beliefs that I hold about God. I believe that unlike most religions, they are consistent with all facts.
1. God exists.
2. He is a being we cannot comprehend.
3. He is, literally, everything. The universe is his body, and we are cells inside of it.
4. God perceives everything that takes place within him, and nothing that takes place without.
5. All books on God are written by man for a purpose. They are the stories that define their culture, and nothing more.
6. Man's definition of God is, in fact, Man's definition of the human spirit.
7. God would never, ever deign to influence the human race in any way. The moment he does, we become nothing more than puppets.
8. When we die, we become a lesser spirit similar to God.
9. Heaven is the rejoining of a spirit with God's consciousness.
9. Hell is the inability of a spirit to rejoin with God. If God allowed a spirit of sin to rejoin him, its sin would spread like a sickness, tearing it apart. God may not even have the capacity to allow such a spirit to rejoin with him.
10. There is only one sin, that of pride. This is the belief that all must think as you do, that your successes prove this, and that your failures were put upon you by others. Most pride is washed away during a recouncillary period of spirit and God, as we take responsibility for the life we lived. Those who fail to do so, do not rejoin with God.
All of this is merely the conclusions I've drawn based on my analysis of the world. It is of course entirely within the realm of possibility that God does not exist, that we are a great accident, and that oblivion awaits all of us upon our deaths.
It is also cynical, cheap, depressing, and unlikely in the extreme.
There is another important conclusion here: religion, for all of its flaws, has served an invaluable role in the progress of the human race. In darker times, where peace and order did not exist, it served as a manifestation of the human spirit that people could latch on to and use as a base for a moral code. It gave our people a reason to act responsibly towards ourselves and our fellow man, and prevented us from murdering our own species in cold blood. Those who give themselves to God should be given our utmost respect, whether you agree with their views or not. For in so giving their lives, they are giving themselves to bettering the human condition.
That's how I feel. I want to get some idea of where you all stand, so I'll ask you to do this:
Tell me an idea you hold about religion or God that is unique to you. I've spent a lot of time thinking about all of this, and I'm wondering if anybody has anything interesting to add. It doesn't have to be big; just something that's personal to you. If you don't want to comment publically about it, send me an email at KastellSBlawer@aol.com.
I've been all over the map. When I was in elementary school, it was "Christian, I guess." High school, I turned to atheism. After I graduated, I came to the conclusion that I was a theist- that is, I believed in God, but not in a doctrine.
My history and family have a lot to do with my beliefs. See, my mother came from a fanatically Christian family. Her parents and siblings are the kind of Christians that don't want you to go trick-or-treating because it's the devil's holiday.
Most of the time, my parents didn't bother indoctrinating us with any religion. Sometimes, though, they relented under the pressure. My mom made my brother and I spend one Halloween with my Aunt Biddy (All of my aunts aren't called by their names. They're called by the most asinine nicknames you could think of, such as "Pig" and "Chicken".) in a church. I'm not sure why exactly my mom wanted me to be there. All we did was sing songs that glorified God.
Karl Marx once wrote that religion "is the opium of the people". Being around 10 at the time, I hadn't read this yet. However, when I watched the face of my Aunt Biddy as she sung of God's glory- eyes closed, hands out, gently swaying, an unnaturally blissful look of peace- the seeds for my own exploration of that idea were planted.
My extended family made attempts to convert us occasionally. My grandma tried to give my brother an exorcism because we were playing with toys made by the devil- that is, of course, Power Rangers toys. My aunt convinced my mother to wipe my Dungeons and Dragons game off of our computer after she saw me playing it during a visit, a memory which irritates me to this day. These are actually the more harmless examples: they said things about our non-religious nature that are so horrendous that I won't go into them here. Needless to say, the example of my extended family was a deterrent to my ever joining a religious denomination.
At one point, my dad became convinced that we hadn't been taught proper morals or something, so he deemed it neccessary to start taking us to church. (For the record, we didn't do anything particularly immoral. The main problem was that our teachers complained about us a lot. They particularly took offense to my sleeping through their class, although I could easily absorb the material public schools teach in my sleep. In the 12th grade, I proved this theory, as I would answer the questions my teacher would pose to the class while my head was buried in my hands.) This newfound belief that a good-sized helping of God would cure our social ills was reinforced after our first church visit, when my dad declared that it went so well that we'd be doing it every week.
The next week, they starting preaching that the unbelievers would be going to hell when Judgement Day came, beliefs my dad apparently finds to be silly. Thus the great church experiement ended.
In high school, I started reading about all of the injustices the Church of the Middle Ages had done to the people. This combined with my personal experience with my family, as well as those Christians who had attacked my religious reluctance in the past, led me to conclude that religion was silly. Thus, I became an atheist.
At least, I thought I did.
However, whenever I would go through a hard time, I found myself talking to God. I'd ask for answers, solicit his help, or even sometimes damn him outright.
This threw atheism out the window.
After trying on the agnostiscism label and realising it didn't fit, I realized that I was going about it the wrong way: I was trying to find one of society's designated labels to see how I could define myself. I decided that everybody had the whole God thing wrong.
These are the core beliefs that I hold about God. I believe that unlike most religions, they are consistent with all facts.
1. God exists.
2. He is a being we cannot comprehend.
3. He is, literally, everything. The universe is his body, and we are cells inside of it.
4. God perceives everything that takes place within him, and nothing that takes place without.
5. All books on God are written by man for a purpose. They are the stories that define their culture, and nothing more.
6. Man's definition of God is, in fact, Man's definition of the human spirit.
7. God would never, ever deign to influence the human race in any way. The moment he does, we become nothing more than puppets.
8. When we die, we become a lesser spirit similar to God.
9. Heaven is the rejoining of a spirit with God's consciousness.
9. Hell is the inability of a spirit to rejoin with God. If God allowed a spirit of sin to rejoin him, its sin would spread like a sickness, tearing it apart. God may not even have the capacity to allow such a spirit to rejoin with him.
10. There is only one sin, that of pride. This is the belief that all must think as you do, that your successes prove this, and that your failures were put upon you by others. Most pride is washed away during a recouncillary period of spirit and God, as we take responsibility for the life we lived. Those who fail to do so, do not rejoin with God.
All of this is merely the conclusions I've drawn based on my analysis of the world. It is of course entirely within the realm of possibility that God does not exist, that we are a great accident, and that oblivion awaits all of us upon our deaths.
It is also cynical, cheap, depressing, and unlikely in the extreme.
There is another important conclusion here: religion, for all of its flaws, has served an invaluable role in the progress of the human race. In darker times, where peace and order did not exist, it served as a manifestation of the human spirit that people could latch on to and use as a base for a moral code. It gave our people a reason to act responsibly towards ourselves and our fellow man, and prevented us from murdering our own species in cold blood. Those who give themselves to God should be given our utmost respect, whether you agree with their views or not. For in so giving their lives, they are giving themselves to bettering the human condition.
That's how I feel. I want to get some idea of where you all stand, so I'll ask you to do this:
Tell me an idea you hold about religion or God that is unique to you. I've spent a lot of time thinking about all of this, and I'm wondering if anybody has anything interesting to add. It doesn't have to be big; just something that's personal to you. If you don't want to comment publically about it, send me an email at KastellSBlawer@aol.com.
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