Religion

This is a bit of a heavy subject but whatever, it's nice to think about things like this once in a while and to get it out onto a page so you can see what those thoughts look like and how they fit together outside of your head.

Religion has always been a part of my life. Some people these days are born and live without coming into contact with religion at all and it has no impact on their life. Religion has been a part of my life though since birth. And not a strict regimented religion either, my mum is a baptist, but my dad is an atheist, or at least doesn't approach the subject at all. So I have been taught and shown religious values, I went to Sunday school and church every week until I was 13, but never told that I have to be religious myself, it's always been my choice.

As a baptist you don't get christened at birth, you have a dedication service where you're taken to the front of the church and officially introduced but as far as having your original sin washed away, that doesn't happen until you choose to have it happen and officially take God into your life. And so I have never been baptised. As I said I have never been told I have to be a Christian, the choice has always been my own.

So when I think of Christianity and religion now I come at it from an educated viewpoint. The bible was one of the first books I ever read, I had religious fables told to me week in, week out for the first 13 years of my life, I am very aware that a major part of life is death and the possibility of what comes after it, if anything comes after it at all.

But I also know about the great sense of community the church gives to people who need it, my parents are both retired and drawing their pensions, have fully paid up their mortgage and have a comfortable amount of savings now but in the past, whilst me, my brother and sister were growing up, they struggled. At one point they had no money whatsoever and were going through a really rough patch, but a friend of my mum's through the church leant them a large amount of money not expecting it to be paid back. My parents have paid a substantial amount of it back since though the people who leant it were reluctant to take it, but that sense of community I think is just so great. Not only that, my dad is very ill, he has been my entire life, and my mum is his carer. She has had so much support from other people in the church it has been invaluable for her. And my dad. Just complete selflessness from people, I know you could say that's just a friendship thing, but I think it's more than that, it's concern and care for people who have the same beliefs as yourself and who are all working for the same cause. However questionable the cause is.

And so I have never been anti-religion. I see the bible as a handbook to life and society. If everyone was able to live by the advice written in the bible the world would be a much better place. Those that do find comfort in the bible and do lead their lives as it tells them, I envy.

This is where the problem comes, as human beings we all approach things differently and have differing interpretations of the same thing. Some people who are more arrogant and self-important than others aren't content with just living their life in that way themselves, they believe it should be imposed on other people in an aggressive manner. Note I talk about religion here, not Christianity alone. Every religion is just as valid as rules for living, all religions should be allowed to exist side by side, each religious community understand that the other believes differently rather than trying to prove theirs is the right one. It may even come down to financial greed as well, the heads of churches wanting to find more money for their churches and so try to convert more and more people to their belief system, I'm unsure what drives it but that part of religion is wrong and is the only thing about it that I disagree with. That shouldn't mean an eradication of the church and religions entirely though, definitely not, and atheists who are strongly against religions even existing, who think of religious people as being stupid to think that such a thing might exist are heartless, callous creatures in my eyes.

Religion I think is very important. Personally, I cannot fathom death. The idea that when we die that is it, that we stop existing completely. I cannot comprehend it and when I try to I get filled with the greatest sense of fear, it has been known to send me into week long depressions. The idea of religion is the perfect antedote for this. If you let yourself believe in religion, that is the answer. You needn't have that fear when you truly consider non-existance and death because as far as you are concerned that's not going to happen. Even when you die you do not have that fear when you pass away, as far as you are concerned you are going to heaven. What actually happens after that doesn't matter because your brain won't be functioning to know or experience it.

Can you see were I'm coming from then, in my belief that religion isn't a bad thing, that in fact it is a brilliant thing and for some people is their whole life?

I've never been able to take it on myself though. I see all of the above, but at the same time my mind is simply too rational to just let myself believe that. I wish so badly I could believe in it but I can't. Not for now anyway. I don't believe in heaven, I definitely don't believe in hell, I also don't believe that the bible is a reliable text, I don't believe that Jesus simply popped into Mary's womb from out of nowhere, got killed on the cross and rose again of his own accord three days later. I do believe in Jesus but I don't believe in those events. For instance, there is a version of the bible in which Jesus was crucified on the cross but instead of dying there he was made to inhale a mixture of herbs which would have knocked him out, possibly for a number of days. The fact that such arguments like this exist but are never accepted or discussed by the church even though it is a fact that differing versions and translations of the bible do exist makes me unable to simply accept it.

As far as the life and death thing is concerned then, I simply cannot comprehend non existance. There is a lot in the claim that sleep is the brother of death, sleep is probably the closest we can come to experiencing death and an absolute stillness of consciousness, but even then during sleep we dream. I am a strong believer in the spirit. To not believe in the spirit is a very modern disease. Science may not be able to prove the existance of the spirit but that does not by any means mean it does not exist. Science has not disproven the existance of the spirit either. It is still an open question. To call the non-existance of the spirit a definite is ignorance.

I do not know myself yet what I believe in terms of this. The closest I have come to defining it so far is possibly buddism, the belief that we are eternal consciousness, that we reincarnate, egos and personalities are bound to the earth through nurture and the environment we live in, we are here to experience. I can't tell you the hows and whys but that doesn't mean that none exist.

Simply, I am open minded to everything apart from those who try to impose their own beliefs, or lack of beliefs, onto other people. We do what we can to make it through life and survive. There may be a truth or reason out there but at the moment we don't know what it is, no one does, not the religious or the atheists. If believing that what they believe is the truth gets them through life then no one should dare turn around and tell them they're wrong.