My View on Religion

I grew up hearing "hell and brimstone" from a god that supposedly loved me.  As a kid I was terrified of what this god of loving could do to me if I failed to be a faithful and humble servant.  As I grew and started studying history, I noticed what had caused all the wars in the past and saw where most of the conflict comes from in the world.  Yea, you guessed it.   I grew afraid of the harm that religion has done and continues to do in the world, a view I still hold today.

I distanced myself from any form of religion and would not go as far as entering a church building to go to a wedding for more than a decade after I left my religion.  I was the one that would finally agree to take care of all the children in the nursery in the front of the church.  This worked fine for me until I married a woman whose sisters are religious.  I have handled it by being withdrawn when I am around them.  I only engage in polite, casual conversations avoiding any hint of a religious discussion and in reality any kind of meaningful conversation.  They too have become guarded, no one saying anything that might upset the apple cart.  Of course, my wife wants them to get to know the me that she knows, the person that usually digs down and tries to see what is under the hood in each person I meet.

Here is the paradox for me.  Religions ask you to believe something on faith.  What does that mean?  To me, it means believing something that is possibly irrational and at best unknowable because someone acting for "god" has decided it is the right thing to believe.  In some religions, what they ask you to believe is relatively harmless on the surface, at least, and in other religions it is horrible.  The Nazi's fit my definition of a religion; they believed they were a chosen, special people and to be part of them you had to be of the right race and believe their sermon of superiority.  This is also very much like the Israelis of the old testament, or much like the ones still in the middle east, or the Palestinians for that matter.  (We talk about illegal immigrants in this country often with the same tone of superiority.) 

The harm to me in religion has always seem to be at the point that an individual  relegates "right and wrong" and "what" to believe to someone else.  Each person in my sense of right and wrong has to  responsible for what they believe, even more, what they think is right and and wrong.  To take a myth and a book written a long time ago as my guide for right and wrong seems horribly wrong to me, and it seems a step away from abrogating my responsibility to my fellow men.  I want my actions to spring from my thoughtful, honest opinions I have on the act in question based on my values which in turn are based on my life experiences.

I look at our political landscape in the country and it is filled with religious righteousness -- judgment pronounced in the name of the Bible primarily of what is wrong with our fellow humans.  Of course, it is a no brainier that religion is going to mostly be against gays or anyone else that departs from the traditional family assumed in the Bible, or the Koran for that matter. But, with only 64% of our workforce having jobs, it is more surprising how we find the righteous noble ground to characterize people not working as lazy. (Reminds me of Romney's 47% of the people that want hand outs.)  This moral righteousness that sometimes disintegrates into moral disgust keeps us from recognizing how serious this problem is and it eliminates all the obvious solutions that a religious perspective would not find appropriate (since these people are "lazy" and might get something for nothing).  Accepting the world and capitalism (often a religion itself) could be inappropriate for the situation we now find herself in would be anathema. 

So, obviously many people don't see religion as harshly as I do.  They don't see it as one step away from accepting something awful, they don't see the harm in choosing to believe things that I find to be illogical or at best unknowable.  So, how do I relate to these people, many of which believe that I am condemned to hell because of my lack of belief.  First, let me say that I don't really mind if they think I am going to a place that I have no evidence exists.  Second, I like being an example of a good person that doesn't believe.  It gives me a strange satisfaction to make them wonder about their god and their religion where people like me would be sentenced to hell.  Really?  Third, I like to contrast the simplicity of my religion which can be summarized by saying I believe in being kind and helpful with courage.

But, I still haven't found a framework where I can sit down and even discuss something like unemployment with my fellow humans who believe in a religion.  All I have is logic, I have no judgments to pronounce.  I still don't know how to talk to my religious relatives.  What if my wife and I want to bring a third party into our bedroom.

 My guess is that most of my religious friends are going to have a problem with this action and no amount of logic is going to make them comfortable with us living our life as we chose to live it.  So, how do I call a truce where I let them be religious and they let me and my wife live as we see fit.  We might even want to smoke dope with this visitor to our bedroom.  Now, I see we have brought in the legal into the subject that was before just right and wrong, believers and unbelievers.

I would argue of course that much of our legal basis in this country comes from our religious, Puritanical past.  I tried to buy some wine in North Carolina on a Sunday about 10 am in the grocery store.  I thought gee, this is more permissive than where I live where I have been protected from beer and wine being in my grocery store.  But, once at the register, I was told I couldn't buy wine before noon on Sunday.  Logical?  It is not logical, it is a religious outcropping.

Okay, I am still not any closer in coming up with a plan on how to relate to my religious relatives or my religious friends.  How do I know when being as logical and honest as I know how to be is going to cause hurt feelings.  How do I shed an air of superiority when I really do believe honesty and logic is superior to belief and faith?   My friend Brian says that I need to accept that all people are where they are on this journey of awakening, growth and consciousness as he calls it.  However, that seems to strike me as being very similar to my trust in logic, honesty, and kindness.

The best I can come up with at the moment centers around my belief in kindness, compassion and being my brother's keeper.  I think the answer for me has to come down to being as helpful to my religious friends as possible.  In conversations, I need to ask them about their beliefs without being compelled to share my viewpoint. But, I should not be afraid to inquire deeply on any subject that they bring up.  I should not be afraid to examine views that they hold that are not consistent with other views that they hold -- since being illogical and consistent are not possible.

When I was young, my fundamentalist religion made me an outcast at school and now I find my thought that faith is illogical separates me from many people.  I even find atheist's confidence that there is no god just another "faith".  I find it hard to find those like me that just don't know about the unknowable things beyond our senses.    

But in this muddle (this post and my thoughts), the desire to connect to my fellow humans remains strong and at conflict with my desire to be honest and transparent, and just be me, not knowing.