Decomposition of Religion
I don’t hate religion, really I don’t. But there are many reasons why I treat religion with much animosity. Most of them have to do with my tendency to not want to think like everyone else. I just cannot bring myself to believe in what religion says. And for the purposes of this essay, religion will basically be Christianity, since that has been the one I’ve had the most contact with. Anyone who wishes to defend religion or at least tell me why I’m wrong can email a response to me. Just a small point for those of you attacking my position, I’ve never really participated in religion, all I have are observations from the outside, so I’m basically attacking something I know very little about. Hypocrisy reigns true.
Religion is not all bad; it has quite a few qualities that I try to ascribe to myself. It’s easier for me this way because then I don’t have to believe in all the mumbo jumbo I will critique later on. My critique of moral theory has already been presented in an earlier essay, but I will revisit it here. Morals were created to keep the peace. Things like theft, murder, and adultery not only promote violence in the act of doing them, but they also tend to incur violent retaliation. For example, if someone sleeps with your wife, don’t you want to go beat him down? An eye for an eye ring any bells? So, in order to dissuade this violence-retaliation thing, you just make the acts that illicit retaliation “wrong” or “immoral” and you back that up with saying that if you do “wrong” in life you experience never-ending torture in this thing called an “afterlife.” I see it as a basic scare tactic, saying that people will eventually be punished for evil deeds according to some sort of divine “justice.” Right and wrong, moral and immoral, virtue and sin, heaven and hell, they are all fabrications in order to try to force someone into keeping the peace. Now, it seems contradictory to say I like morals and then say they don’t exist. Well, I like the concept behind morals, keeping the peace, and believe people should try to keep the peace. This is why the laws of the country seem to coincide, at least in part, with moral edicts. Laws are created to keep the peace and maintain order, just like morals, but laws have a more concrete and tangible punch to them. The have reality to them, and you don’t have to question their existence.
Religion also promotes various desirable qualities. Virtue and living a “good” life have already been discussed. Things like charity, forgiveness, good will towards others, and a sense of community are what I see. It seems to attempt to break humans of their intrinsically selfish nature. See my Human Nature essay for some bad qualities of humans. Promoting working together and helping each other out are great things. Making sacrifices on behalf of others, caring more about the person next to you than yourself, those are definitely things for which people should strive. Being selfish and self-centered may be great for you, but it doesn’t do much for the rest of the planet. So, I agree with promoting these qualities, because the world will be a better place if everyone actually cared.
Religion has as one of its purposeful traits reasoning for life. It gives people a reason for living life. People tend to feel very insignificant, especially nowadays when it seems that it doesn’t matter what you do during the day. Very few people get to have any historical significance. Not everyone changes the world. So, why go through with it? Well, you could pride yourself on doing the best you can to make a difference or to make as many people happy as possible. Or you could believe in moral theory and think that if you live a full and good life you will be rewarded with entrance to paradise. Again, the creation of an afterlife comes into play. Without people thinking that they will be rewarded somehow after they die, most would not try to live life the way they do. This is the concept I have the most difficulty finding a secular equivalence to. It’s hard to justify living life “morally” when there is no afterlife or what I’ll call perpetual consequence. Without these things, it seems that people should do whatever they want, since they only have one life to live and will never really be punished. There is no incentive to be good, so why would anyone do it? I haven’t really created an answer to this one. Breaking the law has consequences, but not everyone gets caught. Following the belief that you should bring as much happiness to the world, other than yourself, has good consequences for everybody, but there is no reasoning why you should do it. I would like to say that putting the world above yourself is noble, and is the thing to do. It’s not all about you. You should try to reach out and touch as many people as possible, and when you do that you should make their lives better. It’s not about fame, although that would come. It’s about knowing when you die that you will be remembered fondly. That’s what life is about, making a difference to the world and having a positive impact on people’s lives. None of the other stuff really matters.
Ok, enough of this “let’s play nice and give religion some props” b.s. and get on to why I can’t bring myself to believe in religion. First of all, it is encumbered with mythology and folklore. The purpose of religion is to explain why things happen the way they do in the world. The Greeks and Egyptians had all sorts of gods and myths explaining everything from why the sun came up to why the seasons change to fate and everything else. Christianity sort of takes that route as well. The world is the way it is because God said so. Things happen the way they do because it is God’s will. I don’t know about you, but any explanation along these lines seems to be very cheap and self-serving. Why do things have to have a reason for happening? Why do people always have to think there is a why? The fact is that you cannot just accept that the world could be a grouping of completely random occurrences. People always have to add something purposeful or add meaning to everything because it makes them feel better about life and try to avert the fact that they have no control over it. They want to reassure themselves that things are happening for a purpose, even if they don’t have control, because it feels better if you know that what you are participating in, which you have no control over, has some ultimately lofty purpose. Things don’t have to have a purpose; they could just happen randomly. I know this is a very bleak outlook, but I’m not about making things all lovey-dovey.
The existence of God, an issue I have all sorts of issues with. From an empirical standpoint, I have found no proof of God’s existence. I can’t see, touch, taste, smell, hear, or even conceive of Him. This argument was refuted by the old standby of “Do you have any proof He doesn’t exist? Why do you need proof anyways?” Well, I need proof because I am very skeptical of anything I cannot discover on my own. I usually don’t believe full-heartedly in anything that someone tells me without giving me hard evidence, and even then I may still doubt it. As to proof of non-existence, well I have no hard evidence, just a couple ideas. How can a being that is all-knowing and all-powerful allow for so much violence and suffering to take place among the people he created? How can a being that is all that is Good permit all this evil to exist? It doesn’t seem to follow logically. I mean, if you have a deity that can do whatever it wants, why would it allow evil to be? Doesn’t it have the power to prohibit evil’s existence in the first place? Can’t it create a world without evil? Shouldn’t it be able to create a world without evil? If God was all there was in the beginning then wouldn’t He have to have created evil? But, how does this work if God is wholly good? Either God created evil, which can’t happen since he is all good, or God allowed evil to enter the world, because he is all-powerful and could have stopped it. Or, God could just not exist and the previous contradictions wouldn’t matter. Or, God could exist, but not in the manner that Christians believe he does. Another argument for the existence of God, posed by a couple people who will remain nameless, is that something would have to have been there to create the world. Ok, so you’re telling me that you cannot possibly believe that the universe is eternal and timeless, that it always has been and always will be, but you can attribute the same qualities to some being that you cannot perceive or comprehend? Sorry, I just don’t get it.
The problem of free will, another thing that I don’t quite understand. This requires two major assumptions: a) God exists and created man, and b) man has free will, meaning he can do whatever he decides and is not predestined to do anything. Christians generally accept both of these from what I can tell. So, God must have given us the ability to do what we want because he created us. So why would God punish people for acting upon that trait? It’s like putting a toddler in a playpen with a ball and saying, “If you play with that ball you will be spanked for all eternity!” I mean, if you are going to give us freedom to choose but also give us an edict of what we should do and also punish whoever doesn’t follow that edict, what’s the purpose of giving us the choice? Is God testing us on how well we listen and follow directions, giving those that pass paradise but those that fail eternal torment? That’s a little sadistic isn’t it? That’s like giving a 2nd grader all the information they need for a four-hour test, half an hour before the test, and then telling them that if they don’t pass the test they won’t get into college, ever. I can’t come up with any good analogies, but that may be due to the fact that I can’t comprehend how God can give us free will and then punish us for acting upon it. It doesn’t make sense to me. Wouldn’t it have been easier and better just to have not given us free will? If you’re creating humans, and you love them and want them to be happy, why would you let them have the ability to do evil? And don’t give me that “humans are misusing what God has given them” crap. God’s all knowing; he saw this coming.
The Bible. It’s just a book; a book like any other book. It could be true; it could be the greatest work of fiction of all time. What makes it so different? Why do people believe that its contents are true? It’s just a book. For all you know, a bunch of drunken guys sitting around a fire just up and decided one night to explain the world. Yes, certainly the purpose of the Bible, just like any other book, is the message it conveys and not necessarily the reality of the contents. People should believe in the message and not in the occurrences described. There is no difference, however, that the message of the Bible is better to believe in than those in, say, Brave New World. They are both books, what makes the message of one loftier than the other one? What is there to say that I should believe whole-heartedly in one and not the other? Or make my belief in one more important than belief in the other?
Ok, that’s enough for now. If you can answer any of these questions, make an argument. Well, I have to go pack now. Are those torches I see coming up the road?