You may have seen the poll I posted not long ago, so I'd better get this out the way first:
I'm not looking to convert anyone, nor am I going to be converted. I simply find the topic interesting, so I wanted to write about it.
Haters gonna hate. I did not set out to offend anyone, and I apologise in advance if anything I say comes across as such. I'm sure that the majority of you, religious or otherwise, are perfectly good and honest people, and often I'm addressing the opinions of the extremists. In addition, the only religion I'll be mentioning is Christianity, Catholicism in particular - this isn't because I have anything against the other religions, it's just that I don't know enough about them to judge.
God and the Creationism vs. Evolution debatePretty big in the religion world, isn't he? If anyone came up to me and asked about my religion, I'd say "I'm an atheist; I don't believe in God. But I still go to church."
More on that last part later. To be honest I don't like the phrase 'believe in God'. Would you say that he 'exists'? If so, where? Physically, on a cloud (in which case I have no respect for you at all) or is he purely a spiritual being? I can understand why people would think the latter, since the concept seems to give people support in their lives, but I fail to see how people can put so much dependency on him. He's not responsible for how well you perform in a test, but allegedly he's to blame for allowing the world to become so corrupted. What I mean by a corrupted world is that a common argument against theism is "If God is truly watching over us, how did he allow [bad event] to occur?". I think these bad events (such as tsunamis or genocide) have nothing to do with religion at all: both natural disasters and natural growth have been occurring pretty much since the Earth came to be, so I don't see why people say things like "Oh God, why did you let this earthquake happen?" or, similarly, "Thank you God for this bountiful harvest.". Meanwhile, I don't see why God should be involved in human unrest, like the Holocaust or wars in general. We as humans caused these issues - people found problems through disagreements, so we're responsible for generating the terror and for fixing it afterwards. People could hardly expect a giant hand to appear from the sky and flick Hitler into a gaping hole labelled Hell.
Like I said, I don't have anything against people who say that they believe in God; I just find it hard to understand why they'd put so much faith in something where the results can't easily be measured. On a more personal level, I would consider myself a scientist. I put my trust in what I see, and what makes most sense to me. I believe that we only get one shot at life on Earth, and once that's up, it's The End for you. So far I haven't had any reason to think that there's a God out there looking down upon us. Everything that's happened in my life up until now has been perfectly normal in terms of the Laws of Physics, so why should there be an external force that affects things?
Similarly, I believe entirely in evolution, not creationism. I have seen physical evidence in support of evolution; to be honest I think that one of the many reasons why some people aren't convinced is the word 'theory'. 'Theory' doesn't just mean a general hunch that someone's had, contrary to popular belief. A theory is an idea which we believe to be most accurate and truthful, supported by sufficient evidence, to the point where we see it as fact. Switch to the arguments in favour of creationism: it was written in a book. Oh, and we humans don't want to be associated with monkeys! Gah, I
hate that last response. It really shows how some people are so proud of themselves, and how unwilling to accept new ideas, not to mention how ignorant they are. I could write a whole paragraph about why the sentence "If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" is wrong beyond belief, but I shall save you the time.
There are a few people I look up to in terms of their opinions of faith, and I'll be sharing three of them with you. The first is comedian Dara O'Briain, talking about the creationism vs evolution debate and how God doesn't exist:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdi_u1…
The Church and the BibleWell, I mentioned earlier that I still go to church despite being a self-proclaimed atheist, so I'd better explain that. There are three main reasons why I still attend after all this time: firstly, I've been going virtually every Sunday since my memory kicked in, so it's become tradition; secondly, my grandma is a
very strong Catholic (or to be more precise, she is a literalist), and I'd rather stay in her good books; and thirdly, I like the songs. There's something about church hymns that you just can't capture in a SATB choir, but I can't find a YouTube video that accurately depicts what goes on. Anyway, my point is that I really wouldn't be bothered if I never went to church again. Why? It's because everything has become so materialistic.
I personally think that the main problem is that people are confusing the terms 'a good person' and 'a good [Catholic]' (any religion, I mean). My definition of 'a good person' is someone who is honest, kind, caring... that sort of thing. Obviously no-one is perfect - the Church is quite right in saying that everyone commits sins, but naturally everyone's perception of what exactly classes as a 'sin' differs massively. Meanwhile, what makes a good Catholic? Someone who attends church every week and can recite all the prayers word-for-word? Sure, if you want to do that, go ahead, but I see no correlation whatsoever between that and being a good person. In fact, my personal opinion is that much of Mass has completely the wrong intentions. Does being able to say 'Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...' help me at all? Do I even understand what the hell I'm saying? Of course not. This is how materialistic religion has become: you can skip work and spend the entire weekend drunk, but you'll go to heaven as long as you are at a certain building at a certain time and say certain words. Oh, and ask for God's forgiveness, which he will undoubtedly give you, letting you spend the next weekend drunk but guilt-free.
Don't get me wrong, I like the
message of the Church and the Bible. Well, most of it. It's good that people are taught lessons such as forgiveness, understanding, and gratitude for the opportunities you have (that, in particular, is something that most people these days lack). Yes, the Church is one way of teaching people these valuable things - the only downside is that the Bible is (in my opinion) one massive metaphor which people such as my grandma have taken as fact. You won't believe how much it infuriates me when people take the bible as literal. Oh sure, there was a massive flood that killed almost everything apart from two of each animal
(the unicorns didn't make it), saved by
a man who lived to 950. I once heard a man explain this using the words, "He simply didn't die for 950 years". I wanted to strangle him for his naivety.
My grandma is a literalist, but thankfully her English isn't good enough for us to have debates (not that she'd back down, obviously). The rest of my family have the same views as me, and they'd quite happily call themselves Catholic. Maybe that makes me a Catholic too; I don't really think about terminology much. In the meantime, here's a video showing how the Bible might not be fully truthful (even once you take out the walking-on-water, infinite-fish-generation and waking-up-from-the-dead malarkey):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6m…
Religion as a wholeTo wrap things up, I'd say that religion has been hugely warped by society. It no longer means communal faith or support - it's become a horrendous, unwinnable fight as to who is right, and atheists have been dragged into the arena. Why people are still fighting over the issue, I don't know. In fact, society's responsible for that too; only the extremists get any media attention, while people like me (religious or otherwise) holding signs saying "Hey there, I don't care what you believe in!" just remain in the background. It disgusts me how we as humans are unable to understand each other's cultures; we say things like "How are those people over there allowed to have more than one wife? That's just wrong!", but really that's just how they live their lives, and we need to accept that. In fact, they're probably looking at us thinking, "How can they eat pork so casually every day? That's just wrong!".
You know, I brought up the topic with my family earlier today. My Dad asked, "What do you think would happen if Jesus resurrected now?", to which I said, "The scientists would see whether or not he can walk on water, and when they find that he can't, they'd laugh in the literalists' faces (but the literalists would be too busy celebrating). Most people would try to get a photo with Jesus for their Facebook profile picture. Then all the other Christians would run up to Jesus and say, "Look Jesus! Those guys over there don't believe in you, so we're fighting with them!", to which Jesus would simply facepalm."
I'll leave you with a video that is incredibly thoughtful and hard to disagree with, from the Tales Of Mere Existence series:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLr2o…Thanks for reading, and hopefully understanding as well. If you're still interested, look no further than the comment section right under this journal! By all means, I encourage you to contribute any thoughts or opinions you might have, or simply read the discussions.
On second thoughts, if anyone wants a good-natured God-related laugh, there's this too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vciwZj…CSS made by
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