I went along with organized religion and its sometimes wacky beliefs for most of my childhood. By high school, I began to doubt many of the questionable practices employed. And by college, I found religion to be no more than a combination of exaggeration and guise.
My intentions aren’t to demean anyone. I respect some of those who lead moral lives based on religious systems. However, I also respect anyone with a good morality system, which more often than not seems to be based on strong philosophical beliefs.
My criticism of religion is my only way to find answers to a culture I simply don’t understand. Being immersed in it for at least a dozen years, I never really once heard a good answer to any questions of proof. So why do those that support religion feel they can talk about truths without having to backup their words with solid academic research, like the disciplines of mathematics, science, business, and history?
How can people firmly believe in a god? First, there are hundreds of different gods in every different region of the world; yet none of these gods have ever been witnessed. The strange part is that everything thinks that their god is the right god, but not every religion can be right.
Moreover, today’s society typically laughs at different belief structures from monotheism. The Greeks really thought that there were many different gods, controlling everything from a Sun god to a Wind god. They could never prove in the existence of these gods and today we consider them to have been wrong. Nothing has really changed though, because today’s major religions can’t prove that their gods exist either.
I foresee a future, that today would seem silly. Perhaps in hundreds of years, civilizations will look back at our world today and laugh at our belief in an all-powerful being. Maybe they will believe that aliens on another planet created us or maybe they’ll believe in a dualtheistic system.
After stating this argument, I’m often met with one word: faith. Faith doesn’t prove anything though. I can have faith that I will win the lottery, but every weeknight, I never guess the winning number. I know many of you have had faith that you will pass a test only to get an F. So why should faith within religion be any different.
Even when we have faith, we are still right only 50% of the time. Having faith that something is true is no better than flipping a coin to see if its true. Justifying an entire religion based on faith is as ridiculous as basing all of life’s choices on the roll of a die.
Just once, I’d like people to explain the definite existence of a god without using the word faith. Cults have had faith that if they die they’ll catch an afterlife on the tail of a comet. That’s quite an absurd idea, but it’s not much different than any of the people who have faith that when they die they’ll enjoy life in a place called heaven.
Most religions don’t just rely on faith, but also on a book of writings. The problem with these books is that they were written by human beings. They are composed of nothing more than stories and offer no exact way of proving that any of these religious beliefs exist.
Books like the Bible are supposed to be based on historical accuracies. Though I’m not doubting these characters were real people with real stories; I do have to wonder how so many contradictions were created and exaggerations were added.
Another big question is why aren’t there miracles happening like in the days of the bible. Bushes were burning and seas were being parted, but today only natural disasters occur. Supposedly these books were written by god through people and through inspiration, but isn’t that just another way of duping ourselves.
Saviors and prophets are other interesting characters in religion. Today when people claim to be the son of god or the second coming, we find them to be mentally disturbed. In every religion, though, there are humans that claim to be somehow connected to a god, however despite all this connectedness, there still exists no concrete proof in religion.
I know that religious followers will dismiss all my questions or give me the answers I have heard all before. I watch television programs and reads books always looking for something that is just a small piece of proof, but it never happens. The answers always come back to faith and beliefs and improvable saviors.
My final question: If there really is a god, why does he care who wins the Super Bowl?
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Copyright 2004, Kevin Semanick