Cognitive Dissonance

When I was younger, religion was a huge part of my life. Church every Sunday, rain, shine, sick, well, whatever. It was the hardest thing because I wasn't allowed to play Pokemon in church. And I had to get up early. Why did I have to get up early on a day of rest?

But that aside, it actually was an important factor in my life. When I was maybe in 4th grade, we were learning about the solar system, and I was terrified that the sun was going to spontaneously turn into a black hole and we'd all be dead. I lost a lot of sleep over this and I remember praying to God to keep me and my family safe. I remember the immense amount of comfort I got from that, knowing there was a god that loved and cared about us, that listened to our prayers.

In fact, at the age of 12 or so, it was one of 6 adjectives I used to describe myself: Religious. As I got older, I loved being part of mission projects, and most importantly, choir. Choir every Sunday morning and choir tour every summer were the best parts of my religious life. We went to a contemporary Methodist service and the songs were fun. The sermons were boring, but the songs were fun.

To be honest, I don't remember when it started to change, really. I think it might've been when the church installed a new $10,000 electronic sign outside, but I remember not really liking how the church was run. I didn't like how the Bible said that non-Christians went to hell. What about all of the people in India who just never had a chance to choose Christianity? What about children who weren't baptized? What about my Muslim friends? My Jewish friends?

I quietly revised my definition of what it meant to be a Christian and moved on, but that didn't sit well with me. Why would the Bible say that? Why would the Bible say that the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus? Especially if it weren't? What if you're a fantastically good person who's dedicated your life to helping people? Why would that person go to hell? The Bible says it's because we've all sinned and fall short of the glory of God but...why isn't really trying (and repenting when you fail) enough?

So I started skipping Sunday School after the service. I started meeting my friend in the stairwells and reading the Bible ourselves.

Well, in theory, anyway. It never worked out that way, but I always tried to read it at home. First, I started with Genesis but that was all family trees and boring crap. Then I started with the gospels but...I don't know. I got bored? Went back to Genesis and got up through Leviticus, I think. There are some fun stories in there. Sodom and Gomorrah is a riot and that whole bit about Abraham saying Sarah was his sister? Hilarious.

But anyway, it was at that point I decided to start trying to follow the rules in the Bible. They were right there, in the holy book, so I was going to follow them. It didn't make sense for them to be part of the Bible if we were going to ignore it, right? So I went kosher, which wasn't a big deal for me except I had to give up Pizza Rolls (which was the hardest decision of my life). I honestly didn't know much but I tried to follow what I could. I tried not to pick and choose what was convenient. I tried to actually live by what the Bible said but...that whole bit about sending good people to hell still didn't sit right with me. Eventually, I went through confirmation and I remember that being such a peaceful weekend. I was constantly surrounded by people saying "No, don't worry, this is how it is. You don't need to think too hard about it, just believe and that's enough." It was calming. It made it easy to just go along with it. It wasn't until after confirmation, when that nagging feeling came back that I felt I had to do something about it. I looked into other religions. Judaism was closest to what I was practicing: Be a good person, follow the rules. I was dating (sort of?) a Muslim at the time, so I looked into Islam too. Interesting religion, that. Honestly though, the thing that really kept me from converting was the services. The contemporary service, the songs, that all felt comfortable to me. It felt fun and welcoming.

And then I thought, "Am I really a Christian because I like the songs?"

That disturbed me, but I tried to put it out of my head. I tried to figure out what I believed. At one point, I tried a mix-and-match thing, picking out the beliefs I liked and rejecting the ones I didn't, but that always felt fake to me. If the Bible said that Jews go to hell and Christianity follows the Bible, then how am I a Christian if I don't believe that?

Then in 2008, Cute Is What We Aim For released their album Rotation. Track 4 was a simple song called Loser. The first verse (and bridge) went like this:

I've read of a man up in a room 
Who can control everything I do 
But what do I know? 
What do I know? 
And if the story of the man isn't true 
Then tell me what I should do 
Should I take off the blindfold? 
Or do what I'm told? 


But we'll never know about the life I chose 
I won't believe I won't be so naive until I go 
Yeah we'll never know 'til these eyes close

And it sounds superficial, but that song gave me the idea: What if there isn't a god? It was a simple idea and one I'd never thought of before, but as soon as I gave it a chance, all of the pieces fell into place. I'd figured out that there was so much nagging at me I didn't even know about.

I thought about how prayer never made sense to me. If God were omniscient...then shouldn't he know every argument you could possibly have against him? Shouldn't he have it all under consideration? And if he had a plan for all of us, then...why were we praying about Susie's cancer? If logic can't change his plan then...what? Do we need to get as many people to pray as possible because there's a quota you need to meet? 100 people and Susie's cancer goes into remission, any less and it metastasizes? I never understood what made prayer matter if God knew us before we were born, who we would be and what we would become. If he were going to help us, wouldn't he just do so?

And why was God so active in Biblical times, talking to people, burning bushes, causing floods, but not at all now? Why didn't he pick a prophet every hundred years or so to guide his flock? Why didn't he make it easy to believe and make the challenge to be a good person?

And there's been religion throughout all of history and we've consistently looked back and said "Ha ha, those guys were idiots. Thinking a guy in a chariot pulled the sun across the sky, what silly people," and then held our own religious beliefs...wasn't it kind of...proud? To think that people wouldn't look back in a thousand years and do the same thing to us?

And this is big, why is there no proof? Why is there no statistical proof that prayer helps aside from the general help that having a loving, supporting family provides? Why can't you find anything other than anecdotal evidence about Christians having miracles happen to them? If God is affecting our world, there should be proof. We can study everything in this world, but does God just refuse to participate in science? It seems rather unsportsmanlike, like he thinks we're cheating. I never understood why faith had to be so hard, why there wasn't any proof on our side.

But thinking he didn't exist (or at least not the active, involved God the Bible describes), that made sense. The nagging feeling went away. Everything fell into place and started to make sense. We had enough science to explain how people came to be. With the sheer size of the universe, it makes sense that somewhere, conditions would be right for life to evolve like this. Given infinite chances, things of all probabilities are possible. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that I didn't need a god to make sense of the world. Sure, I didn't understand where the first matter or energy came from, but I didn't understand where God came from either, so it seemed like a fair trade. There weren't any holes in my understanding of the world that needed a god to be filled, and trying to shoehorn him in where he wasn't necessary caused so much stress.

Of course, I never had anything against the deist theory of God as a master clockmaker who set the universe in motion and then went off to...make other clocks, I guess, but it seemed like an unnecessary complication. If God exists, it should be provable. He could just make a loud pronouncement from the heavens and let us know "Yo, guys, still here. You might want to clean up your act a bit." I think he'd be really pleased with the results. But you can't prove that he doesn't exist any more than you can prove there isn't an invisible pink unicorn somewhere in space. If you can prove something but can't disprove it, then I don't understand why I should give equal weight to each idea, not if there is literally no way to discredit your idea.

But this wasn't a decision I made lightly. I didn't go "Aha! You silly peons still believe this while I see the truth!" To be honest, I don't like talking about my opinions on religion because I don't want to come off that way (And believe me, I talk about everything, at length). It's hard to say "I believe differently than you and here are my reasons why" without it coming off as "And you're stupid for disagreeing," especially with things like this. I didn't really talk about it when it happened and I think this is the first time I've really told anyone the full story (so enjoy, internet). The fact is that it pained me because there were so many things that were so comforting about religion that I wanted back. I wanted to believe in an afterlife. I wanted to believe that somewhere, Biscuit was still happy and healthy. I wanted to believe that I'd be reunited with my loved ones in a place of eternal happiness, but I just...can't. Religion nagged and nagged at me until I realized it wasn't something I could be a part of anymore. To be honest, when my cat died in 11th grade, I didn't think I'd ever stop crying. I didn't know how to deal with the fact that he was just...gone. Never coming back. Never see him again. That was it. Gone. Dead. Forever.

And I don't know how I'm going to be able to deal with that if someone close to me dies. Them not being there anymore. Not ever. I don't...I really don't know how to deal with it. I'm not saying this to ask for pity but just...I never hated religion.

Well, except for that one time it made me feel immensely guilty for my magic spell book (that was pink revolved around rose petals and fingernail polish). To be honest, I still feel resentment for that. Stupid Christianity and it's stupid rules about witchcraft.

But seriously, I never hated religion and I still don't. It was an important part of my childhood and a really positive influence, for the most part. I don't blame people for believing differently than I do and I just ask that people not judge me for not being able to believe what they do. Believe me, I tried, but after years of discomfort and confusion, I finally found what made sense to me, what I was comfortable with, and I feel better for it.

That said, I really don't like people who talk about "atheism," like it's a religion. I don't believe god exists, but I don't have any dogmatic attachment to the idea. I believe in science, in evolution, that the earth was once a ridiculously hot singular land mass with no atmospheric oxygen and that life evolved from prokaryotic cells. My beliefs don't include a god but neither are they about not having one. I consider myself an atheist if you want to talk about religious beliefs, but it's really more that I don't have any than that mine revolve around denying god's existence. I'm an atheist, but I'm not a "follower of atheism," because that doesn't make any sense. If there were proof of god, I'd be all for it, but in the absence of such things, I don't see any reason to include him in my views of the world.

Though just in case there is a god, I fully believe that if he's a god worth worshipping, he should accept me by the good life I've tried to live, rather than by strict adherence to whatever holy book is most prominent in my area, so I think I've got all my bases covered.

Why I Don't Go To Church

- Or In Which Emily Rambles About Religion and May Not Make Sense -

Religion is a difficult topic for me at the moment, because…well I haven’t been to church in roughly 2 ½ years. I still believe in the doctrines of what I was raised in, I just don’t agree with the politics. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

I am a Christian Scientist. No, that is not the nice way of saying ‘scientology.’ Now that we’ve gotten that out of way…

God has always been something I’ve just believed in. There was no specific moment where I sat down and said, “Well, golly, God must be real,” because he/she was always a real part of my life.  My religion is the reason I’m still really uncomfortable with the use of medication in my life, as up until 2 ½ years ago, I had never really used medications for anything (with the exception of getting my wisdom teeth removed). I relied on prayer for healing, which you can judge in whatever way you want to. All I know is that it worked and still works, even though I don’t rely on it as much anymore.

So why don’t I? Why did I stop going to church? My church is tiny, and shrinking. The board doesn’t handle its politics well. That’s the short answer.

The long answer is this: way before I stopped going to church, my brother got diagnosed with Anxiety. It was a huge ordeal, because, at the same time, my dad was working on his anger management issues. Life in my house was extremely tense. My brother and my father were both working through a Christian Science Practitioner (basically, a teacher who can help direct your prayer and recommend sections of the Bible/Science and Health* to read), but my brother wasn’t getting any better. In fact, he was sort of getting worse.

No, let me be clear here – this was not some sort of crisis of faith for me. In fact, the entire situation just sort of morphed into my existing beliefs and, on the whole, I was fine with that.

The is a little not in the manual (set of basic rule and beliefs upheld by my church) that says, roughly, ‘If prayer is not helping you, do what you can to stay healthy.’ The only thing about that is you cannot continue treatment through prayer if you decide to use medication – which, my parents decided would be best for my brother.

Now, the process of getting a child into a psychiatrist in NOVA is immensely complicated, namely, because there are so few of them. The fact that my brother got into one at all is rather miraculous, and I was accepting of the entire process. My essential belief here is this: if you are not in a mental place to work out something through prayer, God will lead you to something that will help you get better, whether that method is through medication, a doctor’s visit, or otherwise.

Unfortunately, this is not how my church thinks, and though everyone at my particular branch was supportive, Christian Scientists that my dad knew and was friend with began to judge his decision to put my brother on medication. The old people (and by this, I mean the ‘conservative’ 10% of my church) control the direction of my church, and have instilled a sort of gross bias against members who have to rely on some sort of daily medication. It’s the sort of superiority complex I despise, and so when my dad stopped going to church, so did I.

I’m still spiritual, I still believe in God and the basic principles of the Christian Science Church. And Above all, I miss it. I miss going to church and having an outlet – I miss it enough to try going to church on my own for a while over the summer. I still try to read the bible lesson every Sunday.

My religion used to be a huge part of who I am, and I wish the people in charge would change their politics, so I don’t feel like I’m betraying my brother going to a place where he felt outcast. I guess if there was any point to this rather rambling blog post is the following:

-                     My crisis of faith is a crisis between what I believe and my family. They aren’t preventing me from perusing my faith, but I feel as though I’m betraying them by going.

-                     My church is shrinking at such a rate that I don’t think it will be in existence by the time I have children.

But more than that, it’s because my faith is more amorphous than the organized church really allows for, even in an apolitical church like mine. So, I continue to identify as a Christian Scientist, and I continue to not have a place or outlet to share my ideas on that faith. I continue to miss it.

In the beginning...

I was raised in a small, Southern Baptist church in rural Virginia.  My church congregation took a fairly conservative approach to interpreting the Bible, so my upbringing was primarily based in this tradition.  During the summer before I started the sixth grade, I was baptized and joined the Church after attending a session of Vacation Bible School and hearing a testimony from a member of my church earlier that year.  I should also mention that while I was raised in a fairly conservative congregation, my parents had done their best to raise me to be open-minded and non-judgmental (but we can all admit that we often judge one another despite our best, or worst, intentions) especially concerning the beliefs of others.

Like many others, I started to have doubts around my teenage years.  Sometime during high school, I came close to separating myself from Christianity, because I didn’t agree with the way that many people who called themselves Christians treated others who didn’t agree with them.  I was also apprehensive about the origins of the faith that surrounded me as I was growing up.  So started researching other faiths and I read texts from other religions.  But a few years later, slowly and with God’s help, I began to look past my doubts, even though I knew that they would always continue to reoccur, and use them as a way to rebuild my faith and make it stronger.  (I know this sounds a tad dramatic and clichéd, but this is essentially what happened.)

My religious beliefs today primarily lend themselves to the Progressive Christian tradition, but I don’t feel the need to identify with any particular denomination within the Christian faith.  

Blankets, by Craig Thompson, is a good book.

So, my personal religious history.

The earliest memories of religion that I have are being a part of Sunday School at the local Presbyterian church.  I don't know exactly when my participation in it became optional, but it must have been sometime around age 6-7.  None of the things that I learned from it really stuck to me, or came with any sort of significant awareness - to me, it was just a non-optional obligation.  One Sunday morning, I had trouble waking up, and my mother asked me if I was planning on going to Sunday School.  I replied that I wasn't, and the topic was never brought up again.  As far as I know, my parents aren't religious... but we've never really discussed the matter.  I know that they don't attend church, but I really don't have idea on their personal beliefs.  It's just something that we never really talked about; for better or for worse, that lack of direction has been present my entire life.

Fast forward to my Junior year in high school.  A girl that I was interested in gave me a bible for Christmas, and started trying to introduce me to the concept of Christianity.  She even started a school approved Christian group called Edge Club, and convinced me to be one of the first people to join it.  I wanted to be interested, to learn, and to believe as the rest of the group did.  But I didn't.  The inner skeptic that I have simply couldn't believe in any of the claims that she, or her friends, could make.  In addition, I found myself disagreeing more and more with the way the group treated those who disagreed with them.  From my perspective, they were more abusive and hate-filled than a good number of the other people at the school.  If they approached someone to join the group and were turned down, they would harass and berate the person until either a.) the person got sick of it and agreed to go, just to shut them up, b.) the person walked off and left them behind, or c.) someone stepped in to stop it.  This seemed very fundamentally wrong to me, and I tried voicing my concerns several times, but no one really wanted to listen to me.  The core members of the club were a close-knit bunch of friends, and they essentially ran things as they saw fit.  Eventually, I distanced myself from both the group and the girl that I had been interested in.  The rest of the year (and most of the next year) were filled with abuse, further convincing me that I had made the right choice in abandoning something that I couldn't believe in.

My last real experience with an attempt at religious beliefs came in the 2002-2003 timeframe.  There's a long and uninteresting story behind it that, I'm sure, most people don't care about, but the end result is that I ended up very depressed and very sick.  I turned briefly to religion here (which was an odd decision, given that the catalyst for my condition was religious-based), due to a perceived lack of other options.  My commitment was simple and unobtrusive enough - a quick prayer upon waking, one before each meal, and one before going to sleep, all with the concept of being thankful for what I had.  This became a part of my daily life for quite some time.  One day, though, I was in a rush to get through my lunch break at work, and I forgot to pray.  I didn't even realize it until later on that evening, and the realization of such initially threw me into panic.  I had forgotten to pray, and be thankful - did that make me a terrible person?  I had a few days off just after this occurred, and I used that time to take a really introspective look at myself and try to figure out my thoughts and feelings.  Eventually, I decided that I wasn't a terrible person, and I decided that my daily regimen of prayers was entirely unnecessary.  They had stemmed from a feeling of guilt, and a lack of self-worth; I had believed that I wasn't deserving of the things that I had, and I was seeking some form of reassurance that it was okay for me to have them.  At that point, I decided to give that reassurance to myself, rather than waiting for some otherworldly sign.  I wasn't praying out of a belief in God, I was praying out of... ... I don't know.  Fear?  That didn't seem like a good basis for religious beliefs, and so I abandoned my schedule of prayer.

I've looked into the topic of religion several times since then, trying to sort out my own personal thoughts and feelings on the matter.  It's not an easy thing to do, because I'm not the type of person to believe in something without having some sort of evidence of it.  Furthermore, I don't honestly think that I could ever pick a "correct" religion, when there are so many that proclaim their way as being the only correct choice.  Who am I to tell someone that their method of worship is wrong?  Who are they to tell anyone else the same, or differently?  Through the years, my closest friends have all differed tremendously in their religious beliefs, and that didn't matter to any of us; mostly, I think, because we didn't let it matter.  We respected each others' beliefs, and accepted each other for who we were, not what we believed.

So, my personal experiences have led me to a state where I'm more concerned with spiritual beliefs, than following any sort of doctrine.  I don't read the bible, nor any other book of faith, and I don't think I ever will.  I'm okay with that.  Do I believe in some higher power?  ... I really don't know.  I haven't seen any real proof of one; on the other hand, I've seen nothing to make me believe there isn't one.  I've had occurrences in my life that I'm sure some people would label miracles, but I don't call them that.  I've had occurrences in my life that I'm sure some people would label as the end result of an inappropriate lifestyle, but I don't believe in that.  My beliefs are fairly simple.  I try to be the best person I can be, even when it's hard.  I don't steal, I don't intentionally lie to people, and I act out of compassion more than anything.  I have been both treated well and abused by multiple people of different faiths, and that, more than anything, has led me to push away any firm religious beliefs.  I try to make the world, and the people within it, a better place.  In my mind, any entity that would potentially disapprove of that, simply because it wasn't done according to certain tenets and guidelines, isn't worth following and/or worshipping.

I suppose it's possible that this could change in the future.  For now, though, I'm content to live as I am, in terms of my beliefs.  Brandon's quote, above, (possibly) from Marcus Aurelius, is one that I like a lot.  I've enjoyed reading all of the posts so far, and I'm curious to read the ones posted after mine.  Tomorrow's entry will be brought to you by Pendleton.  See you next week.

Uncertainty

I have to admit, when this topic was suggested, I was really excited, but it seems very heavy for the first week. Before I get into it, I just want to say that even though some of what I'm about to say may come across as an attack on religion and/or atheism, it really is only intended as a reflection on my own experience in trying to figure out what exactly I believe. I have nothing but respect for the beliefs of the other people on this blog, and I'm generally pretty cool with belief systems that aren't centered around being a dick. Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, let's get into it.

In this post, I'm going to try to address two main things: how I came to find agnosticism to be an appealing option and why lack of a religion doesn't preclude having a strong sense of morality.

I think it's important to start out by saying that religion was never a huge part of the way I was raised. Yes, my family identified as ambiguously Christian, for the most part (my dad is a rather vocal atheist of the mindnumbingly ignorant variety), but we were never a very religious household. We never went to church at all until around the time I was in middle school, and even then it was infrequent and only ever involved my mother and sisters.

Interestingly, my older younger sister was a lot younger when this started, so she had more association with the church as a part of her childhood, which may be a factor in why she continues to identify as fairly religious.

Around this time is when everyone and their cousin at school started declaring, "RELIGION IS FOR SHEEP." This bothered me a lot at the time, and in a lot of ways, it really still does. These people made the same assumption that many religious folk adhere to: religion and reason/logicscience are mutually exclusive. I won't get into it too much, because we'll be discussing this more thoroughly in a future topic, but in short, I thought this was stupid and narrow-minded.

With middle school, something changed at church that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I felt out of place there, and eventually I stopped going to church with my family altogether. One afternoon I sat on my neighbor's driveway, and he asked, "Shouldn't you be at church with your mom and the girls?" My dad responded before I could with a simple, "Nah, he's an atheist now." This struck me as rather presumptuous (as my dad is wont to be). I still mostly believed in what I'd been taught; I just didn't go to church.

However, as I learned more about history and the way that different religions developed over time, I became skeptical toward the idea that any of the major options out there could really claim to have any certainty about the supernatural. For a while, I considered the idea of deism because it seemed consistent with what I was told that I was supposed to believe without contradicting common sense and logic and science.

But even that idea started to bother me. I just couldn't bring myself to definitively think either "I believe in some kind of religion" or "I don't believe in the supernatural". I didn't feel like I had the resources to really make an informed decision about what to believe because none of the available options really seemed like they had much concrete support for or against their truth.

And that brought me to agnosticism. I'm sure that if you didn't know what it was, you looked it up yesterday after Kathleen posted, but I'm going to provide a definition anyway. Old debate habits die hard.

ag·nos·tic   [ag-nos-tik]
noun
1. a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience. (Dictionary.com)

Amusingly, dictionary.com also lists as synonyms for agnostic the following: disbeliever, nonbeliever, unbeliever; doubter, skeptic, secularist, empiricist; heathen, heretic, infidel, pagan.

Now, I think that something I should make clear is that this isn't entirely accurate as a representation of what I believe, but it's close enough. With enough advanced mathematics, I'm sure that there's some kind of calculable answer to the question of how the universe came to be, but we don't have that answer, and odds are good that we never will. If you think I'm kidding, you should go read up on chaos theory.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a strong belief in your preferred brand of religion or irreligion. There are plenty of possible explanations for the supernatural or other unknown aspects of the universe, like how it began or how it will end, but I don't feel like I could make a strong assertion of any particular belief in any of those things. There'd always be a level of uncertainty that I just couldn't shake.

Now that I've addressed that, the question of morality comes up. The biggest thing that bothers me that I hear as arguments against any kind of irreligion is that people without religion have no moral compass to guide them through life. To this, I ask, "Is your sense of right and wrong governed solely by your religious beliefs? If you thought that your god wouldn't punish you for being a dick to people, would you do it?" I think it's safe to assume that for most people, the answer would be no.

And that brings me to the (in my opinion, inappropriately named) Atheist's Wager:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. (Marcus Aurelius, allegedly)

A variation on the more commonly known Pascal's Wager, this idea is something that I strongly agree with. I make a concerted effort to do right by people. There are more than a few times that this effort has backfired on me rather spectacularly, but I still believe in trying to be a good person.

I'm not an ambitious person. I don't believe in stepping on everyone else to climb to the top. I don't think that financial well-being is as important a defining characteristic for success as being able to say that I've done my part to make the world a better place. My moral beliefs are simple, some might even say naive, but they're important to me. If there's a god that doesn't agree with those values, then that's not a god that I want anything to do with, and if there is, then I expect that I won't be turned away simply because I didn't want to make assumptions that I wasn't sure of.

Anyway, I hope that maybe you took something away from this, obviously not necessarily a change in your beliefs or lack thereof, but maybe a rethinking of your thoughts on the relationship between morality and religion. Tomorrow John will be posting, and I'm pretty excited to see what he has to say.

Religion with a side of Hello

I was Catholic, now I'm not.

the end.

Well, not really, because religion is something that cannot be simplified. I currently classify myself as Agnostic, but I know that if I could find a way to be religious, I would. My mind, though, when I contemplate religion, cannot find itself changing the way I currently identify. That sounds, perhaps, too technical for something as personal and deep as religion.

And a warning, I tend to write stream of consciousness when I write about myself. Perhaps it's because I do not like writing about myself, or that in some way I really do feel "I was Catholic, now I'm not" sums up everything you need to know. But because the intricraces of my religious life might give some insight on the complexities of religion's place in society, I shall continue. And I shall take this point to say hello, that this is my first time talking to you, and I very much hope it gives you some of the insight you were looking for.

Perhaps it is best to start at the beginning, although little happens until I reach High School. I was raised Catholic, although my family was never the most religious. I went to Church on Sundays and took the required Sunday School classes, but even in my own family, that lead to two separate outcomes.

In High School, I accepted that I was not a religious person, that I did not want to go to Church, that there was no connection there, and that, as I feel now, the organization of the Church held no appeal to me, and actually turned me off through some of their policies. There was no defining event, nothing that said "I shall not believe" and suddenly made me feel like I should not be Catholic. It was slow; I learned over time and came to accept that current way I view the world does not hold a place for organized religion.

My brother, on the other hand, who raised in the same religious situation as I was, turned towards religion and become more religious than I thought he would. He was, too some degree, considering colleges because of religious affiliation, which spoke to me of how much of a Catholic my brother was. The same environment, the only difference that he was born two years earlier than me, but we ended up on different sides of the religious spectrum. I think that speaks to the personal nature of religion, that the degree of belief is a deep examination that a person must make by himself. I cannot say where I will be religiously in ten years; I do not know how my life, my world views will change to accommodate religion. The Catholic Church says that may young adult fall out of faith only to return to it, as if that deviation was just a phase in which one must explore other parts of life.

And then I went to college, stopped going to Church, and call myself an Agnostic who cannot come to terms with the existence of a higher power or not. Perhaps if I can ever decide that, choose to believe fully in some being above us, I could move on to forming a deeper religious conviction around something. And as one who does not know what she believes, who sometimes cannot believe in something above it, I can say it is incredibly lonely. Unlike others who may ask "what do I think my purpose in life is?", I prefer not having an afterlife. I do not want people to think I am in a better place when I die because then what is the point of this life if I can just die and move on to a better one. It makes me feel like everything in this life becomes meaningless. Of course, with Heaven and Hell you could argue differently, but belief is not a rational thing, now is it.

Is anyone really interested in what I have to say about religion? It if makes a difference, I have plans to someday read all the major religious texts in the world - Bible, Qur'an, Buddhist texts, Atheist works, anything I can get my hands on. I believe, at the end of the day, in educating oneself to the fullest on all dimensions of the issue. I cannot always promise that in my posts, as time is a constraining thing, but I think especially for religion, exploring and looking at the way other people see the world is always important, and may help with so many of the conflicts around the world today.

Oh dear, that last paragraph got a little away from me, but I think that belief is part of why I view religion the way I do. That - why is one religion more right that the other? There, after all those paragraphs above, there is why I will probably continue to call myself Agnostic. Probably, but possibly not. I will leave you by saying that as religion is a personal thing, very personal experience could change the way I feel. And I suppose the only way to know is to live it.

Not Exactly Clear Cut

Morning everybody! So, as Kelsey said this weeks topic is Religious History. Here we go.

So, okay, I wouldn’t exactly say religion has always played a major role in my life, but it has kind of always been there in the background. My mother is Methodist, my father is... undecided on the whole affair. I was raised Methodist, and I really still consider myself as a Methodist, even though I don’t really know where I stand.

I haven’t been to church regularly in about three or four years, nor was I ever really explained what Methodism entailed. Basically, what I gathered of Methodism is that they are all really chill and laid back and that seemed attractive when it came to a church. I went to the same church with the same people for so long I guess I thought I just didn’t need to know the details because none of them expected me to. I kind of wish now I knew more, because if I say I’m a part of something, I’d like to know what it is. But, alas, I do not. Yet.

So, I guess, Methodist isn’t a good title for me. I guess I would say: I believe in God, in Christianity. (As well as Judaism and Islam) I believe He’s there but I don’t know what I believe after that. I guess I would say I’m a Christian, what specific section, I don’t know.

Here’s kind of how my adventure with religion has gone up to this point:

Like I said, I grew up going to the same church regularly with my mother, who taught Sunday school, for about twelve years. We stopped going around the time my parents split up, which makes sense because my mom was stressed, not everybody always wanted to go, and it just made sense that we put it aside of all things.

Now, don’t take me not going to church as me not keeping my religion a part of my life. I didn’t really focus on it, but it was still there. The past three years, since our first move my seventh grade year, I’ve been keeping my religion in my life as best I could on my own without putting the people around me at an inconvenience. I didn’t talk about it, I didn’t ask to go to church every weekend, I didn’t even pray in front of people just because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing people needed to be bothered with. It was just something I was doing for me. It was just something I wanted to do because I felt like it.

A couple of months ago, though, two friends asked me to join them at the local church, which was also Methodist, for a “contemporary” service. It was, essentially, a lot of really awesome music and a video of a pastor from I’m not sure where giving a sermon. I really liked it and it reminded me how much I missed just the idea of a church and other people who shared your beliefs and would stand with you for an hour or two just to remember that.

Since then, I’ve really wanted to just get back into things that are religious and to get involved and be a part of it more. But, I haven’t been, maybe I will in the future, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep praying at night and reading sermons on the internet because that’s what I’m comfortable with.

And, the things is, I’m okay just being comfortable with the situation. Because for me, religion is something you do for you. If I really feel like I need to go to a church to keep my faith, I will. Right now, I don’t have that need.

So, that’s pretty much how things have been for me in the past. Now onto my opinions and such on how people perceive my religion.

People always talk about “the invisible man in the sky” and how that’s ridiculous. (And that’s something that’s done across the board. I won’t deny that, every set of beliefs are screwed over in the stereotype department.) That was always something that bothered me because I never viewed God as that person. That destiny maker, the game changer, the big guy in charge, I just didn’t. He was just there. He was just someone that I could confine in and trust and ask for help from. And that’s still how I view Him.

I still see religion as something that you do if you feel like you need it. If you need faith, if you need something to believe in, then religion is a really easy way to do that. I feel like I need my faith to keep balanced in my life and so I keep it in my life. If someone is comfortable with their life without a religion or with a different one, who am I to say that’s wrong? Honestly, it’s really hard to prove anything in a world we know so little about and fighting over it just seems a little pointless to me.

The stereotype that all Christians are against anything that isn’t heteronormative is quite annoying. Because, most of the people I’ve come across in my own religion aren’t like that. I’m not. You do with your life what you want. Who in the hell am I to say what you can and can’t do? Who am I to say who you are? Or who you love? Or what you believe?

Honestly, it just seems kind of contradictory to me to be Christian and hate or judge someone else for how the way they live their life. I mean, isn’t that the whole point? That God is going to be the one to make the big judgment? Like, I don’t know what you’ve learned, but that’s really how it came across to me. Acceptance is something that is supported, isn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to love everybody or something like that? It just never made sense to me.

Two other things that people assume about me solely because of my religion: I’m pro-life and that I’m against contraception. Like, seriously? Firstly, this goes back to the whole, your life is none of my business thing. I shouldn’t judge you for choices you make. I also shouldn’t try to make those choices for you. And neither should the government. And we all know this. These are just topics people bring up during elections to make people uncomfortable and to hit them at home. My views on both of those things are plain and simple: your life, your choice. I support contraception, but I also support those who do not want to use it, because that’s their choice. I support abortion as a real option, that doesn’t mean you can’t have kids.

I think that’s something people confuse with religion too much. They think that by believing something, it means you automatically want everyone else to believe it to. No, I don’t want that. I think you should do what you want. If you live a miserable life believing things you don’t want to and being forced to do things you don’t want to, then you are going to regret everything. If you are basically being told how to live, then it’s not really living. Is it?

I feel like I have rambled quite enough for this topic. I think I’ve hit everything I wanted to and I hope everybody the best for their week. Can't wait to read what Kathleen has to say tomorrow. 

Happy Monday!

Week of 4/29 - Personal Religious History

We're kicking off this blog with an interesting topic: personal religious history. The point of this week is to have everyone talk about what kind of religious background they have and what choices they've made in their lives (or the things that have happened to them) that contribute to their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

Religion is always a controversial subject that has a lot of different aspects to it and I'm willing to bet it'll come up many times in future topics, so it's good that this week sets some groundwork; that way, you can see what kind of perspectives we're coming from.

I'm really interested to see everyone's views on the issue and get to know everyone a bit more. Randi will start us off tomorrow and I'll be back on Saturday to weigh in on the issue myself. See you guys then!