#2: Religion

In a recent (current) thread, it was clear that many of us grew up
in a very religious environment, but have left it behind.

Several posters noted that they had actually done a better
than average job of meeting the demands imposed on us by religion.
I fit this profile myself.

In a neat little twist, I had suicidal thoughts until the day
I realized that there is no God and that we are simply the result
of unthinking Nature - and I have not had a suicidal thought since.

In brief, I observed a great deal of idiocy within the Evangelical
community of which I was a part. I saw miracles invented
in church foyers, where what started as a prayer request evolved
into a miracle through what was essentially a game of "telephone"
- that is, it changed with each repetition until it returned
to the person who requested prayer, as the story of a similar case
in which God had answered prayer with a miracle - and this happened
all within earshot in a foyer among honest people of better
than average intelligence and education. It became clear to me
how easily miracles could have been invented and believed
in Biblical times by uneducated people - and all accounts of miracles
became rather suspicious.

Most of all, I came to understand that the nature of God, if there is one,
could not possibly be as the Bible describes: if he is loving enough
to sacrifice his Son for us, why is he going to torture anyone
who doesn't believe he exists? Even I am more loving than that,
so does that make me superior to God? If so, why should I worship Him?
Does he have no choice because he is not strong enough? Not wise enough?
If so, He is not the God described, and if He authored the Bible,
is a liar - so why should I trust Him? Is it because He cannot tolerate
anything less than perfection? I can't believe that an all-wise God
would be such a fool to think that eternal torture was preferable
to simple oblivion.

In short, the God that Evangelicals and Fundamentalists believe in
IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I'm more ethical than that God, and I am aware
of at least some of my many limitations.

Of course, on top of that, there are issues of interpretation,
and it is demonstrable that Evangelicals - and Fundamentalists
even more so - make a huge mess in the area of interpretation.
It could be argued, for example, that when the Bible speaks of faith,
it means being true to the example of Christ, rather than "belief"
in the modern sense. One can also argue that the passage about Gehenna
refers not to the fire of the place, but to the utter destruction.
(Gehenna, IIRC, was a garbage pit near Jerusalem where a continual fire
destroyed the refuse completely - thus, the emphasis may not be
on the eternal fire, but on the consignment of refuse to oblivion.)
If this is true, I have no fear of God's wrath, because once again
I figure that, if He exists, God is not an idiot - and would prefer
an atheist who tries to live his life loving all that is good,
and loving his neighbors, to a "Christian" who does neither,
but "believes" in God and the Bible.

All this said, I still love the Evangelicals/Fundies/etc. around me,
even if they despise us. A fair number of them try to be loving
as best they can, and I can't fault them for being born "blind".
And a few of them show an occasional glimmer of intelligence.

I know quite a few of them. I'm attending church for my mother's sake.
She's one of the loving but "blind" ones. Sometimes I try
to help her out a little by pointing out a better interpretation
that fits better with the Gospel's over-arching message of love,
but she is always bound and determined to find a loophole.
The latest is that loving each other on our own is not enough,
because it is impossible to "really" love anything or anyone
unless one has a personal relationship with God. Reminds me of
a pastor who preached that Protestantism is the only religion
that preaches salvation by grace, and this is proof of its veracity.
When I pointed out to him another religion (a Buddhist sect)
that also preaches salvation by grace, his reply was that
that obviously didn't count, since the grace did not come from God.

I could go on and on in this thread, but I won't bore you.

I will say, however, that my experience has put me off from ANY religion,
even the relatively benign ones like mainstream Christianity or Wicca.

Baldur