Religion Depresses Me

I wish I could put my feelings about religion into words. I can't at the moment but I'm working on it. I guess I can't believe it's lasted so long. Shouldn't the fact that religion has changed so much in the last 200 years be some sort of indication? Religion is evolving, but that is a mind-blowing concept.

I'll keep working on finding a way to accurately put my views into a readable piece of writing. In the meantime I'll give a few aspects. Religion gets me down, 'cos it's so divisive. So many wars have been fought on religious grounds and in my mind this is unneccesary bloodshed and hatred.

I don't like the way religion is used as a tool to pedal a person's agenda. George W Bush for instance. He uses God as a matter of course... "God bless America", "God is on our side", etc. Surely he can't believe God is on his side.

Most of religion is hopelessly out of date. So much so that everyone now picks and chooses which parts of their religion they want to follow/believe. Everyone has their own interpretation. While I like the idea of people forming their values themselves, I dont know why they still need religion. One main idea behind religion is that you follow its values and it gives everyone a good, moral set of values. I'd prefer people to make up their own mind. Dont cross the road when the green light comes on! Cross the road when you've made your judgement that it's safe to cross the road based on your knowledge and awareness.

What gets me stuck is how much influence God has in general everyday things. God supposedly has a plan. But I dont see at what point God sticks His hand in and changes things to execute the plan. When someone loses their house in a bushfire the claims if was God's doing... all part of His plan. I assume God doesn't influence phyical effects like gravity, evaporation, momentum, dimensions of objects, chemical structure of materials, etc. If He did then no calculations would be predictable. We wouldn't be able to calculate how fast our cars are going. So His influence must be on another level. I assume He doesn't control our brains. Our thought patterns are influenced by previous events just like physical effects are. So if God can't actively control the person's thoughts when they decided to light a fire in the woods, if He can't control the wind or the burning properties of wood, then how was this person's house burning down some part of God's plan? The only way I can see God having an influence on the way things pan out is if He calculated everything up before creating it all in the beginning and it is gradually happening over time.

Adam and Eve. That's a big sticking point for me as well. If you dont believe in evolution, wake up and smell the coffee. Evolution is everywhere on display for everyone to see. Evolution of species of animals happens over a fairly large time scale. For an easier example, look at TVs, look at cars. We didn't suddenly have the car. We engineered and refined it over many years to get it to the point it is now. It will continue to evolve as we put more ideas into it. You can track the evolution of the car back through the years and using a different technique, you can track back the evolution of humans. I'd like to explore that idea not deny it, track it back to see how far back we can go.

Most religion now accepts that we know the moon revolves around Earth, the Earth is a spheroid, rain is a condensation of previously evaporated water. How has religion survived all this knowledge we've gained? How does "fear of God" still exist? People are still able to use it to get people to do what they want them to do (and not to do). I dont get it. There are things we still dont know, but I'd like us to pursue the endeavour to work it out rather than simplifying it to being the work of God.


So they are some insights into my feelings on religion in general. I dont have a problem with people who are religious. People should be allowed to believe what they want to believe. If it makes them happy then it's a good thing as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. I have my own religion in a way. It's based on respect for yourself and others, respect for your surroundings. In my religion there is no afterlife. When you die, your brain stops working and you cease to think. As such everything for you stops and you effectively cease to exist. But of course parts of you live on in the personality of others (after all your personality is an amalgamation of other people's personalities). What my religion doesn't have is a theory of how it all began. The closest my religion has come is that it never began.

I will try to get a better description of my feelings towards religion but it's really, really hard. There are so many aspects to religion. Oh well, I hope this post made you think and formulate your own views on the subject.