Fatuous Brain

Happy Birthday Tom

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Religion, Faith and Memes

I was raised a Christian, and at the age of 13 my faith was "confirmed". Something happened when I was 14 or 15 that reversed that confirmation. I don't know what it was. I would say that I just started thinking about life, the universe and everything. I had questions that religion just couldn't answer. I'm a natural fence-sitter, which is a curse and a blessing. I could see that each religion, while mutually exclusive, all had similar answers. How could they all be right? If I had been born and raised a Muslim, it seemed unlikely that I would end up a Christian.

If you take 100 believers and 10 of them are Christian, how can the other 90 be wrong when their beliefs are just valid? It's not a big leap to go from saying that 90 of them are wrong to saying that all 100 are wrong.

So I swung in the opposite direction, as many people do, and became fervently anti-religious. I looked forward to being approached by evangelists so that I could put forth my arguments and questions until they either got upset or walked away shaking their heads.

When you argue with someone who has "faith", you create cognitive dissonance. Your arguments and questions are objective, and yet they take them as personal insults. Here's what I imagine the line of thinking to be:

"Your argument, which is logical and in a sense I believe, conflicts with my existing beliefs. But I know my existing beliefs are true. I cannot believe two conflicting ideas at the same time. That makes me upset. Therefore you are making me upset; therefore you have insulted me."

As I've grown older my attitudes have changed. I now think that in the balance, religion does more good than it does harm. It gives people answers to questions that have no answers or can't be known. I don't look down upon the religious any more. I respect them, and in a way, I'm envious that life can't be that simple for me.

I think that belief in God and an afterlife can give people a lot of strength. There's a lot of hard scientific data on the power of positive thought. If you believe that crystals emit positive energy, they probably do help, because belief in them will put you in a positive frame of mind.

And that's useful.

The only problem I have with religion is evangelism. It's okay to ask "Do you think about God?" but it's not okay to say "Believe in my God". Do that and I will bring out the tried and true questions that no one seems to be able to give reasonable answers to.

I had a bit of a turning point at a BBQ a couple of months ago. A friend and I, let's call him A, had taken MDMA. Another friend, let's call her B, wanted to take it too. She's engaged to a Christian (let's call him C) and has taken on the faith herself. C used to take MDMA but has stopped. B has taken MDMA a few times too, but I think she wants to explore it more.

A said to me "B wants a pill, why don't you put the hard word on C?"

I realised that C wasn't forcing his religious beliefs on me, and I wouldn't want him to. I refused to enforce my drug views on him and his girlfriend. I am good friends with both B and C. B told me she wanted MDMA, but couldn't take it. I asked why. She said "What Would Jesus Do?".

At that point I could have said that Jesus would take MDMA and get a taste of God's eternal love, or rush home and delete his entire MP3 collection, which was also illegal; and just like MDMA not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.

I chose to keep my mouth shut.

Personally I want to question the world and my reality, but I can see the comfort people get from being inflexible and having faith. There's so much less to worry about when you only see black and white instead of shades of grey.

I don't have all the answers, I haven't asked all the questions, and I think this is true for everyone to differing degrees. If everyone questioned everything all the time nothing would happen.

I don't think that belief in God is holding us back. Ideas and beliefs evolve too - this is the concept of "memes" - the ideas and beliefs that work for people persist, and the ones that don't get forgotten. Science mostly works. Religion/spirituality mostly works. They both have good and bad elements. When one stops working, it'll be eliminated from the meme-pool.

To wrap this baby up - If you don't fuck with my shit I won't fuck with yours and we'll all be happy.

Image stolen from The Age.