I would not call myself a religious person. I was raised in a Jewish (father)/Christian (mother) house with a little exposure to the two ideologies, but it was never pushed on me. I've been to synagogue a number of times, and to church less. I don't believe either religion, or any other religion for that matter. I would still consider myself spiritual because I understand the limitations of describing our existence through any model of understanding. To clarify, consider modern science: through it we try to understand the nature of the universe we live in, but it is confined to be an understanding of how something could work. Even if we were capable of designing a model for the universe that predicted perfectly every observation we made --I do not know whether we are--, we would be leaving unanswered the question of how the thing which that model represents comes to be what we call "actual". Metaphysics, which is religion as far as I am concerned, is a necessary consequence of science.
What irks me, as a thinking being, is how people accept mythology as truth. Maybe Jesus is the son of the Christian God, or perhaps not and is just a prophet, and Muhammad is the last of said prophets. Or perhaps Zeus is the supreme ruler of Mount Olympus. Maybe we are all suffering in the cycle of birth and rebirth to acquire Nirvana, or the universe follows The Way because it is its nature. Or perhaps, these are all valid interpretations of a more supreme truth. I like to think that these are all simply stories we tell each other to comfort ourselves and guide us to follow more cooperative behavior, and teaching them as truth dims the minds of truth seeking agents. I tend to not accept anything to be true and rather let myself work under fuzzy logic and reason about uncertainty. On a fundamental level, I do not even know that it is "true" that I exist. This thought was hard to accept, but it is even harder to try to communicate; I will leave that task for later. I think there is more worth in reasoning about observations than there is in accepting other peoples beliefs as our own.
But please, don't believe me either. Think for yourselves.
6 comments:
I was raised strict catholic. My mother's catholic, and on top of it, hispanic, making religon the guiding factor in my childhood. I was the perfect catholic girl, i knew all the facts and prayers and I loved Jesus like I was supposed to. Then one day, I woke up and I thought, do I really believe. To be honest, I am in the middle of not having a particular faith. Its hard, with all the pressure coming from a catholic community to believe in something Im not sure about.
I myself have come to believe that in one way or another, there is a place after death, and that whatever one beileves, they have a reason to believe in it, thus ,it is valid. It helps to not believe in reality or science, my current stance on the validity of truth, that everything just is.
Sorry if this comment was a bit long, but I enjoyed your post and just felt like sharing my own thoughts.
I think that if you're interested or concerned about these things, e.g., "maybe Jesus is the son of God -- or not", you should actually check out the claims underlying the various faiths that interest you. Jesus, for instance, did indeed claim to be the Son of God, and he was killed because that claim was too dangerous to the ruling class in Jerusalem. Read the gospels of Matthew and John to see Jesus' statements about himself, and the response he got.
NOTHING TO LOOSE
I would not call myself a religious person either. It was interesting reading this post, because it invoked feelings of uncertainty and doom inside of me that I have not experienced since my grade 13 "Science in Society" course. I had NEVER felt so depressed in all my life. Whoever thought up of the idea to passionlessly (sp) teach raw human function and instinct, scientificly proven natural ritual, and minimize the account of existance through an insignificant DNA bind probably had very few friends. That was a long scentance.
I am a spiritual person, definatly. I know that what drives me every day is the hope of better things to come. I've gone throught the same thought patterns as you. I thought "maybe Jesus is the son of God" and looked at the pro's and con's of what that entailed. I guess the pro's and con's of what that means differs for everyone, but I figured out mine. Then, in a matter of events and situations, wondered "Maybe he's not...etc" along the same lines as you have written. For myself "myth has become truth" because I decided I've got nothing to loose.
"Nothing to loose. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. You'll never win the lottery unless you buy a ticket."
This is no guarantee, but have come to take comfort on the fact that I've done everything "I" could to give my soul a chance past the cycle of death.
In YOUR own words...
"This thought was hard to accept, but it is even harder to try to communicate...I think there is more worth in reasoning about observations than there is in accepting other peoples beliefs as our own. But please, don't believe me either. Think for yourselves."
Wow Fuzzy, you seem to have attracted another person who can't spell lose. It's a "looser" congregation!
Maybe I should read my responses sooner than I have been... I'm new to blogging.
I think some people have misunderstood the point of my post, which is understandable since I am horrible at getting my points across. What I meant was that while a lot of people believe a lot of interesting things, on the topics of religion, math, science, philosophy, etc., but nobody can provide absolute proof of anything. Not even 1 + 1 = 2 can be proven outside of simply defining it as true. Religion works the same way. You can argue that Jesus was the son of God by saying that he claimed it himself, and even that he had a lot of followers that believed him. That still isn't a proof, it's support.
So to deal with this, I've decided to believe nothing, and just trust my intuition and hope that it grows with my experiences. I think that anybody who claims to know anything absolutely is retarded.
Hope that helps.
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