Jason's Thoughts on Religion

A subject, which seldom fails to spark emotional interest with anyone when it is mentioned, is religion. Everyone has their own personal viewpoints and here are mine. Before I get straight into describing my actual thoughts on the matter, I feel a slight history of my theological background is necessary. I was born into a Roman Catholic family of primarily German origins, and this would shape a good deal of how I see the world especially in religious terms. When I was very young, I remember quite vividly sitting on and under the pews of my church, being bored senseless for one hour a week for quite a long time. Even now when I go to church, I am still left in that mind set a little bit, though I no longer hide under the pews. I remember listening to the bible stories (the more fun and poignant for preschoolers ones), and not quite being able to connect with a lot of what was said, because I didn’t understand nor did I appreciate the differences between biblical culture and my own. Still, I got the hints from these stories and was always well-behaved enough to abide by the rules they were suggesting. I also remember quite well for most, if not all, of my young life being completely assured of the absolute truth held in the bible and its teachings, in my mind there was no doubt at all this was just how the world was. Strangely, however, I remember having some of my most abstract and philosophical thoughts about metaphysics at this age: wondering, for example, about things like reincarnation and things along those lines, without ever formally being introduced to the ideas otherwise.

When I was around six years old, something quite strange happened in my views of religion, and that is that my oldest brother Matt, whom I looked up to very much, announced (out of jest) that he wanted to be the pope. Although he was only joking, I really thought this was the noblest of aspirations and thought I too would pursue this particular vocation. So, between the age of six and the age of twelve or so, I wanted to enter the priesthood. I would tell everyone (when asked) that I wanted to be the pope someday, and naturally everyone always got a chuckle from this strangest of desires. In spite of these laughs, I was quite earnest, and entering the priesthood is what I really wanted to do. My assurance in God was never in doubt during this time, but my interest in becoming a man of the cloth waned. I knew I wanted to be the pope, but I could never really think of a great reason why that was, and furthermore, I simply didn’t know enough about Vatican politics to actually want to make a great difference. Eventually, I learned that I was simply too interested in girls to truly want to spend my life chaste and thus went my dreams of the papacy and all that went with it. I officially ceased wanting to be a priest sometime in the seventh grade (1996 or so) for what reason I ultimately stopped, I am sure I don’t remember right now. A bit of it, I know is because my doubt in God grew. This does not mean, however, that I ever denied God or his existence forthright.

For the remainder of my middle school career, I still considered myself to be a Roman Catholic, though a less religious one than before. In fact for about four or five years, I was an alter boy for my church, and I enjoyed it more in many ways than being a parishioner, because of the more comfortable seats, and a bit of the ceremony itself. My alter boy service ended at the end of my Freshman (first year of highschool), and this I have no doubt was in large part to my highly eroded beliefs in religion and not wishing to further live a lie. At around this point, I discovered a new religion that really appealed to me, for its explanation of things, especially why bad things happen, this was deism. Deism is the belief in non-interference from the creator, and it was a major religion of most of the creators of my country. Why did this appeal to me exactly? Because it was a belief founded in the use of reason to determine the laws of nature and what God is. It also explained in many ways why bad things occur. I suppose the largest reason it appealed to me was because of what I thought God’s motivations may have been with creating us, as speculative as that line of thinking is. Basically, I believed there would be little point for God to make us, only to guide and interfere with us every step of the way, what would be the point of that? Furthermore, the only logical reason I could think of that He might create us at all, was simply for entertaining purposes to Himself. Because if He was as omnipotent as I was raised to believe He was, than it would be a pointless exercise for Him to create us knowing everything we would do already. This is why I thought God would abstain from human (or cosmic) interaction.

Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely a true (or orthodox rather) deist, and this was simply because the entire time I believed in deism, I was still of the belief that some of the bible, and Christ specifically still did exist and were true. I thought that after Christ had ascended into heaven deism had again set in, so to speak. This belief seems somewhat silly to me now, but here was the reasoning behind it at the time. I believed that the understanding of God or ‘the Clockmaker’ as deists call Him, could not be truly even thought of, and certainly not from a well-informed perspective about His intentions, without some guidance and knowledge that He initially gave to His followers. This, combined with the infatuation for Christ as a teacher, was my reason to appreciate the Christian perspective combined with deism. Thus it was I called myself, for a short time, a Deist Roman Catholic. This moniker ended rather quickly, when I found another word to add to this eclectic belief in God, and this is the title of: agnostic, thus Agnostic Deist Roman Catholic.

What this meant was, I didn’t know if God truly existed or not, but if He did, I thought he was a non-interfering Christian, specifically Roman Catholic God. Now, by this point, to keep the title of Roman Catholic may seem a little strange for someone to be in the camps of both agnostic and deist, but there was a great deal of reason to it, strange as it may sound. First of all, I believed if there truly was a God at all, He would probably want more than just a handful of people to know about Him, or He would be cruel to the people He created and wanted to worship Him. Thus, I thought that He must be the god of the majority of the people, and that would be the Judeo-Christian-Muslim (Abrahamic) god, statistically speaking, with about 54% of the world’s population adhering to one of the religions of this category. Of the two major branches of the Abrahamic god (Judaism only has .5% or so) Christianity had many more members, which made it seem more likely to be the one belonging to the true ‘God’ anyways, and furthermore, I found its philosophy on a whole to be a lot more enlightening and accepting. From this, Roman Catholicism seemed the most logical choice, because not only is it the largest Christian denomination with well over half of the total Christian world belonging to it (the next largest being Eastern Orthodox still a form of Catholicism, with 1/4 the followers of Roman), but it was also the single biggest denomination in the world, beating Sunni Islam by about 100,000,000 people. Of course, numbers don’t make a religion right, but I thought it added great clout to the reason to think this might be the best religion to choose from.

Additionally to this, I thought Roman Catholicism best because I believe that the general Catholic idea of bishops and hierarchy was the best way to organize a religion and to truly give salvation to the people. The Protestant ideal of individual salvation, plus my general interactions with Protestants left a bad taste in my mouth. I am all about individuality, but I reasoned that spiritually speaking, there could really only be one true path to God and finding Him in any way that suited a person (as individualism suggests) would ultimately defeat the true way to him. Of course I didn’t have any huge complaints about Protestantism on a theological level really, other than that I liked the episcopal chain of Catholic churches, and thought they made more sense to really universalize the ‘correct’ salvation of people in general. What I did have a much larger problem with in Protestants (perhaps not their religion itself, I don’t know, as I remain slightly ignorant on their actual doctrines) is that they seemed far more judgmental on a whole, and full of hatred and exclusion to other perspectives.

Throughout my lifetime there has always been a general thought, from the more ignorant of people I come across, that Roman Catholics, and Roman Catholicism generally is a close-minded, backwards, judgmental, ‘fire and brimstone’ religion. Having grown up as a Roman Catholic, this point of view deeply upsets and offends me. This perspective mostly comes from (in my experience) Protestants (particularly: Baptists, and ‘non-denominational’ Christians), and shows them to be clearly far more ignorant of religions not their own. Where I do not encounter this perspective nearly as much is from certain sects of Protestants, namely Lutherans and Episcopalians (if indeed Protestants they can really be called), and of course Eastern Orthodox Catholics. I suppose what is so upsetting about this to me, is in my experience, the Roman Catholic religion, at least at the churches I’ve attended, seem to be far more accepting and okay with other religions than most others I’ve encountered. I’ve never once heard during a Catholic mass, or from a Catholic priest anything about anyone going to hell, especially for choosing another religion.

The Catholic church is one of the only ones I know of (in the Christian realm anyway) that openly accepts the theory of evolution and such like that. Granted, they should allow women in the clergy, and I don’t really have an opinion whether priests should be allowed to marry, but I would think a church of 2,000 years of history, and 1,050,000,000 people will have some difficult things to manage. I, for one, have only really had good experiences with the church, and think that through their history, though they have been corrupt at times, they are also one of the most charitable religions in the world, with hospitals, orphanages, universities, schools, soup kitchens and homeless shelters and so on. I also am happy about the fact that they supported so many arts and such, as much of a waste of money as that may seem, because we can now appreciate the artistic and representative works of centuries that would otherwise be lost. The other thing I love about the Roman Catholic church is its emphasis on scholarship, especially in many of the monastic orders. The fact that monks kept scholarship from the ancient world alive is simply amazing to me. I won’t say they don’t or haven’t had their faults, I know full well they do and had many, but I simply think as a general religion it is certainly a good one today, and has much more often than not had at least good intentions if not good actions for the world.

So, I kept the title ‘Agnostic Deist Roman Catholic’ for many years, and the final word to be added on to this title took over in my thoughts more and more upon the consideration of all things religious. The way it truly began, was that I got to thinking one day about all the religions in the world, and how everyone was about as convicted in their religions as I used to be in my own. My doubt in God Himself also grew I figured that if there was a deity or set of them, I certainly should not simply choose the one I thought was correct because I happened to be born into a family that thought a certain way. As I grew older, I became less sure about such things ultimately coming to the conclusion time and again that I simply didn’t know enough to really make what I felt would be truly intelligent decisions about theology. This, title started with a simple amount of doubt about the existence of God and if He did exist, whether He was the god of a different religion than mine or not. This small little facet of my theology started to play a larger and larger role in my beliefs generally until they began to really overwhelm them entirely. As I grew less sure from things I had heard as a child, the more sure I grew to know that no one else would really know either. I came to the conclusion that anyone who is certain without doubt about the existence or lack thereof of God was a fool. This didn’t mean that I had any ill opinion of theists or atheists, but it did mean that anyone who would disdain my professed ignorance publicly was himself: hypocritical, stupid, unreasonable, or close-minded.

Thus, today, I am an agnostic through and through, specifically, what is called a weak or empirical agnostic. What this means is, I do not think we have had enough evidence one way or other that a god may exist, but I would be very open to evidence were it to be presented that a god may exist and I do believe if that were to happen it would be in fact knowable that He did. The more I go through and encounter life, I feel that there really is no other logical alternative to be than an agnostic. I do not understand how people can be so sure about things like spirituality, or the fact that there is no god, just because they can not directly witness him. The thing that I suppose I truly lack is faith, but I lack it in the sense that I am simply unsure about things I do not know about. It also is not lost on me that I must take a great many things on faith like basic scientific facts of things I will never be able to personally take witness to, such as the existence of germs. I feel this is a bit different in a great regard, because should I actually take the time and effort I could certainly verify these things for myself based on the established scientific ways of deducing them.

Of course, my lack of faith does not keep me from being open-minded to possibilities, simply because they may seem unlikely. Many days I’ll definitely lean toward the atheist side of things and believe that the likelihood of a god existing is far less likely. Even when I think this, however, I still would be open to the idea that I could be wrong, because I can’t prove otherwise. Faith to me, is a shield people wear so that they can justify unlogical things and not need to answer for it. On the other hand, to be so empirical that you will not accept any possibility outside of your own realm of experience or what makes sense based on the world you know is almost as daft as faith. I sometimes think of the atheist argument of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and although I agree with some of the tenets of this, I also believe that the lack of willingness to consider other ideas is equally as ignorant as the religions they hold so much contempt for. I understand the desire to dismiss things for being absurd, but I say dismiss it until evidence is found to support or deny it.

The strange thing is, I have a large contempt for religions that are (to me) obviously made up. At the risk of alienating myself, I hold this perspective over a few beliefs in particular: Mormonism, Scientology and neo-paganism. I do not like the fact that I hold this contempt, but to me, the novelty of these religions alone are enough to condemn the truth behind them. The story of Joseph Smith seems ludicrous to me, just for the absurdity of the events surrounding his religion’s following. That said, I do not have contempt for Mormons themselves, saving their pushiness toward their own religion. Scientology, I simply can not respect for more reasons than I care to go into here, suffice it to say it is an absolutely greedy and insane religion to me, and I pity the followers. Neo-paganism, is a religion I’d have more respect for, if all of the followers didn’t seem to be in a socially awkward and vulnerable demographic, namely teenage girls trying to be different. I understand the love of nature and the willingness to be closer to it, but too much fantasy is given for reality, in my mind. Of course, I could be wrong about any one of these, somehow I just don’t think that I am.

One more question arises when I think of religion, that being spirituality. For some reason I have never had any sort of perception that spirituality really existed and that has been somewhat stifling for my understanding of those who truly are religious. It is, naturally, a very complex issue in some ways, and this will bring us to my metaphysical beliefs, which I imagine are in several ways quite different than most, or at least most who are religious. Metaphysically speaking, I’d consider myself a hardcore materialist, meaning I believe that everything exists is made of physical properties, namely energy, matter and nothingness. This may seem self-evident, but it may be easier to explain my belief by describing the opposite. What I do not believe is that things are made out of ideas or abstract properties (non-material ones) or some combination of matter and abstractionism (Cartesian Dualism). I do not have any reason to believe the universe or anything in it could exist outside of the realms we have seen, this does not mean I would not be open to such ideas, just that I really don’t know, or have any reason to believe anything would exist otherwise.

I have always felt this way, and based on my accumulated perceptions thus far, have no reason to believe otherwise. Consequently, my belief in a spirit (a very Dualist concept) is non-existent. I believe very heavily in the power of the mind, and I love and admire it so, but I believe all things mental are physical, meaning they are all just electric currents in the brain and strategic placement and design of neurons. If there is something more, I won’t know until I die is my guess, and by then I’ll be willing to write a retraction of anything I have written erroneously, if I’m proven wrong. Thus, I don’t really understand or appreciate any spiritual needs people may have, simply because I am highly doubtful of the spirit itself. The need to find spiritual enlightenment to me, is almost always interpreted as the need for emotional enlightenment, and the need to soothe the mind itself. By mind, I should point out, I mean the mental activity of the brain, that which would be perceived as consciousness. I see our consciousness as being the navigation system, so to speak for the body, and while it is capable of many wonderful and unique things, it is no more removed from our body than our digestion or sight.

I believe it is very possible to feel completely interesting, liberating, stimulating and powerful emotions, but to attribute it to a spirit is taking it a little too far for me. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I prefer to use the words spirit and soul (which are indeed lovely concepts) as proverbially as I use the word heart to mean the center of love and emotion, even though it is well known that all such things are produced and sensed in the brain. So, what does that mean as far as an afterlife is concerned, if we don’t have a soul? Well, I honestly don’t know, on my hopeful days, I think there could be the idea of a heaven, but truly I always kind of sense that we just shut off after death, in the same way that a machine shuts off after its turned off, there is no temporary ‘computer heaven’ for when a computer is shut off. This means in essence that I view the human body as a machine, and the mind is just doing its part as is any other organ or function. This to me, does not take away from the amazing aspects of humanity, but only increases my wonder and awe at it. I love the human: spirit (proverbial use meaning ‘will’ in this case), machine, and body.

In conclusion, I don’t know if there’s a god, or a spirit, from what I can tell, the evidence isn’t very clear either way (especially for god). I believe that anything is possible, but at the same time, I don’t think all things are likely. Whatever the truth is in the universe, I believe the best thing any one person can do, is to set a moral code, with others in mind and advance the cause of survival and creativity. If a person tries to be good (which would take an entirely different essay to conjure what makes that happen), hopefully any godlike being that exists and judges us, will see that, and not punish us for an accident of birth, like being born to parents who believe the wrong thing. Let us live life now, and concern ourselves to get into the afterlife by enjoying ourselves now and finding the right ethics which helps the world to live the most comfortably and best overall. If I’m wrong, well, shit.