I’m Working… I Swear

So, I recently had to think about what I would do in the future (something I generally despise). I had a tryst with an overly religious girl recently, shortly after she started questioning me about my thoughts on religion and how she wanted to raise her children Christian because of her strong belief in Jesus Christ. It got me thinking about my childhood and what effect Christianity had on me as a child. The most vivid memories I had were being forced to go to church and having my friends make me feel guilty for the things I did as a kid and not being a “better” kid. I remember being really concerned about what god thought about me and worrying that I would go to hell.

I always had a problem with the idea that saying a prayer one time suddenly would send me from hell to heaven, it didn’t seem like enough. Now I think about how much time I wasted being judged by my friends for the things I would do that were “unChristian-like” and being told that people belonging to other religions were bad people.

So, would I raise my kids Christian?

Lets imagine that for some reason I ended up married to a woman who was religious, Christian even. I wouldn’t have any problem at all with her taking them to church on Sunday. After church though I’d make sure to remind my kid that although they’re attending Christian church, there’s also Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, etc. that they haven’t heard about and all have an equal probability of being just as correct as Christianity. I’d probably give them a crash course in the beliefs of other religions and their stories. I’d make sure to point out how similar the story of Jesus Christ is to other religions saviours and dieties and make them think about where Christianity really originated. At the end of all that I’d also mention that there’s also one more option and that’s to not believe in a god at all.

I actually get a bit upset thinking about my childhood and being taught that no other religions could possibly be correct. I never even knew that there were other people that didn’t believe in the same god I did and never got a chance to hear their ideas or teachings. I think this kind of upbringing teaches a child to be close minded and teaches the child not to think for themselves or question what their told. Essentially I think it has all the makings for creating an ignorant person because of the unwillingness to listen to unfamiliar ideas. I don’t think its a good attitude that if something is hard to explain, its because only God knows. This attitude leads to the discouragement of new thought and discovery.

We’re getting to the point with modern science that we can explain almost all the things that were previously considered acts of God. Demonic possession – schizophrenia, A vision of angels or speaking with god – schizophrenia or ergot poisoning or hallucinations, the origin of humanity and conscious thought – Darwininian evolution.

Religion has existed for the last several thousand years due to a lack of understanding of how the world worked and because human beings needed something to comfort them because we’re the only beings capable of understanding our mortality. Do I like thinking that when I die my body goes into the ground and nothing happens? Well, I don’t think heaven really sounds that great either (well maybe Muslim Martyr heaven). Who wants to sit around for eternity and worship a god? BORING. I wanna play ping pong. Beyond that, I don’t recall what it felt like to not have been born, but I don’t remember being bothered by it, I suspect being dead will feel much the same way.

I believe and hope that as we learn more about how our world works that god and religion won’t even be necessary anymore to explain how this all came into being. Maybe religion is just a passing phase that will become extinct when people begin understanding that evolution and science can now explain much more than god’s existence does. Its a role reversal that has happened as we progressively learn more, the more scientific education we have, the less likely we will be to believe in a god.

I do understand why some people still choose to believe in god, its because they don’t understand science, and they don’t require something to be proved to them for them to believe it. I also realize why I changed from being a believer to a non-believer. I spent 4 years studying physics, biology, psychology, and chemistry. I have a much better understanding of human thought, human behavior, the rules by which our universe is governed, evolution, and human motivation than the average religious person does. There’s a reason why there’s a negative correlation between level of education and belief in god. I think not being educated in the areas I described above make it easy to say that god exists and not see the blaring contradictions that science has created in the last century. More than that I could expect that knowledge humanity has only had for 50 years to change 8000 years of belief, no matter how irrational it is.

So, to answer your question miss, I would want my children to think for themselves, question what their told instead, and not blindly believing what someone tells them. I don’t think only showing them one tiny of religious possibility is the way to do that.