It wasn’t too long ago that a family member began trying to push religion on to me. Prayer, according to him, is real and he has with his own eyes witnessed miracles. He went on to say something akin to, ‘God is about love’, ‘ask and you shall receive’, and the typical things religionists use to try to convince those they deem ‘lost’, that their faith is right. He does this with the best of intentions I’m sure, but that air of certitude every time a religionist speaks of his or her faith reeks of conceit. My grandfather and grandmother often argue, and it is this specifically that he claims is the work of ‘demons and bad spirits’. He also believes prayer has alleviated some of the negativity and driven out the demons. Nevertheless, witnessing miracles and just knowing that prayer is real were the least convincing of his arguments, even if they may have been the most convincing to him.
I stopped believing in God years ago. Superstitious beliefs concerning all-powerful beings, virgin births and other silly things just didn’t do it for me anymore. Perhaps they never did. Similar beliefs from different religions certainly struck me as ridiculous (all while I believed that women were made from a rib and that an all-loving God murdered every human in a colossal world-wide flood), but that’s because I wasn’t raised to believe in them. I’m sure the contents of the bible would be deemed fictitious to an outsider. If all my life I’d been taught to believe that sacrificing a cow every 3rd day of the month would bring my people good fortune, I most likely would follow the tradition unquestionably. Other beliefs seem non-sensible to us only because we weren’t brought up in them. That begs the question, how then can anybody be so positively convinced that their beliefs are accurate? The simple answer is faith. Faith does not require evidence. You’re told to simply believe, unquestionably, that such & such occurred. The majority of people do seeing as how everyone else probably does, so they follow. In this respect all faiths are equal. Modern religionists try to ridicule scientology as though their beliefs are any less farfetched than those of a scientologist. They’re seemingly unaware that faith is a pillar necessary within both religions. Both must then be equally accepted or equally rejected depending on your view. The same can be said of any made up belief no matter how childish it may seem. If faith is the religionist’s answer, then how does he know his is the correct faith? There are millions of beliefs so the odds of the one you’re born into being the right one are slim to none. In fact it seems to me the odds are in favor of all faith systems being incorrect. If history is any indication, then we can safely expect that in time, today’s prominent religions will become tomorrow’s Greek Mythology.
