Religious Ramblings

Blog post #2: on religion.

Our age is severed from religion.

Its fashionable these days to dismiss religion. Sam Harris and his cult of atheists think that religion was a great mistake with no saving graces. They seem to think that religion existed universally, in every country, in every time, from 1900 AD to who-knows-when BC… for no reason.

Now, anyone who believes in evolution should realize this makes no sense. Evolution, it is claimed, is random- but only mutations which are useful continue on. Evolution is usually directed at animals- but it is applicable to ideas as well. Ideas struggle for existence; the ideas which unlock better ways of existing, continue to exist. Science, for instance, unlocked technology, and competed itself into existence.

If ideas operate like evolution, they compete with one another. How then could every civilization create and live by religion? Not just for a day, or for a year… but for five millennium.

If religion detracted from society, all it would take is one society without religion to out compete all these foolish societies that believed in fairy tales.

Yet this did not happen. Not until 1900s Europe, at least.

If religion was merely a stupid mistake, it might have arisen in civilization once. Maybe twice. But every civilization in history? Impossible. And yet, every civilization prior to ours has had religion… Religion must have had some purpose.

This universal belief in religions and gods seem to me all the justification we need to believe that there is some reason for their existence. The only alternative is to say that reality makes no sense, and that things come into being for no reason.

If it isn’t clear, I think the atheists are dumbasses. In fairness, I’m more disgusted with them because I used to be one of them. As they say, “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself”. But that’s a story for another day.

Even those who claim to be religious are not really religious. They go to church, sure. But who among them follows the dictates of the bible? Chastity before marriage, penance, forgiveness, knowledge of the evil lurking in one’s soul… these are relics of a culture past. Churches today offer some solace, but few take it seriously. Who today believes in man’s fall from Eden? In Noah? In the miracles of Christ? Despite what we’re lead to believe, very few. Religion is a husk of what it once was.

But that has little bearing on the existence of God.

All religions are based upon the existence of God. The Hindus call it Brahmin; the Daoists call it Dao. The words mean little. Every religion revolves around a fundamental principle. This principle is the source of all life; of all existence- of being itself.

That is God. Forget Michelangelo’s paintings, forget the dogmas of religion. Every religion is rooted in one fundamental question: I exist… yet I know not why.

We need not trouble ourselves with the dogmas of past ages. It is obvious that the virgin birth is unlikely; it is obvious that God did not speak directly to Abraham. But the fact that all these religions have a fundamental principle… that they were fundamentally united and one in a source of existence. That they were united in wondering: “I came from nothingness; what is this nothingness?”

This is where God lurks.