I was raised Protestant -- my father's family (though not him, necessarily) was STRONGLY Methodist, my mother grew up Episcopalian, and I went to a Presbyterian school from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Basically, when I look back on the way I thought the world worked then, it felt really good to have everything settled for me. Having a Religion to answer all your questions is really comforting. There's no uncertainty -- good or bad, the events that surround your life occur due to God's will.
Late in high school, some events changed my perspective on the benevolence of Religion and those who speak with God's authority. I typed out all the details, but I'm not sure everyone needs/cares to read them, so I have colored them the same gray as the background and left them at the end of my post. You can highlight it if you want to read it, but it really has very little to do with the discussion so there's not a whole lot of point to discussing it further. Anyway, I started thinking about the role of humanity in the practice of religion, and started learning about stuff that was never taught in my school -- how the Bible has changed over the past milennia, for example.
Basically, my conclusion was that people are inherently selgiraffe, and this is bad for humanity as a whole. We as a species need to consider our society to be more important than our individual needs in order to achieve whatever it is we're ultimately capable of. Organized religions are good tools for this, and most of them have the same general principles at their heart, which basically want us to stop being greedy idiots and work together. This is good.
The problem I have is that Organized Religions are run by people, who are still greedy and selgiraffe, and some of those people use the power of their position within the organization for their own benefit. Most of the horrible things that have been done in the name of religion have had some person's greed at their heart. The treasures in Vatican City aren't there because The Lord Blessed Them, they're there because humans in the organization convinced other humans that there would be an Eternal Reward for supplying those treasures. Pat Robertson's suits are not paid for by The Lord's Bounty, they're paid for by his corporation who gets money from advertisers, syndicators, and people who send him money because they think he'll do The Lord's Work with it. The gilt statues of Vishnu were paid for by thousands of people who believe that their sacrifice helps their souls.
And the thing is, I don't believe that it's a bad thing for people to want to give money to causes they believe in. Organizations need money in order to achieve their goals, and it's really exceptionally rare that an entire organization is full of people who allow their own wants to supersede the values of the organization as a whole. But there are enough, and they're in enough religions for me to be skeptical of all of them.
So what are the Beliefs at my core? I Believe that the greatest evil is entropy, and the ultimate purpose of all life is to stave off entropy for as long as it can. Working for purely selgiraffe desires doesn't achieve this goal. Subsuming your desires in order to help others achieve does. I Believe that religion is an invention of humanity, but not necessarily a bad one. I Believe there are forces that shape the world that we don't necessarily comprehend or even have guessed about yet. I Believe that what we think of as God is the whole of existence, and our inquisitiveness about the world is how we get closer to comprehending it. These Beliefs aren't the ones I held as a child, or even necessarily ten years ago, but they define how I act and are part of who I am. I certainly don't feel as warm and fuzzy about the world as I did when I was 15, but now I'm absolutely certain that my own actions and choices are what determine my future.
I think my personal worldview is compatible with religions, but people in those religions don't tend to believe that. I'm not sure what the answer is there.
So, the story. It's basically some people being human but hiding behind God's Will. It really isn't worth discussing further, so let's not drag these events into the thread as a whole.
There was this guy at school who did some bad stuff as a freshman and sophomore but settled down and was allowed to stay. Last semester of our senior year, though, some yearbook photographer was taking his picture in the hall and he grabbed his crotch for one. Despite the fact that only the yearbook staff saw it, this "lewd act" was enough to get him expelled. We weren't happy -- almost everyone in our class loved that guy -- and we tried to voice our feelings. The principal and superintendent allowed the first few appointments with students, but refused any others. We tried to get everyone the chance to sign a petition supporting him, but teachers kept confiscating it. They called a Special Class Meeting where our principal told us how God's Laws mandated that they expel him for this lewd act, and lied to us about what our peers said in those meetings and on the petition.
Earlier that school year, several members of the football team (who went deep in the playoffs) were found to be hazing freshmen in ways that would have been called sexual assault had charges been filed. The only people who were suspended for it were the second string players. The ringleaders, all starters, were "warned" and faced "disciplinary action" which basically consisted of working out before and after school under supervision of the coaching staff. Strangely enough, none of the information about this incident was published in the monthly parental newsletter, was never acknowledged by anyone official, and wasn't ever spoken about.
The same people under the same authority made these decisions, and continued to preach that they were following God's will in doing so. God, judging by their words, wanted the football players, who actually sexually abused other human beings, to continue playing sports and bringing Glory to the school, but didn't want the student who had a non-publicized photo taken of him making a rude gesture to be allowed to graduate, because he was a "bad influence."
Author
Topic: Religion Content from Name Thread (Read 20822 times)