I don't get religion. I really don't. Hell, I don't even get faith. Or maybe it's just the people who buy into religion who I don't get. The people who, for some reason or another, believe it all, when, really, it's all very unbelievable, in the most literal sense of the word.
Every time some one asks me how I cope with "being alone in the universe" or "not having a reason to live" or some equally eyebrow-raising BS, I can't help wonder where they got the idea that I am having trouble coping with anything, let alone some of the most irrelevant, abstract things that don't really apply to life at all. At all. It's like they figure that, just because I don't have myself convinced that, once I die, if I'm a good girl, I'll go to some poofy place where there's an unlimited supply of Root Beer and sex just kind of isn't, I have no goals or any reason to have goals.
Even when not being addressed personally, it pisses me off. When some old white folks on TV go on about how, "The atheists need guidance," or, "The atheists want to take God out of our schools," (Which we've already accomplished, for the most part, thank God. [smirk]) I feel like breaking their ovaries/balls in. Also, it makes me laugh, because of the way they refer to atheists. It's like we're some misguided little child with his pockets stuffed full of sand-box sand, who runs around kicking his classmates just because he thinks he's better than them. (Which, perhaps, is an apt enough description, minus the misguided part.) And the entire "we" part of it just confuses me, to no end. It's like they're so convinced that everybody's just gotta have a religion, even THE ATHEISTS must have their own religion, only it constitutes absolutely nothing. Or, better yet, it constitutes Taking God Out of the Schools.
Once, a religious friend of mine said to me, in a voice that expressed genuine concern, "But, you should go to Church, in case there is a god! That way, you'll have all your bases covered." If there was any possibility of there being a god, I would have considered it. If I found it remotely possible that I will have some semblance of consciousness after I freaking die, maybe I'd have agreed with her on that. But there isn't and I don't and it, quite frankly, pissed me the hell off.
It's this attitude of, "Don't worry; you'll be okay! You just need to find God. You're lost," that gets to me, along with this disbelief that I could possibly get by in life without being convinced Jesus or whoever was hovering around, watching over sheep or whatever he's supposed to do. I mean, Jesus was a great guy, don't get me wrong: it's just that he died. He had nails stuck through him and he suffocated to death, via crucifixion. It was a sad thing, but it happened. And, somehow, I'm crazy for thinking that maybe, just maybe, he didn't come back to life.
Personally, I've always seen religion as a sort of cop-out. If you can't figure out exactly what's going on, there's no way it could be unmagical or just too complex for modern science to tackle. It's like using a computer your whole life, but never bothering to find out how it works and assuming there are little fairies inside the monitor, all running around madly so their different coloured uniforms will form the images on the screen. Or, better yet, it's like is never climbing to the top of the mountain to discover the river that has been feeding your family for generations is actually the run-off from a large amount of melting snow.
It seems ridiculous to use these examples now, but it's simply a matter of perspective. Thousands of years ago, people had no real understanding of how anything worked. They attributed most of it to gods: disease, weather, eye-colour, the works. They thought sticking pigs and other things upon spears and then burning them would make good things happen because it would please the gods. Because they didn't understand.
And we don't understand most things. The world we live in is still largely a mystery, when it comes to how everything fits together. But this isn't an excuse to attribute it to some divine power governing things. If anything, it's a reason to completely throw away any belief that some sort of divine power might exist: we've gained so much knowledge and achieved so much as a species, its only natural for us to continue learning, until we understand at least a great deal of It All. Until the sun burns out and we all die, of course, and our seething minds are ground to a halt. (Ten points if you can name the reference.)
When I say I can believe in God as readily as I can believe in fairies, the Great Pumpkin, or the Easter Bunny, it's not out of being misguided or blind or contemptuous, it's out of simply following what I've learned since I was little:
-the Sandman doesn't exist
-Santa Claus doesn't exist
-the Great Pumpkin was basically a rip-off of Santa Claus
-the Easter Bunny? What the hell?
I was told, at some point, that each of them existed, with the exception of TGP, but realized that believing as much was...well, how could I? It didn't make a lick of sense.
And so, when people say, "Don't worry--Jesus still loves you," or that I'm taking God out of schools or that I simply do not have the will to get out of bed each morning, I glance at them but briefly and say, "That's lovely dear," all the while thinking about how I think it'd be cool to have a bisexual boyfriend, since we could go around taking candid photos of hot guys (and girls) together.
So shut up...
...please.
