by B.J. on 8/28/2003 09:46:00 PM 0 comments Print this post

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Battle with Religion

I believe in a supreme being.

But I'm not so sure that I believe in the worshipping practices. The parts where I have to kneel, and assert his greatness. They are rituals. Robert Sapolsky, writer of this awesome book, The Trouble with Testosterone, calls out some of these rituals as being obsessive-compulsive in the context of a psychological and biological point of view. He states, "Religion is not just a foundation of thought and faith. Nor is it just a set of moral imperatives, or a set of cultural values to be shared with a community. In its traditional, orthodox incarnations, it is also a collection of small habits, behaviors, and prohibitions, a myriad of everyday activities and sayings."

"During periods of stress or of anxiety in our lives, most of us will find ourselves having certain small behaviors or thoughts that we cannot suppress, little rituals that, repeated once, are benign, but repeated at length, become irritants."

Even though I do believe in some kind of supreme being, I wonder why a lot simply don't. If the supreme being was that great, why wouldn't he make everyone believe in him ?

In a historical context, belief in hell for not believing in a religion seems like something of ancient times, when strong people wanted justification to coerce people into believing their religion. People believed in religion as comfort to the big unknown of death. Today's society of sprawling democracy has laid a heavy assault on worshipping anything. From the democratic view point, it seems like nothing more than a ploy for Conservatives to make the disadvantaged accept their lot in life, even though those Cons will tell them such empty meaningless phrases like "keep hope."

But from the personal context with my family, friends, background in mind, there's nothing about religious practices that relates to me or anyone else, unless you really love those inaudible Latin phrases.

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