HASTE AND SOME WHAT OF A WASTE

I found it fitting to add this comment in response to those who have read and chosen to objectively respond to my "point of religion." I truly appreciate the comments I have received. Indeed, it's hard to understand how life truly works. However, on a particular note, i had given this to my aunt to read. Seeing is how she is a devote catholic, I, was anxious to witness her reaction. To my surprise she offered the thought that because I was young, I would not be able to understand many of life's mysteries, and that god is there to help us find the path. Funny, age it seems plays a role in your understanding life, but pain, happiness, grief, death, seems to have no boundaries. In some what hushed tones, I choose to blurt out that very fact and over the next few minutes, we fought over the "exact" role god plays in our lives. Just so we're clear, my goal is not to undermine one ideology with the help of another, moreover, it's to offer to the world, in the most gentle of ways, the point of view I could afford. My own.

The Point of Religion

By no means am I a religious or even a spiritual person. However, most of my family and friends are, they have a strong belief in god's existence and hand in their lives. As a result, I have been raised from childhood to follow and accept the beliefs of the catholic religion. However, the recent events that have affected my life as well as a great deal of time spent understanding life itself, have forced me to question that faith. This year, I lost my mother in April and as with anyone who has lost a loved one, questions arise and doubts and even mixed feelings. I, of course was no different. But, with religion apart of my life, I found it easy to focus on that. After all, I was made to believe that religion and god can comfort and help you overcome anything. The following is my novice attempt at questioning that very premise.

As the days past after my mother’s passing, my relatives would offer their condolences, and then add the response that god is caring for her and that she's in a better place. HARDLY SO! A better place? A husband left with no wife. A son left with no mother. A sister lost. I seem to fail in understanding the concept of that. After all, she was my mother, the best place was here, loving and caring for her family, as we, cared and loved her. Moreover, I hardly see a point in giving this figure the title of god who's supposedly omnipotent, and yet his adoring followers on earth (pope included,) are just as susceptible to diseases and natural disasters and pain as the rest of the humanity. If your response, however, is the fact that everyone must endure the process of life, then would there be a purpose in praying and asking for help if say a child was in an accident and death was a looming? Imagine a doctor telling the parents that, their child is in god’s hands and if he wills it, the life will be saved, if not, the child will be with god. Let us offer a sense of rational thinking, if the actions we take and the consequences that affect us, determine the result, why does god have to play a roll? Have you ever heard a human praising god for the loss of their loved one? Useless is the hand that is neither felt nor seen. Moreover, your response to this may be the fact that there are magnificent things we can witness (nature, space, seasons or birth,) I offer this thought. If science had not helped us as it has thus far, what would we understand about the stars and nature what would we have learned about the process of birth? We have discovered so much for ourselves. Extended life, preserved it, cured diseases and more importantly, we continue to solve humanity's problems. Furthermore, it would appear to me that humanity will be our savior and not a supernatural being.

As time past, I started focusing on the religion I was forced into since childhood. What does it mean, how does it work in today's world and of course, its primary figure. Catholicism, much like the other religions, serves as a portal to draw you into certain assumptions. It gives you false hope. It prescribes the righteous path for our "truthful" entrance into a "special" kingdom. ACTUALLY, it asks you fear, love, respect and follow what we can not see or even feel. Well, how can they do this? How can the Catholic Church (as powerful as they are) accomplish this in a time where science has come so far, and when the 8% of our used brain should force us to question the religious beliefs we're guided by. Well, like many of the powerful corporations, banks and institutions, they have placed their roots far and deep within our society. For generations they have been teaching us their lies coupled with the idea that "GOD SAID SO," and they get away with it. Amazing as that is, it's even more shocking to see over time, their level of brainwashing has advanced to a point that if you were to question it, you would be placed under scrutiny. If the time is spent examining any religion, truthfully, with an objective view, we would easily see what religion has done to us as a people. The lives it has taken the destruction it has caused. Realizing this, I shifted to religion's main player. God himself, His existence, his beliefs, his choice of control or lack there of. Are his followers in denial or justly following their maker?

As a man who has had his hand let go to cross the world alone, I can't help but conclude two points to the existence of god. One; if god does exist, he either chooses not to care or is unable to. However, if he was unable to, there is no point in calling him god is there? And if he chooses not to, then "all-loving" is thrown right out of the window. Either way, he'd be as useful as a football fan engrossed in a Sunday’s game. Moreover, my second point is if he were to simply not exist, these questions wouldn't even be asked. That left me with an odd conclusion and a Subconscious thought of John Lennon asking me to imagine there's no heaven or hell. Well, I did, and the answer was a powerful one. Imagine if we were to take matters into our own hands, imagine if life was not controlled by a "supreme" being but by us. The amount of unwarranted loss of life in wars, saved. The enormous amounts of money spent to build institutions where lives are completely spent in denial, saved. To the cruel events we witness as a people, and the world that turns with them, I’m forced to accept the fact that our lives are in our control, the choices we make to the decisions we abide by.

Because of the power that religion has over this earth and the people, I highly doubt that much of our concepts on religion and god and even the institutions that proclaim to work for them, will change. However, there are a few, atheists as the world labels them, who actively question these methods with pure and simple rational thinking. My hope in the future of humanity remains with them.