Religions And Their Source/3. Present Day Religions/1. Some Major Religions/3. My Dissatisfaction With Existing Religions
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Existing religions raise a number of concerns for me, and those that strike me as incongruous are listed below, not to disparage any religion but to illustrate why I think something better is needed. You may well be able to add additional aspects, both pro and con, particularly if you have a non-Christian background. Having been brought up in such a society, I find it easiest to write with its doctrines in mind, and what I have written applies to all branches of Christianity as I understand them to be. However, I suspect that many of the following issues hold aspects that apply to other religions.
As doubtless you will have realized from the preceding chapters, I cannot even get to first base. I find that I am unable to believe in the existence of a god that intervenes in human affairs. The evidence that others seem to find sufficient just doesn’t hold true for me. It is possible to think that a god was necessary to create the universe, but it is just as plausible to think that He, She, or It did so in a last, dying act. Furthermore, I do not see the point of replacing one inexplicable event (that which created the Big Bang, or the universe) with another inexplicable event (that which created God). If, as the counter argument goes, God always existed, then, just as logically, so could the universe, and one wouldn’t need a god to have brought about its beginning. The Big Bang description, with its verified ability to explain subsequent events, is much preferable to me for this has a utility that is scientifically beneficial.
I find that not one of the world’s great religions is simple enough to be understood. In those most-rational of disciplines, science and mathematics, simplicity is often used as the compass that points to the truth.[23]
I can’t believe that Christianity’s central figure, Jesus, performed miracles, nor that he was resurrected after death. Nor can I believe that the old bible’s stories are anything other than embellished incidents, copied down, then repeatedly tailored, decades or centuries after whatever they purport to describe had happened,[24] and subjected to all the vagaries of intervening (and likely biased) minds. I am much more inclined to accept the findings of the biblical scholars that have contributed to the Jesus Seminars.[25] How can the Bible be one hundred percent factual as some believe? And, if it is not, how does the average person distinguish truth from fiction?
How can a young man or woman, not already indoctrinated into a religion and seeking something to guide their spiritual well-being, make a choice between competing religions? Rationality is not an option (since religions are based upon faith not fact). Emotionally seems to be the only way, but is this really the best method to make such an important choice—a choice intended to provide the rationale for moral decision making in the future? Consider a reputable representative of each religion, someone perhaps midway between a fundamentalist and a reformist, someone anyone is likely to encounter, anytime, anywhere. Each will have a certain way to pray, to dress, to behave, and, most particularly, will have an opinion about how society should be ordered and children raised to conform to their religion’s teachings. Yet each representative will claim that these directions follow from the word of God or His prophet. How can such instructions differ, one from another, so radically?26] Are we to infer from their many different beliefs that there indeed are many different gods? Or, should only one be taken to be correct? If so, which? When neither parents nor culture(s) dictate, how does one choose?
It is clear to me that direction, particularly moral direction, is relative, not absolute.[27] Moral direction varies from person to person, society to society, era to era, even Pope to Pope.[28] Only in an artificial system, such as in the world of mathematics, can anything be absolute, and only then because it is defined to be so as a precondition to the existence and properties of such a (closed[29]) system. Thus, to me, if one states that God’s word is absolute, i.e., true and unchanging, then one is stating that we are discussing an artificial system, a human-defined and invented one, one that may or may not conform to the reality that exists outside of that invented system.
The reality, for me, is that direction of any kind, but moral direction in particular, is nothing more or less than what we choose to make it.[30]
Most religions look to their history for guidance; thus members are continually reminded of past defeats and sufferings inflicted upon their ancestors, most often by other religions. Is this the reason so many inter-religious conflicts still occur? Surely the best way to lead, and to rise above the past, is to look forward, not backward? Furthermore, texts written to guide behaviour in past times were penned with prevailing circumstances in mind. The authors never worried about an over-populated world, for instance, when censuring birth control.
Western religions use fear as a tool to control their followers. Punishment following judgement; the Devil and Hell awaiting; these worries are as real to many as is their belief in God.[31] Is this really the mental environment we want our children to[ pass to our grandchildren—a state of apprehension? What does this say about the way we think of ourselves, when our belief systems use this kind of negative psychological conditioning to obtain conformity?
Many religions only conditionally bestow inclusion and love. Apparently, gaining admission to heaven is not for everyone, only for believers within the faith. Are we to believe that love, stated to emanate from God, is actually so rationed and controlled?
Many religions promote human selfishness; they centre upon and cater to humankind and what God can do for us. Our prayers focus largely upon our needs, requisitioning help to obtain what we want. Moreover, most religions pay very little attention to the fact that we are only one small segment of a whole living biosphere and global ecosystem. If religious people believe that all living things were created by God, why then is the average western religion silent about how we despoil the biosphere (for example, by spewing pollutants, clear-cutting forests, or over-fishing oceans), or the way we treat some of our fellow creatures (battery-raising hens, restricting-movement of calves, force-feeding ducks, and worse)?[32] Is it because we hold that animals are scarcely sentient, or because scriptures tell us we are to rule creatures of the Earth?[33] Ignoring the well-being of all that lives except H. sapiens has innumerable adverse consequences, a concern familiar to environmentalists everywhere, but one almost totally ignored by our religions.
Religions ask believers to abandon rationality when it proves troublesome, to place faith above clear thinking, to deny what their senses tell them about the way things are, and to believe in things like miracles, the existence of an intervening omnipresent, omniscient god, and an afterlife. The world is as it is today precisely because religions (to the considerable extent that they have influenced the behaviour of people and societies in the past) teach such things. Surely, placing statements that cannot be substantiated above rationality is the very last thing we should do if we want to survive and grow in a universe that conducts itself entirely rationally.[34]
Finally, and of crucial importance to my way of thinking, religions are no longer able to do the job we most need them to do. Developed many centuries and even millennia ago, they have nothing to say about numerous current moral and ethical problems. They offer no guidance (and may even issue conflicting instructions) as we wrestle with the moral "right"- or "wrong"-ness of, for example, controlling conception artificially, allowing therapeutic abortion or yearned-for release from terminal pain, altering the genetic makeup of unborn children, rejuvenating diseased organs by using embryonic stem cells, cloning a human, or using MRI to examine suspects knowledge of criminal events.[35]
Certainly, I hear religious adherents stating with conviction their understanding of God’s directives about these matters, but I do not value their declarations as much as others seem to. I believe that the words they attribute to God are those of various well-intentioned, long-dead, humans; words probably altered many times over the centuries, and I discount their importance. Indeed, the arguments of many vocal adherents seem to be based upon their own personal feelings (richly coloured by the emotions they generate) rather than upon facts and logic. Instead of telling me how to act in today’s world, or how to prepare for life tomorrow, I hear them proposing a return to the behaviours of the past. I do not want to return to the past. And I do not think many of us would be willing to trade our current knowledge (and the many benefits of living in today’s world of scientific, technological and medical marvels) for this kind of direction, once we understood that it also requires returning to yesterday’s world of superstitions, intolerances and repressive practices.
Instead of uniting and guiding us as we attempt to make necessary moral and ethical decisions (as all religions were originally developed to do) current religions and their texts seem more to divide and hinder us. Faulty religious guidance has caused some to abandon the Pope in favour of condoms, states within nations to pass laws that counter and contradict reality,[36] fanatics to kill doctors who perform abortions, terrorists to destroy buildings and kill thousands, and otherwise sensible men and women around the world to assault, maim and kill others who have simply chosen to follow a different faith. Would anyone dispute the thought that certain aspects of current religions’ guidance are likely to promote the same practices, again and again, in the future?
In short, I find that our multifaceted understandings of God differ, our interpretations of what He wants differ, and our ideas of right and wrong differ. I lament the way many religions use fear and conditional love as forms of control, and how they ignore the damage we inflict on other life forms. (And—until I found the replacement that is discussed in later chapters—I missed the guidance that a religion’s “purpose for life” once provided me.)
There is one central reason why none of today’s religions satisfy me (or, likely others): religions promote fancies and deny facts. There is no valid evidence to show that there is an overseeing, intervening or compassionate god, none that shows a heaven to exist, and none that confirms there is an afterlife to value. All experiences purported to substantiate these assertions can be explained more mundanely. Such ideas were derived from assumptions made long ago when facts were scarce. They have been kept because they were made central features of religions that provide purpose, solace and hope.[37] Our mind’s crucial need for a purpose has caused us to follow a series of myths.
If we continue to rely upon incorrect assumptions when making decisions that affect the whole of life’s future, then we are imprudent and short-sighted. Furthermore, we will suffer the consequences, as biospheric degradations and humankind’s many ugly acts are regularly demonstrating to those with the wit to recognize what they are seeing.
We must search for a better purpose to guide our moral decision making. It must be based upon facts, not fantasies. We must develop a morality that conforms to reality, thereby creating one that is less likely to lead us astray.
