Are You Christian? Who Cares...Right?
If there is one thing that I learned from Monday's discussion of religion, it is that whatever you believe in, you should not let yourself be a slave to its rhythms. If you cannot truly understand it--and I guarantee you that you do not understand it--you should not let your life revolve around it.
Too many times in the past has religion been used to justify some of humanity's most terrible deeds--religious persecution during the Roman era, the destruction and massacre of the Mediterranean Crusades, and several cases of state-sponsored genocide, just to name a few of the more known cases. Religion has lead to wars between countries and insurrections within. It made slaves out of most of the populace during the Dark Ages (serfs and peasants were told to work hard in return for reward in their afterlife and to avoid holy retribution). It was used to justify the terrible and paternalistic imperial conquests of the 19th century. And even in the present day, fanatics from both sides attempt to discredit each other. But why do we keep letting these injustices continue?
America's founding fathers recognized the innate problem with bundling religion with government and addressed that issue in the Constitution that still guides our country today. Keeping them together as one unit would amount to ruling a populace with fear--fear of something they could not possibly have understood.
What do I mean by understanding, then? It is being able to communicate with certainty a belief or knowledge you have. Consider this example:
- First, you are a one-dimensional ant (a line segment) living in a one-dimensional universe--an infinite line. You have two perspectives, front and back. In this frame, it would be absurd to claim to know what is up, down, left, right, because those perspectives are simply unavailable to you.
- Then, you become a two-dimensional (a finite flat shape like a circle or a square) ant living in a two-dimensional universe--an infinite plane. You have four perspectives now: in addition to front and back, you can see left and right. At this point, you can understand what a one-dimensional world would be like, but it would be equally absurd to claim to know what is up and down.
- Finally, you become a three-dimensional (a finite shape with volume like a sphere or a cube) ant living in a three-dimensional universe--an infinite space. You can finally understand the six directions we are familiar with and the previous dimensions. But what comes next? We cannot know. Some say time, but if that were true, we would be able to look back and forward in time with as much precision as looking backward and forward in space--but we cannot.
My point is that although it is easy to understand the universes whose dimensions are equal to or smaller than the one in which you live, it is pure vanity to claim anything about universes whose dimensions are greater than the one in which you live (Linear algebra freaks, you can relate all these together using familiar terms such as vector spaces and subspaces of those vector spaces). Regardless of whatever may exist beyond our ultimate level of perception, we cannot speculate on their properties.
Because there is no way of knowing what exists outside of our range of perception, regardless of what other human sources tell you, it is futile to live a life revolved around the "super"-spaces (a "space" of which our current space is a subspace). Christians for example may claim that the Bible is composed of the word of God, written by Jesus's disciples, and therefore that claim must make the Bible the truth and Christianity valid--but how different is that from a 2D ant listening to another 2D ant explain what he asserts the 3D ant told him about the world beyond?--that there is up and down in the 3D universe, when the 2D ant has no way of understanding what that could possibly mean?
When people speculate on the properties of the un-understandable, they make tragic mistakes (as I've mentioned above) and conflicting conclusions. Muslims are convinced that "all religions other than Islam are heresy and error," and that heretics go to their equivalent of hell. Protestants believe something along the same, and so do Catholics. Buddhists and Hindus have completely different mindsets based on reincarnation. But realistically, at least one of these beliefs is wrong; you cannot both go to Islamic hell and Protestant heaven while being evaluated in the Catholic purgatory. (and plus, did God just build a new waiting room when Martin Luther created his own strain of Christianity? That surely does not make sense) Is it the fault of the Buddhist monk to never have heard about Jesus? Does he deserve to go to hell because of it? Certainly, you can see the vanity in attempting to question the unquestionable and attempting to understand what we cannot understand.
And what about moral beliefs? Why can't the code of ethics to which we all adhere be based on common sense and personal experience? Why must there be a set of things that Jesus and Moses say we should do and should not do? Why can't we simply apply our common sense? Surely, Jesus did not foresee the advent of computers and the Internet. Is it okay to spread viruses to unprotected computers because Jesus did not mention anything about it? As you can see, religion should, by no means, be the official framework on which everyone's morals are based.
Everyone, live your life around what is real and what can be understood, and leave the unreal and impossible-to-understand to your afterlife, if you believe there is one. Do not dwell on what goes on beyond your range of vision, for you will never understand as long as you are trapped in this universe, and do not make the understanding of the un-understandable be your life goal; those attempts will only be in vain.
I thank everyone for their time and hope that I offended no one with this post. Regardless, I invite everyone's honest thoughts into this discussion. I am strongly interested in hearing everyone's inputs.
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Comments
Hm.
Hm. I really like your analogy with the dimensions. lol. (Apparently I'm nerdy like that..)
Yeah I agree that we shouldn't bother ourselves with all these things we can't really know about no matter what we do. They make for interesting things to think about, but ultimately all that thinking won't amount to anything. Basically it just comes down to living your life as a good person - and more than that, what you personally think is a good person. Even religious people can't really say that their ethics are guided solely by religion. There's so many different ways to interpret religion that any number of religious people can come up with an equally large number of interpretations of what sort of ethics their religion directs them to. Martin Luther King Jr., as a reverend, found his inspiration in the same religion that was once used to justify slavery. Apparently Hitler drew his Aryan fascism from the same religious source that guided Gandhi's pacifism. It doesn't make sense because religion is so fluid, ultimately it has to be just personal.
In the end, we just need to decide for ourselves what we think is a good person, try our best to live up to that, and then what will be will be. Doesn't matter much that we'll go to heaven or hell or reincarnate or what, and it shouldn't because fighting over details like that is really the most pointless kind of fighting ever. Even though I guess its not wrong to have some sort of idea about what we'd like to happen after we die, but that really shouldn't be the primary focus of.. well, anything. We shouldn't blind ourselves with religion - we should just see people for who they are, who they strive to be, and that should be the end of it. It shouldn't matter that someone is Christian or Buddhist or atheist or anything.
I agree -- and offer more
There is a reason why I left Christianity a long time ago -- the uncertainty. Essentially, I am living a relationship with someone I cannot see and possibly understand. Humorously, relationships with another individual after a given amount of time are governed under the same principles: you can see the person, but your feelings must come from somewhere else after awhile. Of course, that's a conversation to be had later, or maybe it's just me needing to grow up. Likewise, that's irrelevant to this conversation.
Within the context of this post, I agree with the sentiment. Religions should take note of accepting others for who they are -- and from what I remember from my Catholicism class last year, I believe they do. I also think that if you are some religion (religion a), other religions (religion b) have no effect on where you go. For the most part, that's what it should be anyway, that if you are a Muslim, what happens to you in the Buddhist and Christian world should be quite irrelevant to you where you go in the afterlife.
The final part I want to add to your post is the fact that while its probably not right to believe in something that can't be explained, sometimes that's all that people need to know that their life is okay. Some of the most calm individuals I know happen to be Christian. They just seem to have all that they want and need together, and God just compliments that... It doesn't make sense to us who don't share the faith, but I guess if it makes them happy... sure.
I Don't Know
You've made excellent points here, Jinghao, a few of which I've often thought about before: how can we understand a "higher dimension" (though, I didn't come up with anything like your analogy with dimensions ^___^), how can so many people think their religion is the ultimate truth when so many religions exist (resulting in an incredible amount of conflict, ultimately leading to wars), and how can we still follow rules and customs established thousands of years ago by someone who probably decided to write a nice novel, but turned out to be a religion some how (*ehem* no offense to any religion). But, I don't really think about these matters anymore...because, "Who Cares"?
I've realized long ago that I'll almost never succeed in getting a religious person to even doubt their religion a bit. They simply hold onto their beliefs too strongly. But, really, there's nothing wrong with that at all. They know they are right, and we know we are right. So who really knows the truth? We think it's *obvious* that religion is far from believable, but they think we are absurd, and rightly so.
Religious people grew up with the concept that religion does exist, and is a fundamental part of their lives. If you try to get those people to believe their religion is false, they'll tell you "kiss my a**". Either that, or they attained "enlightenment" in some later part of their lives (either forced or self-attained), born an atheist and then converted to some religion, one way or another (e.g. missionaries). People of the second case still have a chance to get converted back, since they've lived "both sides". However, it's nearly impossible to convert the first type, those "born into it". Why? Simply because people of the first type are "programmed" to believe this stuff. They are like robots who were programmed to believe one thing and the source code was thrown away -- they'll never have a chance to get modified and recompiled, nor will they allow it.
But, how can we say they are wrong? How can we say we are right? What is wrong, really, and what is right? Isn't it really just all in our minds? If we truly believe something is right, then it is right. Perhaps no one is right. Have you (not referring to *you*, Jinghao, but just you in general) been religious yourself? Have you seen things from the "other side of the fence"? Similarly, has the strongly religious person seen things from the perspective of an atheist? If you haven't, and you claim that someone on the other side of the fence is wrong, then most likely, you are wrong too. Unless one can "experience" religion (whatever that means), or "experience" atheism, one can never claim that the other is right or wrong.
So, after all these random offshoots from the main topic of religion in this crappy, un-structured response, what I really want to say is...I really don't know. Until I can see things from the other side (but I never will, because I will never believe in any religion), I can't claim what I believe in is right and that religious people have no idea what they're talking about. Sure, I think religion is absurd. Sure, I think there's no reason to believe in any of this. But, still, I can't say religious people are going nowhere. Because, at the end of the day, all that really matters is what you believe to be true and that you do what you think is purposeful in life -- *that's* what matters most.
Living both lives
You make a valid point about having to live as both a theist and an atheist. I probably haven't had too much experience with Christianity itself since China is officially atheist, but my afterschool in Japan (which I attended for 2 consecutive years) was a Christian organization. I was lead to believe that there is some supernatural force that I cannot understand, and that's why we had to pray so much. I lived in fear--what if I did something that this divine being did not like? I was told that I would go to hell. The feelings were terrible.
Then they said that this being loves us and that he's the source of all love. What? Why would I be afraid of love? Why would someone who purports to be the source of love make me so fearful? It just did not make any sense to me, but I did not question--I simply told myself that this was something that I could not understand. That feeling is analogous to an English major accepting the proof written by a math major of something the English major cannot understand; he did not understand it so had to either reject or accept it. All of the confusion left my beliefs in a jumbled array of conflicting assertions, none of which could be understood and resolved.
When I first came to the United States near the end of my third grade, I did not stop going to church; I kept convincing myself that this divine being, however inexplicable and confusing, must exist because everyone else says so, and I was in no position to question. But this mentality all changed in middle school, when I began to develop a strong liking for science (of which, I believe, mathematics is a branch), specifically astronomy. Things just made sense; I did not have to rely on faith or belief or the fact that others said so to convince myself that something was true. All the stuff about the Milky Way's spirals, the nuclear fusion inside the cores of stars, and even black holes, just made sense. That's when I began to abandon the framework of religion as the basis for thought and understanding--it was too restricting and impossible to understand, and here I had a stack of books that explained what I wanted to know, in a way that did not force me to rely on anything but my sense of logic and common sense.
But of course, I am a difficult skeptic either way, and I've lived most of my life up until that point as a supposed theist. Although all the intergalactic stuff, the physics and the chemistry made sense, I always wandered back to this one recurring question: how did life come about? Surely, I thought, something must have started it, for, I believed, there must be a cause for anything that is put into motion. But after having a year of biology with my high school's most vocal advocate of evolution which included a lecture on the Miller-Urey experiments, I was finally able to make sense of the world without the need for a strange intermediary.
So that's my story. As you can see, despite all those years with theism, I could not fully understand it. Unlike human reasoning and science, theism, which derives its origins from the faulty logic of two millenia ago, was simply too confusing. And that is why I stand now the way I am, with a true (though not comprehensive) understanding of the world around us. I no longer live in fear of the inexplicable and unknown.
The Question of Faith
For an individual who is religious, they are only as strong as their faith carries them. I've met individuals on both sides of the coin; those are easily swayed by the logic of another individual, and those who will refuse to budge no matter how you put your words. My former roommate is an example of the former: You can use all the science you want to tell him that God most probably doesn't exist, and that his faith is founded on flawed grounds, but as hard as you try, you will realize that he gets more and more stubborn (or I suppose in his case, demonstrates that there is something there for him).
My story with Jinghao is somewhat similar, although for me, over time, I have learned to define things within my own realms. To me, I don't think religion can be really much of a religion until you personalize it to your own likings. If you take Christianity on a general scale, there really isn't much to go forth with, and you end up more lost than you think. If I were to make my way back into the world of Christianity, I would approach it with known limits, and understand God as more of a standard than anything else. The concept of love and thinking that God created everything to me would be completely different: that part of the relationship with God would be completely irrelevant.