According to our pets. How we are stone
I don’t really understand religion.
Allow me to clarify. I understand, or at least I think I do, on some intellectual level, why it exists and why people believe in it. I don’t dislike it particularly, nor do I dislike religious people. I mean, there are plenty of religious people that I dislike, but those people would be assholes no matter what their belief system — their assholery just makes them put the religion out front and it’s what you encounter first. Even for them, I believe that I understand why they find it important.
But I still don’t get it. It simply doesn’t hit me at that gut level that I really think is required to actually be a religious person. I don’t feel that I am or ever will be able to really believe that there’s any kind of mystical unknown presence that controls the world. People tell me that I will someday have a kind of spiritual encounter, some kind of numinous visitation that will forever convince me as to the reality of the almighty and the correctness of whatever dogma they’re advocating to me. I just can’t even begin to imagine what form this epiphany could possibly take that would convince me of anything apart from my own delusional state.
I’ve thought about trying to pretend, about joining a church or synagogue and just going through the motions, but I really don’t think I would feel right doing something so insincere. It would be nice to have something to believe in, but it’s not the kind of thing you can just decide to do.
Oh well.
Honk honk. I can’t imagine that someone could honestly say that they knew you would have some sort of epiphany about it. I mean, if you aren’t just brought up in a religion, and really have some sort of moment of truth, you realize that it’s totally out of the blue. It sounds like these people are trying to get you to agree so they feel more secure about their own beliefs, sort of like a religious pyramid scheme. =)
My experience with religion is quite similar except that I had no religious upbringing (except in a situation comedy sort of way) and no overtly religious friends before I was 16. So it just kind of confuses me. And as you say, there are all kinds of media for assholery, and atheism (and even agnosticism) is at least as conducive. Many of the people I know who are religious are as or more appealing than many of my non-religious friends, so maybe they’re onto something civilization-wise.
I don’t think it’s likely that you will ever have that kind of revelation. At the same time, I consider myself a fairly religious person though not in any traditional sense of it. From what I know of you, you just don’t connect in those ways.
I’ve had a nmber of people try to convert me, both in person and online — one guy actually mailed me a bible and some prayer guides and stuff like that. Maybe I attract it by seeming (or being) so unremittingly evil.
I distrust most religion, but I believe in myself.
I think at some point in your life you make the decision that you want to believe or you don’t. It’s much easier to doubt than to have faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, which naturally caused me to believe in NOTHING since Catholicism pretty much guarantees everyone goes to “hell.”
I don’t think you should go to church just to feel “normal,” because that’s faking it as you said and it’s not going to make a damned bit of difference to you in the end.
Maybe someday you’ll believe, maybe you won’t.