Monday, May 4, 2009
i've been thinking a lot about religion lately and because neither religious nor atheistic views can fully convince me into either side, i think i have better call myself an agnostic for now.
however, if i were to rate my religious inclinations, i wld give it a 3. I find myself closer to positions held by atheists, even after being exposed to christian teachings for the longest time ever over the past few days at a christian wake after one of my family members had passed away.
well in truth, religion isn't just about christianity, but more often than not you find religious debates entailing one of the big 3 monotheistic religion that somewhat gives them this false impression of importance. buddhism, hindu nor sikhism has never warranted such debates, and while i do not have the statistics to show, the latter 3 seems to be losing their draw to the 3rd generation kids. most of the time, i can only hope that my friends in any of these monotheistic religion can see enough to know that the world is too diverse to be centred around their own beliefs. stop promugating fundamentalistic religious views. stop evangelism. stop forcing religion down other's throat. okay...i shall leave these for another post at another time.
back to the point. well, why 3? why not 1 or 0.1? well richard dawkins gave himself a 9.9 on a scale of 10 for 'anti-religionism', leave the remaining 0.1 to humbly admit that like how religion can never prove anything right (his belief), science can never do that as well, even though it is more plausible that the former. i give myself a 3, leaving the other 2 as a mark of respect for my friends who have chosen to believe, for one day i might find myself wrong.
personally, i have never understood how it feels to be in touch with the divine, a supernatural, omnipotent and omniscient super-creator that created the universe from scratch in 7 days. my understanding of christianity might be shallow, but with basic knowledge of science...you know that this, cannot be true:
Genesis 1:1 - 1:24
'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...
...let there be light...let there be an expanse between water and to separate water from water. God called the expanse 'sky'...let dry ground appear...let the land produce vegetation...let there be lights to separate day from night...God made two great lights (sun/moon)'
wait...how can the land produce vegetation...without the sun? what happened to chlorophyll and photosynthesis?
well, in truth this isn't enough to drop a death knell to the debate. but, that wasn't my point either. genesis is merely a book in the bible - the bible consists several books. while there are certainly good teachings promulgated in several parts of the bible, there are also some, like the abovementioned, that defies logic and common sense. i need not dwell too much on this, but i have done enough research to know that there are texts in Deuteronomy and Exodus that suggests support for slavery, and supression of women rights. Today, we know that society has grown mature enough to move away from them. Yet, I find fundamentalist christians too stubborn to remove themselves from scripture, somewhat contriving to accept and indoctrinate their beliefs on their offsprings and others. I am not exactly sure what defines a Christian, but from what I have gathered thus far, full belief in God and the Holy Bible are 'pre-requisites'. I have heard from several Christians who once expressed doubt on their faith, but ended up too fearful for committing blasphemy to command enough courage to ask sound questions on their own faith. This, to me is BLIND faith.
[Watch Al Sharpton vs Christopher Hitchens to see what i mean by 'contriving', for al sharpton failed to conjure any meaningful (in my opinion) viewpoints to counter Hitchens' eloquent arguments against religion. (Disclaimer: I am neither a fan of Hitchens or Dawkins, because I think the last thing you want to do is to make atheism much like a religion itself. You end up losing the ability to accept others, and this becomes a polarising battle altogether).]
Yet, some people say, faith is BLIND. There is certainly some truth to this. To date I have seen for myself enough examples of how some people lose all rationality as they dwelve deeper into religion. I mean no disrespect, but by 'losing rationality', I mean devoting your life to Jesus Christ/Allah/God. by 'devoting ur life', I draw examples from friends attributing all good deeds done to God's will, attributing all failed attempts at scholarship to God's plan. With all due respect to all believers , sometimes, all these seems to me more like a good emotional cure than true, righteous belief in the divine (that I find it hard to acheive). Yes, as a community, organized religion does brings strength to the weak, the poor, the homeless and the helpless. It is good, but spreading goodwill in the name of God appears to me no different from committing sedition, for u risk raising discontent among non-believers and followers of other religion, no?
Ultimately, whatever faith you are in, I seriously hope that you remain open-minded and wide-eyed enough to accept the wonders of the world - without the idea of a God. Be brave enough to ask questions and doubt your own religion, and listen to other people's views instead of likening their understanding of God to the length of their penis when you hear competing views (watch the 10 mins of Christopher Hitchens vs Al sharpton).
disturbed you at 9:06 PM