My Gripe with Religions
Today is Thanksgiving, a perfect day to talk about my gripe with religion. Not because Thanksgiving is a religious day or of any sorts; purely because as an employee, this is one of the few days that I can take a few hours off and do creating writing like this. So now, join me in this journey, where I will dive into the deep and interesting topic of religions; not just the big ones, but all of them, as academically as possible.
In my head, the first piece of opinion style writing that I wanted to write was not with religion; it was pornography. I wanted to critique pornography and or the social tabooness surrounding the topic. Without first discussing sex, however, there is not much to discuss for pornography; and without religion, the big daddy of it all, there is no sex.
Well, there is sex without religion, but the religions we have today has everything to do with sex, so much so that there is no discussion without it.
What is religion? Everyone knows what religion is, but I doubt that most people cared enough to really think of the core of religions — that an almighty force looks over us that awards “good” behavior and punishes “bad” behavior. Now an interesting question arises. What counts as “good” behavior and what counts as “bad”? Did the divine, or the divine(s), judge what “good” and “bad” are?
There are three main religions in the world — Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Two of them are monotheist, while Buddhism technically does not have a “big daddy of them all” type of deal. Does God, in Abrahamic religions, decide what good and bad are? Does the Buddha decide what good and bad are?
Before we continue, there is something that needs to be pointed out: I don’t believe in religions. I find religions being at odds with nature; it is a contortion of what we are as natural beings. You can believe in the theory of whether or not there is a set timeline where a man’s “future” has already been decided; therefore there is no free will; or man can choose their free will, by making decisions for himself. Sounds very Greek, but there is something deep inside this topic. Whether we control our fate or not, one thing is for sure, religion does not control our fate for us.
With that out of the way, let’s dive into religion. Why does religion exist? Theologists and anthropologists alike have come to the theory that religions exist because early humans do not have what it takes to understand our world through scientific experiments, and our brain creates reasons for things that we don’t understand. For example, a prehistoric human sees that there is a huge lightning bolt that struck from the almighty sky — we know that’s a natural phenomenon now, since we have years of science and studies conducted to analyze its properties; but to those prehistoric humans, they would have no idea what that is. Their only “logical” conclusion at that time leads them to the belief that there is an almighty being, living in the almighty skies, that strikes down these lightning bolts when they are angry — because why else would they throw down noisy stuff like that if they are happy.
The same can be seen across the world’s theologies, not only the three main ones now. In Greece, you have precisely what I described above — Zeus, the almighty God of Thunder, throws down forms of electricity when he’s angry. You have Thor, also the almighty God of Thunder from Norse mythologies, and a slew of Gods from across the world that shares the same description. We create explanations for things that we cannot explain at the moment, that is how the human brain works, and our brain is the perfect breeding ground for theological explanations for unexplainable things.
When there are one or more godly figures created, our brain does the rest — to create stories that make the gods lively. Early screenwriters (or just storytellers, a little joke of mine) would come up with godly interactions that make the story a lot more interesting, hence making it easier to spread around. After all, why would anyone want to spread boring stories. For societies like ancient Greece, this factor becomes more prominent; stories are told from mouth to mouth, and would only get more and more interesting when the story becomes told from one version to another. When the stories get fascinating enough, you have a mature theological system that categorizes gods, their duties, and why certain things in the world behave in the way they do. Things wouldn’t always stay the same; but the main skeleton of their version of the story remains unchanged, as one unexplainable factor happens because of this god was happy or sad.
Interestingly, in all polytheistic religions, there is always one god that rules above all others, and that will be expanded below.
A religion only becomes a religion when rules are introduced — a set of criteria that they must follow in order to please the almighty beings so they will either get rewarded in this life (for some reason), or they will get it in the afterlife. After all, people are selfish creatures, although I do believe that there are general good deeds that are unselfish, but I also believe that most acts of good are done out of selfish reasons, i.e., done to make oneself feel better. That means, in many religions, to do good, one will receive reward in the afterlife, because we all know that god cannot give them rewards while they’re still alive — that breaks the illusion that a god exists!
To illustrate my next point, one main difference that must be brought out is the difference between religions based on mouth-to-mouth transmission and the ones that are written down. For religions based on mouth-to-mouth transmission, although that there is a main set of event that drives the certain differences that diverts from the first tale-teller’s version, since no one has the definitive answer as to whose version is the exact transcript of what happened with the gods, everyone has the right to draw conclusions, and thereby, create rules based on their own definition of what happened.
For example, in ancient Greece and later the pre-christianity Rome, their religion does not prevent people from having sex with each other for leisure. Why? Because anti-sleeping-around people do not have the definitive version of the religion to refer to when they don’t like people having sex with each other. And once that the society where the religion becomes prevalent accepts certain norms like “fornicating for pleasure” is acceptable and or encouraged, that becomes the religion itself. When people finally took time to write down the most mainstream version of the religion at that time, they are not going to diverge too far from the mainstream version, and that becomes the basis of the ancient mythologies/religions that we focus on to study to this day. One great example, Zeus (I just love that dude), constantly sleeps around outside of his “in a relationship” status with his wife/sister, there seems to be no consequences. Why would I, a normal Greek civilian in the Classical Greece era, do anything different if even Zeus, the most powerful of them all, sleep around for fun? That seems fun!
However, with religions and mythologies that have written-down scripts or texts, the story is different. Now that there is a solid text that people can refer to, what is written on that text will be the definitive answer to all questions regarding the subject. If the religious text is written clearly, there is no room to go off the rails anymore as there is no leeway, further solidifying the first tale-teller’s position, as there is unity among the worshippers of the same religion.
This is the case with Abrahamic religions, i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and later, Islam. There is a solid text that can be referred to by religious leaders, and even though different people can come up with different explanations for the texts, there is generally little to no deviation from what the original tale-teller’s position is. For example: Sex is shameful, it is only to be conducted between a man and a woman held in holy matrimony. Once that position is established, you can’t say this sentence means anything else, because there is no room for any other interpretations. With this one sentence, you can rule out polygamy, homosexuality, extra-marital affairs, and unblessed sexual activity.
Here comes the most important question of the day: why the hell are there rules based on religion?
It is understandable, though, that some superstitious rules are built on top of religions. After all, human beings are superstitious, go ask some contemporary sports fans and you’ll see. When a sailor cursed out the good name of Poseidon and later died in the sea, I mean, you can understand why other sailors wouldn’t want to do that themselves. Do not curse Poseidon if you want to have a good journey on the high seas; do not make the sun god unhappy by not donating certain proceeds to his prophets or your crops will die. These are generally understandable and are extremely broad in its stance; it is understandable because of the fact that these are life-threatening and affects the very first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy.
What puzzled me, though, are with some rather silly rules in the big religions like Abrahamic religions.
Let’s start with diet. Both Judaism and Islam share this interesting quirk: they don’t eat pork. The reason given by the religious texts is that, apparently, pork is considered unclean. The precise reason why these two religions forbid the consumption of pork is irrelevant to the case being discussed here — why pork? It seems like a perfectly perfect thing to consume in order to, I don’t know, SURVIVE? Don’t mind the fact that pork is not poisonous; many cultures around the world consume pork on a daily basis, there is no logical explanation for this rather silly ban on one of the most tasty protein that you can get.
Then it hit me: the reason for this might be more than superstitious and superficial reasons; it might be because the rather unfathomable train of thought of the person who created the religion in the first place had some twisted thoughts.
The connection is clear: for religions or mythologies with written texts, the most authoritative interpreter of the religious text is the person who created it in the first place; after all, he or she composed it based on their imagination of how the world works. In other words, the person who created the religion, had a special reason or just a rather silly reason to ban a certain thing or allow a certain thing.
For example, for the unfathomable rule of no pork, there may be the genuine reason that the creator of Judaism really thought that pigs are dirty, and by relation, pork is dirty as well despite how many times you wash it. Or it can also be the fact that a family member of his or her (although I am pretty sure in those times women aren’t allowed to write) got really sick or even died from a rotten piece of pork, therefore creating the lore that eating pork IS BAD! There also might be a shortage of what it was banned afterwards — there might be a genuine shortage of pork at the time; pigs are slaughtered faster than they could procreate and give birth to more pigs; to preserve pigs, the creator of that specific religion or religious rule decided that no one should eat pork, to let pork survive.
My explanation, though, is more cynical than that. During my first year of college, when asked about this very same topic, after some thought, my theory for religious rules is that: the creator of religion created the rule such as no pig in Judaism and Islam or no cows in Hinduism is due to the fact that people are eating too much pork or beef, the poor little creator of religion couldn’t get his cut of the beef or pork train, in much hatred, he created the rule that: “No one shall eat pork! Why? Um, because they are dirty!”
For Hinduism, the same can also be applied; perhaps everybody’s eating the delicious beef and having prime rib parties, the little homeless beggar that couldn’t afford to eat beef cried out his decree: “No one shall eat beef! Why? Um, because they are holy!”
I am exaggerating in effect. I am not actually saying that the creator of Hinduism is actually a little homeless beggar, because I would never know that without a time machine. This sentence is put here is people don’t take it out of context if I become famous or something in the future.
More so than not, religion is about forcing itself onto other people. If you don’t believe in us, you go to purgatory. If you don’t believe us, I am actually going to bomb you to smithereens. If you don’t believe us, I am actually going to send an army of crusaders your way to pillage your village. These are all good examples of patrons of religions that is trying to stuff their unwanted ideologies down other people’s throats.
We are not discussing anything similar to peaceful missionaries that walk away when you tell them to do so; those people get a pass; I don’t have a beef against them. It is the people stated in the above paragraph that gets under my skin. Christian extremists tell you that nonbelievers go to purgatory, or perhaps, hell, just for being a non-believer. Is that a threat? Well, not according to them, as they are doing something “good” to you. Christian extremists, or just general war loving idiots, also threatened Muslims with the crusades, and after a few thousand years, Muslim extremists threatens Christians with terrorist attacks.
What turned me against Christianity and religions in general, despite years of education pointing to the opposite that believing in a religion, and Christianity in general, can make yourself peaceful, is the fact that all religions are the same. I used to despise Muslim extremists, for their terrorist attacks on civilians just minding their own business. But after years of college education and independent thinking on my part, the thin line between a Christian and Muslim has blurred.
Christians and Muslims would love to debate me on this topic: how different Christianity and Islam is, and how their respective religion is better, or “worthy to believe in”, than the other. Since I was raised in China in the 2000s, a very atheist country (the supreme leader Mao doesn’t count), I never took a liking of Islam; we all know the horrific 9/11 attack that killed civilians minding their own business. Growing up, we also were horrified by the Uighur Muslims who would conduct terror attacks upon civilians in train stations with long knives. Forcing women to wear long robes that cover from hair to toe did not make me like this religion any more. With the prevalence of Christian education (foreign influence), it is no wonder why more Chinese people hate Christianity way less than how much they hate Islam.
But in essence, these two religions are just the same. Comparing contemporary Christianity and Islam is rather unfair; for a fair comparison, one needs to look at the height of each of the respective religions. For that, we can just look at the middle ages, or the “dark ages”. There’s not much difference left now, isn’t it. When religion controls the state, all of them look the same — it is just a piece of the game board that political leaders use to have a better control of their subjects. Who’s usually in power? Men! Who suffers when only men are in control? Women! Tell me those chastity rules from Christianity doesn’t sound similar to the mind-boggling rules set on women in the Middle East.
In fact, the only reason why there are major differences between contemporary Christianity and Islam is that the whole of Europe has went through enlightenment and renaissance that weakened the basis of power for those higher-up religious people. When people have the freedom to think, like me, they will start to question why there even is religion, and what needs does believing in a religion serve them when living without it is much freer. All state-controlling religions do is to place shackles onto people’s minds, and once that shackles even cracked a little, there is no going back. I am not saying that once there is even a little sign of religious freedom, all people would just forego religion — not everyone is educated enough to stop believe that someone is watching them even when they’re peeing.
In the Middle East, only Iran and Turkey had the guts to go through religious reform, and only Turkey succeeded while Iran went back to religious hell. Despite that there are intellectuals and young people who enjoy secular lives, there are also religious nuts that want to return the world to their status quo, which is just sad.
And the fact that there are still religious nuts everywhere solidifies my conclusion that Christianity and Islam is just the same thing. They force people to behave in they way of their liking, and if things are not to their satisfaction, or if things didn’t go the way that they would consider to be like of the “good olden days”, they would see it with disgust and try to force it back to the way of their liking.
There is also the hypocrisy of the worshippers of religions; they would happily try to convert more people back into their respective religions, but they would be extremely angry when people tell them to believe otherwise. Oh, the world is actually flat, you telling me that the world is round makes you an idiot! Oh, gay is only a choice, you telling me that you are born gay is just the most silly thing you can say to me. There are just so much more examples that I can make out of how stupid religious extremists are; listing them all would take all week. The point that I am trying to illustrate is that when a religion is no longer just a mythology and does not carry on with the evolution of human heritage, it is time for its demise and be labeled as, you guessed it, “mythology”.
The sad thing is, even though I do not like Christianity at its current form; at its conception, Christianity is not what we see today. If everyone just followed what Bible actually said on its pages, then it would be a completely different religion. It is through years of demonic interpretations that made it into the bloated mess that it is today. Tithing, crusades, all of these are just corners of the huge iceberg that we know as of now.
In the middle of what I wrote earlier, I mentioned the fact that there always tends to be a leader among gods, or simply one leader that leads every one and every living being. That simply proves my point; religion, or mythologies, are created just so it gives the storytellers the legitimacy they needed in order to rule people. If there are no actual godly hierarchies, when gods all sit alongside each other with no meaningful power imbalance, then why should worshippers follow the religious leader? In fact, I would bet that there are definitely versions of religions or mythologies that had democratic gods; and none of them lasted long enough in our collective memory because they would either being absorbed by nearby religions that stressed power hierarchy, or that as democratic as it would be, people didn’t like it, and deviated it from its original form to the present form. After all, it is human nature to either be the leader, or succumb to a leadership; that’s how we, as a society, function as a whole. When we create stories, we tend to model it after our own society and how we live; the same story can be said with religions. They are modeled after the contemporary society at the time; and precisely because of that, since everything is written down, they do not evolve with time.
Now if we have new religions that is based on the circumstances of nowadays, I would not have any objections to it now. The flying spaghetti monster god? Sure, that sounds like a hoot. Religions, as it is at this current point, is useless to our society because it is created/modeled under what was believed to be “good” at the time; and as society evolves, they become outdated and will become harmful to human progress.
And that, is my gripe against religion as a whole. I wanted to write something like this for a long time, and I have basically illustrated everything that I can count from 1 to 10. Don’t get me wrong, I still recognize the basic factors of religion: be good to people, love thy neighbor, all that, to be the founding principles of human societies, and is something that we need to abide by at all times for our society to continue to exist; but, aren’t these just principles that we lived by before religions were a thing? Can’t we still do that without religion controlling us? Aren’t these morals just there for religions to use to solidify its stance? That’s a topic for another day, and I am tired of typing. Be well, my friends, don’t do stupid things.