Hunter Faugot
Introduction to Psychology
Sandra Todaro
10/09/08


“I Don’t Know”
(An Essay on Organized Religion)


‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.’ -Thoreau

Religion, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is an action or conduct indicating a belief in, reverence for, and desire to please a divine ruling power; the exercise or practice of rites or observances implying this. There are a number of different religions out there. Christianity has been the most prominent in the world for hundreds of years. But Islam is not too far behind. And then there’s Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and many more. Each religion, for the most part, has a different understanding of the purpose of life, the way it was created, and how we should live it. And most of them, teach good morals along with their ideas. From a glance, religion sounds like a great idea. It explains all of the big philosophical questions humans have been asking throughout history. So why are there people who aren’t religious? Or why are there different religions? If there is only one thing we call life, how can there be different explanations for it? And, do people actually believe everything their religion teaches them? Many people do not. So why then, do they still say they belong to that faith? Why don’t they make up their own religion, and follow their own ideas? Better yet, why don’t they just not believe in anything and say, “You know what? I don’t know!” The point is, no matter how sacred religion seems to be, everyone aught to question it.

I grew up in a Christian - Roman Catholic household in the United States and went to a private Catholic middle school and high school. Growing up I was never exposed to other religious beliefs, and for a while, thought everyone believed that Jesus was the son of God and died for our sins. Then when I got into my early teens I started learning the history of my religion, and its branching off. That was the first time I ever had doubt about my religion. Why, would some people believe Jesus was the Son of God, and others not?

One question I always like to ask now is, “What if I was born in another country, where another religion was dominant?” I would most likely believe in that religion’s teachings, just as I would have in the United States. But how can that make sense, if just because I was raised in a different part of the world, I believe in a totally different truth to life?

At the same time as I was being raised in school to be a Christian and believe in what the Bible said, I was also being taught, with the help of my father, the Discovery Channel, and his National Geographic collection, about the wonders of science. It was as if I was living in two separate worlds. On one side, the earth was billions of years old, and on the other, God made it in 6 days and created man at the same time. When I got older I learned that it was okay to not take the story of creation literally, and that it was okay to believe in evolution and still be Catholic, after all, my dad did. So my logic began taking over, and I started putting the puzzle pieces together.

How can someone be a part of a group that is based on beliefs that many of its followers don’t believe in anymore? And how can some people believe it and some not, but still belong to the same group? Sometimes these people will separate to make other churches with slightly different beliefs. But if you talk to different people that belong to the same faith, you will start to see some that disagree with it, or with their fellow mates. Why do people label themselves as the same thing, when they have so many disagreements?

By the time I graduated high school I believed everything science said was true, and I took my religious beliefs more lightly. I still believed in God, but thought of him more as the concept of infinity, and not as some guy watching over everyone. It’s strange that I believed this, but still went to church and prayed to him, and still believed Jesus was his son. It became more of a ritual, and I started to realize how funny it was. Why was I acting like this one person, but in my head, the only thing I had in common with my religion was that there was a higher being. I soon saw Jesus as a person, who was very influential, and a great role model, but not divine. I began taking all the magic I believed in as a child out, and listening to the logic that made since.

When you are young you believe everything you’re parents tell you. But when you grow up you start to realize that some things were just stories, like Santa Clause and the tooth fairy. Magic is great for a child, it helps them to open up their mind and be creative. But when you grow up you start to see what’s real and what’s just in your head. So why, when it comes to religion, is it okay to believe in something magical? Or why do the religious call it miracles and not magic? Why is it a miracle if it was through God? How do we know whether it was done through God or not?

I had a close friend who thought the same way I thought, and had the same religious background as myself. The changing point in my life came when that friend and I took a road trip to New York. Spending a total of six days in the car, we talked about a lot of things, but we both couldn’t get around the fact that life still didn’t make sense to us. We tried looking through the eyes of people different than us. We looked at all the different religions, and began to see that if one said the other was wrong, but that one says the same of the other, who decided which was right? We saw that parents determined their child’s religion, and so we tried to look at religion as a person who knew nothing of it. That’s when I saw how easy it was for anyone to make up a religion. I saw how and why certain religions became dominate. But most importantly, I saw how hard it was to get out of that faithful mindset.

Some people try to understand life more than others. Some people are okay with not knowing, and focusing on what’s going on right now. Others have that problem of not knowing the whole point to everything. There’s nothing wrong with being busy, but sometimes, if you’re too busy, you can make bad decisions because you didn’t have any time to think them through. People like to better themselves, and the world. But if you don’t have time to sit around and think about the world and yourself, how can you come up with a way to better them. Some people will use their religion to help them decide. But how are they sure if its really right? Look at the attacks of 9/11. Those Muslim terrorists believed they were benefiting mankind, because according to their religion, all other religions are wrong. They were only doing what they thought was right, because they wanted to be rewarded by their god. Now not all religions are that hostile, but they still prosecute each other just because they are different. If people would only settle down, and contemplate life, it’s origin and it’s meaning, in their own view, instead of what they were told, then maybe they could find a way for peace.

Almost immediately after I rejected my religious faith, I realized I was still left with one more problem, God. So for months and months I tried to see if there was another explanation for everything, apart from a god. Of course there was the Big Bang theory, but then people would ask, well where did the Big Bang come from? So I tried to think more abstract, and basic. I started thinking about how the human mind worked. Then I tried to look at the human race, from an outside perspective. I saw that all we have are our brains to understand everything, but like dogs unable to talk, don’t we too have our limits in understanding things. How do we know there isn’t a color out there we can’t see? How do we know that we aren’t all part of a huge experiment? How do we know we aren’t living in a fake world, like in the film The Matrix?

The truth is we don’t know. No one really knows anything, besides the material world, which in fact, could not even be real. So how can anyone claim to know anything? The truth is you can’t. You can only go on with what you know as life, and enjoy it for what it is. Humans have the need to understand things. Early humans came up with multiple gods for different things. Then we became smarter and combined them into one, who created everything. We made him a father figure so he could take care of us, and when we were bad, he sent himself as a human down to ‘fix’ everything. But as we become even smarter, shouldn’t we be able to get rid of this idea also? Shouldn’t we, in the 21st Century, be able to call this mythology? Shouldn’t we be able to stop lying to ourselves, grow up, and say we don’t know? Why can’t a unicorn have just as much a right to exist as a god? Yes, there could be a god, but the point is no one will ever know. Being atheist is no good either. Atheists deny any supernatural deity. But who told them there wasn’t one? Why can’t there be infinite mystery? Why can’t life be subjective? Not knowing might seem scary, but religion can be much scarier. It might not be settling, but it gives you the free will to make your own purpose to life. It might not be heartwarming, but at least it’s the closest to truth we can get. If you lie to yourself, you can’t trust yourself. And you should trust yourself more than anyone else. Don’t follow others if you know better. Yes, the majority of people in the world are religious, but the majority of the world also believed it to be flat, believed the sun revolved around the earth, and believed in justifying slavery. Maybe if we did this, we would have more people who thought for themselves. Maybe if we did this, we wouldn’t waste our time asking an invisible person for help, but talk to ourselves, think, and take action. Maybe if we did this, we wouldn’t have to fear the idea of eternal damnation, and use this life to enjoy it and make the best of it. Maybe if we did this, we could benefit our children by not lying to them and forcing them into biased ideas. And then maybe if we did this, we would be closer to uniting humanity and working together for a better and smarter future.