As cliché as it sounds, the United States of America was founded on the idea of freedom. Our forefathers believed in it so much that they wrote a Bill of Rights to instill it as a value protected by law. What is also explicitly protected is the interference of one’s practice of belief.
This includes not just practicing religion, but the right not to practice as well. Living in Texas, the biggest state in the Bible Belt, that can sometimes be hard.
I was not only raised Catholic, but attended Catholic school from pre-K to high school. I attended church services biweekly, was involved in youth group and even went through confirmation.
But the idea of faith has always alluded me. I understand believing in a higher power, but the worshiping aspect of Christianity, Texas’ largest religious majority, baffles me.
I place my “faith” in humanity and not in the spiritual or supernatural. My understanding of faith is the hopeful anticipation of something that will change or happen based on either evidence or observation.
Rationalism and reason, qualities that sometimes aren’t stressed enough, are what guide me. My definition of “faith” evolved as I grew older.
I have faith that I will graduate from college. I have faith that I will have trouble parking in the economy lot at school. I take issue with believing in anything without evidence.
Living in Houston, religion is almost inescapable.
Houston has the two largest megachurches in the nation. It’s impossible to go a week without seeing or hearing about Joel Osteen; whether it be Osteen collaborating with Slim Thug, or seeing his absolutely-so-perfect-it’s-creepy smiling face on his book sitting on your parent’s bookshelf.
I know many good people who take comfort in their religion. Most of my friends have stories involving when they “knew” that they had “felt God’s presence,” and every time I hear these stories, I just get more and more confused.
Proverbs 3:5 of the North American Bible says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding,” which I interpret as blindly accepting that the “Lord works in mysterious ways” should be my answer for anything unexplainable.
After years of Catholic school and many theology courses, I just can’t accept that a God is the answer to everything I don’t understand.
I have no problem with religious people at all. Thankfully, most Texans tend to have a “stay out of my business” kind of attitude when it comes to either politics or religion. Because this is the Bible Belt though, there are still plenty of people who are vocal about their poor interpretation of the Bible.
Most of the time it’s shown with legislators, like Gov. Gregg Abbott, who try to impose their religious beliefs on same-sex marriage, women’s reproductive rights or education.
But then there’s the occasional crazy person.
Remember the Monster Energy 666 lady? That’s Christine Weick, a notoriously vehement evangelical who not too long after that video went viral, charged a podium during Muslim Capitol Day, a day where Muslims gather at the Texas capitol to celebrate their religion, screaming, “I stand against Islam and the false prophet Muhammad,” before she was taken away by security.
It’s people like Christine Weick who give Christianity a bad reputation.
I stopped going to church because of people like Christine Weick. I grew up knowing some priests and nuns who were the most caring and welcoming people I ever met.
But during my Confirmation when a new pastor was brought in, I started feeling a little less welcome. He was this pompous New York monsignor who during his first week had all the boys in confirmation class gather in one room where he proceeded to go on a tirade about why masturbation was bad and why we will all burn for eternity if we did not talk about it in confession.
The last time I went to mass on my own, he gave a 45-minute sermon focused on why you can’t live with your significant other before marriage.
After that, I threw my arms up.
Now I’ve reached the point where I believe religion is not a necessity in living a good and moral life. I don’t need 10 commandments to tell me that killing is bad or that stealing is wrong.
But evangelicals in the Bible Belt will probably never understand that. Massive reform is needed, and I don’t see things changing soon.
Until then, I’ll enjoy sleeping in on Sundays.
Exactly, I have faith that when I bang other dudes I won’t get AIDS.
“I place my “faith” in humanity and not in the spiritual or supernatural.”
Communism is a great atheist system, where faith is place in humanity(especially the proletariat)
The greatest source of post-war democide was communism (see the communist death toll).
During and after the war communists seized power, or came to power with
the help of Soviet military might, as in Eastern Europe. In addition to
the USSR, Mongolia, Eastern European regimes, East Germany, and
Czechoslovakia, communist regimes eventually also included China, North
Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Grenada, Afghanistan,
Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and South Yemen, or 26 regimes
in all. These communist governments and the communist guerrillas they
supported in other countries account for about 66,000,000 of the
76,000,000 murdered since the war, or about 87 percent. Clearly, of all
regimes, communist ones have been by far the greatest killer. During these years it has been mostly death by Marxism than more generally by government.
“Because this is the Bible Belt though, there are still plenty of people who are vocal about their poor interpretation of the Bible.” – Anthony Torres
So, what do you consider an interpretation of the Bible which is a good (rational and reasonable) one?
“Now I’ve reached the point where I believe religion is not a necessity in living a good and moral life. I don’t need 10 commandments to tell me that killing is bad or that stealing is wrong.” – Anthony Torres
So, you admit killing is bad? And wrong? What about abortion? Rational and reasonable thinking would tell you that simple biology says that a fetus is not a woman’s tissue, but rather an unborn human being composed of DNA from both a mother and a father. Who should protect the baby’s right to life? Who holds the baby’s hand during the trauma of abortion? What if an abortion of a first pregnancy increases a woman’s risk of future miscarriages and low-birth weight babies when she does want to conceive? What if oral contraceptives increase a woman’s future risk of cancer (even if there are medical arguments on both sides of the debate)?
In all the Catholic school you claim to have had, did you hear that the NT finally got put together in the mid 300’s A.D.? (Google it if you need to). The Didache which is dated mid to late first century reads in part (Protestant Lightfoot translation):
“…Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery,} thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, {thou shalt not steal,} thou shalt not deal in magic, thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born, {thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s [sic] goods, thou shalt not perjure thyself, thou shalt not bear false witness,} thou shalt not speak evil, thou shalt not cherish a grudge, thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued; for the double tongue is a snare of death. Thy word shall not be false or empty, but fulfilled by action. Thou shalt not be avaricious nor a plunderer nor a hypocrite nor ill-tempered nor proud. Thou shalt not entertain an evil design against thy neighbor[sic]. {Thou shalt not hate} any man, {but some thou shalt reprove,} and for others thou shalt pray, {and others thou shalt love} more than thy life…”
Adam Smith of “The Wealth of Nations” and the “invisible hand” of the market fame also wrote another book called “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” in which he asserts:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrows of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous or the humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility. The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.”
So, maybe there is a moral law printed in people’s hearts? As St. Paul says in Romans 2:12-16: “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares…”