Religion

A topic that has interested me for many years is religion. I could write a book about it, but instead I'll probably just make a few posts. If you are a religious person, this may be hard for you to read, so you may want to skip it. I don't pull any punches.

First I'll give you a little background. I was raised in the Episcopal Church and confirmed at age 12. At the time I didn't really understand what it was that I was supposed to know, though I tended to like stories from the Bible. Then when I took science classes in junior high school I realized that physical reality does not correspond to Christian conceptions of it, and I began a very long process of observing and analyzing how people adopt religious views, why they persist in holding them, and what the consequences are. From about age 14 onward I have been an atheist, though I must qualify this somewhat. Technically I would have to be an agnostic, since it is simply not possible to know with certainty that no god of any kind exists.  However, my position is that none of the gods postulated in Judaism, Christianity or Islam exist, and since these are the significant ones in Western culture, I am an atheist in at least that sense.

During my sophomore year in college, my roommate was a pretty bright guy who was a little confused. This was the time of sex, drugs and rock and roll. He dropped out of college and tried to be a writer. When that didn't work, he joined an ashram.  I'm not sure about the teachings, but I think they were loosely based on Hinduism, with an emphasis on Kundalini yoga.  The ashram was in a large university town and had many young people living in it.  I was skeptical of the swami leading it, because he used the ashram members for free labor, with which he set up several profitable businesses.  Later he was run out of town and moved to the Boston area, and finally he settled in Portland, OR.  He has been accused of having multiple sexual relationships with female members and of pressuring members to turn over their assets to him.

The ashram was a sham, but it served a purpose for those who entered it.  My friend later became a lawyer and seems to have had a successful career.  It drove a wedge between us, though, and I have had almost no contact with him ever since he joined.  A friend of my friend, an acquaintance of mine, joined the same ashram and later became an M.D.  He is now on the faculty of a medical school.

In this vein, I had another college friend who was a talented painter. After college he moved to the same town as the ashram and attempted to live as an artist. However, he had no marketing skills and eventually became homeless, living in an abandoned bus. He was the son in a family that owned a major office equipment company, which he had been expected to take over. It seemed he had failed both in fulfilling his family's wishes and in achieving his artistic aspirations. I have wondered about this, and suspect some kind of mental illness. I used to think it may have been adult-onset schizophrenia, but it is probably less severe. Anyway, while he was homeless he took an interest in Hinduism, and the last time I saw him he was a monk living in a Hindu monastery in Ganges, MI.  He still paints, but only to Hindu themes, and I don't think he's made much progress.

Religion has never been of any personal interest to me, and the above history is included simply to inform the reader of some of my early observations. I have read books out of curiosity by authors such as D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Ram Das, and the much lesser-known Swami Rudrananda, but more for informational purposes than for religious purposes. Of these, as I recall, Watts is the only one worth reading, because, if nothing else, he writes very well.

I now think that religion is an invention that fills various needs for individuals. It is so obvious to me that God is a made-up entity that I don't think it even merits discussion. The same goes for miracles. The major world religions have historically been effective at organizing large populations. On the individual level, religion fills many needs that are difficult to meet otherwise. It is sort of like software that provides orientation and purpose when none is there. Being conscious can be a great burden, and few can face it without adopting something that resembles a religion. Religion also adds a social structure that encourages behavior that benefits everyone. In this sense it is a meme that indirectly has a positive evolutionary effect on humans.

One thing that often amuses me is how the beliefs within a religion evolve over time. Often what the founder said becomes distorted or is completely ignored by later followers. My favorite examples are from Christianity. According to Jesus, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." The U.S. is purported to be one of the most Christian nations on earth, yet there is almost no evidence of this being a popular belief here. Quite the contrary, the basic premise, held almost universally in the U.S., is that we are here to become prosperous and achieve eternal economic growth.

Ordinarily I would not concern myself with religion, but it increasingly seems to play a major role in serious armed conflicts both between different religious groups and between sects within religions. I think that the problems far exceed religion alone, but religion is the ideology placed at the forefront of many of the conflicts. Among the underlying problems is overpopulation, which forces previously isolated groups into contact with other groups and creates conditions of scarce resources. Then there is the remembered history of American and European imperialism throughout the globe. If the world became more secular, that would certainly help, but that is not in the cards. Having one world religion would also be an improvement, but that is even less plausible. Greater prosperity worldwide could be a short-term solution, but I think it would be temporary at best and would soon create new problems such as more overpopulation and more pollution. From an American standpoint, I am inclined to support much more international restraint, perhaps to the point of isolationism. When America acts abroad, it usually advances its own economic agenda, which is a vestige of imperialism and is often resented with good reason. Furthermore, the U.S. still unofficially goes by the Christian brand, which is an ongoing disaster in the Middle East and elsewhere.

More on this at a later date.