I don’t know how to start this post. I want to talk about religion, you see.

As I see it, there is a choice: does a higher deity exist? You can believe yes, you can believe no. If you believe no, then religion possibly plays no part in your life. But if you do believe in the existence of a higher deity, you must decide what path of worship you take–even if it is you believe in a higher deity and have nothing to do with him/her.

Where does the belief come from?

Commonly, it comes as a part of your childhood–your parents or guardians will instruct you in their faith and it becomes yours and you grow up as a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, whatever.

I grew up as a Roman Catholic. I am no longer that. I’ve forgotten why I became dissatisfied; I seem to recall it had much to do with the idea that two men could live their lives, one good, one bad, and yet in the end all that matters in their acceptance to heaven was that the bad man believed in God and Jesus and was sincerely sorry for what he had done. The good man went to hell because he didn’t believe.

I believe I also didn’t like the idea that people went to hell for practicing homosexuality.

Don’t bother correcting me on those two points–I no longer care if I had it wrong. The point is that was my understanding at the time and hence a major part of my choosing to find a new religion.

Therefore I hunted around, looking, thinking and then I found Discordianism, which suits my particular beliefs and such.

It was soon after this that a new angle of looking at the religions of the world began to occur to me–I think in part because I met someone who was a very passionate Christian and I forget the particular denomination, for which I apologise. In any case, I have discussed this angle with her and never found satisfaction in it. Possibly because she’s arguing from the point that Christianity is the right religion, but in any case, read on.

The world has many religions–many of which, if not all, say that if you want to go to heaven, you must be that religion. They can’t all be right. (If they all are right, that would suggest to me that the higher deity doesn’t really care what you believe so long as you live a good life and don’t commit sins, which is another subject entirely.)

So if only one religion is right, that presents a problem right there.

Suppose in a hypothetical world the correct religion is Judaism. Every other religion is wrong.

In this hypothetical world where Judaism is the right religion, non-Jewish people will grow up as Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, etc, all of them believing that they are in the right religion. They will have no reason to convert to Judaism.

So my problem is this: How are we supposed to tell which religion to be when every religion is claiming to be the right one and not a single one of them can actually provide any PROOF that we can actually see? Frankly for me, sacred texts aren’t proof: they could have been written whilst on a drug trip, or made up entirely.

We get one shot at this–most of us take the religion from our childhoods.

Something doesn’t sit right with me about choosing to be a religion and then spending an eternity in hell because I chose wrong. From where I’m sitting, it’s a big gamble. Even if the world only has five religions–Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Muslim–that’s an eighty percent chance you’re choosing wrong.

I suppose that’s why I prefer a system–though when challenged by my aforementioned Christian friend, I have never been able to explain how it would work–where we are judged on the basis of our good and bad deeds, rather than what deity we believe in.

So yes. There’s my problem with religion and the reason I stay with Discordianism.

I am more likely to be wrong in my choice of religion than I am to be right. I prefer to stay in a religion that supports my beliefs and such than to be in one that teaches what I can’t agree with. As such, I ignore all religious based judgements made upon me–what Christianity says about an issue has no relevance if my religion says the opposite.

Therefore, I leave you with the pentad.

Hail Eris.
All hail Discordia.

This entry was posted by Alex Collins on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 6:00 PM and is filed under Discordianism, Religion, Themes, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.