There are two interesting, rant-able topics on my mind at the moment. Neither of which either of you readers wants to hear about. However, as I have not posted on my website for a while, you are forced to deal with mediocre product over no product at all.
Firstly, my friend Shaine is on a mission to find his own religious beliefs and that makes me want to discuss my own views further. Perhaps you’ll remember I wrote about my own such mission a few months ago, so I’ll try to brief and not reiterate anything I’ve previously gone over. Mainly, I’ll talk about where I am now, and how I feel about that Ð something I never really went over before.
Currently I’m pretty much a Deist. Deism is like atheism, except for believing in God. If you’ve never really understood atheism, as I was just 8 months prior, then this comparison won’t make any sense. However, if you do understand atheism, than the comparison is simple. Let me fill in those that are lost. I hope I get this right, I’m sort of still learning this stuff.
Atheism starts on the basic principle that humans have an innate sense of reason and should use it. They extend this to include religion – every person should have their own personal understanding based on their own reasoning, not a prepackaged set of beliefs.
Atheism also denies revealed religion on the basis that it’s not reasonable for someone to base their life on the blindness that is called faith, especially when that faith is simply trust placed on other people that may or may not have reason to tell the truth. Finally, and here comes the main difference between atheism and deism, atheists believe it’s unreasonable to believe in a supreme being, a creator. Deism is practically only different in that a deist believes it is reasonable to believe there was a creator.
So, simply put, I believe in God, but none of the religions on this earth that claim to speak for him. I think it is reasonable to assume that if God truly wanted people to worship him in a special way, he’d let us all know fair and square. He gave us the capability to think for ourselves for a reason. He wouldn’t want us blindly following one religion or another without at least going into it cautiously (with doubt and criticism in hand). I believe it’s appropriate to pray as a form of thanks, but asking him to do this or that is somewhat ridiculous. There you go. All of you can stop wondering what I mean when I say I’m a deist now.
Now, how does this make me feel? Well, I feel great. I have to say that I feel much better about my life than I did while I was Mormon. Being Mormon had me somewhat depressed, because I always felt like I wasn’t good enough, and there was no way I could get better. I felt completely unsure of myself or my supposed testimony, unsure that I would ever live up to what god wanted.
Sure, there’s still some uncertainty about life and how it all works, but that’s life. I can deal with that. Now I’m happier because I know that I don’t need to live up to some standard I don’t believe. I don’t need to feel obligated to give two years of my life to a cause I don’t very much believe or any other such things. It’s a freedom one can only feel when he stops sitting in the middle and finds the side that best suits him, and for me, this is the side that best suits me.
I want to leave this final note on the topic of religion: I’m constantly “evolving”. By making this radical change in my belief structure, I’ve realized that there are possibilities for change. I may very well some day find myself gravitating back toward a religion. I may find myself with a better grasp on how the world works and realize that God does want me to have some faith. I’d be a fool not to leave such things open for further review and refinement.
Now that I’ve written a billion or so paragraphs about religion, I think it’d be rude to hold you up any longer with my other rant. Let’s just say that one of the bills in Congress being pushed by the RIAA sucks a whole lot. I’ll probably post about it sometime soon, because it makes me angry and I’m likely to write about stuff when it gets me angry.
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