Day 241: Start a Religion

I don't mean to offend anyone with what I'm about to say, please let that be known.

Side-note: This entry is really unorganized and whatnot, I'm just trying to get it all down paper first.

     Religion is a touchy subject for a lot of people so I won't dive into too much detail about this particular challenge. All you need to know is that I am not in any, way, shape or form religious. To be honest, I believe that religion is the single most detrimental thing to ever happen to humanity. I think that religion started out with good intentions, to control the behavior of entire populations by enticing them with a heavenly reward, but those in power have twisted and turned the foundations to their advantage. I think of religion in the same way that I think of government. They both are established to protect and dictate the lives of the people (even if you were bigger and stronger than everyone else, that didn't mean that you could simply take whatever you wanted/needed) Both organizations work on a positive and negative reinforcement system. We are told that if your a bad person, you will end up in jail and then go to hell. If your a good person, you will obtain the American dream and eventually go to heaven. They are two similar strategies that both are controlled by an omnipresent being.

     My religion is more like a value that I entertain myself with from time to time. Its nothing groundbreaking, but its something to think about. Its the idea that you are in charge of your own life. Granted, its a bit simplistic (I know that "shit happens", but still) and totally obvious, but its not as shallow of an idea as it may seem.

Its the notion that maybe you should stop blaming or praising someone else (man in the sky) for how your life panned out.
 I admit that life is a gift, but not in the same way that life was granted to us by a mystic being.
The way I see it, you've got one shot to make your life worth living, quit trying to live your life to the approval of the ideology of people from thousands of years ago. Live for you, not for what is expected of you. We are a species of trial and error. That's just how we learn. Almost all of humanities facts in the past were dead wrong at one point. Even great intellectuals like Aristotle had their share of facts and understandings that were later proven wrong. Everyone, including Aristotle "knew" that the Earth was the center of the universe. It wasn't till much later that humanity discovered that they were totally wrong. We've been wrong about basically everything at least once, but the important thing to remember is that even though we've been wrong about a monumental amount of things, we've always kept an open mind on later solidifying or disproving the theory when more evidence or better technology arrives. That has been the case with everything from the shape of the Earth to the inner workings of the human body. We're constantly redefining our definition of the world before us. We do this for everything except religion. For me, the word religion has a very ethnocentric connotation. It's gotten people to believe that others are somehow different from them just because of their faith. We view people from other religions as "them" as if they were an entirely different species, and I don't like that. We are all the same, but religion forces us to ignore that fact.

I've decided to name my look-on-life Willful Suspension of Disbelief, after the cinematic term (the cinematic term is actually willful suspension of belief). See, in movies, they strive to make an unbelievable story believable. The movie may be fictitious, but they will throw in an equally fictitious scientific explanation so that the audience will allow themselves to believe the story for long enough for them to understand what exactly is going on. I think that religion works in the same sort of fashion. As people, we understand life's basic facts. We understand the fundamentals like how gravity works and why lightning exists. We have a reason, and a logical and scientific explanation that can be proven every time. We understand how our world works, but for some reason, we allow ourselves to believe in the most impossible ideas that many religions suggest. For example, we believe that the virgin birth really happened. We believe that even after it's common knowledge that the idea of it is impossible. The same goes for Noah's ark and the giant fish story. They sound more far-fetched then most fairy tales, yet they are closely regarded as historic facts. People know that these things are completely preposterous, but they allow themselves to believe in them for long enough for them to get the jist of the big picture, religion.
     My religion will be based on the ability to not simply believe what you are told. Just because it's in a book or in a priest's rant, doesn't make it factual. Rely on what you know and what you believe, and don't be afraid to challenge them from time to time. It's about living for yourself, but taking those who will be affected into account as well  It's a religion with no guidelines, no rules. It's about doing what you think is right, not because you don't want to end up in hell, but because it's simply the right thing to do. It's about seeing everybody from any and every religion as humans, seeing them in the same light that you see yourself. It's about you and everyone around you.