You Gotta Have Faith, Do You?

I am not a religious person, though I sometimes wish I were. The “opiate of the masses” seems like a preferable treatment for my anxiety and depression than prescription or recreational drugs. I want to be delusional enough to believe that “it’ll all be okay in the end.” But I’m constitutionally incapable of being religious because I’m curious about the natural world, and a religious explanation of events doesn’t satisfy my questions. Despite the comfort of the idea that we’re being watched over and cared for, and despite the comfort of the thought of an afterlife, religion doesn’t offer as much as we’d like to believe—not intellectually, morally, or even spiritually—and often, religion hampers our better nature and societal progress. Instead of bringing peace, harmony, and understanding to our world, religion mostly divides us, causes conflict, and stifles advancements. The good news is that a person doesn’t need religion to live a virtuous, moral, and purposeful life. We can, in fact, live better without religion.

                One problem (among many) with religion is that it’s a human-made phenomenon. The fact that there are, and have been, so many religions—from different regions around the world, all with their own methods of worship—and that there are different sects within each religion, indicates that human preference and perspective plays a big part in shaping belief systems. Christianity, for example, grew out of Judaism, and under the umbrella of Christianity are Catholic and Protestant divisions; and there are further denominations, like Methodists, Baptists, and Evangelicals, each with their own interpretation of scripture—scripture that has been added to and changed over hundreds of years by men with their own thoughts and opinions. If there’s no agreement on the proper way to practice your faith, can it really be said that your religion—or any religion—is true? No. If religious observance is a matter as consequential as eternal salvation or eternal damnation, there has to be a universal understanding of how to do it correctly, because that’s an extremely risky roll of the dice. As I like to say about religion: they can’t all be right, but they can all be wrong.

                It also has to be noted how religion divides us for no good reason—how it fosters conflict and violence. From school to the workplace to the neighborhood, explicit and imagined religious differences discourage genuine harmony and cooperation and get in the way of understanding one another and discovering new ideas and perspectives that can be beneficial to society as a whole. Medical advancements have been hindered by religious opinions about stem cells. Environments have been destroyed in service of the Prosperity Gospel—species driven to extinction and climate to the point of collapse. Wars have been fought over religious differences—millions of people tortured and killed over who has the better imaginary friend. Democracies destroyed by religious divisions. Religion holds us back from being better than we are.

                I won’t go too deep into the argument that gods don’t exist because it’s obvious. We live in the real world: religion is a superstition and nothing more. We can’t see God; we can’t touch God—those who claim that they can hear and feel God are just slaves to their own imaginations. Enough. There is no true religion and there are no gods; there’s no evidence to support it. To quote Christopher Hitchens, “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

                Some people say that a world without religion is a world without meaning or morality. The people who say this are shallow and immature. Meaning and morality are intrinsic values: if you need a force from without to give your life meaning, that’s a psychological and emotional shortcoming; if you need the promise of reward or the fear of punishment to be a good person, you’re not a good person. A person who lives a purposeful, virtuous, moral life without needing to rely on the delusion of religion has reached a higher level of development than those who do.

                But if one does need a source of inspiration or spirituality, there are plenty of philosophers, authors, and even scientists who can provide insight and guidance by secular and humanistic means. Carl Sagan, for example, described the wonder of our universe—a place where there is always an unknown waiting to be discovered. Ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote of our duties to care for ourselves and each other. Authors like Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, and John Steinbeck show us how we all share a common humanity. There’s no need to pull strength from the Bible or any other religious text when we’re already surrounded by so much wisdom and beauty in our natural world.

                Although I’ve spent a large portion of this article criticizing religion, the truth is most world religions represent righteous teachings. They tell tales and allegories of beauty and morality from which we can learn some lessons to guide us through our own lives. The problem arises with the fundamentalists—the people who take their religious beliefs too far and infringe on the lives of everyone else. Religious fundamentalists barely even adhere to their religion’s core teachings (as with Evangelicals and Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount). The solution, then, is to outgrow religion—to leave it behind. We can’t take care of our world if we believe a better one awaits us in some distant afterlife and we can’t achieve true progress if we get hung up on religious differences. Embrace our shared humanity, ignore manmade religion, and live in the real world. We only get one chance at life, so make it a good one.