I, too, Vacillate in Regards to Religion

My opinions of religion have altered over the years. As a young person, say somewhere between 9 and 11, I felt cheated and damned. This was because most everyone else I know or with whom I spoke seemed to know the bible, have a rich social life that involved church or those they met there, and each was equipped with an apparent faith in the rightness of their path and their own salvation. Later or maybe because of this, I grew intolerant of these folk. I can recall a time in college when a stranger came up to me during my walk to class and attempted to proselytize me. Since then I have adopted different strategies ranging from ignoring people of this ilk, taunting them, engaging them in debate, and trying to be as accepting of their beliefs as I would like them to be of mine. At present I believe that organized religions and cults all bespeak a lack of the believer's own free thinking (there is a potential contradiction there, but we can discuss this later), inability to question the ideas of others, and a frightening desire to count themselves among the masses. My own contradictory spirit has led me to tentatively explore paganism, but here again I find the rituals, doctrines, and silliness overwhelming. Like you, I try to appreciate the mystery of the world, give thanks to nature for allowing me to operate within its systems whose fullness I inadequately understand, and try to be grateful for a world beautiful beyond what I deserve. As for a notion of god (little "g", thank you very much), I dismiss any notion of an omnipotent creator that manages to be both human and superior to humanity. Human beings are fallible, silly, and often animalistic. Instead of insisting upon our own superiority we should admit our failings, embrace them, and then attempt to improve the muddled mess that marks our sociality. There is much to love and admire about ourselves, but Narcissus hides in the rhetoric of salvation and sanctity, so let us cast him out of our interactions. Were god to be similar to us then I suggest we rise up against our creator and find another; Frankenstein has much to teach us about hubris and arrogance. Right now I am fatigued by the religious right and their efforts to direct the course of politics. If only the majority of moderate America would stand up, tell these people that they are welcome to abide by any silly moral strictures they like and impose on themselves but the rest of the country will happily ignore them, and then do what should have been done to them some time ago--ridicule, give them some history to read, then ostracize them until they learn their place or start up a commune outside of our borders. There is a point somewhere between the civility of accepting the ideas and beliefs of others and the attempt to convert others to an untestable and ultimately illogical faith that I need to find. Presently, I am as likely to react with hostility as I am to ignore. Given my querulous nature, I should be the last person to advocate that everyone respect everyone else's beliefs. That said, my current feeling is that strangers should ask a listener's permission before attempting to persuade others, at least as concerns religion. Otherwise, my civility takes a back seat to my aggression and I feel free to mock and argue with such folk. Democracy requires debate; I am unsure if it requires tolerance towards religiously oriented efforts to change the thinking of others. If the citizens of this country feel we need religious debate then at least we should be able to seriously debate the need for religion at all. The claim of moral grounding imparted by Christianity and other faiths has grown hollow to me. I believe we can adopt a more ethical orientation that is based on social benefit and not spiritual salvation. Amen to the agnostics, godless heathens, and the religiously apathetic. I will put my faith in language, millennia of social conditioning, and an unsupported belief in reason.