Piss in the Wind

For a long time, I believed one had to be an idiot to believe in a higher power of some sort. To a degree, I still do, but not to the extent that one must be an idiot. Moreso, I think one must just make the conscious choice to be ignorant in order to believe in a higher power.

Now, there are plenty of reasons one would want to believe in a higher power. None seem as powerful as it brings meaning to one's life. It is definitely the biggest strength in which religion of any sort has.

For example, if a person is egocentric, then religion grants them the ability to feel as though there is some level of superiority over their fellow man. It grants them more meaning than those who don't believe, at least in their own mind.

Another example, when one becomes so broken by the societal damages from merely existing, it gives all that suffering the ability to mean something when it all ends. All of it will mean something because when they die they will live on in an afterlife, where peace and harmony can be everlasting.

But none of that even makes any sense whatsoever. Let us think about all the human beings who existed before religion came into existence - since we already know that to be true. Under the assumption that there is a heaven and a hell then where did all those humans go? Did they all arrive in the depths of hell because they knew no better? Did they all get granted access to heaven because rules for their afterlife had not yet come into existence?

Beyond that, how egocentric does one have to be in order to believe that all those lives are rendered irrelevant because a book states that the world is only so many thousand years old, and thusly those humans that came before that time frame don't even exist. That becomes quite the paradox that then must be explained away by ignorance of the reality we live in - those people did not exist, despite all the evidence. The bible must have used clever word play or technicalities to excuse away the planet we live upon to be so much older than the bible claims - like, the week long endeavor to create the world is actually equating to billions of years because time didn't exist before the earth was made.

Again, ignorance.

And then one must question how, since there are so many paradoxes within religions itself, what is the purpose of believing?

Well, as pointed out before, it is clearly an egocentric thing on an individual level. It gives a person's existence meaning in an otherwise meaningless world. Or, more specifically, it becomes too hard to give one's self meaning in their life and so the illusion of meaning becomes satisfactory enough.

But on a more societal scale, it is control. If the people in charge of preaching the religions can create a set standard of rules for people to follow in order for them to achieve their desired afterlife, then they thusly become controlling of the individual. And since the individual's entire meaning relies on the belief structure in which they have to follow a rule set in order to successfully achieve their desired outcome then it becomes exponentially more likely for them to be controlled within those guidelines.

And let us not forget that all religions - I do seem to be focusing primarily on the major religions like Christianity and Muslims and Judaism and the like in this post - require the believer to suspend an undetermined amount of belief in the reality they experience every day. As in, we have a method that is built around disproving everything until there is no other option but to believe entirely within the realm of what is left. Religion asks us to do the exact opposite, in that it asks the individuals to believe in it without any evidence whatsoever. Reality? Forget about it.

Now, don't get me wrong. I wish that life had meaning so easily. It sure would make everything so much fucking easier. Instead of having to constantly shift meaning around based upon the growth and experiences we have as individuals, and constantly reevaluating what lands upon importance to us, but instead to be able to just have some innate type of meaning would be wonderful. The philosophical meanderings of having consciousness and the ability to rationalize our experiences constantly makes life exponentially more difficult than just existing. No other animal prays or creates figments of their imagination to worship, so what makes us different?

Well, other than being able to be smart enough to rationalize, but not smart enough to understand is the biggest difference. At least, not on average.

On the grandest fashion of society, however, religion simply exists as a form of control. Religion is why Donald Trump could become president despite his very clear breaking of every real that very religion puts out there, but the mindless obedience granted to those who religious individuals have deemed knowing more than they means that the individual can ignore all of that because the guidance of those they deemed more worthy "know" better.

I still do not believe that anything positive can come out of religion without also being negated exponentially by the evils that come from it. People not taking responsibility for their atrocious behaviors, or even worse, excusing it away because they are going to a good place when they die as opposed to those who don't believe the same as they do going to a bad place for all of eternity.

And honestly, the whole concept of existing for an eternity. Who in the fuck would want that? Nothing in the fucking world would be good enough to experience indefinitely. Even an eternity of feeling the most intense orgasm would just become normal if there was nothing to compare it to.

But this is all just me pissing in the wind, and the end result is my own self smelling of piss, and being wet as well.

-Dustin S. Stover