BY SOFO ARCHON
People often ask me if I have a religion.
To hear my answer, watch the video (or scroll down to read the transcript).
Transcript
People often ask me if I have a religion, and my answer is always no.
Some of them try to change my mind. They try to convince me to adopt a religion. And they do that by giving me several reasons why I should or need to have a religion. Here I will share with you some of the most common such reasons, as well as why I think that none of them is compelling or convincing.
The first and perhaps the most common reason that people give me for having a religion is that it can provide us with moral guidance.
It is true that most, if not all, of the world’s major religions do contain some great advice and some powerful guidance that can help us to live better lives, or that can help us to improve the conditions of the world that we are living in. At the same time, however, all the world’s religions to some extent also contain some bad advice, sometimes even terrible and dangerous advice.
The problem is that usually people who have a religion are so attached to it—because they see it as containing the absolute truth, or at least they see its scriptures as containing the absolute truth—that they blindly believe what is found in them. And as a result, they allow their religion to cause a lot of harm to themselves.
When someone does not have a religion, that does not mean that that person cannot learn from the world’s religions. In fact, I would argue that one can do it better because one is not attached to any religious ideology. And one can think critically about the information that is presented in religions, and find out what works for them and what does not, what is true and what is not, what feels right and what feels wrong.
And they can openly criticize those religions as well because they are not afraid that their church or whatnot will kick them out. They are not afraid that they might commit a sin and that God might punish them. So they are willing to speak out about the flaws of religion.
But they can also study different religions, whereas people who are attached to a particular religion usually don’t care about other religions, because they believe that their religion has everything that they need to know. And sometimes their religion discourages them from studying other religions, because other religions are sometimes seen as evil forces. So they are scared to approach them.
The second common reason that people give me for having a religion is heaven and hell.
They tell me, “If you don’t believe in religion,”—and by religion, they mean their own religion—”then you will most likely end up in hell, where you will suffer for eternity. But if you follow that religion, then you will be rewarded with heaven, where you will experience everlasting joy.”
I find this reason to be one of the worst, if not the worst, reasons that I have heard. You see, those people say that you should follow religion or that you should accept God because otherwise you will end up in hell. But if you ask them, “How do you know that heaven and hell exist?,” they will say, “Well, because God said so.” So their logic is circular. It makes no sense if you think about it.
I don’t believe in heaven and hell, at least not in the sense that most religions speak about them. And I’m not willing to accept those notions on faith alone because some religion says so. And I’m not willing to live in fear and shame and guilt due to having such beliefs. I want to live as kindly and peacefully and generously and compassionately as I can. And I want to savor life as much as I can. But I see so many religious people suppressing themselves, sacrificing their lives in the here and now, doing things that are harmful to themselves and to the people around them, just so that they don’t end up in hell or just so that they can end up in heaven.
The third most common reason that people give me for having a religion is that religion provides us with a sense of belonging.
I consider this reason to be the best one of all. Nowadays, people are so disconnected from each other; they feel isolated, alienated, lonely, which makes them feel depressed—because all of us are inherently social beings. We crave connection—to experience a sense of belonging—and religions are great at providing that. That’s why so many people are attracted to religions, or to cults—which are also religions, although not mainstream.
I was reading some studies that found that religious people tend to be happier than non-religious people, and that’s because of that sense of connection that they feel. They go to, let’s say, their church, and they feel connected with their fellow Christians. Or they believe in God—some figure somewhere out in space—that is watching them all the time and is there to protect them. And although that sounds a little bit creepy, those people feel the same way that they felt when they were little children, when they had their parents protect them and take care of them and be there for them. God is this father figure that helps us to feel a sense of love and care and connection.
The problem with that reason—that religion can offer us a sense of belonging—is that it does that only to some extent. It indeed can bring people together that belong to the same religious group, but it divides them from other religious groups. So it might bring Catholics, let’s say, together, but it separates Catholics from Orthodox Christians. And as a whole, Christianity separates Christians from Buddhists or from Muslims or from Hindus, and so on. And because of that division and separation that religions cause, religious people tend to fight among themselves. That’s why there has been so much conflict and violence and war in the name of God and religion throughout history.
The fourth common reason that people give me for having a religion is that religion can provide us with hope and comfort.
They say, “Look at the world. There is so much suffering in it, so much conflict, so much violence. Look at the poverty that exists. Look at the stress that people experience. Look at the ecological destruction that humans are causing. By accepting God and by following the dogma of this or that religion, you don’t have to worry about all of that suffering because, first, you will eventually end up in heaven, so the suffering that you’re experiencing here is only temporary. And second, God will at some point restore peace and justice and prosperity to this world. So you don’t have to really worry. Just accept God, pray to God, do as you are told by your religion, and sooner or later things are going to be alright.”
I find this advice to be terrible because it implies that someone external to us is going to save us. And that’s a problem that has accompanied humanity for a very, very long time. People are waiting for God or religious figures, spiritual teachers, gurus and politicians to come and save them. And when they find such a person that they believe will come to save them, they throw all responsibility on that person. They’re like, “I will support them by giving them my money, by giving them my votes, by doing all sorts of things.” But eventually all of those figures disappoint them, and then they wait for the next savior to come.
A lot of religious people have been waiting for millennia for God to come and save them. But he never does that. If God wanted to save us, he would have done it a long, long time ago. So although religion can provide people with comfort, that comfort is actually hurting them in the long run because they allow the problems to perpetuate. They allow the suffering and the violence and the destruction to continue, and go from bad to worse over time.
And as far as hope is concerned, religions, for the most part, don’t really offer hope. To me, hope is seeing the possibility of improvement and then acting in order to bring that possibility into reality. That is not what religions do. They don’t provide hope, really. They provide wishful thinking. And wishful thinking is delusional thinking. Wishful thinking is just sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for things to change without your taking part in that change.
True hope involves a vision, as well as a lot of action to bring that vision into existence. So let’s stop waiting for a savior because no one is coming to save us. No one can save us from ourselves. Only we can do that. And we can do that by challenging our beliefs, examining our behavior, and starting to think and live in a different way.
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