I have finally found a way to classify my religious beliefs. I am officially claiming to be a Deist. Deism is the belief in a higher power without all the baggage of religious texts and worship; deism is based around “reason and nature” according to Webster.

The truth of the matter is that organized religions have certain inherent discrepancies between their teachings and their concept of what God is. Most organized religions believe that God (substitute whatever God is referred to in you’re religion when you see the word “God“) is all knowing, benevolent, and our creator. I’m not going to go into the creation aspect because that is just too much for me to deal with right now.

So God is benevolent and all knowing right? Then explain why people justify discrimination, segregation, and killing in his name? That doesn’t sound very benevolent to me. I’m mostly referencing the 3 major religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

*Also note I will refer to God as a he although I do not believe God is necessarily a man or a woman (it‘s easier than writing “he/she/it” or “him/her/it”).*

According to Christianity (which was foisted upon me at a young age) God created mankind in his own image, which is a little vain of him if you ask me. Isn’t vanity one of the 7 deadly sins? Holy shit! God is a hypocrite.

Sorry, I’m digressing. I already know religious figures will say that religion is not responsible for the actions of people. I agree. I am aware that there are extremists in almost every faith (I can’t comprehend Buddhist Extremists but that’s just me) and that extremism is the problem not the religion.

However, organized religions have books, prophets, and prayer. I’ll start with the books. The Bible, the Torah, and The Koran all claim that their God is the only God and that their way is right. Fine, I am open minded to other people believing what they want in regards to God. The problem is tolerance. If organized religions claim they are tolerant they are liars. Even if those groups do not act out against other religious groups, or smear other religions, even if leaders in the Jewish faith and Muslim faith are friends they still do not preach tolerance. Each book has a spot somewhere that says if you don’t believe in that book’s specific religion you will go to hell. Basically as a member of an organized religion you can be as tolerant as you want but really in the end, anyone who is not like you is tortured in some version of hell? How is that tolerance?

Religious figures will again have a come back for that as well. They will say things like, “God allows everyone the chance to find the right path,” or “God is testing us to see if we can find the right way.” Are you fucking kidding me? That’s like giving a kid with down syndrome an LSAT exam and then setting him on fire when he fails.

Condemning someone to hell because of what they believe is something I just can’t get behind. You want to send rapists, child molesters, and cold blooded murderers to hell… fine with me. But a hardworking citizen who means well is going with them because they believe in a different religion than me? Fuck that.

Now comes the fun part. These books of these organized religions are supposed to be the word of God. Okay we all know that is bullshit to begin with. Those documents are at best the word of God as interpreted by a mortal. That, by the way, is giving the Bible, Torah, and Koran too much credit. Allow me to explain why I can’t support the aforementioned books.

I’m going to use a metaphor so try and stay with me. If you haven’t played the game of telephone before I’ll explain it to you:

Take, let’s say 20 people and sit them in a circle. One person is designated as the person to think up a phrase and whisper it into one of the people’s ears sitting next to them. Once the original phrase is whispered to a person, the phrase is whispered from ear to ear until it comes back to the person who coined the original phrase. Then the group tries to see if they managed to maintain the integrity of the original phrase by saying out loud what the original phrase was in contrast to the phrase that was whispered ear to ear.

Okay, so anyone who has played a game of telephone knows that the phrase that gets passed around the circle is never the same as the original one. So let’s think about these organized religions for a minute. Take that same game of telephone and instead of 20 people you have billions of people playing. Then instead of a phrase you’re whispering a books worth of information from ear to ear. Also from time to time you have to translate that books worth of information into another language. The likelihood of that book’s information remaining congruent with the original after being passed through billions of people over thousands of years is damn near impossible.

Ever heard the phrase “lost in translation?” Yeah, that in and of itself is enough to keep me from buying what the books are selling. Even if the book has always been written in one language the book has still been passed through generations. Languages change over time, and people interpret written texts differently. Maybe someone was reading the very first copy of the Koran and was so moved by something in it that they shed a tear, and that tear caused ink to bleed and changed the whole meaning of the text. Basically, I don’t trust mankind enough to allow a book that has passed through generations to still be what it was meant to be according to it’s creator.

So, I personally, have discredited religious texts. So now let’s get back to this idea of God being All knowing and Benevolent. If God is all knowing, then he would know that humans are incapable of fully understanding him, because we are but mere mortals. If God knows that we don’t posses the mental capacity to grasp him then how could he expect us to know exactly how he wanted to be worshiped? Furthermore, why would he punish people for believing in him in a way other than what he preferred? Those people would still be trying to show loyalty and humility, why would a benevolent God damn them to hell? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

To me as a Deist it doesn’t matter what you believe in, you’re not going to hell. Even if you don’t believe in God or question the existence of such a thing. How do we know for sure that Allah is not the same God Christians pray to? We don’t. Even if they were different God’s how do we know that Allah and the Christian God are not drinking buddies up in the celestial sea? We don’t.

I guess organized religion is too incongruent with the attributes most people would associate with God. An entity far superior to us would not have expectations of us beyond what we were capable of. That goes back to the definition of crazy. Crazy in scientific terms is carrying out the same action in the same situation and environment and then expecting a different result than the first result received. If God was continually placing expectations on us knowing it was impossible for us to meet them, yet still expecting us to meet them… sorry to say it, but that would make God crazy.

So I choose Deism, mostly because it makes sense to me and everything else does not in one way or another. I have never understood why the unknown is so feared by mankind when the unknown is what makes life so interesting.

If you want more information on Deism check out this site:

http://www.deism.com/deism_defined.htm

Let’s hope God isn’t crazy or we may all be going to Hell… See you there ;)

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