Origin of Religion - Part II: Fear of Responsibility
Responsibility is frightening on any level. From individual responsibility for one’s own survival all the way up to our species’ responsibility for our home planet, it’s an enormous burden. In fact, if you thought about nothing but your responsibilities, on all levels, every waking minute of every day, you’d be hurtling toward a nervous breakdown. The only way to avoid a straightjacket is to find ways to NOT fret about responsibility, at least some of the time.
Distraction works nicely for most of us. We use alcohol, television and other drugs to divert our focus from our responsibilities. Some use avoidance. If something smacks of responsibility, these people will be running for the hills as fast as their irresponsible legs can carry them. Another tremendously popular method is surrender. It’s like delegation, but doesn’t necessarily involve actually telling anyone to do anything. I have a choice to either worry about my responsibility in the success of the company for which I work, or to surrender that responsibility to my boss, who likely does the same in turn with his superior. Surrender allows us to close doors completely on certain worries. Whether these things are actually being taken care of or not is another matter, but we can avoid thinking about them.
Religions differ from one another on many points. Some teach reincarnation, while others offer only a single lifetime. Some allow for free will, while others stress predestination. Some religions even lack gods entirely. What EVERY religion contains, however, is a greater power. Whether a single god like Allah, many gods like those of ancient Greece, animistic spirits like the Shinto Kami or a principle like the Tao, all religions have an unseen force acting upon (or having acted upon) the Universe. While the purpose of this force, under whichever guise, is as an object of worship or a paradigm for behavior, there is a pleasant side effect that I believe must have facilitated the adoption of religion. We can surrender responsibility to it. In the extreme case, we can even blame it for things.
Would you rather live in a world in which everything wrong with your life is your fault, or one in which some or all of it is “god’s will.” Fate is more appealing than fault when things go wrong. When you go to war with a neighboring people over territory, resources or buttering bread with the butter side down, do you want to wrestle with the ethical questions of killing? You don’t have to if your gods are punishing them for not believing. If a friend or family member is in trouble, do you want to go through the hassle of stepping in and making a difference, or do you just want to pray for them. After all, once the almighty is alerted to the problem, it will be taken care of. If it’s not, it’s… that’s right… god’s will.
So make a donation at your local house of worship. Sit in candlelight and grind your herbs. Meditate on the suffering in the universe. Rest assured in the knowledge that everything will be taken care of. Ultimately, it’s not your responsibility.
~I AM~
May 29th, 2005 at at 1:51 am
Very good points, I think you’re right in that part of religion’s appeal is due to the fact that you can shrug off responsibility. What? Your life is a fucking mess? Seems like you’re going nowhere? It’s okay, god has a special plan for each and every one of us. You just sit back in your chair and continue eating potato chips you sexy bastard.
My girlfriend’s ex-roommate would always have messages that exhibited this behavior on her away message on AIM. It would always say something like “I’m hoping god tells me what I should do this summer soon”, or “trying to figure out what the lord is trying to tell me”. While of course she still decided herself what she was going to do that summer, she could definitely spend less effort thinking about it since all she needed to do is wait for god to tell her.
May 29th, 2005 at at 2:00 pm
I have relatives that are big into this — “it’s god’s will” stuff — and inside my head I’m screaming. I don’t understand how one can truly believe that. A child can be brutally raped and killed, and someone will turn around and say, “it’s god’s will, that child is now in a better place”. It takes everything I have within me to not slap that person right there and then.
Shifting responsbility to a god or gods is what keeps many sane. Keeps some from feeling. They can go back to their little lives cause someone else will take care of everything.
May 30th, 2005 at at 1:00 pm
I’m not sure how many of you posting out here are recovering from religion, like myself. I AM says he believed until he was about ten… but I wonder how deeply that belief ran, and I wonder if believing until age ten is long enough.
I was an intensely passionate believer for a very, very long time. I went to a Presbyterian church that had a rather radical doctrine. It was fairly conservative, as Pressy churches go. I went totally of my own free will, from a very young age. I’d had a great aunt who took me to Sunday school, and I loved it. So when she got ill, I found a new, local church and went on my own. I was in third grade at the time. I joined the youth chorus, went to youth group every week, did Sunday school, vacation Bible school, went to sleep away camp… I even played bells at Christmas.
The church was my home. It was my family. The leaders of the choir were two spinster sisters, and they also did the youth group and taught Sunday school. The older sister, I’ll call her Sally… she was just the epitome of hypocrisy. She was a backstabbing, gossiping, judgemental, lying… well, bitch. Without going into details, to sort of illustrate my point, we were once discussing abortion in youth group. I was about 12 or 13 at the time. I said, “well what about it cases of rape?” because I couldn’t imagine anything more awful that carrying a child in you for nine months that would be a constant reminder of the hell of rape.
“Well, during rape the body is so upset and stressed that it doesn’t allow a woman to get pregnant.”
Yes, you read correctly. She implied that any woman claiming to have gotten pregnant as a result of rape must’ve had consensual sex and be lying. Now mind you, I was 12 or 13. I’d been involved with this youth group for several years, and I’d been at the church since I was 8. I was a devout believer… I never thought she was lying.
I’ve been to those ceremonies where some very evangelical preacher says, “open your heart, and give your life to Jesus” and they ask those willing to turn themselves over to the Lord to “come on up” for prayer… I’ve done that. I’ve felt the power… and I can tell you, that to some extent, you are all oversimplyfying the intense control it can have over your life… if you haven’t actually felt it, you can’t possibly understand it.
I started to really question Christianity when I was about 14. I’d been exposed to Greek myths, and had my first major introduction to Islam and Judaism in a World Cultures class in high school. That class also covered Christianity, and it taught about the religions from a secular, educational perspective. That class together with my Greek myths class made me wonder how we could be so sure… once the Greek “myths” were believed… how was the Bible really any different???
I asked my questions to Sally, who was at the time my Sunday school teacher as well. She evaded them, never answering beyond the oh-so-basic response of principle “you have to have faith”. I hated that comment. Was I wasting my time?
It took a long time for me to realize I was an atheist… I stopped going to that church for reasons I won’t get into here and now, but it wasn’t totally my choice. They abandoned me, at a time when I most needed what had become my “family”. That really left me doubtful and bitter… but I had to get through the bitterness to be truly sure I was a non-believer. I spent years as an “agnostic” before I thought of looking for a new church. I desperately missed the camaraderie… but by then, I realize something. I realized that I no longer believed any of what I’d been taught. I couldn’t go back without being a hypocrite.
Losing my faith was not easy for me. Even now, I sometimes miss it. I realize I am better off, but I suppose it’s like any addiction… giving it up, even if it makes your life better and happier, isn’t easy.
So… I guess what I am trying to say is that when someone says they are following “God’s Plan”, it’s not just a matter of stupidity. I am not a stupid person. I am happy for the experience on both sides of belief, because it means I can be truly sure of where I am now… but once, I did believe God had a path for me. And it was scary and exhilarating, and you cannot discount how addictive that feeling can be.
June 1st, 2005 at at 1:08 am
I had a long response typed out and the thing got erased somehow.
I am the only person in my family who is not a believer in God. I am constantly hearing from my husbands family how I am going to hell. How if I only would go to church (ahh organized religion “roll eyes”) I would be okay. God will forgive me for my sins.
What they dont get is that I do not live in fear. I do not have the fears they have. I do not answer to anyone but myself. I dont need someone to blame when things do not go my way, nor do I need someone to blame to make me feel better. I take responsibility for my own actions. And when things go wrong. They just go wrong. I do not fear hell.
These very people telling me I am going to hell, that i am a sinner and if i would only believe in my heart and give myself to him I would be okay, are the very people I see drinking and driving, sleeping with their friends husband/wife, ect. If that makes them a good person then I have no desire to be a good person.
I think God is a crutch for alot of people. It gives them that feeling that in the end everything will be okay. That someone is holding their hand and watching over them much like their parents may have done when they were a child. Alot of people grow up believing and doing the religion thing simply because thats what they were taught. Not because they firmly believe it on their own. But simply because they were taught to and they were taught not to question it.