I instantly turn off if someone tells me they're part of an organised religion. I will never understand it. Living in an extremely non-religious country and looking at Christians in the US or the circus in the middle east just baffles me. Similarly, atheism has become a religion for some people. I say some because it is a small minority, kind of like how feminism has been tarred by people who do not understand the concept of it.
I never bought atheism as a "thing". Maybe it's because I grew up with no religious influence surrounding me at all, and I imagine it is very different in the US than it is here. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have been in a church, and none of my friends or family are religious. An explanation given by an atheist as to how religion started might be that people used religion as a way to explain things that they couldn't explain with science, or maybe it started as a cult situation in small tribes where a guy makes a bunch of shit up to control his population more effectively.
Whilst both of these things certainly must have played a factor at some point, I think drug use has a lot to do with it. The only "religious" experiences I have ever had have occurred during periods of heavy drug use. My formation of ideas surrounding mortality and other things you might refer to as "spiritual" - I hate this word but I'm going to use it - all basically happened as a direct result of using psychedelic drugs for months on end. It is impossible to describe how bizarre it was to go from having no interest or thought about anything vaguely religious, to suddenly spending a few hours at a time being completely convinced that everyone is the same person, small parts of a universal being that exists in everything.
Due to the current societal opinions and legal issues surrounding drug use, I doubt this will be seriously explored by historians for quite some time. Looking at history as a whole, not just the formation of religions, without thinking about the effects of widespread drug use is probably ignoring a large new field of investigation that is waiting to be probed.
I find this difficult to bring up for a few different reasons. One of them being that it is extremely easy to dismiss anecdotes from someone who was off their face on acid, and the other being that the vast majority of people in this country have no interest in "religion" in any form.
I'd recommend reading/listening to Terence McKenna. Even if you have no interest in the drug stuff, it is still interesting to listen to because what he really talked about was religion, and he talked about it in a way that is extremely different from organised religion.
Megan Phelps-Roper is a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church, having left in 2012 with her sister Grace. She is a social media activist, lobbying to overcome divisions and hatred between religious and political divides. In this podcast, (at least what I've seen of it), they primarily discuss the church in general, and her experiences in particular with it. They also discuss the church's beliefs and culture.
For those not in the know, The Westboro Baptist Church is a very small church here in the United States. They are most well-known for protesting at many events, particularly funerals involving homosexuals and military personnel. The Supreme Court in Snyder v. Phelps, ruled in favor of the church, where thee court determined that speech on a matter of public concern, on a public street, cannot be the basis of liability for a tort of emotional distress, even in the circumstances that the speech is viewed or interpreted as "offensive" or "outrageous." The ruling was 8-1.
I have not yet finished this episode - I'm about 1:30 into it - but this is a difficult one for me to listen to. But I do think it's important and so I wanted to share it. I consider myself quite religious, although not in a traditional sense. Religious truth isn't about the existence of a deity, or whether Jesus actually rose from the dead or not. It's more about fundamental ideas and "truths" that can't be explained with science; at least not at this time. It's part of a struggle I have had with faith ever since I began seriously considering it many years ago. My struggle has been from one of pure atheism, to one of simply not knowing and refusing to draw any conclusion as a result, to a struggle as to whether the being God actually exists, to its current form, which is kind of swirling melee of ideas that does not have any focus yet. I am convinced something is there, but I have not grasped it or understand it on any conscious level. Likely because I have not studied it enough to really understand anything.
It's interesting because her experience is kind of the opposite - after growing up in the church her whole life, and believing so completely that The Bible was the word of God, and that their efforts were to save others (a story not unlike Scientology, interestingly), but after struggling with contradictions with her own faith, she and her sister eventually left, as it was no longer something they could believe in, and Megan has since become an atheist.
Like I said, it's hard for me to listen to. What I mean by that is that there's a lot of struggle in reconciling many things. She obviously struggled with that, and it led her to abandoning her faith. I continue to struggle with it, but I'd going the other way, where I think I can find my faith in religious structures. I don't really know what I'm trying to go for here, outside of the acknowledgement that it's not easy, I guess.
I know most of the people on here (Phuks) are atheist, or at least not religious; and that's OK, I get that. But at the same time, I feel that there is this divide as well, where I almost feel I can't really talk about this stuff with an atheist. Almost like the connotation of saying "Well, I actually consider myself religious, just in an unconventional sense", is enough to make some atheists extremely skeptical or even hostile to the idea that there is any truth or knowledge or wisdom to be found in religious texts or mediums. But at the same time, conventional religious people are also skeptical of this...almost a new approach to the question of religion as well. This is something I've internalized for a while now, and I really feel like there is no good outlet to be had for going into conversations. I could communicate with a few like-minded people - I know they exist and where to find them - but I worry about going into a hive mind sort of thing, and don't want myself falling into that either.
So I haven't finished this podcast, since it's difficult for me to sit and listen to. I do intend to go and finish it, but I'll finish the rest at another time, when I can take the rest of it in a single chunk. It is a struggle, at least for me. I feel it in my heart, and I think it in my brain. There's a lot of competing ideas going on here; different values and morals, perceptions and realities, that are all trying to coalesce into something that makes sense. Right now it's just a bunch of stuff, swirling around without form, philosophy, guidance, or knowledge. I can sense the...discord of my thoughts and lots of different things within me, where I don't know if I should go this way or that way, whether this idea is correct or completely off the rocker.
You know, I know, a lot of people think it's easy. At least that's my perception. "Well, of course there's no God. Jesus didn't really come back from the dead, and you don't get 72 virgins when you die." "Obviously there's a God; how else do you explain everything? You think the Devil doesn't have his eyes on your soul?" It becomes too simple. You believe, or you don't. Or maybe you're in the middle and you're kind of stuck like a third-party supporter in a two-party world, where nobody likes you because their side is obviously right, and you still haven't chosen it, even when it's "obvious". But it reminds me of ideologies, and how ideologies get like that. They're right, and they hold the answers, and all this other stuff is wrong, and it can be easily explained away. But that's too easy. Real life isn't that simple. It's not so clean-cut. And for real understanding, I think you have to dig deeper. And I think that's where I am. I'm at the point where I can either do the hard thing - dig for the truth - or do the easy thing, and let myself be swept away on one train that's absolutely correct or the other train that's also absolutely correct.
I think I would rather put in the effort, and see if I can't get somewhere digging away. I don't even know what the point of this post is, except to say it, I suppose. Thanks if you read it all.
EDIT: Removed a line that didn't belong and added a thanks at the end.