The Superficiality And Thoughtlessness of Religion
Part Four of a Multi-Part Series “Towards Religion and Meaning”
Note: This is a multi-part series, if you haven’t read the previous posts, I highly recommend checking them out to catch-up before proceeding, here.
- Part One: Why I Turned Away From G-d
- Part Two: Declaring My Atheism
- Part Three: The Repugnancy of Religion
Just before my first year of high school, my family moved from the suburbs that we had lived for all of my life to downtown Houston. While most people would probably think of this as upsetting, it was a huge relief for me and a means of being able to get away from all of the bullying I had faced over the years.
To add, I really only had one true friend at the time, and as he continued to gain in popularity, his interest in hanging out with me quickly waned. So, I really didn’t have much to lose and everything to gain! At least that’s how I looked at it.
Wanting me to succeed in making new friends and adapting to my new environment, my mother encouraged me to sign me up for AZA (an international youth-led fraternal organization for Jewish teenagers) as well as BBYO (a Jewish teen movement) as a means of making friends and getting more in touch with Judaism. On top of this, I was also attending Hebrew school and getting to know some peers at the local temple.
I couldn’t relate to these people, though. I’m a deep person who likes to get into it with people — what they have going on in their lives, their aspirations, their current issues, etc… and here I was going on field trips with AZA and getting wasted / tipping over port-o-potties at construction sites with BBYO. It all just seemed so superficial to me.
And in Hebrew school, I was always the wet towel — constantly asking questions about the things we were being taught and challenging them. Naturally, this skepticism didn’t win me many friends there, either. Nobody seemed interested in trying to understand the foundations of what we were being taught and why — something which deeply frustrated and upset me. It also led me to thinking the rest of my classmates to be both dull and unable to think for themselves.
These feelings culminated in my withdrawal from AZA, BBYO, Hebrew school, and further served to harden my impression of religious individuals as both unthinking and superficial.
Luckily, I found that religion played almost no role in my new high school and that a number of my peers also identified as Atheist and that it was okay to do so! Finally, it seemed like I had found some people who had formulated their own opinions and thought for themselves.
