What should I believe in?
We’ve replaced our religion with a new kind of faith. A faith in statistics. Scientific theories that are most likely wrong. We’ve over confidently pushed aside thousands of years of knowledge and history of religion like yesterday’s news. With hubris. But what if there was some truth to this wisdom? What if it shines a light on a way of being that makes things better? — Dave Levine
This past year I was fortunate enough to take a trip to both Rome and Istanbul, the two most religious places in the world. Afterwards, I became intent on learning about the history of these places and the beliefs of the people that lived there 2000 years ago. Eastern Europe and the Middle East are very religious places; the United States not so much. Some argue that the decline in the church contributes to the lack of community we now face in the United States, where you shoot your neighbor and steal from your elders. What contributes to the decline in religion? An obvious answer, science. I was never religious growing up; I could never understand how someone parted the sea, how we fit a pair of every species of animal on a boat, and how someone that was dead came back to life. On top of that, how come we didn’t have miracles like that today?
In the history of humanity, we’ve never before had science as prevalent as we’ve had now. Science has disproved much of religion and as a result its lost on us. However, after the trip back from Europe we stopped in at a church on Easter Sunday. The following day was to be the running of the Boston Marathon, one year after the horrific bombings. He said something that really resonated with me: He didn’t know what happened 2000 years ago and whether or not a man that he didn’t know came back to life, but what he did know was that the city of Boston was an example of a resurrection from something horrible that happened. That made sense to me, after all the city really did bounce back from that tragedy. It also brought to mind what a tour guide said while visiting the Vatican Museum: You don’t read the Bible with your mind, you read it with your heart.
These two sayings actually made me understand what religion was all about. It wasn’t about who the prophet is, who was chosen, or what someone said. It was a blueprint for how to treat each other. Yet people have gotten too smart for our own good. We’re looking for exact representation in what is known allegory: This man said this, and he also said this, and thus this means that we must do this. And thus, because the representation has become lost we also lose the blueprint for humanity. But religion is not about these things. Even Jon Hunstman Sr, a Mormon, says so himself, that giving to church is not charity, it’s his “club dues.”
Throughout history whenever you did not answer to God, he became angry. Floods, plagues, earthquakes and other disasters was the work of God. Again, science has answered this. Katrina, Sandy, Eyjafjallajökull, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, the 2011 Japanese Earthquake, all of these “acts of God” have been answered by science. This contributes to the decline in religion a focal point in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. Throughout history, religion has motivated us by fear. Pascal’s wager is the best illustration of this: if you do or don’t believe in God and he does not exist, then no harm no foul, but if God does exist and you don’t believe, then you suffer in hell eternally versus an eternity behind the pearly gates of heaven for believers. So we should believe since the pros outweigh the cons. We are afraid to do something for fear of God. But what if we thought differently? Since we are no longer afraid of God, what if what we did, we did for the opposite reason? Not for fear but for happiness or love (John 4:18 mentions that love is the opposite of fear). Can we be good neighbors because of love of each other instead of fear of God?
While I’ve never been religious and can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to mass, I do believe in what the principles of religion provide: a way to treat others, a way to live your life, and a way to be a good person. Do we still believe in that? I think if we strip away what science has disproven or made very hard to believe; we still have something at the core of religion. Is it time for a new religion? One without actual humans in the stories and just stories of how we bonded together to be better human beings? I look around at how different the world is than it was 2000 years ago. And while I wasn’t there, I believe that 99.9999% of the things we have today are not the same….except for one. One that appears to need “renewal.” (Looking at the chart below, the newest “religion” is Scientology from 1954).
9/11 comes to mind. The Northeast Blackout. Hurricane Sandy. Just some examples in the last 15 years from the Northeast. These “acts of God” have brought together our community, have made us forget our differences, have made us remember how to love each other more; a new religion? New Yorkers have never known community; Kitty Genovese is a great example of this. As more high rises and less stoops come into our city, community will be harder to come by as Jane Jacobs once argued. But we have also shown how the best of us comes out in times of pain and suffering. Is there a way for the best of us to come out at all times?
