Day Four - 30 Days of Blogging

Day 4 – Your views on religion.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. It’s from my Dad’s side of the family, my Grandad was training to be a priest and then the war (World War Two) happened and he met my Nana, and well it’s clear what happens over the years that follow, but anyway my point is my Dad’s parents were quite religious, so are some of his siblings. My Dad himself not so much, although he must be to some extent my Mum converted shortly after I had my First Holy Communion. Personally I didn’t progress as far as Confirmation.

For me it all seemed like too many promises I wasn’t sure I wanted or would be able to keep. There were too many rules, like we had to go to church every week for two or three months, why? I thought you were able to worship anywhere, but apparently if the priest doesn’t see you do it it doesn’t count? I’m not convinced that’s how it works. 

I think having faith is nice, it gives people something to believe in, gets people through difficult times, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I appreciate there are extremist that take things a bit far, but religion can hardly be blamed for that. If there were no religion there would still be extremists, you just wouldn’t be able to call them religious extremists anymore, they wouldn’t be able to kill in God’s name, but that wouldn’t stop them killing in the name of The Great and Powerful Potato for example. 

So I don’t believe in all the rules that go along with religion, like Jehovah’s Witnesses not being allowed blood transfusions, it’s just not logical, why would any God want that? There rules don’t fit anyway, you can’t do this and you can’t do that, but God is all forgiving so as long as you’re sorry for your sins you’ll be forgiven. Basically suicide is the only thing you can really really do wrong (I assume this doesn’t apply to all of the religions, I wouldn’t know it’s not a topic I know all that much about). Most of these rules can’t cause too much harm these days anyway, doctors have a duty of care to their patients, the law overrules religious texts, there are ways around these things. 

So basically my view on religion, let people believe. I don’t agree with people forcing religion down your throat, the same way I don’t like vegetarians and vegans that preach. I’m scientifically minded, so no I don’t believe in creationism and stuff like that, if science shows something to be true I’m going to believe it, but when it comes to God or Gods, no you can’t prove their existence but you can’t disprove it either. Besides forever is a very long time, it’s a risky game not believing…although saying that Lucifer was the Archangel of Music, so by that logic if you’ve heard music you’re going to Hell anyway, guess I’ll see you all there