My whole life, I’ve had to explain to people that I’m ‘half-jewish’. It was kind of assumed the other half was that really popular religion about how our omniscient god couldn’t figure out a better way to get us to love one other than to have his only son tortured, killed, then resurrected. Whatever they call that one. To kids, all that it really means is “My Dad is one of those big, bald, financially.. intelligent guys, and my Mom used to wear a cross 35 years ago”.
I hated not knowing which one I was. I wasn’t as cool as most kids because I didn’t have one identity in that department. Almost everyone else did. Anything setting you apart from the ‘normal’ crowd was a bad thing in those days. Now, being an outsider seems to be a positive attribute. This probably can only do us well as a society, as it helps eliminate the group mentality.
Take the shape of the Earth for example. If that first guy who said the world was round never spoke up, and everybody just followed the crowd… You know where I’m going with this. Same goes for the whole ‘geocentric’ view on the universe. Sheesh how pompous can we be? The universe literally revolves around us!? See, this is why we need dissenters. And yes, I am one. ;-) How hypocritical of me.
Religion feeds on our dire need to feel like a part of a group. You know how excited people get about whatever groups they get into when they’re in their 20’s, fraternities and sororities for example? Take that mentality, but drill it in when they're so young they don’t even get why till it’s already a part of their self-image, and boom you’ve got a devout religious follower.
As a kid, I desperately wanted to have this feeling. Do you think I had any idea what they were actually talking about in there? Of course not. But I did want free pancakes on Saturdays and to have an excuse to hang out with some new friends. But back to the problem at hand, the good old ‘half’ a religion concept.
What a joke. Hey, I have half a soul. I half like pancakes. I’m half a Dodgers fan. You can’t be half a religion, guys. Give it up. Either you believe in a religion, you don’t, or maybe you like some concepts in a religion, but it’s not your faith. You can’t have your fake and eat it too. I know now, that although for years I proclaimed myself a half-jew, I never, not once in my life for one second had a religious faith. At least, not one that existed outside of something I sort of put together myself.
Furthermore, something sounding cool doesn’t mean you think it’s true. I know, everybody likes Buddhism because of how cool it would be to die and come back as a flower lily. Maybe if the correlation between cool-soundingness of religious concepts and how popular they are wasn’t so high, it would be easier to believe in them. I’ve also found the same goes for beer. Allow me to explain: The cooler the brand name of a beer, the exponentially terrible it will taste. Example: Asahi, delicious, with a plain old Japanese name. Victory Golden Monkey (who doesn’t like monkeys? Golden ones for that matter.): After I drank this pitiful, pathetic excuse for a fermented beverage, I seriously considered giving up the consumption of liquids as a whole. Sounding cool ≠ Veracity.
So for all of you half-religion followers out there, your burden is relieved. You now can realize how beliefless and agnostic you really are, and can feel free to choose among the thousands of belief systems out there to waste your time on. My beliefs on this subject can be summed up by referencing Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: You know the scene where Indy has to choose between all those cups to find which one was the holy grail? (Or else he dies a horrific death, i.e. face melting) The most beat-up, piece of crap cup turns out to be the divine chalice. Picture every religion is its own cup. I can’t imagine in a million years that the right one is the nicest looking, shiniest of them all. What, it just so happens the nicest way it could be, is the truth? Nothing else in life is like that, and I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell can’t subscribe to something that is so distant from reality.
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