So, I'm technically a Muslim (I desperately want to leave, but my country forces me to stay), having grown up in a religious household. As is required for all male Muslims on Friday, I had to go to the mosque to pray. The sermon that was given seemed to spark something in me. I don't have anyone to share this to (everyone in my local vicinity is deeply religious, so they'll keep preaching to me about how God is like, the basis of my morality or some shit like that. Yes, even the non-Muslims), so I guess I'll put it here. I apologize if what follows is utterly incoherent or if I'm repeating myself.
See, I think that every religion has at least one entity that is infallible in the sense that whatever it does is inherently good, and that you can't question what it does, else you go to Hell or something. The thing is, why? Why should I have faith in something that I can't question? To scale it down to human terms, it's like someone who claims to be perfect, acts like they're above criticism, yet expects to be respected by others. Why should I care about someone who only wants a one-sided relationship, in which I'm the one heaping them with praise, yet when I say something vaguely negative, I'm the one who's in the wrong? The one who gets shit from others, just because I wanted to be honest? In the same way, these infallible entities are very much like that kind of person. Even then, though, at least with the human-scale example, there's actually someone there. A complete asshole, sure, but at least there's only one set of things to work with. Everyone's reading from the same 'book', as it is. When I get to these 'infallible entities', though? Sure, there's probably at least one text that describes this entity, probably in the form of a book, about how perfect and good this thing is, but there's no one set of characteristics that people can point to when describing this entity. This entity, existent or not, doesn't interact with anything. It's not like a Twitter page, or something, where everyone can see what you've posted and what they've posted in response to what you've posted, it's like this series of PMs between me and this entity, completely hidden from anyone else, yet I'm expecting everyone to believe me when I say that I have faith in this entity. There's no 'public record' that you can point to. That's the thing that turns me off about religion: the thing that's being worshiped cannot be held accountable for anything. If I can't hold someone accountable for their mistakes, the same way that I am for mine, then why should I trust them? In the same way, if I can't question God, then why bother? The way I see it, I'm basically supposed to follow this deity's rules, even if it entails doing something entirely counterproductive, like marching off a cliff to my long, drawn-out death. I don't care if what I'm doing leads to eternal damnation, 'cause frankly, I don't give a shit.
Sometimes, I ask myself, "Why was I so stupid as a child?", but then I realize that it may have been a blessing in disguise. I was too dumb to understand anything I was being taught, so by the time I 'woke up', it was far too late to convince me of God's existence. It's like language acquisition; it's fastest during infancy and early childhood.
I don't know if I'm at all right. I just wanted to vent, I'm tired, I need to relax.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9783351 times)