Re: Faith
I don’t believe in God; but I don’t know if that means what it sounds like. I definitely feel like there’s more in the universe than human beings can comprehend. The universe is so mysterious.
When I was a kid I believed in God. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I knew something back then that I don’t know now.
I forced my parents to take me to Religious Instruction after school; they didn’t think it was a good idea, but I was adamant. It was Catholic classes, basically.
I got as far as my confirmation before I realised I thought it was bullshit.
After that, I got really into Buddhism and Taoism. But years of being around people who identify as “spiritual” made me pretty cynical about that too. Lots of religious texts, taken as cultural or ethnographic or anthropological records, are really brilliant. But I think practising any religion leads to the same inevitable problem: you close yourself to new ways of thinking — which is ultimately the definition of learning.
I think asking questions, investigating, and learning from life experience is more important than religion. Lots of religious people do this anyway; they’re not mutually exclusive.
But when people forget that THEIR way of looking at things is not THE way of looking at things, that’s when the trouble starts.
If you take that as a definition of religion — an over-arching belief in the way things are — then most people suffer from religion. Even atheists.
Interview conducted and edited by Ben Kritikos
