Of religion, faith, and the power of prayer

Posted by Kromey at 11:33pm May 19 '08
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Everyone who knows me knows that I am very interested in religion. All religions. I want to know what they believe, what they require, I want to read their scriptures.

Why? Is it because I'm looking for something? Well, yes, actually. Am I looking to fill a void, an emptiness in my heart that, somewhere deep down, I know can be filled by God (or Sheva or Allah or...)? Not at all.

It's because I want to understand people.

Religion is a creation of men. It is a fabrication, a fiction, created to explain the unexplained, to give comfort in the face of the unknowns.

So why do I bother with it?

Because it is, nonetheless, a powerful driving force. It is perhaps the single most influential aspect of many people's lives. No book has influenced more lives than the Bible, and no great society has existed without a grand and all-encompassing mythology.

Take [private], for instance.
"...you know what I've done on my own: cheating on my wife with men, exerting violence, illicit drugs, alcoholism, etc..."

I don't think anyone here has any doubts that [private]'s religion has done amazing things for his life.

"the dramatic changes and improvements in my life, the people surrounding me in my life, and my ability to handle things -- is certainly no delusion."

No, certainly no delusion. What [private] has been able to do with his life is nothing short of.... well, a miracle. And it was through his faith and his prayers that he was able to accomplish all of that.

[private], I applaud you for your accomplishments, I really do. But it was not God that did it at your asking; it was you yourself that did it at your own beck and call.

You see, [private] found what is necessary for making such a tremendous change in one's life: he found a motivator more powerful than his own habits (his belief in God), and he found like-minded fellows who could be living examples for him of what he wanted to be (his fellow parishioners).

There are, in fact, two keys necessary to accomplishing the change that [private] made in his life. The first is support: I don't think anyone would dispute that [private]'s fellow worshipers were significant aids to him.

The second one is desire. Someone can have all the support in the world and still not change if they simply don't want to. At the same time, however, simply wanting is not enough - your desire has to overpower what I call "Newtonian psychology", or the application of Newton's first and third laws to human behavior.

What that means is that once you form habits, they are very difficult to break. Everyone who's tried to stop biting their nails or overcome alcoholism knows this. It's very easy to keep them up, but to give them up you have to apply enough force to bring them to a halt ("A habit in motion tends to stay in motion").

But even that isn't enough, as bad habits have a bad habit of returning ("For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"). So you have to not only force them away, you have to keep working to keep them away.

Enter religion: The perfect vehicle for applying that initial desire and for providing the motivation to keep that desire. But when you get right down to it, it wasn't God that changed you - it was you.

The simple fact of the matter is that the human spirit is amazingly strong; so much so that we, as humans, find it difficult to comprehend what we are capable of. When we turn ourselves over to an outside force (e.g. God), we give ourselves an excuse: "It wasn't me, it was God." This lets us unleash more of our potential than we may otherwise have been able to. But it was us all along. If it were God changing us, why does He change Muslims too? Or Hindus? Or Buddhists?

Every religion out there can bring forth examples of people who, like [private], came to their faith and turned their lives around for the better. If, as these religions each claim, it was their own deity(ies) that did the changing, then how can all of them bring forth so many examples of changed followers? Are there really that many deities floating around out there? Or is the answer more mundane: Is it instead the people themselves changing themselves?

Once you also consider the countless atheistic spirituals out there who, through nothing more than meditation and self-reflection, have accomplished the same things, the answer becomes quite clear.

But this in no way diminishes the importance of religion. This is why I seek so hard to understand as many as possible - because they all provide insight and understanding into human nature, and they all provide a key to unlocking more of the capabilities of the human spirit. Every religion instills faith, which in turn provides the faithful with the rewards s/he seeks in his/her life.

It is through studying these accomplishments and how they were obtained that I find the key to unlocking more of my own potential, so that I may, too, achieve similar results in my own life. You see, my faith is not in any higher power that can change me; my faith is in myself and those around me, in the human spirit and its boundless ability to shape ourselves and those around us.

[private], forgive me for holding you up as an example here, but I find your accomplishments amazing and an inspiration - you are an example of what all of us can achieve, with or without religion.
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