Relgion: If you know there's no answer to a question... why ask?

“The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, all the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.”
- Frank Zappa

My views on Religion are contradictory, almost hypocritical. I understand that the existence of religion even in today’s society is a necessity. Religion forms a strong moral foundation, conducive to the construction of a civilized and balanced society. Without a clear ethical compass to moderate human behaviour, civilisation has a tendency to decay into moralistic ambiguity.

I personally believe Religion is merely a self-defence/coping mechanism for sentient beings. When an entity becomes self aware the art of questioning as a form of self discovery takes over. And what are the biggest moral quandaries?

What is the meaning of life, why are we here and is there life after death…?

All incredibly profound, and ultimately unanswerable. The problem with this is that the human psyche is not able to deal with the possibility that all not all questions beginning with a “why” can be answered.

In addition to this, us as self-aware beings, (and most other creatures, bar Lemmings), have a strong instinct of self-preservation, as the only organism on earth that is aware of their own mortality, the notion of the afterlife is something that helps us better understand the inevitability of our own death.

Religion unfortunately is too infinitely complex for me to have a definitive belief. Most people who don’t assign themselves to a particular religious demographic tend to refer to themselves as atheists. For me this isn’t possible, I do believe in a God as such, but I certainly don’t belong to the dogmatic view of an all encompassing cloud hermit making kittens and Platypi, whilst dealing out life affirming information to people in their bedrooms. On the contrary, I believe that the physicality of our creator could be so abstract, so ridiculously fantastic that our self-important minds would never be able to understand it. Personally I find the ideology of an omnipotent force comforting, like an all knowing fatherly figure scrutinising my foibles.

I read once that, “atheism” started life as a pejorative description applied to anyone who seemed to be in conflict with the established idea of religion. It’s ironic now that this a term seized by anyone wanting disparity from religious canon. In the same way that this term is banded about religion is now used merely as an excuse, a placebo for a conscience in less rational people.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’d love to believe that when I leave this mortal coil St Peter will welcome me with open arms. After shooting the breeze with Jesus, I’d have a drunken game of twister with Jimmy Hendrix, George Best and my Nana. The fact is that the more time I spend in this curious existence the less it makes sense. I was born into the Catholic fold, I knew my prayers, knew the order of the Universe and thought that I had it all figured out. Then as I matured, I found that I may have known the universe, but the Universe certainly didn't know me, and I began to feel alone. As a remedy for my insecurity I decided that I didn't want to believe, ignoring my fragile faith was easier than asking questions.

So where am I now, well I wish there was a God, but there's just to much unselective pain in this world. Any existence of a creator immediately casts a paradox over the human notion of responsibility. If God created us in his image then why are we to live this infinite soap opera of philosophical turmoil, wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone knew what the hell was going on?

For most people existence can either be a decreed cause of events, contrivances and predestined conveniences, or just plain unbridled chaos. For me justification does not lie in religion but in experience.

I hope I'm right, or I'm in a lot of trouble.