My response to religion: "So what?"

The way I feel about religion now is similar to how I feel about my ex-wife. Not much. Meaning, most of the time I don't think about religion, or her. I've got some pleasant memories of each, along with some unpleasant memories.

But neither occupies much space in my brain these days. This wasn't the case soon after my marital and spiritual divorces. Splitting up after a lengthy attachment, it takes some time to get the other party out of your mind.

For twenty-one years I've been married to another woman. However, I've had no inclination to get married to another religious belief system.

The reason? It's easy for me to explain, and more importantly, experience, the benefits of having an intimate relationship with my wife. When it comes to religion, though, I no longer feel any desire for hooking up with an organized form of spirituality.

A few days ago I culled through a bookcase that held many of my once-cherished mystical, spiritual, and religious books. I had no problem filling up four boxes with books that either will be sold or donated.

Picking up a book that I could remember reading avidly years or decades ago, often my immediate intuitive reaction would be "So what?"

Meaning, from my present churchless perspective I couldn't see any point to what the author had written about. As with my general reaction to religion now, I wasn't so much opposed to the book's theme as apathetic.

So what if we humans supposedly have, or are, a soul that lives on after our body dies? There's no way for me to know if this is true. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So what if this or that mystic, master, or sage supposedly is enlightened or god-realized? There's no way for me to know if this is true. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So what if ultimate reality is supposedly one, non-dual, dualistic, chaotic, none of the above, or something else? There's no way for me to know which is true. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So what if God or a higher power supposedly wants me to act a certain way? There's no way for me to know if this is true. And there's nothing I can do about it.

So what if consciousness is separable from the human brain? There's no way for me to know if this is true. And there's nothing I can do about it.

I could offer up other so what's. But most likely you can sense my apathetic attitude toward religion, supernaturalism, and spiritual hypothesizing from the five "who cares?" examples I've given.

There's simply no connection anymore between the satisfaction, meaning, and happiness I enjoy from everyday life, and what purveyors of a supposed divinity have to offer.

I can't see any benefit to me from believing in something which doesn't have any influence on the world in which I live and breathe.

Soul. Enlightenment. Ultimate reality. God's will. Nature of consciousness.

Whatever can be said about these things are abstractions, concepts, hypotheses, conjectures. Typing on my laptop, sipping coffee, thinking the thoughts I'm sharing in this post -- now this feels real, immediate, important, meaningful.

By comparison, the fanciful imaginings of religion are yawn-inducing. So what?

If people want to believe in that stuff, fine. It's no big deal to me, unless their dogmatic viewpoints interfere with the ability of other people to live life as they want to.

Comments

[Marina]

They are some very good 'so whats' Brian!

I feel somewhat the same. So what?

So what if I am divorced even though a lot of 'spirtual/religions frown upon it?

So what if I am supposedly 'one with everything?

So what, if I break rules 'others' make up? Let them keep them for themselves?

So what, if you have a belief different than mine?

So what if I am 'there' or not 'there'?

So what if I am wrong?

So what if I am right?

So what, is the point of anything?

So what if I question?

So what if I don't?

So what if God punishes me?

So what if there is a God?

Live and let live!

Oh yeah. Your comments are catching. :)

[Becker's Stand]

Quote:

"To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything."
— Ernest Becker

"We are gods with anuses."
— Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)

""Yet, at the same time, as the Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshy casing that is alien to him in many ways—the strangest and most repugnant way being that it aches and bleeds and will decay and die. Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and to have to live with. The lower animals are, of course, spared this painful contradiction, as they lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it. They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were, in a state of dumb being. This is what has made it so simple to shoot down whole herds of buffalo or elephants. The animals don't know that death is happening and continue grazing placidly while others drop alongside them. The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual, and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness: a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled days—that's something else."

— Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death)

[cc]

"So what if consciousness is separable from the human brain? There's no way for me to know if this is true. And there's nothing I can do about it."

Really? Couldn't you look into out-of-body experience and perhaps learn to do it?

[Blogger Brian]

cc, to date there is no persuasive evidence that "out of body" experiences are really that. Researchers have set up experiments to see if near-death experiences in the operating room enable people to observe things that couldn't be seen bodily. So far, I don't believe any evidence has come in.

Lucid dreaming isn't out of body. It is in the brain. So I'm not sure where you are talking about. How is it possible to leave one's body? If you can prove that this is possible, this would be amazing news.

[Be There]

"We don't even care that we don't care." Tortoise Morla's philosophy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Z-3VUE9ec

[Dogribb]

Thought about you when i saw this Brian.Somehow I envision Mr F saying "So what" !

http://i.imgur.com/GpbYj.jpg

[Willie R]

If there is a mode of conscious existence that is superior to physical embodiment, then it would behoove us to deliberately abandon embodiment.
That could be the reason why high-yield thermonuclear weapons have proliferated. It may be to our advantage to speed things up a bit-on the whole, bodies are a disappointment.