Alone In The Machine

Religion As Hedonism

It had not always been this way. Once i was a good christian boy. I was born and raised on dogma, drip fed fear and meaning and faith. Told that i had original sin, that beliefs and ordinances would save me. More specifically, their beliefs. When i finally got out the thing i realized there was no original sin, every torture and atrocity had already been committed, usually in the name of some belief.

I'd hear stories about good old Jesus throwing the money changers out of the temple, then they'd ask for tithing. Ten percent of everything i earned, which was never much to begin with anyway. Something didn't seem quite right. The philosophy seemed to be 'give us your money and we'll save your soul'. A multi million pound organization didn't need my money more than me, and i could be damned certain that if God existed he needed it even less.

Religion is meaning on tap. Religion is heroin to the mind, to the soul, and to the ego. At best it's a subtle form of hedonism, at worst it postulates heresies and declares wars. Once i had so desperately tried to make myself believe, i had used prayer, i had fasted for an entire week hoping that God would confirm the truth of the beliefs that i was being told were true. God remained silent. The beliefs spoke, the desires spoke, the fear, the ego, and ultimately it was a matter of how much one was willing to convince oneself.

I never did find myself convincing so naturally i remained in doubt. Curiosity and doubt are related, and they are the children of mystery and knowledge. When i was in organized religion i had tried to repel all doubt, to fix my mind on one object, one belief, and to have faith it was the entire truth. As far as i had succeeded in doing it, i had found that i had also banished curiosity.

When i left organized religion there was a sense of freedom i had never felt before, any idea could be expressed, any viewpoint entertained and considered, yet there was also a tremendous vacuum of meaning. God had been dethroned. What was i to do with my life? What was true anymore? There were no right views to hold and i had to discover and carve out the 'truth' for myself.

My suspicion of organized religion and the convince yourself approach of faith inevitably led me to doubt. To be skeptical, slowly i started to feel myself resonate with Atheist and Materialists and what they were saying. I think it was because what they were selling seemed pretty bleak and cold and logical. They weren't selling meaning, it didn't seem a thing one would choose to believe. Matter was real, outside was real, the cosmos was real, whereas i was just a fleeting epiphenomenon of that. It had no meaning or purpose in itself, let alone a purpose for humanity at large, and even less so for me.

I had randomly and miraculously emerged out of all that. I was one of the lucky ones, except i didn't feel thankful. Millions of other sperm could have reached the egg before me, anti matter and matter could have been completely balanced and the universe not formed, stars might not have burnt and formed atoms, life might not have emerged, and i wasn't thankful.

It didn't fill me with a sense of meaning. I was just an accident in an accidental universe, but then i wasn't looking for meaning, i was looking for truth. I had assumed, rightly or wrongly, that truth was cold, that it was independent from us and didn't care about meaning. Truth wasn't selling anything, you didn't have to give it ten percent of your earnings. It wouldn't threaten to burn you in hell for an eternity if you didn't believe it. All this i liked about it, but i still had to give my mind to it, i still had to give my soul to it, i had to be consistent, i had to call myself an Atheist or a Materialist.

I had become identified with another constraining belief system. I had a new dogma, doubt had once again turned into certainty and once again i was confined and felt the need to escape. To go back to my mother, to embrace curiosity and mystery. To stare at it all again with new eyes of wonder. To wrestle down the universe, only this time not to take it so seriously and realize that it's only a game. That all our beliefs are myths and apertures by which we try to make sense of the world.