Michele’s Freeminding

I was baptised. I went to a Catholic school. Basically, I was grown to be a Catholic. And I’m not.
As soon as I started asking myself questions, I began being dubious about religions. Not just Catholicism, all religions.

I think religions do more harm than good and usually, positive things about a religion can either be found somewhere else, too, or were introduced in that religion, through an evolutional process, with the help of free thinkers — often battled by the heads of that same religion.

Especially in the last centuries, we can see this liberal-induced evolution. Just two really quick examples:

• Women are — almost — no longer viewed as mere incubators
• We can work on Sundays/Saturdays without being considered sinners — mainly Protestants had this issue

But there are still a few major issue on which regards religions — I’m mostly talking about the Catholic Church simply because it’s the one I know best — are not willing to evolve. They act like they’re evolving, but it’s just a cover.
Want a few examples? Tolerance and willingness to openly debate are certainly not encouraged by many religions — if not all –, even though they pretend they do and almost everyone agrees they are important values in our society:

• New and revolutionary ideas have always been battled by religions. Religions fear changes and generally speaking — especially in the past — are against expanding knowledge to the base. Wasn’t the Earth flat and all planets and stars revolving around it?!
• What’s up with homosexual people being considered creatures of the devil? It’s not exactly a good example of tolerance

There would be many more examples, but this are really obvious and nobody, I repeat, NOBODY, can say they’re not real.

What I believe many religions teach — with, probably, the exception of Buddhism which is the religion I respect the most, mainly because I believe it’s more of a philosophy than a religion — is to punish and induce fear.
Children are raised to not do certain things because otherwise they’d be punished — thus the fear.
I believe children should be allowed to be what they are: children; they should be let free to experiment and they’re thirst of knowledge should be quenched with answers to their questions.

What’s up with not talking about sex with children?
I’m non saying you should tell a child: “Oh, yesterday night, I went out with my friends, we payed a hooker and screwed all night long!,” because it’d be impolite to do so with anybody — child or not — and it’s not what sex is about.
Children should be raised knowing what sex is — love, passion, and so on –, this way, they will have a healthy interest in it, not a morbose one: we all know children are interested in whatever is kept away from their eyes: I believe it’s a sin to pull the wool over a child’s eyes, not talking about sex with a child.

IMHO, religions don’t help kids to grow freely and to make them more “clever”.
Religion is something a person needs to take without questioning: questioning is not allowed inside a religion, thus kids are grown to be people that are not able/willing to question/think-freely — this is a bad generalization, but you get the whole point.

Not to talk that most people believe because they were told to believe, because their parents believe.
If you ask a person to tell you what he/she believes in, you’ll probably get dumb/funny answers. While the real answer should be: “Because I was told to,” “Because everyone in my community believes” and so on.

And what about those who consider themselves as good christians but don’t do what the Church tell them to do?
How many of those supposedly good christians have sex out of marriage? and how many have sex just because they want to? Oh, and who really apply this: “don’t judge unless you are yourself”?

And talking about sex, of course it’s better not to talk about sex with kids and tell them it’s wrong to use condoms, and then cope with HIV spreading all-over the World, instead, of simply saying the kids they should use a condom when they have sex, especially if they don’t really know the partner. Right?
What’s so bad about sex? Why shouldn’t I be able to make love with the girl I love?
Sex is something private which nobody — States, religions, whatever — can interfere with as long as nobody’s hurt.

I also can’t agree with many of Jesus’ teachings. One for all, Jesus preached punishment! Punishment?!
Oh yes, punishment is very useful to scare people and to make them repress their instinct and have them grow up as repressed and frustrated individuals.
And as a side note, I remember you all that those of you who don’t believe in the Holy Spirit won’t be forgiven and will rest in hell for eternity.

Many religions think they should be part of a country’s politic life and many politicians think that, too.
But if a State is, in its constitution, declared to be laic — take Italy and the USA as examples — they should be just that: laic!
Instead, if a State has got a state-religion — take Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. –, it’s fine if religion plays a part in its politic life.

Finally, one more issue with religions: they don’t help preventing wars, instead, they motivate them.
In the past, wars were directly fought for — futile — religious reasons, nowadays they might be fought, indirectly, for that same futile reasons — not always, take the Middle East situation, for a “directly” example.
The Roman Church, for example, played a big part in past wars, both publicly, the Crusades — a quick digression: the Roman Church fought against muslims and killed many of them, while at the time, Islam was pretty open to other religions…can you find any analogies with our times? –, and undercover, take the Dirty War and Operation Condor in South America aimed at destabilizing Marxist regimes, which ended up killing — well they disappeared — countless innocent people.

To wrap this up, my idea is that religions are not only useless and based on misconception, but also detrimental.
I’m not saying religions should be erased from the face of the earth in no days: it should be a progressive change sided with a change to our educational system. Simply banning all religions would be even worse, because many people, because of bad education I must say, base all of their values on religion, thus they’d end up being without values.
People should learn that what’s good is what’s good for humanity and not what their religion says is good. They should also learn that what’s bad is what really does harm to another person, not what their religion says is bad.

And I’m not saying you’re stupid if you believe: you’re free to believe in whatever you want, but it’s important that you think about it, not just believe because everyone does or because you were told you so. I’ve had people — and ones I really have esteem for — saying it’s easy to be Godless, I say it’s even easier to believe.
Even though I’m adverse to religions, I truly believe everyone should be free to be what he want to be — religiously, sexually, etc. –, and that’s something I can’t see in many religious people. And it’s sad.

I think you might consider me an atheist, as I don’t believe in God and don’t see room for improvement.
But I’d prefer to consider myself neither atheist, nor agnostic, as none of the two really express how I feel — plus, I consider both to be, at an extent, Godless religions, but that will be part of another post.
I’m just a free-thinker who has his own ideas and who’d like everyone to have his/her own ideas.

P.S.
I know there are a few religious people reading this blog and I hope you won’t take this bad: it’s my opinion, it’s not my goal to offend anyone and I’m open to debate.
I’m not judging — nonetheless criticizing — those who believe and as I said I really respect those people; instead, I’m criticizing those who preach.

P.P.S.
Here’s the usual apology: I’m sorry for the hiatus — about two weeks — but as you can see the post rate has diminished sensibly during the past months and that’s for two reason: I’m aiming at longer, more insightful posts, and I’m damn busy — my projects, freelance work and finals at the doorstep. :)
I really do want to post more often, but many times I’m just too tired to write a good post. I hope you’ll forgive me…

This post was written 2 years ago on June 13th, 2006 early evening.