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So, I guess I will preface this by saying it may offend some people. I apologize now, but this is something that I really didn’t think I would have to deal with in this day and age.

I guess I should be giving some grounding to all of this, I am an Agnostic. I was raised Roman Catholic, but moved away from that faith when I was in high school, much to the initial dismay of my parents. I believe the word my mother used to describe me was “Satanist” (which, I am not, nor ever will be a worshiper of Satan. In fact, contrary to popular belief, not believing in Christ does NOT make you a Satanist). My religious belief change was not really much of a factor on the people a hung out with. In fact, few of my girlfriends minded, and most of my friends didn’t seem to mind either. In fact, they usually asked me why I became Agnostic… to which I promptly replied “I learned about other religions”.

Now, I should probably clear something up right now. A person’s beliefs are different then a person’s religion. You can believe that Jesus or Mohammad were good people, and their teachings were (in general) good for human kind, and not be Christian of Muslim. Religion is the social structure that is built around particular beliefs. This structure is almost never necessary, but it allows people to be able to unite and say “I am Hindu”, and be able to make certain assumptions about their lifestyle and beliefs because they become standardized in this social structure.

This is why I can say I am an Agnostic (while Agnosticism is not a religion, the word can be used in similar contexts). With that term, you learn some things about me. You can make the assumption that I believe it is impossible to know if there is a God, or if there isn’t. You can also determine that I believe that there is no earthly way for us to ever know if a God exists. You also learn that this flips both ways, because this also means there is no way to prove there is not a God either. If Agnosticism were a religion, you would also be able to derive some inherent moral code from my belief, but it’s not.… anyway, enough about Agnosticism, I could go on for hours.

So, why am I even bringing up religion? When I first got to college, religion wasn’t even an issue for me. It just never really played a role. Well, over the past 6-8 months, several people I have hung out with, met, and socialized with have been religious, and with that, there has come some issues. The girl that I am dating now identifies herself as a Christian. To me, and to her, our religious differences is not a big deal. Unfortunately, this is not always shared by people around her. Yesterday, I had met a friend of hers that she was staying with for the week. After I had left, and Jess had come back from the trip we took yesterday, her friend asked her if I was a Christian. Jess replied that I was an Agnostic. The response (which Jess later revealed) was appalling to me:

Oh Jess, don’t worry. We’ll find you a nice, Christian boy one of these days.

I almost threw up in my mouth after hearing this. I was mad, upset and angry. It is appalling to hear something like this, but it doesn’t surprise me. The problem with religious people, is they don’t understand differences. I have asked people who are very religious about what other religions they have studied. I am usually amused when a Lutheran replies “Oh, I’ve studied lots of religions. Catholicism, Baptism, and Orthodox Christianity”. Right. Lots of religions. For those of you who didn’t notice, those are all essentially the same belief system, just different social structure around each of them. If you want to get mad because I just called Catholics essentially the same as Lutherans, go for it, but only after you study Judaism, Islam (edited for clarity: the Abrahmaic religions), Hinduism (edited for clarity: a non-Abrahamic religion), and a few other non-Abrahamic religions.

It’s so troubling for me to believe that even in America, people don’t understand that difference is good. We see it all the time though, families getting upset if a child marries inter-racially, or outside of their class. Religion is just another social element that is around to for people to become bias against. I firmly believe that if people were to actually study the beliefs and religion of others, they would become more tolerant to other belief systems. Religious tolerance does not mean that you believe that other religions are total truth, but that you can accept that other religions can have legitimate belief systems, even though they are different then your own.

It makes me sad, that people can dismiss others as insignificant based on a difference of religious belief. Religion brings to the table certain elements that some people want, and others don’t. This is how someone can choose a religion (which I highly recommend, over inheriting a religion from your family). The worst thing that someone can do is merely accept the religion they have as total truth without at least understanding that there are differences out there, and they aren’t evil.

So, at last I will get to my point: Religious intolerance is dumb. People that perpetrate the intolerance are usually uninformed about what they are being intolerant towards. There is absolutely no more evidence that your religion is better then their religion. So please, go out, and learn about other religions. Understand why people believe what they believe. What makes their religion attractive? What are parallels you can draw between the religions you study and your own? Knowledge is power.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 3:29 pm and is filed under friends, life, rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.