I now understand that religion is not supposed to be understood

With Lent and St. Patrick's day, I thought I would vent about religion for a bit.

First off, me: I am an atheist, though a recently "out of the closet" atheist. I was raised by Jewish parents, sent to hebrew school, bat mitzvahed, forced to temple, the whole nine. Never once in my life can I think of a time when I actually believed a single word that was being uttered to me. Never was there a single day I had to go to temple or hebrew school where a tremendous fight didn't ensue. I was kicked out of hebrew school more times than I can count for combative behavior. My first memory of questioning religion came around age 5 or 6, when I first heard the Adam and Eve story. My response was "how could everyone be spawned from them? Then everyone in the world would be related and they couldn't have babies together." At the time I didn't understand genetics, but I knew enough that you weren't supposed to do that. What probably frustrated me the most about religion was that any time I asked WHY we do these things, the stock answer was "you're jewish; that's what you do." Even as a child, I suppose I needed a logical answer.

I say I am "out of the closet" because I spent a month on location with a crew that was largely atheist, and though atheism was really never a topic of conversation, religion certainly never came up, either. It was on that trip I looked back on other jobs and other crews and realized how often god and religion came up in conversation. And how out of place I always felt. It was comforting to know that on this particular crew, I wouldn't be surrounded by co-workers fretting that they wouldn't be damned to hell because they didn't give up anything for Lent. It wasn't that I didn't consider myself an atheist - it was that I didn't consider myself ANYTHING. up to that point, when people asked my religion, my stock answer was always "well, I was raised jewish but I don't practice" or "my parents are jewish" and left the whole issue of MY religion unanswered. Now when asked that question, I finally have an answer (as an added bonus, since atheism isn't truly a religion, it generally shuts down any further discussion of religion)

The other night I was chatting online and the subject of premarital sex came up. The two girls I was discussing it with had initially considered waiting until their wedding night, but both opted against it. Both cited religious reasons as at least part of their decision.

One girl had been promiscuous before her current relationship, and it had gotten her into trouble and bad relationships. With her current fiance, she wanted to wait before fucking him because she didn't want to get herself into trouble again. He later admitted that he initially just wanted her to be a one night stand, and her wanting to wait made him curious and realize that he really dug her. Now they are to be married in a few months, and they do have sex. That is a totally logical, totally reasonable reason to not want to have sex. I have a lot of respect for someone who can make a decision like that - she is learning from her mistakes. But then there was some other stuff that she said relating to religion. Raised in a religious household, she had always been taught "god says wait" with no explanation. She eventually came to her own decision that god says to wait because sex is better with true love. Which, I suppose, is an ok answer for some people, but really, that has nothing to do with god. She even says that that is what SHE came up with on her own - she simply chose to relate it to god.

The second girl was raised in a very religious culture - she was even taught that that people should date in groups only and never be alone until their wedding night. She listed off a variety of reasons that her church taught her about sex before marriage being bad, and every one was something that was a person's puritanical belief: sex without marriage is bad; abstinence is the only 100% effective way not to become pregnant, and a child birthed outside of marriage is bad; etc. she summed it up by saying it pretty much always came down to a big case of "god said so" around her church. She did say that her fiance had to help cleanse her mind of puritanical beliefs (such as "everything outside of man-initiated missionary sex is evil") and that one of the things that seemed to help them is that they couldn't find anything in the bible against premarital sex.

I have always felt that religion was created by egotistical and often puritanical people as a form of control. And seemingly "normal" and open minded people who still believe that a god exists were likely just products of parental upbringing (and it seems that a lot of religious beliefs stem from a fear of death and the hope that there is something beyond this life).

But now I finally feel like I have some closure, that people who believe there is a god can say "yeah, I have no logical explanation, religion doesn't have a logical explanation, this is just what I believe." I mean, I still think it is stupid, but at least I was able to get a couple people to kinda-sorta admit it is stupid, too.