Keeping my religion

Or how to offend every fanatic of every belief in one breath.

First of all to my own religious preference. I believe in the supernatural, I believe in the higher powers. However, I choose not to put myself to a label. Something that big is simply unable to be labeled. So that's the perspective I'm working with. Not a religious person, not an atheist or agnostic.

Religion is not what makes people good or bad. They're just names, words in a book, and the myths of a culture, for a universal concept. All religions promote themselves as being good, or powerful, or better yet, right. Hence all the others are wrong. There's a paradox here. Religion itself is nothing but what a person views the world to be like. It's important, but it doesn't determine what makes a good or bad person.

I've known good and bad people of many different religions. I've seen some that are fanatical, and I've seen plenty who use the label as a social tool and little else. But most people regardless of religion are good people (in my view).

Living where I do, in a mostly Catholic dormatory, and in a mostly Christian town when I'm at home, Christianity is the only religion whose tenets I'm even slightly familiar with. And, well, I figure that most atheists believe in the human will, and that the better ones are concerned with the betterment of humanity. And that each group can really learn from the other.

Why? Because both have virtues that the other seems to lack.

Christianity, as far as I know promotes unconditional love, forgiveness, temperance and prudence. Unselfish living, which brings about the betterment of the world.

Atheists are more likely to believe that people are what they are. That life is meant to be lived, and that you shouldn't judge people for those little things that they are. They realize that people are human, and that they do have the right to be less than perfect in their behavior. In other words, they're accepting of what we are in all our vareity.
Except when it comes to religion.

I figure if you can apply the Christian attitudes towards love and forgiveness and general selflessness, and apply them to your own life as best you can, while being able to accept and tolerate the natures of others, then you've got a one up, and regardless of what you think happens after death, that you'll at least be able to die in peace.

See, I've had people try to convert me. They've told me that I'm going to hell, that they wouldn't be my friend, any number of things. And that's why I'm not. Religion made me more selfish than I already am, and I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. But I don't hate the religion or the people of that religion, even though I disagree with some of their beliefs.

It's hard to hate some general group of people, once you've gotten to know and like and individual of that group. We may, as Clancy Lass put it, be incredibly the same, but we're still individuals. In fact, Me-chan and I are of two very differing opinions on religion. When we first met, we clashed over religion: she going through confirmation, and I having a strong interest in the occult then. But now that we actually know each other better, and know that our differences in views don't make us any worse than the other. We actually talk about it now, in a deep way, not even really arguing over it. Just sharing ideas.

So, that's the opinion. Live with it.

Over and out.