I mostly try not to talk about religion. I think you are either in or you're out. I was brought up catholic, required to go to church every Sunday, then to Sunday school after that. Received my First Communion and then was Confirmed. I believe it was shortly after that point that my mother didn't require us to go anymore and I stopped. At that time, I thought it was all about old men controlling people and well, a bit of greed, always wanting money and keeping track of how much you gave (a whole other story). I resented the church.
When I was 9 and my 12 yr old sister died. Everyone said things like, God had a plan for her, he will take care of her, and a bunch of other similar shit. And I thought, are you kidding me? What kind of god kills little kids? And lets bad people run around free? Then there is the whole thing about her soul - She's up there watching you, you'll see her again some day, etc. Her and God, and a hundred trillion other people who have died since the beginning of mankind. So what does that mean? It means that once you die, your 'soul', some lifeless, aura of yourself, can do everything an alive person can do and more. Ya know, like fly and judge and talk too, because mediums and psychics, say they talk to them all the time. So your soul is up there (it's always 'up there' because 'down there' would be bad) and watching, along with god. Like everyone lives in one big Truman Show. All the dead people you've ever known are watching your every move and deciding you did the right thing - or the wrong thing - except those things never get mentioned. Can you fucking imagine everything you ever do, EVERYTHING, being watched? You are your own TV channel. And of course there is god. HE is up there judging you as well. Keeping a big scoreboard in the sky so that when you die, he can make a determination about whether or not you deserve to live up there in the nebulous heaven with all the good people. Maybe he decides your life has been so egregiously bad that you must be relegated to hell, where you will burn for eternity. So, once I die, and they burn my physical body, which maybe is sacrilegious because I'm beating god to the punch, my essence, my soul, will float to either heaven or hell. I think, if I have a choice, why would I choose hell? How stupid is that to think my soul is gonna fly out of my body and then go stand in line and when god, or his designated lackey tells me that I wasn't good enough to ya know, live in heaven, that I'm just going to turn around and go OK, I'll go jump in the fire then. Really?
I understand the need for religion. I understand people wanting for their to be a higher power, something to blame when something bad happens, or someone to praise when a good thing happens for apparently no reason. I understand the need to believe in something else when logic isn't working to explain something. I understand the need to wish, wish very hard, that something isn't true or will disappear or get better. I understand the desire to hope that one day, you will be reunited with the loved ones lost. I can't think of a single thing that could happen though, to make me believe any of it.
