Souless Searching
Mar. 18th, 2010 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaI feel like I'm losing focus.
I'm all over the place. Writing here is a great outlet for my frustration, of which there are many, but I think perhaps it's just not that interesting for people to read about.
I haven't written about anything fannish lately and politics is nothing if not depressing, excessive and while important to me, could be really not interesting to others.
This is my space and I should write what I want, but this isn't a vacuum. I never wrote for myself. I want people to like what I write, or at the very least find it interesting. I know that sometimes you read something and you've got thinky-thoughts but don't exactly know what say about it, or even, if you have anything to add.
I'm like that, a lot.
So here's a focus.
Reading about the latest issue making the rounds, religion, I feel like I don't have a whole lot to add. It's not my issue.
But it is, as my previous entry clearly suggests, an issue I have to deal with.
I had spoken to my sister about the fact that I hate going to shul. She suggested that it's because I'm not close to the congregation. The thing is, even when I was a kid and our excursions to shul were much greater, I found it tedious. Even reading the portions that had nothing to do with the service were boring as they reminded me of my Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) lessons in school, which were a mish-mash of literature, history and mythology.
As a lover of mythology I tried to find parallels between the myths of Genesis and the Greek myths, all it did was confuse me, because Judaism is my religion and myths weren't real. But if Zeus isn't real... why is G-d real?
I wasn't taught about god from home, I had never heard my parents or siblings utter a word about a belief in a supernatural deity.
That wasn't the point.
The point is that I grew up struggling with the fact that I have no faith, in a faith based society. At first I thought the monotheistic deity just didn't suit me, so I had a pagan phase, the tendrils of which kept strong up to a couple of years ago in which I simply made the concious decision to stop trying to be something I'm not.
I can't not be Atheist. In the same way, I can't not be Jewish. I have too much history invested in that identity. Too much of why I am who I am comes from that blend of not-belonging in so many ways to so many avenues of society - being an Atheist Jewish person in Israel should have been a walk in the park.
Alas, that identity contains a large amount of frustration, anger and trauma, it makes me sceptical.
Fuck, did I mention the lack of focus?
Let me try and tighten that up.
I grew up with religion, but not religious. I grew up knowing I'm supposed to believe in god, but the gods to me are stories in a book. I grew up soul searching, only to conclude, that I have no soul. Just skin, flesh and brain matter, with billions of neurons making up the big soup that is Me.
However, as you've probably guessed, religion is an important facet of the human condition. If there's something I love, it's trying to understand things that are foreign to me. I do not get belief in the supernatural (god, monsters, demons and faeries), even when I was into paganism and its often tag-along cousin new-age, I was trying to get it and never properly did.
Being a sci-fi and fantasy reader, I'm open to the possibility that there are things I do not and cannot comprehend, that modern-science has some catching up to do... but that means that I dot not need to believe in things. You can't believe in things that really are.
All that aside. Religion has been used as a tool for destruction and I don't think religion is at all necessary to appreciate life, the universe and everything. I think religion, when it insists on categorising people as "Good", "Evil" and "Heretics", rather than as the singular beings that they are - humanity loses out.
And this is putting it mildly.
I can rant like the best of them as to why I consider faith-based ethics and the people who follow them to be less ethical than people who actually consider the law, not because "God Said So", but because they consider their fellow human, first!
But that's a post for another time, maybe in time for Pesach.
I'm all over the place. Writing here is a great outlet for my frustration, of which there are many, but I think perhaps it's just not that interesting for people to read about.
I haven't written about anything fannish lately and politics is nothing if not depressing, excessive and while important to me, could be really not interesting to others.
This is my space and I should write what I want, but this isn't a vacuum. I never wrote for myself. I want people to like what I write, or at the very least find it interesting. I know that sometimes you read something and you've got thinky-thoughts but don't exactly know what say about it, or even, if you have anything to add.
I'm like that, a lot.
So here's a focus.
Reading about the latest issue making the rounds, religion, I feel like I don't have a whole lot to add. It's not my issue.
But it is, as my previous entry clearly suggests, an issue I have to deal with.
I had spoken to my sister about the fact that I hate going to shul. She suggested that it's because I'm not close to the congregation. The thing is, even when I was a kid and our excursions to shul were much greater, I found it tedious. Even reading the portions that had nothing to do with the service were boring as they reminded me of my Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) lessons in school, which were a mish-mash of literature, history and mythology.
As a lover of mythology I tried to find parallels between the myths of Genesis and the Greek myths, all it did was confuse me, because Judaism is my religion and myths weren't real. But if Zeus isn't real... why is G-d real?
I wasn't taught about god from home, I had never heard my parents or siblings utter a word about a belief in a supernatural deity.
That wasn't the point.
The point is that I grew up struggling with the fact that I have no faith, in a faith based society. At first I thought the monotheistic deity just didn't suit me, so I had a pagan phase, the tendrils of which kept strong up to a couple of years ago in which I simply made the concious decision to stop trying to be something I'm not.
I can't not be Atheist. In the same way, I can't not be Jewish. I have too much history invested in that identity. Too much of why I am who I am comes from that blend of not-belonging in so many ways to so many avenues of society - being an Atheist Jewish person in Israel should have been a walk in the park.
Alas, that identity contains a large amount of frustration, anger and trauma, it makes me sceptical.
Fuck, did I mention the lack of focus?
Let me try and tighten that up.
I grew up with religion, but not religious. I grew up knowing I'm supposed to believe in god, but the gods to me are stories in a book. I grew up soul searching, only to conclude, that I have no soul. Just skin, flesh and brain matter, with billions of neurons making up the big soup that is Me.
However, as you've probably guessed, religion is an important facet of the human condition. If there's something I love, it's trying to understand things that are foreign to me. I do not get belief in the supernatural (god, monsters, demons and faeries), even when I was into paganism and its often tag-along cousin new-age, I was trying to get it and never properly did.
Being a sci-fi and fantasy reader, I'm open to the possibility that there are things I do not and cannot comprehend, that modern-science has some catching up to do... but that means that I dot not need to believe in things. You can't believe in things that really are.
All that aside. Religion has been used as a tool for destruction and I don't think religion is at all necessary to appreciate life, the universe and everything. I think religion, when it insists on categorising people as "Good", "Evil" and "Heretics", rather than as the singular beings that they are - humanity loses out.
And this is putting it mildly.
I can rant like the best of them as to why I consider faith-based ethics and the people who follow them to be less ethical than people who actually consider the law, not because "God Said So", but because they consider their fellow human, first!
But that's a post for another time, maybe in time for Pesach.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 06:55 pm (UTC)I find myself struggling similiarly. I can't believe in God, but want the trappings and community that come with religion. I didn't grow up religious though, so I just end up wondering. And sometimes praying to anyone who happens to listen. Which is weird since I don't really believe anyone is. Oh well. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 08:49 pm (UTC)But it's a good story and it's good to get it out there :)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 07:28 pm (UTC)I can rant like the best of them as to why I consider faith-based ethics and the people who follow them to be less ethical than people who actually consider the law, not because "God Said So", but because they consider their fellow human, first!
I agree completely. Doing basically "blind good" is just.. fake to me. If you're doing it out of a selfish fear of going to hell, is it really doing good? I really don't think so.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 06:42 am (UTC)I very much identify with Jewish history, culture and mythology, but it's not so much a lifestyle, I mean, I don't eat kosher to begin with, I drive and do things on the Sabbath... it's complicated.
All atheists who grew up in a religion are informed by it - thought one can still ID as Jewish (and Shinto, taking what you said into account) while completely having no faith in the deity. When it comes to Christianity and Islam, I think it's more complicated - but I'm sure many Atheists go to Church and Mosque and enjoy the rituals and community.
The religious community simply isn't my community. I've often considered what I would do if I immigrated, what community would I seek out as a support system? I just don't know.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 09:52 pm (UTC)Just a note:
Religion isn't the only alternative to science. As a philosopher, I can tell you that there are plenty of philosophical positions which consider the limits of science and give reasons why science has limits and how and why humans think about things that go beyond their actual experiences.
There are some things that science will never be able to answer, even if and when science itself undergoes changes which we can't imagine (in the way that an Aristotelian in the 12thC couldn't imagine the science of today).
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 06:41 am (UTC)I have my own criticism of science and the discourse about science - i.e. positivism and how it ain't actually all that good, among others, but over all, I think science has been more beneficial to this world and offers a beginning of an explanation as to why things are. Unlike in religion which is an all encompassing system which doesn't give you a lot of leg room.
I don't think science and religion are enemies (I think those Creationist whackos should STFU and GTFA), but they can make dangerous bed fellows.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 06:46 am (UTC)As someone who loves the Kantian concept of the thing in itself, there's a lot about the universe which I think human beings can never experience or explain, but I don't need any religion to fill the gaps.
And yes, positivism is just one of the problems with how people think about science and what science does.