Adam J. Choit

For now, I’ll take a break from all the ‘Crosswalk stuff.   Don’t worry though, I’ll have more updates with that soon.

For now, I’ll turn my attention to completely unrelated random subjects.  God, religion — all that crap.  Crap?  Actually, I guess I shouldn’t refer to that stuff as crap.  After all, god might punish me for it.

Now, I was raised Jewish, although my family was never very religious in the least bit.  We more or less just went through the motions and traditions, because well, that’s what most Jews do.

Nevertheless, I was ingrained with certain ideas as a child.  For one thing, using the phrase “god damn it” or “god damn this” or “god damn that” —- weren’t exactly encouraged in my household.  In fact, I could remember my mother scolding me for occasionally using such phrases.  She told me I’d be punished by god if I continued to say such things.

Anyway, flash forward to the present — today I consider myself an “agnostic Jew” — meaning basically I identify myself with the Jewish people, despite at least questioning the idea that a god exists in the first place.  But if I had to put money on it, I’d bet that there is no god.  Maybe some singular force of nature did indeed get the universe rolling, but surely there is no old man in the sky aware of my every move and thought.

I mean, I consider myself a pretty reasonable and rational person, but even today after I hear myself blurt out something like “Godammit, I don’t think the Mets are going to be very good in 2012″ — I feel a bit of regret afterward.  As if god (Mets fan or not) is now mad at me because I said such things.

It’s interesting though to think about that something my mom said to me as kid still has such an effect on me even to this day, as a fully-grown fairly-reasonable adult.  I guess the lesson here is one should never underestimate the power religiousness and god-lingo has on a young mind.

If a theist feels the maximum amount of guilt after blurting out a “godammit,” and an atheist feel no guilt whatsoever, where does that leave me?  I guess my real question is, now as adult agnostic, am I supposed to feel a little bad each time I say “godammit” or should I just feel guilty —– say, after every other time I use the phrase “godammit” ?…

I feel blessed to have friends in my life who come from all walks of life, and have wide-ranging spiritual beliefs.  For the most part I consider myself a “Jewish-agnostic,” but I know many atheists too.  I respect them, but find it tiresome when they utter a particular phrase to me.

“I hate religion.”  To me, to say such a thing is very close-minded, and even ignorant.  These people will probably then tell you, “Religion is responsible for all wars.”

Even if it is in fact true that religion has caused more harm than good, it’s unfair to make such blanket statements about religion as a whole.  For many people who are law-abiding citizens and aren’t zealots, religion has uplifted their lives and increased their happiness and quality of life for them.

Don’t hate religion, which is an idea.  Hate people.  People are the ones who take things too far, and too seriously.

Sure most (organized) religions are severely flawed when taken literally and followed “by the book,” — but don’t think for a second that if the world was 100% atheist that we wouldn’t find something else to fight over.