2,200,000,000 Christians
1,800,000,000 Muslims
1,100,000,000 Atheists
1,000,000,000 Hindus
380,000,000 Buddhists
14,000,000 Jews

Religion is ubiquitous among all cultures on earth and has been for the entirety or recorded history. This concept has puzzled me for as long as I have been exposed to religion as I was raised with barely any presence of it. My Grandfather is very religious and when I was younger we would often go to church for events like Easter or Christmas if he was staying with us, which allowed me to form an opinion from both sides. I had experienced religious practices and observed those invested in them but wasn’t brought up within it.

My impressions of these church services were of confusion and curiosity, I didn’t understand why this man standing up the front of a room telling stories from an ancient book was so important to so many people. After all, nothing was happening, I wasn’t feeling any divine presence with me as I sang the hymns or prayed in unison with other families. I thought I was missing something or I wasn’t doing it right. As I got older I started learning about other religions that I hadn’t been exposed to, such as Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Yet again I was confused by this new information as it only brought more questions that couldn’t be answered:

So Judaism is like Christianity but Jews don’t believe Jesus was the son of God and Christians do but they believe in the same God and share some of the same writings but not all of them but Muslims believe in a completely different God with a different prophet and Hindus have multiple gods  and they put dots on their heads and Sikhs wear turbans and aren’t allowed to cut their hair…

It was an information overload that I couldn’t wrap my head around.

Who was right? Which religion had figured it out and which hadn’t? How do people decide which one to follow? Is it just what you’re raised into? If everybody thinks they’re right how can you tell who really is?

All these questions completely turned me off from the idea of religion, I never took anything religious seriously and was entirely switched off to the idea of it becoming part of my life. I have never liked the idea of one’s life being governed by a predetermined set of rules with no explanation or deliberation.

As Atheism increased in cultural popularity, the idea of religion being an archaic people management programming structure began to dawn on me. For a long time I referred to myself as an Atheist and had strong opinions regarding the negative effects of religion on society that I would often express openly. However what also dawned on me was that I had become what I was against, I had become somebody who pushes their ideas onto others (often aggressively) and restricts themselves to  being able to follow a single set ideology. I knew I was right and everybody else was wrong, this was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Much like when I was at church as a child with no prior investment in any religion, I was now able to take an outside look at Atheism and see it for what it really was, a religion. It’s not a conventional religion by any means but still very much a religion.

To many followers of Atheism, the idea of a deity has been replaced with science. Now I’m a pretty big fan of science but I don’t claim to understand almost any aspect fully, though I tend to fall into the trap that many do of taking somebody in a position of authority’s word for it. Can I prove the existence of cosmic background radiation? No but I can read about it in some guys book. Can I prove some 900 yearold guy gathered one of every animal on earth and put them on a boat so God could start a new game? No but I can read about it in some guys book. Granted the science guys book tends to have the story a bit more fleshed out but how many people are aggressively regurgitating these ideas in opposition to somebody else without actually reading or understanding the information. The point I’m trying to make is that a group of people who’s main objective is to put an end to the blind following of ideas do an awful lot of it themselves.

At my current stage in life, if somebody asks if I am religious or atheist I offer the analogy that “OFF” is not a station on a TV.

Thanks Bill, couldn’t have said it better myself.