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Passion! freedom and sex! « Escaped Mentalpatient

This post talks about ”religious twits” and the writer’s opinion is that those without religion are free. That instead of religious people having something that the writer doesn’t have, the writer has what religious people don’t have - freedom. The most interesting comment to this post is the first one – Basil has some interesting things to say, but he is as vehemently against atheism as much as the blog post’s writer is against religion.

I’m still trying to find out more about organised religion. I don’t have an issue with religion, because I know people, including family, who are religious, but still act without thinking they live just to please a God who, for some reason, needs/wants to be pleased; and that what we do in life doesn’t really matter when compared to our relationship with God. I’ll get back to this whole “relationship to God” thing in another post, because it’s a huge area. 

I don’t like the “alright, over to you now God” attitude that some of my religious friends have. I think one can be religious and also have freedom. Fundamentalists within a religion make me uneasy because I don’t understand how they can be so sure about some of the core questions that seem to plague most human beings. Sure faith is good if it teaches good values and graces people with a reason to live their lives; but it sucks when faith creates an attitude that others oustide the community are simply wrong. God is almighty, but we can only have a relationship with Him through one faith? Why can’t people be atheist and be loved by God, if God does indeed exist? Do people need religion to be good? Alright, I’m off on a tangent.

I always think if fundamentalists were living lives which were impacted by another religion (eg maybe they were born into another religious family, they had a different experience that made them turn to a different religion and so on) they would instead be fundamentalists in that religion.

I think the writer of the “Passion! freedom and sex!” post should probably note, that many religious people who love their God and accept His teachings understand that they recieve unconditional love from that God. So, anything they do which pleases God, is them not contradicting their love for God. People sin because that’s in human nature, but they’ll be forgiven because they understand that God loves them. Isn’t that a good thing to have? You feel that you are always loved and you love almighty God back, and if you make a mistake or give into what some may consider “human nature,” He’ll forgive you because He knows you love Him. So, in that sense, you get freedom up to the point of what you think is right and what is wrong (depending on your religion, and the “facts” about that religion that you been taught and so on). So in that case, you’d always be loved, and in your own eyes, you’ll also always be free. Wouldn’t that be great?

To use a quote I’ve already used: From Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley (1958):

“The nature of psychological compulsion is such that those act under constraint remain under the impression that they are acting on their own initiative. The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free. That he is not free is apparent only to other people. His servitude is strictly objective.”

I think you can be religious and be as free as you want to be; just as much as someone who is not religious. I mean, values without the belief in God can be as restricting as values because of a belief in God, can’t they?