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A fellow blogger asked me about my “irreligious views.” He said he thinks I’m agnostic. According to Wikipedia: “[A]gnosticism is the view that humanity does not currently possess the requisite knowledge and/or reason to provide sufficient rational grounds to justify the belief that deities either do or do not exist.” I think he’s right.

I have no problem with religion per sé. If religion helps someone refrain from raping, stealing, killing, etc., then by all means, go for it. However, when religion exercises mind control over its followers — Mormon, Islam, and Jewish religions, for example — then I do have a problem with it. Blindly following a religion simply because you were born into it is, in my humble opinion, a little strange.

I find it entirely plausible that people of old — i.e., prior to the Age of Enlightenment — needed a way to explain thunder, earthquakes, the sun, the moon, eclipses, falling stars, rain, snow, volcanoes, earthquakes, clouds, the desire to kill each other, life, death, etc. Enter religion. However, once people became enlightened, and science was able to explain all those things (except, perhaps, the desire to kill each other), I find it interesting that they still need to believe in a deity in order to explain those things.

Some of my friends ask, “What if there’s an afterlife?” What if there is?

If I spend my life helping the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless, the disabled…. and someone’s God doesn’t want me, I’m okay with that because I don’t want that God either.

If someone’s God will take the rapist, the killer, the thief…. simply because he says as he’s dying, “I repent of my sins and accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior,” well, I also don’t want that God.