Atheist
I hit a bunch of random blogs today. It is Easter, so a bunch of them sounded all bible-thumpy. That's fine. I don't have a problem with that. I hit more than one that contained information about Atheism. The funny thing is, they were the worst at being preachy. The term Atheism is supposed to mean that you don't have a belief structure. You prefer not to buy the story of any religion. It seems like these people believe very strongly in Atheism.
What is the purpose of religion?
* Where do you go when you die?
    * Heaven if you are good and follow the rules here on Earth.
    * Hell if you are bad and cause social unrest.
    * In some religions you suffer your sins against others and feel the reward of the happiness you bring.
    * In some religions you find the happy hunting grounds, or achieve rank gain/loss based on your deeds.
* An early attempt at social control
    * Don't eat pork, because no one cooks it right and people get sick.
    * Don't commit adultery because it is the first thing that will cause a blood feud between families and get a bunch of people killed.
    * Don't kill people because it will only lead to more killing.
* A means by which to organize people when needed.
    * Back in the dark ages, people had no way of getting news except for social gatherings like church.
    * Most wars were fought over religion. When you do the math, it was over land or resources, but the people were told it was over religion.
* Sex.
    * No sex before marriage, because it leads to disease and orphans.
    * No sex without following the rules. if you break the rules you are outside of society and get no more sex.
Have we outgrown religion? We preach to young people to be independent and think for themselves. We tell children to find their way. Then we tell them to follow the rules of law. We tell them all to be leaders, even though that does not make sense. Then we tell them to buy that new pair of shoos because they are cool and people will think more about you or want to have sex with you if you look cool.
Perhaps we are just shifting our belief structures around. I know so many people who pay lip service to God and do what ever the hell they think is socially acceptable. In the end it all boils down to dominance and the want of humans to fit into the dominance hierarchy. People just want to know their place. They will say that they want to be way out ahead of the pack, leading the way, but they submit to the pack.
Religion is but one tool for finding one's place in the hierarchy of society. There are any number of ways now to determine what to say next in the conversation at the water-cooler, bar, IM, blog ... .
Any good surfer will tell you in order to ride a wave, in order to get what you want out of the ride, you must find the best place in the wave and put yourself there at the right time. You ride the wave by knowing the wave. You will get nowhere trying to tell a wave what to do. In other words you must submit to the wave in order to succeed. They won't put it like that because submitting to something is a bad thing in western culture these days.
So, what is my point? Well, I wish I knew. I call myself a Christian because that is how I was brought up. I can't say I have strong feelings in any direction. I talk with God every day. I have a funny feeling that things are closer to the Matrix than the bible. I can't wait to find out how the story ends. If I can, I'll find a way to blog it.