One of the appeals to religion is how much better life can be with God’s help. I’m not sure it’s true. When religion takes charge of a person’s life, it immediately gets busy rewiring the circuits so that whatever good stuff happens gets credited to God and bad stuff is automatically assigned to not-God. This can be seen in Galatians 5:22, which lists the “fruits of the Spirit” as being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Wonderful things, all of them, yet it is wrong to attribute them to the Spirit of God as if they could not come from anywhere else. All of the items on this list are the natural products of living a life of reason. They arise spontaneously when we exercise our innate capacities for empathy, compassion, curiosity and thoughtfulness. They don’t require an external source.
I’ve heard the claims. “I can feel the love of God.” “Jesus brings me such peace.” The idea that religion is the source of these things is so ingrained that to speak against any of religion’s bad ideas is considered an attack on all of the good things it supposedly brings. I was at a booth that had a huge sign reading, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” One lady shouted at us as she walked by, “You should be ashamed!” Even our simple message that non-believers exist was offensive. To her, we were tearing down the fabric of society. Without God, her children would start going to drug-fueled orgies. Apart from religion, her husband would begin drinking and beating her. If not for Jesus, things would never work out right again. If we desire these things, we should be ashamed indeed.
But, since rejecting the God hypothesis, I have discovered something that this lady could not know. None of these good things disappear in the absence of religion. This makes sense if they come from within ourselves as I suggested earlier. The implication is clear; to ascribe these good things to God is to introduce an unnecessary middleman.
Whenever middlemen get involved, costs go up. I saw this displayed dramatically when my daughter died a while ago. We’re all told that faith in God helps people cope with devastating losses like this, yet as a non-believer, I had to struggle through without that support. Several months later, I attended a grief workshop where many people gathered to share their stories. What I saw was astounding. Where I thought my grief was bad, the religious people had it very much worse. It wasn’t enough for them to be sad. They felt intense pressure, guilt even, at not being joyful as their religions said they should be. They struggled under crushing doubt as they tried to reconcile their private tragedies with the idea that God was taking care of everything. I attended several of these workshops, and it was always the same. The believers were never able to engage their grief directly. They were never able to embrace it as a natural process, to let it wash over them and then ebb away. They were always kicking against the current, trying to find God’s larger plan in which their loss made sense. I heard many very sad stories in those workshops, but the saddest were the stories of the struggles these poor people had to endure in their quest to square their experience with their religion. What I saw convinced me that religion does not bring real comfort to the grieving.
There are other costs as well. If you love the people in your life, religion says you might have to sacrifice your relationship with Aunt Molly and her second husband. If you find satisfaction in your work, religion says you might have to give it up to do something that serves the heavenly kingdom more directly. Many Christians insists that people are basically bad, but this idea immediately makes any striving for good an uphill battle. What’s more, people don’t live in a constant peak experience. Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness; these all come and go. Humans have good days and bad days. This is normal and should be expected, yet many religious people torment themselves over this variation. They experience guilt that they are unworthy or that they’ve messed it up somehow. The list could go on.
I see it this way. When gods and religions are pushed out of the way, people can tap directly into their inner source of goodness. They can love in the purest sense, without being told how to do it. They can choose gentleness from the goodness that wells up within them. They don’t have to check it off a list to make sure they are measuring up. Non-believers get all of the good things at cost. Religious folks have to pay retail.
If you still think religion is a force for good, what I’m about to say will come as a surprise, but if you have understood my thesis so far it will make perfect sense. When I gave up religion, when I stopped believing in God, I saw an immediate increase in all of those good things that the Bible says come from the Spirit. I found it easier to love people. I began seeing my wife as her own person rather than as a player in a biblical role and I discovered that she is amazing. With God, I never had such peace as when I understood that the world is random and isn’t trying to punish, reward or teach me. Patience and gentleness bloom like flowers when they are cultivated with empathy and compassion. Every good thing I once thought came from God, I discovered in greater abundance once I gave up that notion.
When you stop paying inflated, boutique prices and begin receiving direct from the factory, you can get so much more. That’s one huge reason why I don’t see myself ever going back to religion.
Religion is an expensive way to live.