Effect of Religion

I recently read Stephanie Zastrow's first post which expresses her views on religion, and I felt inclined to respond in some way, or at least express my own opinion on the subject.

I'll start by giving a brief description of how I was raised with respect to religion. I attended an Episcopal church for about eight years (during my formative years, I suppose), and before that was raised Christian from the get-go. Although I attended church, I would not have called myself spiritual, I basically went through the motions, not really questioning what I was being told. After my family moved I stopped going to church and began to try and figure out what exactly I did believe. I suppose I really want to believe there is a God because that option is so much more pleasant than the alternative- that I have no purpose, I'm just a speck in the Universe. However I'm still searching for a set of beliefs that I can accept and live with, without feeling constrained by them. I have a lot of trouble accepting ideas that cannot be proven so a belief in an all-powerful being seems completely ridiculous, I need to work on the "faith" concept.

Ok, back on track. Stephanie Zastrow's post definitely made me think about religion in a different way. In class, we had mostly discussed the unifying power of religion, and barely touched on the dividing effects of it. It is impossible for me to imagine a world without religion so I cannot infer whether the world would be a "better" place without it. I feel like if people never even imagined that they had a larger purpose in life or something to aspire to, they would have much less reason to live. In that case, morals would be much less prevalent (non-existent?), and individuals would lead selfish, meaningless lives. Though I'm not really sure that would be the case (it is a difficult scenario to imagine), but a world without religion seems much less favorable to me than a world with multiple clashing religions. If only we could all realize that all beliefs are inherently the same so there is no logical reason to fight about "contesting" ones, the world would be great!

I'm not really sure where I ended up with this post, but at least now I have more to think about (is that a good thing?). Thanks Stephanie for the interesting post.