My level of faith is doubtful but optimistically realistic

Free your mind And the rest will follow –Free Your Mind/En Vogue

Precognition my ear.
–One Way Or Another/Blondie

Doubt.

Wrote a song about it.

Wanna hear it? Here it goes!

 

People often possess an unfortunate combination
of trust and gullibility. When your religious belief system
includes a mandate to accept without doubt that your God has a plan
for you and that you shouldn’t question it even if you
don’t know what it is
because it’s all too great and
wondrous for human understanding, then I wonder how much that lack
of questioning effects other aspects of life.

Ineffability my ear.
It isn’t only religion that asks us for faith–politicians and
military leaders often try for it as well. It doesn’t work well for me. If you want me to follow your plan, you’d best tell me what it is and also allow for
a good long question and answer period. Especially when the plan
appears to sometimes include distasteful items like the
Inquisition, Crusades, suicide bombing  and more than a smattering of
genocide and the burning of “witches.”

It’s particularly irksome if you believe in an omnipotent supreme
being–if s/he wanted absolute faith, s/he could presumably have built it
into us instead of making faith into some sort of heavenly litmus test. It is easier to understand not questioning a despot or
military leader. They are typically well armed in addition to being
cranky about the appearance of dissent. I suppose the deities do have the threat of some sort of Hell…or smiting. Does smiting influence people these days?

So I’ve decided that if I ever launch a religion of my own, it will be a cult of Doubt. If more people questioned…everything…I have a hunch things would be a lot better.

And there won’t  be a deity.

There will be Doubt and Common Sense.

And Whimsy.

I’m still working out the commandments, but #1 is:

Thou shalt not be a douche.

Catchy, right?

 

Question authority, don’t take “it’s part of my ineffable plan” as a valid response, and trust your hunch that if something is fishy it may be because someone left a dead trout in your trunk.

 

Instead of sacramental wine, we’ll have IPA. Some potential congregants are fussing about that, but I pointed out that following rules is not going to be a big thing in the cult of Doubt.

 

Except for not being a douche.

 

Commandment #2 will be that if people keep calling you an asshole, there’s a chance you might be. You should probably read commandment #1 again.

 

Oh!

 

I forgot.

 

There will be a lot of profanity in my cult.

 

And really good music.

 

Welcome all non-douchebags.

 

If I have my own religion, can I use the phrase “don’t question my authoritah, it’s part of my ineffable plan” when my boss wonders why I’ve done something?

 

 

 

 

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