Does Religion Matter?

Why is it that many people are so comfortable with religion? There are those who cling to it like a comfortable habit and those who reject it as the greatest example of human ignorance and evil. And there are, of course, many who are somewhere in between.

Does it matter?

I think that's equivalent to asking the question, "Do ideas matter?" Any reasonable, thinking person ought to realize that ideas are everything. Ideas are our realities: they inform everything we do from whether or not we change the oil in our car on a regular basis to what political candidate we vote for. We base our whole lives on our ideas about life.

What if our ideas about life are all wrong?

What if what we hold to be true is actually false? What if the whole of our lives has been a misguided and futile attempt at survival and we go to our graves empty-handed to find that there is another world awaiting us: one we weren’t ready for?

Does it matter?

If we merely enter the ground and our deaths become mere silences, than I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

But what IF we never die?

I would hope in that case, something would wake us quickly from our sleep, shake us like lightning, and shout loudly through a megaphone, “It does matter!”

“Our lives matter!”

I think then, we would be a little more interested in ideas, the truth, and learning how to live in reality.

I’m thinking of beginning this blog discussion (which hopefully doesn’t turn out just to be a discussion with myself (but that might prove to be helpful to me in any case:)) with religion. I start with religion since most science does not attempt to suggest that there is, with any certainty, a life beyond this one. If science has the final say, I ought to stop writing all together and figure out the best mode of survival: perhaps learning to enjoy my life more and get a full-time job to start. If science is not ultimate truth, than this surely would not have been a complete waste of time…