Hey guys currently I'm studying electrical engineering and I wanted to share some life experience I made even though I'm still young. You have to know some basic information about me. My origins are from Iran but I was born and raised in Germany living with my parents. I visited my family from time to time in Iran when I was a kid.
I don't believe in any godly powers, neither in magic or anything supernatural. It started when I was a kid and I was in Iran visiting my family. The part of my family living in Iran is religious but I had the luck that my parents never spoke to me about any religious topics if I didn't bring it up myself but I will come to that later.
The story in Iran started when I was about 5 years old. We were in a park with some stories about some religious guys and I suddenly started crying and my mother asked me :
"What's wrong? Why are you crying?" and I answered
"I can't believe in god that everyone here is talking about.....".
The exact response of my mother at that moment was just
"Do you say 'oh my god'?" I answered
"Yes" and she replied
"well then everything is fine".
That was my first confrontation with the topic of religion but it shouldn't be the last. Well at that time it was enough to calm me down but anyway I just couldn't understand why everybody is talking about that god and I felt ashamed because it seemed so normal to believe in a superhuman power. My uncle prayed 5 times a day, so did my grandmother and some other family members except my mother and father. I was still a kid and I think it is the best to just let kids be kids and don't make them think about religion in such a young age. It will just influence them in a certain direction. Im really grateful to my parents for just letting this religion thing out of my childhood.
So I just made myself not to care about this topic at first, well I was just a kid.
At some point in my teenage life some of my friends started to show interest in religion especially about islam. That's how I was confronted again with the same topic. They wanted me to share their interest and I got afraid because I just couldn't believe in this thing called god... At that time it was more about belonging to a certain group of people and to show that they are interested in things like that. All of my friends believed in god, they never questioned that.
I was old enough to use the internet and read some stuff and I ended up talking to a priest of a christian church and an Imam which a friend of mine introduced me to. Both had similar viewpoints but it ended in believing in a superhuman power and my last question remained the same. "Why do you believe in god?" the answers were the same, something about "It gives me power", "It makes so much sense", "Essence of life" and and and
For me it didn't make any sense to believe that there is something like a god. My parents played a big role in this viewpoint of mine. My father is an highly intellectual man who read a lot about philosophy (like Nietzsche, Kant,...) and as I said he never confronted me with the topic of religion. He just doesn't believe in a god, he never had a reason to do that but he wouldn't call himself an atheist, he just doesn't care about this topic.
Well I educated myself in the topic of religion and its origin. I wanted to understand why and where it came from. In the end it was clear for me and i made my opinion.
I don't believe in god, never have and I never will.
I think I never needed this kind of pillar in my life. For me it wasn't necessary to believe in something which doesn't really exist. It goes way deeper than believing that god actually exists. Maybe religion takes the fear of death for some people, so that the life and the short amount of time we have on this earth makes sense to them and that life isn't just a fluke. Religion is much more than just life and death. It gives people a certain set of rules which they should follow, so society will work. Over the last centuries these set of rules surely have changed, depending on what state people are currently living in, religion tries to adapt those "set of rules" to those certain situation. (for example: When a country is having a war certain rules can be interpreted on another way so war-actions can be tolerated). I think the mass of people need those rules and guidelines, but for a certain group of people, those rules derive from logic and there is no need for religion to "tell them".
Another big aspect of religion is to take the fear of the unknown by giving it a supernatural meaning. (Thunder -> Zeus, Sun -> Helius, im referring on the ancient gods). Sure there are things which humans don't understand yet and I am referring to the "yet" in this sentence. Religion makes sense as far as humans can't understand a certain topic and the fear over something unexplainable takes over.
2000 years ago those things were probably thunder, waves, tornados and so on. People gave those natural phenomena special meanings or a certain set of gods who create those unexplainable things (referring to greek again ;)).
Anyway the more the scientists can explain the deeper the questions about things we don't understand get. But I would say that this isn't the point where religion should start, furthermore it should be the point where the fun of discovering a new explanation starts. The point where scientists gather and try to find a solution without interference of any religious people.
This is just my short story about religion and some simple things I always had in mind over the last years. I have way more thoughts about religion, if you guys want me to write something else from my viewpoint just tell me. :=) I am always trying to increase my english skills and write some texts from time to time.
Sincerely our Engineer
Very informative, thank you for sharing your opinion!
I pretty much went through the same thing when I was a kid. My mother sent me to religious school, and they talked about God all the time, and also talked about all kinds of laws and traditions and religious practices you have to constantly be aware of. None of it made sense to me. I didn't see any morality in the teaching and following rules didn't help life on Earth, so how was it good? The whole unworldly aspect of religion it such nonsense to me. By the way, I'm also an engineer.