George Carlin, Religion, and Atheism

The late George Carlin was a funny guy. His comments were disturbing but for the most part right on. One of his most penetrating insights into religion was his comment that over 65% of the United States population believes that there is a super human being living up in the sky who looks down on us and judges our actions. If we are good he allows us to live with him. If we are bad he sentences us to an eternity of torture and suffering without any hope of escape. And he loves us.

I guess you can spin this many different ways. But fundamentally, this is the basic belief system of both Christianity and Islam. I'm not sure about Judaism. Their concept of heaven and hell is more ambiguous and subject to individual interpretation. Matter of fact the Jews have so many different interpretations of the bible that somewhere in their vast body of commentaries you can find any viewpoint you want.

I feel a little guilty when I criticize religion because it does have some value and I believe that there is a truth and valuable teaching behind all the great religions. However, there are too many aspects of fundamental religious beliefs that are at best problematic and at worst destructive and harmful to our progress.

First of all the emphasis on faith as the final determining factor of belief no matter how illogical or unbelievable are the religious stories undermines logic and science. This type of thinking holds us back and hinders our advancment. It is an antilife type of thinking, although it is ironically called "pro-life" I am not just talking about abortion . I am talking about the fundamental religious view that glorifies death and the after-life at the expense of enjoying ourselves in the here and now.

I also have a problem with the religious emphasis on worship of god. Why would an all powerful, all loving god desire worship? Why does he need to continually remind us of our helplessness and sinful ways. If he emphasized our need to be logical and see things clearly rather than believe based on faith in a supernatural world we would get all the humility we require. Also, why he is worried about putting other gods before him or worshipping other gods. It seems he should encourage us to be skeptical and check out all of his competitors or pretenders so that our ultimate belief would be a result of choice rather than fear.

Although religion in its present form has plenty of weaknesses, atheism makes even less sense. How can we be totally positive that there is no god.? We can't. The reason that atheism is growing in popularity is that the religious point of view alienates those who assume they are scientific and logical. The bottom line is that religion has not marketed itself well and has not delivered on its promises. The world has not gotten better because of religion. It has gotten better because of science and enlightened thinking based on a belief in the power of the individual rather than that of an unseen supernatural being.

None of this means that God does not exist or that there is not a MAPOL that can be investigated and discovered. We need to rethink our religions, probably eliminate all of them that believe they have the whole truth, and admit that at the present time we really don't know why we are here or how we got here.