I think I’m a humanist

I had a religious revelation today in a WV training. Once again the training was about religion and once again it was mostly in Albanian, but the important thing was that I was able to put into words (and write quickly) what I believe while sitting there kind of listening to someone talk about the importance of Christianity in the work of WV, maybe not exactly what I was supposed to get from the training, but anyway, here it is:

I believe in people as teachers. And I don’t believe in God.

This is a hard thing to say. In our society, having a religion (any one, it doesn’t really matter) is kind of an expected thing. Maybe you don’t go to church (or mosque or temple or whatever), but you are still expected to have some sort of faith. But why? So let’s go back a few thousand years (or maybe longer) and think about some things. Imagine if you will, you are an ancient man and things are going pretty good for you. You’ve had a good hunting season, the crops aren’t doing too badly and suddenly you have a little bit of time on your hands. You start thinking. You look up at the sky and wonder why it is that pretty color of blue. You can make blue dye by smashing some pretty blue flowers. Maybe someone much bigger than you smashed some really big flowers and made the sky blue. And so, gods are born. Gods (with the s and the little g) were invented by people who had the ability to communicate and the brainpower to wonder. When they ran into things they couldn’t explain, they invented gods to explain them. I have a feeling that the questions start simple, like a child asks, “why does it rain?” or “where do babies come from?” These gods, for the most part, took the form of people and sometimes or animals (or often people that could change into animals or had animal traits). At some point, instead of all of these different gods with different jobs, some people started to combine everything into one all-powerful super God, who controls everything that can’t be explained.

Ok, so that makes some sense, explain things you don’t understand, one person easier than many, my God is better than your god etc. but then we get science. We (humans that is) are still trying to explain things that we don’t understand, but now instead of making up stories about beings controlling things, we can use scientific inquiry to try to see what is really going on. Why is the sky blue? . . . How did human beings come to be? Evolution from single celled organisms taking millions of years. Does science have all the answers? No not yet, but for me, I believe (there’s that word again) in science more than religion. I can do an experiment to test a scientific theory. I can’t do an experiment to test God.

But religion isn’t just about God. At some point (or maybe it has always been this way) religion became about two things: explaining the world and teaching lessons and values. In modern times, the lessons and values are taught through people and books (Jesus, the Bible). And here is where I think that religion still has a place. Jesus was a good guy. Maybe even the best guy. He was smart; I’m betting he was charismatic, he really knew how to talk to the people. He was only 33 and had a severely devoted following. I don’t have to believe in God to agree with most of what Jesus said (love thy neighbor, golden rule, etc.). So I can look at him (along with Mohammed, Buddha, Augustine, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King etc) as great people that have something to teach me about how to live.

So that’s where I am now. It’s funny really; Albania is the only country ever to declare itself Atheist. Religion here is an interesting topic- most of the people are not religious and it is hard to pin down beliefs from most people. That being said, it is the Christians here that have made me think about and reconsider my religious position (of course this is something that I have been contemplating and thinking about for a very long time). Maybe it is just that I have the time and space to think about some of these things I am finally coming to some conclusions.