Why do you believe that?

I was wondering when I would come across a blog like this. The very statement you said about questioning what you believe in has been my issue with religion my entire life. From my experience, most religions teach you to have "blind faith", to not question but just do. My reasoning always has been because they don't even know what they are trying to teach everyone else. In my opinion, religion is all based on nothing but someone's interpretations. That's would prove why we have so many different religions and all of them claiming to be the "right" religion. If all your going to do is just float around in this life and not question things you want an answer to, then "God" would have been better off making you a snail, incapable of free choice and communication.

I'd never been to a Catholic Mass before I attended a dear friend's father's funeral service. I felt like an intruder at a secret club. Everyone else seemed to know when to stand, sit, or pray, as though they had gone through the contrived ritual hundreds of times before (many probably had).

I am a Buddhist, and therefore declined to receive communion, as did the three other members of my party. However, it was very awkward when the time came, as everyone else in our pew rose to exit to the center aisle and take part in the ceremony. The pew seemed designed to make those of us who were there merely to support a friend during his loss feel awkward when it came time to receive communion. Should we stand and merely let the others pass? Do we leave the pew and merely bypass the priest as he passed out wafers and then file back into the pew with the others? Of course, I'd like to believe it wasn't intentionally designed that way, but nevertheless we were put in an awkward position because we didn't know how to behave.

As for believing in the existence of God, I've never felt that an omnipotent, omnipresent being would care about the minutiae of human existence, even if he or she did supposedly create us in his or her image. Personally, I feel it's egocentric to assume a being of such power would take any more interest in humanity than a child would in an ant farm. Anything more than a cursory interest seems unlikely to me.

Far be it from me to say that my religion is "better" than anyone else's; we all have beliefs that help to define and shape our worldview. My problem with organized religion comes with the idea that one religion purports to be intrinsically "better" than another. I find Buddhism to be very pragmatic, and it jives with how I conceive of both my world and the spiritual world. Buddhism doesn't include a deity, only reverence for a wise spiritual teacher who sought to eliminate attachment and craving, and therefore suffering.

Buddhism encourages its followers to study and meditate and cultivate an understanding of themselves and others in order to free themselves from unhappiness and suffering. I have found that other religions have a tendency towards the dogmatic and discourage critical questioning of established religious tradition. The only truths in Buddhism are the four noble truths: life itself means suffering; the origin of suffering is attachment (i.e. - we suffer because we lose things to which we are attached be they people or property or what have you); the cessation of suffering is attainable; the path to cessation is the middle way between hedonism and asceticism - the gradual path to self improvement lies in living a life of moderation. Once we have learned to be free form all worries, troubles, complexities, fabrications, and attachments, we have attained Nirvana and a freedom from human suffering.

However, I am a deist in that I believe that somehow humanity (and seemingly humanity alone) was imbued with the ability to reason; it is because of this ability to reason that we suffer.