The real reason I left religion

[Frozenwolf150]

This isn't a hate speech against organized religion.

I had the rare opportunity to sit in on the high holy day services at an Orthodox Jewish temple, which was part of a religious school. Like some people, I knew Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the days public school closed in September for the sake of the large Jewish community living in the area. From my comparative religion studies, I knew Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement for solemn reflection and prayer. Yet there's much I still didn't know, that could only come with attending the actual services in person. Several moments stood out, as did teachings and insights into how the Torah is used and what the original authors intended. It's a lesson worth repeating: to take it literally is to miss the point.

For starters, Jewish prayer isn't mere conversation. It's supposed to express beauty in poetic form, or it doesn't count. Some will sway or shuffle in prayer, in order to involve the body, not just the mind and voice. True intent and emotion should come through, in a sense of song and excitement. This is why verses and themes are repeated, and why prayers are symmetric in structure, to get the point across. Many Psalms are used in Jewish services. These are unmistakably poems. Yes, they have their share of hard passages, but the literal details are not the point. The Jews were a slave race struggling to preserve their cultural identity, so the Psalms celebrate their liberation from slavery and their ability to overcome adversity.

The central theme of Rosh Hashanah is to declare God as King. This is not meant in a negative way, to say that God dominates everything like a tyrant. Rather, it means the human institutions that seem to control your life do not have the final say, whether it's a corrupt government, a jerk of a boss, or even your religious leaders; because God is ultimately in charge. People who think they can run your life and push you around need to remember that they answer to God as well. For the Jews, who were constantly being conquered and enslaved by larger civilizations, this was an important lesson in their religious tradition.

A particular story from the Torah that defines Judaism is the binding of Isaac by Abraham. This is another hard passage, and rightly so, because it's downright awful that a father would ever think of killing his own son. However, the lesson can't be derived from the literal details. God was claiming the greatest possible sacrifice from Abraham, and did not promise to raise his son afterwards, therefore it was not meant to be an easy decision. To be Jewish is to be willing to find something valuable worth sacrificing in one's own life. God isn't literally asking that people sacrifice their children, that was hyperbole. Rather, he's asking them to sacrifice smaller things, like time, patience, and effort. This could come in the form of acts of kindness, visiting the sick, comforting the mourning, you name it. The point of the story is that Abraham withstood a test beyond human comprehension or emotion. The story is meant to inspire Jews to find someone who needs help and help them.


Those were the lessons I took away. The services went on for three hours. This week I attended the Yom Kippur services, and this is what I learned.

Yom Kippur is a time of dispensation of vows and pledges, which takes the form of the prayer of Kol Nidre. This applies more to the future than the present. We are all fallible and will often make promises we can't keep. Ideally, any vows are supposed to be fulfilled right away, similar to the commandment against swearing oaths in vain, but this isn't always possible. The purpose of this is tied into the central theme of Yom Kippur, which is atonement and forgiveness for all, including strangers. All people are at fault, which is akin to Christian teaching that all have sinned. This could be construed as a form of equality before the eyes of God. A common misconception about Yom Kippur is that it's meant to be a sad holiday, but this isn't necessarily true since it's a time of asking for forgiveness, which should be cause for happiness.

When did Yom Kippur start traditionally? It was the day God forgave his people for the sin of the golden calf. According to Judaism, after Moses broke the tablets, he returned to the mountain and prayed for forty days for forgiveness. God had at first vowed to destroy the Jews for their sins, but Kol Nidre let him annul this vow. It's interesting to note that in Judaism, God can feel regret and change his mind. It's almost as if they acknowledge God is fallible. Similarly, people change over time and may regret vows made in error. Yom Kippur allows for a fresh start; you are forgiven, and you are free from the bonds of present and future oaths.

The service ran for two hours; the real Yom Kippur service is on Saturday, over the full course of the day. This brings me to the real reason I left religion, or rather, why I didn't voluntarily seek it out again after my exposure to it had lapsed. Religious services are boring. They just go on and on, repeating the same things over and over, and my mind has places it would rather be. I fail to see how organized religion is capable of whipping people into a frenzy or stirring a passion inside them. All I see is monotony, and that's why I wander my own path.

 

[Dinwar]

I agree about the facts, but not the conclusion.

On another forum, someone asked "If you ran a cult, what would it be like?" I have had a lot of time to think (a job hazard for a PRM), and this was one of the things that crossed my mind. I realized that, if I ran a cult, it would more or less be a geology department set in a Gothic cathedral (I've always loved Gothic architecture). Well, that--and the sacraments would involve beer and a fifteen minute question period.

99% of science is tedium. No one knows this more than someone who's spent the last six months trying to control said tedium, as I have. I currently have instituted three different forms for people to fill out for each bag of dirt, just to ensure that should something go wrong we know how to fix it. This is directly analogous to the boring tedium of the religious observances you mention. Three hours at a religious service? Try 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, for months on end, looking through sediment for rodent teeth sometime. Religion has NOTHING on science for being boring.

There's a critical difference, though. Scientists have the dedication of monks, but the results are far superior to anything monks recieved. We devote our lives to our calling, in the way that monks are supposed to devote their lives to their's. We endure the tedium that would make monastic observances appear restful (again, I know--I've attempted to mimik a monastic routine as a form of rest)--because we know that it's only through the tedium that we achieve the rapture of truly understanding the world in a way that no one outside the field can grasp. Have you ever been struck absolutely dumb by a simple rain? Have you ever been moved to tears by the sight of a growing crystal? Have you ever stood in a in pure reverance, holding a simple rock? Have you ever felt the full weight of the years, and of your full lineage, while holding a scrap of an ancestor so old that the very concept of ancestry breaks down? If so, you've grasped what religion is a tentative step towards. THAT is the sacred. The chair of my alma mater put it best: "If this doesn't move you, get out. This is a religious experience to geologists." And he was right. If you can't see the divine in the mundain, science--the study of reality itself--isn't a good fit for you.

G. K. Chesterton once pointed out, rightly, that in any activity worth doing there comes a point where no man in his right mind would do it (he lived in a different era; please forgive the mysogeny, it's from him, not me). Boredom is good, in my opinion--IF it serves as a culling process, and those who survive it are those truly devoted to the truth, to reality. Religion is, as I said, a tentative step in that direction. Still, the boredom isn't sufficent grounds to damn it. Science has tedium that will put any religious observance to shame. We also have truths that would make any religious experience look like a pale shadow.

I guess my point is that, as I said, boredom isn't sufficient reason to abandon anything. Boredom is necessary to achieve the level of understanding necessary to truly appreciate the divine. I do, however, agree that religion is only a tentative and misguided step in that direction. The real issue is that religious observances tend to be needlessly boring; in contrast, scinetific investigations tend to be boring, but with a purpose so pure and, to put it bluntly, sacred that only the most devout can endure it. Religion speaks of sacred fires and separating the wheat from the chaif; science turns boredom INTO the sacred flames the remove impurities.

Of course, I'm coming off of six months in the field, and a fair amount of beer. So I'm waxing poetic, and probably not making much sense.

 

[Pixel42]

Made sense to me. Thank you for that, Dinwar.

 

[Pup]

I guess my point is that, as I said, boredom isn't sufficient reason to abandon anything. Boredom is necessary to achieve the level of understanding necessary to truly appreciate the divine. I do, however, agree that religion is only a tentative and misguided step in that direction. The real issue is that religious observances tend to be needlessly boring; in contrast, scinetific investigations tend to be boring, but with a purpose so pure and, to put it bluntly, sacred that only the most devout can endure it. Religion speaks of sacred fires and separating the wheat from the chaif; science turns boredom INTO the sacred flames the remove impurities.

I disagree that science (or the similar social science I do) is boring. It might be boring for those not intrinsically interested, but spending eight hours a day for days in a row in a library looking through microfilm trying to find one clue isn't boring, if that's what you enjoy. Literally, I have never been bored by history, even doing things that would superficially appear to be boring.

I wonder if religion is similar, for those who "get it." They would be bored looking for some minutia that seems unimportant to them, but somehow they actually enjoy the sensation of long repetitive services.

I dunno. I see enough "religious" people sleeping through sermons or trying to figure out how to skip church that it clearly doesn't work for all of them. But there must have been some underlying appeal to some segment of the population, or else long repetitive church services would have died out long ago or changed to something else to keep attracting an audience.

I wonder if "boring" is more a factor of the person than the activity, and what makes something "not boring" is the correct match between person and activity, rather than the activity itself.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

The real issue is that religious observances tend to be needlessly boring; in contrast, scinetific investigations tend to be boring, but with a purpose so pure and, to put it bluntly, sacred that only the most devout can endure it. Religion speaks of sacred fires and separating the wheat from the chaif; science turns boredom INTO the sacred flames the remove impurities.

I think that's the difference right there. If you have a genuine interest in your cause, then it's not boring. It wasn't my religion; nothing is. I have nothing invested in it, therefore the boredom was entirely without purpose. Apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way, as I was warned by (Reform) Jewish friends, be prepared to be bored.

It's likely that these particular religious services bored me because they were a mismatch to my personality. I had once attended a Reform Jewish Shabbat service that was full of singing and instrumental accompaniment and I enjoyed every last minute of it. The Orthodox one I attended last night however was full of older people who acted like they didn't want to be there either. The chapel looked like it had a seating capacity of roughly 400, but only 1/10th of that number actually showed up. It seems I'm not the only one who wanted out.

One person's favorite pastime is another person's chore. There are a lot of people who enjoy going for a drive, but I hate getting behind the wheel. And to be fair, there are things I enjoy doing that others would find boring. Religious services aren't for me, but they do feature a fair amount of song and poetry, and I do like writing poems. So maybe there's more common ground than I originally thought.

 

[kellyb]

I found religion riveting when I was a theist. Actually, it was similar to the "zone" (flow?) I sometimes get into now searching google scholar, perfecting search terms, and tracing back references when I get transiently obsessed with some scientific question.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I've heard it said that there are two things which can put someone in a suggestible state - whipping them up into a frenzy, or boring them rigid. Of course, the only references for this I can now find are hypnosis manuals from the 19th Century, so take with a massive dose of salt. If true, though, then it might help explain why these are the two types of religious ceremony which have survived down the years.