A Skeptic In Time

At dinner the other night we paused before eating - held hands around the table in silence as the host offered a prayer giving thanks and asking for guidance, not only for our own lives, but for our nation.

I'm not a religious (spiritual in a way, yes) person, so the moment was rare for me in adult life - I had spent a childhood not missing an Anglican Sunday, even serving as altar boy for a time. In the days since, I've been more the skeptic, and in many cases - gay marriage, the reproductive rights of a woman, racial barriers - I've found religious practice more about dogma than kindness.

But what strikes me again, as it always does, is the sense of comfort, confidence - even a serenity - belief can give to a person, to a family, a congregation. I remember from youth that sense of community every Sunday in the social time following services. And the music - often extraordinary.

All of this is in mind reacting to the use of religion by a Virginia clerk to deny marriage licenses to same gender couples or, put another way, using religion as an excuse not to carry out duties she had sworn to perform, as a reason to ignore court orders, as a justification to defy the Supreme Court of the United States.

Absurd. 

Religion cannot be used to pick and choose which portions of a publicly funded job an elected official will carry out. It cannot be used to unlawfully discriminate. In short, it cannot be used as a fig leaf to cover up bigotry. The clerk in this case could as easily refuse a wedding license to a mixed-race couple, saying her religion forbade such a union.

Absurd.

And this is my own issue with religion - its dark side, what it can justify in the name of faith, in the distorted twisting of words written down centuries ago.
The denial of a wedding license is one thing, but see as well - in the name of faith - human slaughter, beheadings, sexual enslavement, war.

I'm still drawn now and then to the comfort and community I remember, to the help of a symbolic oar of faith on our turbulent life journey. I greatly respect the faith, and resulting generosity, of those who led that prayer the other evening.

But I remember the rest as well - and so these days I'm much more with that great skeptic, Michael Shermer:

“There are many sources of spirituality; religion may be the most common, but it is by no means the only. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades.”
― Michael Shermer

Religion, then, as I believe, is not the only path to a kind and charitable and informed human life. 

Not at all.