A follow up to the exorcism post

Hello again to anyone who reads this blog. It seems I'm focusing quite a bit on religion and how much I'd like for it to go away. Sadly there are people who insist that their religion is "true" in spite of an overwhelming lack of evidence, and in spite of the fact that there are so many mutually exclusive religions that claim to be the one true one. They were all written by people. Some of them just appealed to enough people that they lasted.

Anyway, I wanted to address something from my last post about the church that performed an exorcism to "help" a teen boy stop being gay. It's still infuriating, but the person who responded and deleted his two comments did mention something I have to correct my assertion about. Apparently, as of when I did my reading, homosexuality is not necessarily a biological trait. It supposedly can be, but isn't always. Or something like that.

But when I thought about it... I realized it really doesn't matter if it's biological or not. What right did those people in that church have to impose their way of thinking on that boy? The boy wasn't hurting anyone (to my knowledge). It's persecution. It's morally wrong what they did to that boy. One of the touted traits of this country is freedom of religion. And that's great. It's a protection against one group of people telling another group of people what to think. Having a different sexual orientation is a bit like religion in that respect. But for some reason the religious zealots from that church are allowed to mistreat a young kid in a way they would be furious over if done to them. If I went to their church, tied them up, and forced them to listen to me spout on about how their socially acceptable imaginary friend for adults (and by that I mean their god) is a farce that isn't any more likely than the flying spaghetti monster (I've linked it before... easy to find on wiki), they be pissed off. How can they be so hypocritical?

My guess is because their faith tells them that they're "right", and that the exorcism was a good thing where my explaining why their god doesn't exist is a bad thing.

I have friends who have deep faith that their religion is the "truth". I'll never understand why. Faith to me is something built up over time based on experience. I have faith in my parents, my brother, and my friends. I believe that if I was in trouble these people would help me. I know that I would help them. But I can't prove they would help me without it actually happening... so it's faith instead of knowledge. But having faith in a religion... in a god that has no better chance of existing than a levitating pasta creature... It makes no sense at all. And then to let it guide your actions like those people in that church did... That's what scares me about religion. Even if they are based on something that a goat herder made up thousands of years ago, people seem capable of believing strongly enough to let it make them do stupid things.

I think I understand why people want to have faith. If you believe in some powerful being that for some reason cares about what happens to you, and that everything happens for a reason, suddenly life isn't so hard. Things will work out. You don't have to worry. It's a comfort.

I just can't do it. Part of me wants to have faith in a higher power because I crave that kind of comfort too. But there's nothing in my life that has ever given me reason to even suspect that there is a higher power... except what religious people say, and that barely counts because they are just people... people who believe... and they don't have evidence either.

I'm definitely wandering around in this blog post. Sorry for that.