Reflections on Religion

Religion fascinates me.  For much of my life I have been a "spiritual" person.  For much of my life a belief in something out there has sustained me.  And for much of my life, I've been subject to being beaten over the head (literally and figuratively) by bad followers of good religions.  My brothers and I were raised to believe in a sort of "Santa God" who would grant your every wish if you were good enough (and of course our parents told us that being good enough was doing everything they said without question- considering that one of these things was getting beaten with a belt and NOT crying- it was virtually impossible to be good enough).  But if you slipped up even once you were going to hell and God couldn't wait to send you there.  I know it's crazy to hear that now, but when you are a child and it's your parents are telling you this, you believe it.
In college I was exposed to the abstract thinking of philosophy and had found my match.  A place where no thought was taboo.  A discipline that not only welcomed my "weird" thinking (which we now call "outside the box" thinking) but praised it.  Although I was going to a Jesuit college (yay Loyola Marymount) I was encouraged to learn about different religions and schools of thought.  I suddenly realized that perhaps Christianity wasn't the best religion out there for me.  Or if it was, perhaps there were things I could get from these other religions that would help me to be a better person, to understand things differently. 
I won't go into my complete religious history and all the ins and outs (that's for another blog) but I will say that I have come around to the atheist side of things.  For many monotheists I know this sounds like an empty existence, however, for me, it really has enhanced my life.  I am able to take something from all the world's religions and incorporate them into my existence for the express purpose of being a better person.
As a result the patchwork of my spiritual quilt is made up of the strongest and the most beautiful pieces of the religions the world has to offer.  If it were a work of art, it would far surpass the Mona Lisa and the Sistine Chapel.  I don't need a deity or an afterlife to make this happen either. 
Freeing myself from the confines of religion, has liberated me.  The biggest question I get asked by religious people is "aren't you afraid of what happens in the afterlife"?  And the answer is "no."  I know that if there were a universal God, there would be only one religion that would have been there from the beginning.  I also know that an all loving deity would be more concerned with being a good person that its own ego.  Believing in an invisible and unavailable God would not be a mandate.  In addition, the idea an all powerful. all knowing God were to get so angry at a person for not believing is what is somewhat of  a logical anomaly.  What I mean is, anger comes from fear, and fear comes from weakness. Therefore an angry God is a weak God and if God is angry at me, then that means that I must be a threat to God in some way which means that I am stronger than God which means that even if the original premise were true, God probably wouldn't have the power to send me to an eternity of damnation anyway.  So the answer is, no.  I'm not afraid of the afterlife.
And really, it's been my experience that the people who judge other people for not believing exactly as they do are the same ones whom I mentioned above- the ones that are bad people in good religions.  The fact of the matter is that there is more empirical evidence to support that God doesn't exist than supports the idea that God does exist. A good religious person acknowledges the fact that belief is hard for rational people to accept.  A good religious person acknowledges that they too have their own doubts, but that they believe anyway. 
Religion should make it easier for a person to be good, not easier for a person to be forgiven.  I'm not slamming the idea of forgiveness, as I think its a really good concept.  However, I've noticed that bad religious people tend to only forgive themselves.  Good religious people forgive before its even asked for.  Good religious people have a really well balanced life.  Their spirituality enhances their day to day existence and helps them to be happy. 
Bad religious people seem to be angry all the time.  They are easily offended by everything.  It never ceases to amaze me the number of Christians who fall into this category.  They are offended by a bad word or even the hint of sex.  The way I see it, if my Lord and Savior were nailed to a cross and left to die, and I got offended by anything less than that, I would be letting those little things have more significance to me than that sacrifice.  That sacrifice should be the most offensive thing to me.  These little things can't and shouldn't hurt me.  But then, that's probably why I wasn't a very good Christian.