I have always been a little bit more sensitive to the details and implications of how things work.  I don’t take much of anything lightly, and I never stop digging until I understand the actual root cause of whatever I may be investigating.  In my profession this has served me well, but not entirely.  I am successful in my attention to detail, but occasionally resented for my perceived tendency to over-explain, much like I may be doing now, but to me, it’s all relevant, so I will beg for your forgiveness and your continued patience.

Religion is another matter.  My need to understand causality in such intimate terms has been the single biggest influence in my alienation from religion and that is precisely due to the fact that I understand religion to be a terrible template one which to build a person.  My first major revelation was the dissonance between what the church taught me about sex, and what sex taught me about sex.  Through continued investigation, it is no surprise to me that the Christian church is responsible for producing more sexually deviant behaviors than any other force I could name.  You see, through their lack of understanding the nature and application of sex, their philosophy on the matter is accordingly flawed.  Sex is bad.  Sex is sinful.  Sex should be avoided at all costs.  Sex is forbidden until you are married and then even in some traditions, it is encouraged to only engage in sex for the sake of reproduction.  Contraception of any form is abominable.  You get the picture.  They completely ignore the biological factors involved in sex, and our psychological compulsion toward it.  They ignore the benefits, and the need for sexual health to be a factor in our relationships.  Good sex is essential for a healthy relationship, but it simply isn’t probable in a union between two virgins.  Sex is complicated and potentially volatile if the chemistry is off even at all.  Given the placement of sex in Maslow’s list of psychological needs, you would think that it makes sense to ensure that sexual compatibility is established only prior to making an eternal promise to spend the rest of infinity together.

So my question is, how has religion effected your perception of the world?  How has it crafted your psychological machinery, and how well does that machinery work with reality?

This brings me back to the title.  Why do I feel religion, more specifically Christianity is so narcissistic?  There are a few beliefs that contribute to this perception but none more so than the concept of the Atonement.  That Jesus died on the cross so that we could be forgiven of our sins and enter into heaven and eternal bliss with our maker.  At first glance it is an enticing proposition, but it is unfortunately and ultimately catastrophically inhumane.

Of course the first issue is that it didn’t work…  When you understand the concept of sin in the context it was created, sin was the cause behind a person or community being subjected to God’s wrath.  That wrath was defined by 3 main factors, disease, famine, and drought.  I was personally surprised to find in my last read through of the old testament that there really isn’t any mention of eternal hell or heaven.  When they are talking about the coming of a messiah to free the world from the bounds of sin and remove them from the execution of God’s wrath, their vision most likely consisted of being disease free, well fed, and having plenty of water because those were the only things that really concerned the people of this early farming era when these laws were written.

Of course we found that their understanding of the causes of disease, drought, and famine, were completely fallacious.  It makes sense that they would migrate their understanding of the consequences of sin to something a little less tangible.  You can’t control a group of people when they can reason around your laws with so much ease as medicine, soil nutrition and meteorology provided.  But even this is beside my point.

My reasons for resenting the concept of the atonement is because it only considers the interest of the sinner.  This is wildly pointless for the betterment of humanity.  What’s the point of the savior that can only promise to rescue people from their own guilt?  Why does the savior not serve the function of making the victims of the sinner whole?  Does it make sense that, if a Christian rapes a woman, who then becomes sexually frigid due to PTSD, thus resulting in the dissolution of the marriage and destroying the family, that God’s primary concern is with whether or not he can forgive the rapist?  Again, there is absolutely no consideration for the victims in this scenario.  People are allowed to sin, and absolved of any threat of punishment barring a few special super bad sins, but for the majority, every sin you commit is ideologically ok, because the SINNER is able to repent, regardless of whether or not it is even possible to repair the damage they have done.  Christian salvation is focused solely on personal salvation, and because of this, it cannot be expected to encourage humanitarian cooperation.  It is fundamentally selfish and so can only serve to promote a pattern of destructive beliefs and behaviors.