Religious Pigeon-holing
I’m an atheist and proud of the fact. You’ve got your right to believe what you want to believe, so do I. I believe in rationality, logic and empirical evidence. I do not believe in an Almighty cloud dweller who watches everyone’s move and passes down moral judgements. Every war ever waged has been in the name of religion. My distant ancestors weren’t atheists according to the census returns. Every one of them had a religion next to their names. I know, I know, it was the times, it was the form template, it was expected, but it makes me wonder if ALL of them actually really believed in any creator.
I know that many of them were deeply religious because my research has found them on church committees and giving land to churches and all that sort of thing. I’m supposing that the further back in the tree they were, the more likely they were going to be ostracised by society, or even burnt at the stake!, if they questioned the church authority in anyway. I know my most recent ancestors weren’t religious but still got married in churches. They quite happily embraced the life of free thought and belief in one’s own moral and ethical judgements rather than those carved on rocks thousands of years ago by illiterate middle eastern nomads.
What makes me wonder though is how anyone who went through what my convict ancestors went through could ever declare him or herself a true believer in an Almighty God. Wouldn’t you think when they were so desperate to feed their families in the cold relentless winters of misery that they stole a loaf of bread from a well-to-do person and were caught, beaten, chained and sentenced to death they would say “Who is going to look after my family now God? You never gave them anything before, and now you’ve taken me from them too. What pleasure are you getting in that God?”
Wouldn’t you think as they were held for months on end after their trials fearing that each footstep was the executioner coming to end their lives on a gallows pole they would say “Having fun with me yet God? Is my fear, my misery, my family’s anguish, my terror, my wasted body enough to make you smile yet?”
Wouldn’t you think when they were chained in a filthy underbelly of a leaking ship in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by other godforsaken people, torn from their countries, their families and their history, beaten for the slightest apparent flaw of character, fighting off sickness, fighting to stay alive and say “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”
Their belief must have been sorely tested. It must have been. I’m intelligent, my children and grandchildren are intelligent, my parents and grandparents were intelligent, my great grandparents were intelligent and we all got our genetic makeup from these ancestors. They must have questioned their beliefs and yet they were shackled by society into being a certain “religion” whether they liked it or not.
Forever and a day now, through the scant records that have survived, they are labelled as Catholic or Protestant or whatever and soon a pigeon hole begins to form in the mind of the researcher descendant and the hole gets filled with pigeon poop that smothers reason and stifles critical thinking about what that ancestor may have really thought about his life. As I sit beside the gravestones of some of my ancestors who were lucky enough to have a well maintained headstone, I think about what they would say if I asked them the question in the environment of today’s world where they are free to be honest. I also wonder if they eventually did get to Heaven and if they lasted long behind the Pearly Gates or got the quick trip down the stairwell to Hell.
After all, if my genetic makeup was stronger in them than in me, I’m assuming they would have walked up to God, looked him square in the eye, and gave him a giant knuckle sandwich for his efforts. I’d be cheering them on if they did.