I started my second Vonnegut last night - Cat's Cradle. It's just as fantastically formed as Sirens was, and I'm having trouble putting it down so I can work on grad school applications. The combination of this with the fact that I just finished reading a randomly chosen Anne Rice novel - Pandora (which included quite a bit of talk about religions and their foundation or purpose ) had me talking about religion as I wrote another personal statement for a school. I'm not really convinced that I should include this part in the final draft, and most likely I will edit it out, but this seemed like a good enough outlet for what I was thinking.
The texts of the religion in Cat's Cradle starts with one of my new favorite quotes - "All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies." What we humans call truth, when broken down, is always still questionable. A character in Cat's Cradle is challenged to state something completely true, she says, "God is love," and the response from her challenger "What is God? What is love?" OH, big questions, the one's we're aware of early, though not so much for me. I was more focused on "what is death?" before I ever thought about "what is God?" I was raised by parents who had no use for religion in their child-rearing process, but then again I've never really talked with them about it so maybe this is another lie I've told you. But either way, I wasn't aware of religion or 'God' until about the age of seven, and finding out that others believed in 'Him' didn't give me any kind of freedom or superstition to stop asking the big questions.
I like to think in some form, that I understand religion. I can understand the need for it. It gives answers to the questions we humans ask, the questions that make us fear our existence, and so we can then ignore those questions and go about the rest of our lives. My personal use for religions is in their power to create thought. They give me so much material to think of, write about, and mostly criticize. They seem more trouble than good in most cases, but then again a trouble-less world would be a boring world. I can claim I have no use for a god of any kind, that I am fairly convinced there is no way to prove anything with a consciousness larger than us exists, or that when I die I will die and all consciousness will end and that will be that; no matter how much I wish I could be eternal( if for no other reason than to watch with wonder the way the human mass will live in years to come) – but! Empty claims! I have use for these things here, to ramble and ponder and be another useless agnostic who's true love lies with the stories, with lies, and amazement over those who believe in them so solidly as to commit their life to something that may or may not be.
I still cling to the idea that the closest thing I get to a religious experience is when I'm reading a really good book. A book that makes me feel more human than I thought possible, or that makes me confront my humanity and thus my mortality and so on and so forth. Like Cat's Cradle, where I can shake my head and smile and know that we're all somehow the same, being fed and feeding others truthful lies of all sizes.
A finishing thought that could be a fact : I am a godless being! And yet I live and I am good. I am faithless in others' faith because it makes me angry, it makes others hate. I love it if only so that I may break its outdated rules and laugh in the face of words that hold no power over me. I give power only to words that make me feel more human, so I do not forget that I am mortal, so I do not forget to live.
Did you fall for it?
Back to reading …
