How can I come to understand the concept of religion?

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It took me a long time to understand religion. A long, long time. There’s still a lot I don’t understand about it.

What I do know about it is that it’s something you’re taught from an early age, and it’s either taught well to you or it isn’t. These days, most people aren’t taught it very well at all. That means you have to either want it yourself or not. If not then you become atheist / agnostic.

If you’re taught well, then you come to an early understanding of the limitations of religious thinking. That it’s not substitute for logic, reason and science. Some believers disclaim science but those are by far the craziest, very rare.

It’s easy to think that because some believers disavow evolution or climate change, that they disavow science altogether. That’s not true, these are political positions and not questions of dogma. In the medieval and Renaissance periods, the Christians were also the scientists. Christianity is not opposed to science, but it wants a holistic version of it. It’s understandable, if hard to really swallow.

Religion is a vehicle for spirituality. You can put your spirituality into many different vehicles, but religion is a common one. Lots of people just believe in God or whatever but never go to church. The term for this is ‘spiritual but not religious’.

Religion is putting your spirituality into the forms of a taught belief structure. Instead of believing in a Higher Self, or the generalized concept of reincarnation, or the Goddess, you believe in Jesus. They all serve the same purpose under the hood, it’s just if you choose Jesus, you can draw from a great deal of extant literature and debate and stuff about the nature of this form of spirituality; you don’t have to do it all yourself.

A lot of atheists come on here and are like, “I’m atheist yo, how do I live my life????” Most atheists just take the values they grew up with and use those rather than think rigorously about using new ones. I like to say that secular humanism is just Jesus’ teachings without all that silly holey hands business. They just pretend they came up with all that themselves. That’s why I say that atheism is just another branch of Christianity, they look to me exactly like Christians who don’t go to church.

I am not religious. I’m considering going back to church, but I haven’t decided that it’s necessary. My own beliefs are very different than most Christians. But I’ve recognized that beliefs are analogous, I can talk about my beliefs in the language of Jesus and nobody’s going to ding me for it. If I ever get to the point where I seriously don’t think I can find a wife, I’ll go find one at church. But I’m not ready for that yet. I’m a weird in-between. I have Christian values, but not Christian beliefs. If I worked at it I could make my beliefs Christian. But it’s work and I got better things to do.