Le Blog de Doruk Akan

This is the first entry in a three-part series on religion. The topics have no relation to each other but are things that have come to mind recently. In this here post, I want to address one of the major problems I’ve always had with religion. Currently, I have no ties to religion beyond the purely academic but this problem was one of those things that perplexed me when I was of a more impressionable age.

What I speak of is the sheer number of very different religions. It’s a pretty simple and obvious problem but one that seems to elude discussion. Most discussions I’ve had concern whether God exists with the assumption that it is the Christian God. This makes sense since over here in the US most people are Christian so that’s what’s on the plate. But that’s not the issue. The issue is what to make of the handful of major religions and dozens of other religions. Which is the right one?

I took a gander at the Wikipedia article on religion and it tells me that the so-called Religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) are practiced by about 50% of the world. Even if we lump those relatively similar religions together we are confronted with over three billion people who believe in something very different. And let’s not forget the hundreds of dead religions. For me, intuitively, the preponderance of religions is an argument against the validity of a single one.

I guess now that I think about it that’s a pretty obvious conclusion. But it’s still interesting to think about. I keep imagining a meeting between the Pope and the Dalai Lama where the two are civil on the mortal world but on the astral plane each thinks the other is completely wrong. I’m not too well-versed on the specifics of Buddhism but the Pope must certainly think his counterpart has booked a flight to hell since you can’t enter heaven without accepting Jesus Christ as your savior, etc. That means at least 67% of the world’s living population will be denied passage into paradise upon kicking the bucket - and that’s probably a low estimate considering the schisms and isms and latter-day saints of the carpenter’s religion.

What to make of all these choices? Well, you can hope you picked the right one and shake those pom-poms until the day you die. Or you can just say it’s all a crock and call it a day. I think all these choices show the absurdity and futility of it all but then again I count comic book characters among my heroes. It probably just comes down to how you were raised, which is another issue altogether.

So I wonder how Islam fits into the world-view of Jainism and if Peter, Paul and Mary ever imagined anything like Shintoism. Most religions address other beliefs if they came before - usually by decrying them as false - but of course fail to mention what might come after. Can non-believers be condemned for their ignorance or for simply living before the “truth” came to light? If you’re a true believer, let me know what you think of all this. I hope someone comments because there’s nothing more depressing than a plea for comments without any replies. However, I rest secure in the knowledge that I’ve had record-breaking traffic recently though it’s mostly been for misspelled searches of Scarlett Johansson.

As an aside, I’ll finish with my top four defunct deities that I wish were still here. They would be Ishtar/Astarte, Osiris, Apollo and Aphrodite. As for those who can remain in their graves, I don’t have a top (or bottom as it were) four but instead I’ll just nominate the entire Aztec pantheon. Those gods were some brutal sons of bitches.