Religious Life vs Non-Religious Life

In what ways is religious life different from non-religious life? If you ask this question to people like me who have been on both sides of this fence, the answer you get from each person will probably be different to some extent. Even though many of us follow the same paths in life, we each have our own experiences with those paths. Just because I followed Christianity for a number of years doesn’t mean I had the same experiences as everyone else who has followed that religion. For one thing, there are many different sects of Christianity, many of which have different ideas and visions regarding the correct way to follow Jesus and interpret scripture. Similarly, the fact that someone refrains from practicing any religions doesn’t mean that person will have the same experiences and opinions as everyone else who refrains from following a religion. For one thing, not all of these people label themselves in the same way. Some call themselves atheists. Some call themselves agnostics. For myself, I tend to go either with agnostic or non-theist, since I don’t believe in a personal god, but I am somewhat open to a deistic god of some nature, though I do think that even a god of that variety is quite unlikely. For those who may not know, a deistic god is a god who exerts very little if any influence over his creation. People who believe in such a god are called deists, and many of them believe that god created matter and energy, set the scientific laws into motion, and then let the universe work on its own. Not every deist believes this, but most deists hold beliefs that are similar to this in some way.

As I have already stated, the differences between religious life and non-religious life are pretty broad and subjective. Nonetheless, I have assembled a list of three ways in which my life is different now that I am a non-theist as compared to when I was a Christian. I am sure some people who have been down the same roads I have been down will be able to relate to this, and I’m sure many will have different stories to tell.

1. I now accept the Theory of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory. When I was a Christian, I rejected evolution. I believed in a literal interpretation of the creation account in Genesis, and I really did believe that the Earth and universe were created within a week’s time sometime within the last six to ten thousand years. As I broke away from my religious faith, I studied both theories a little more intensely, and I realized that they are both sound scientific models, and that to reject them is simply preposterous.

2. I have more respect for the separation of church and state now than I did when I was a Christian. During the peak of my Christian life, I could not understand for the life of me why school prayer had been “banned” back in the early 1960s. I frequently hoped the government would reconsider this and reinstate prayer time into the schedule in all of the public schools. When people pointed out that there were people in this country who weren’t Christian, and that it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to participate in a religious practice they didn’t believe in, I bristled. The way I saw it, Christians were the majority in this country, and the majority made the rules. I now realize that mandatory prayer has no place in the public schools, and that minorities do not have to be dominated by majorities.

3. The world seems a lot bigger and more interesting to me now than it did before. Since I have studied science a little more thoroughly, I have become more aware of how everything works here on Earth and in the rest of the universe. When I realize how vast, diverse, and mysterious the universe is, I feel amazed and honored to be a part of it. When I think of the billions upon billions of stars, planets, and galaxies that there are beyond our skies, I feel small, humbled, and empowered all at the same time. The fact that there are billions of galaxies beyond the small handful of celestial bodies that I see when I stand below the night sky incites a paradox within me. Initially, I feel very insignificant and meaningless. But at the same time, I am overcome with awe and amazement. To think that there are billions upon billions of galaxies beyond the sky I see above me, and that these galaxies are each filled with billions of stars and planets that are burning and orbiting as I go throughout my day-to-day business fills me with a sense of gratitude. Many of the stars I see are hundreds, thousands, or even millions of light years away. This means that when I gaze above the nighttime horizon, the faint light that is caressing my eyes possibly left those stars when the Black Death was ravaging Europe, when the Egyptians were building the Sphinx, or when the early hominids were living in Africa. Yes, I feel tiny, but it’s a pleasant tiny. I amount to less than a speck of dust in this cosmos that spans hundreds of billions of light years and contains nebulae, quasars, comets, solar systems, and possibly even sentient life forms other than the ones found here on Earth, and it’s an honor to be a part of something so immense, regardless of how miniscule that part may be.