It is my sincere hope that in time, history will look back on religion with particular hatred for one sin that, to my mind, exceeds all the others, which is this:
Religion teaches us, at a very young age, that there is such a thing as destiny.
Which is to say, that the future is already written, or decided, or inevitable. Which, of course, it is not; it's illogical even to assert that such a thing is possible, even excluding the insult to human free will implicit in that assertion.
But we are told: This Will Come To Pass. And it's like an infection in your mind, eating away at your reasoning. When you come in third at the race, well, it "wasn't meant to be". When your first romance ends, there's "someone else out there for you". When you don't get the job, it's "only a matter of time" before something will come your way.
And moreover, it teaches us: everything you have is by the grace of God, or Fate, or Karma. Your athletic prowess? God's gift to you. Your intellect? A blessing. Your successes? A path set before you by the Lord.
And again: your failures are necessary obstacles, that you were meant to have. Are you sick? It is a burden placed upon you to teach humility. Were you born to parents who have grown to resent each other? Your loneliness is your curse.
We are taught, in short, that what we do is not the ultimate determinant of what we get; and this is often served part-and-parcel with a heaping dose of "you get what you deserve / are meant to have" and/or "in the end, everything will even out", often in terms of a post-mortem reward that there's no point in questioning the existence of.
Destiny, if such a thing existed, would rob us of the opportunity to be human. To be living beings that act on the world and bring about things we desire. If all you have was destined, then did you really struggle to gain it? Was the suffering and loss, the inevitable price of life, really meaningful if it is merely the material echo of a primordial dictum of fate, for all that sorrow cuts like a razor and despair drowns like oil?
It fuels...laziness. And cowardice. Even--no, especially in me, because for so long I wanted there to be fate. I almost physically craved some special destiny, an inevitability to existence that would validate everything I suffered and everything I missed out on enjoying. Even after everything, I still hear that little part of me, crying and beaten and perpetually disappointed, begging me to believe once again that every will be okay someday, because it just has to. Because I want to be special and I don't want to have to make things work out.
This same laziness is reflected in society. Readily, almost eagerly, it seems. Pollution will be figured out in time; so will oil shortages. If the world becomes so filthy that human life cannot exist on it, science will take us to a new world. The sick deserve their illness-it's a burden that makes them stronger, not an accident of genes or environment that means they need help. The poor deserve it, somehow.
Madness. Madness and cruelty. This belief that there's a purpose to everything removes from us the responsibility of empathy; it tears from us the duty of being accountable for the fallout of our actions. When banks fail, it is not bankers' children who go hungry...
There is no destiny, friends. There is no reward waiting. The heavens are empty; and all there is in the universe is what we make. So let us make good.
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