Explaining Religion

Sometimes my mind drifts off. When this happens, the brain follows one particular thought train, but doesn't stick with it for very long. Soon after disembarking, my mindstuff suddenly regales itself with "Let's Go To The Mall", the song from the Robin Sparkles episode of How I Met Your Mother. That's probably because I've been watching endless repeats of those episodes in a similar fashion to the way E4 treated Friends for years. In light of this recent lifestyle, meaningful thoughts and thoughts in which I search for any meaning have been abruptly halted by twee bubblegum pop songs that proclaim how cool it is to go to an indoor shopping centre with friends.

I've recently conducted fabricated conversations between myself and my young nephew set in the future. Here, he plays the role of himself as a young teenager - his mind brimming with questions about life, the universe and everything - whilst I play the all-knowledgeable, wise, advice-giving uncle I keep kidding myself I'll one day be to him. In these hypothetical conversations, he's asked me about a multitude of topics: history, relationships, politics, religion. However, simply because of the fact that at this precise moment he is still actually a toddler, my way of speaking to him in the future in my head borders on patronising baby-speak. Yeah, that's right, you try explaining the concept of religion to a four-year-old whilst trying not to forget to take your robot pal with you when we go to the mall, today. Now tell me you don't have a massive headache.

Forget the toddler bit though. Imagine a human being, any human being. Actually no, better yet, an alien. An alien just about clever enough to understand our language, cultural practices and able to survive in the environment of our planet, yet not informed enough to know a single thing about the concept of religion. Now try explaining religion, without implicating anybody or any belief system as good or bad, right or wrong, and without causing offense to anybody or any belief system through any prejudices or scepticisms brought on by personal viewpoint. Explain religion. And you're not allowed to get a headache or to be sidetracked by the jingles in your head that keep vying for your attention.

I've found that the only way to describe religion comes down to two words: essentially stories. But you can't boil religion down to just two words when it just produces another mesh of thought-lines on top of that, and then another one on top of that. In its simplest terms, one group of people have a set of stories with morals and meanings, meanwhile another group of people have another set of stories with morals and meanings. Then another, then another, then some other ones after that, but by that point you're straying far from the realms of religion and slipping down the scale towards Tumblr-based fan-fiction. Seriously, if Christianity was a modern-day anime series, there'd be a plethora of tales and fan art depicting the on-again, off-again made-up relationship between Jesus and Moses, despite the fact that they lived in entirely different centuries. How the fuck did I get here?

With many different religions floating about and many different stories relating to each one, that well-educated alien or teenage toddler nephew in the future in my head who doesn't even exist yet but still totally exists will start to wonder something along the lines of "why don't we all just believe the same stories then?" or even the much more likely "so which religion is the right one?" And that's where we, as humans - as utterly stupid, simpleton humans - fall down. There is no right answer as far as we can ever be concerned. Even if there is a right answer there's no possible way that we moronic, Earth-bound, thick as absolute pig-shit humans could ever find out, or even come up with the means to find out. We humans have done some wondrous, genius things with our time here. Medical advancements, technological progression, intricate storytelling; they're all grand achievements from our fellow kind, but there's only so far we can go, and proving religion is well out of our puny, pathetic reach.

Since we have no way to prove our religious ideals, we then have to resort to convincing each other that we're right and everyone else is wrong. Humans are stubborn and fickle like that and it's at this point I start to blame the kettle. I was in the kitchen at the time I had this imaginary nephew conversation. This stubbornness and borderline ego-centricity that we are right sometimes overspills, and depending on your viewpoint of your religion - whether the stories are a set of metaphorical and symbolic messages to stick by for harmonious living with your fellow man, or a set of literal instructions to be fundamentally stuck by to the letter - this overspilling of righteousness manifests itself as conflict. And boy, do we clever, stupid, genius low-life humans know how to do conflict?

You then have to inform your alien or made-up teenager about "the bad man" and "the good guys" in your most patronising toddler-talker-toer voice. But wait, didn't I tell you you can't use terms like "good" and "bad"? Look at it from the opposite side. Sure, for some, religion leads people to acts of public atrocity, but as far as they're concerned, they're doing right by their stories. Who is anyone else to tell them they're the bad guys. Nobody's right or wrong, or good or bad here. Everyone follows morals and ideals for harmonious living, but they also have conflicting ideas about the stories and are too stupid enough to realise that's why they hate each other. And absolutely none of this can be described easily or effectively to any child. Each person has to grow up in the world, follow whatever's taught to them and - providing they can keep their mind open a sliver - discover the bigger picture as a young adult and try, feebly, to get their head around it without causing themselves any undue stress. Fucking sink.

Hopefully, the kids will see the beauty of life and that, ultimately, religion shouldn't matter. That's not to say religion is stupid and I absolutely hate it and everyone in the world is wrong except me. Religion is extremely important in the ways that it keeps people together and gives them a sense of purpose and a set of codes and ethics to live by so that they can treat people as actual people without pissing everyone off too much. But religion isn't the be-all and end-all of us. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important thing is people and the sense of goodness that they share with each other; sharing good times with good company, having fun in a wide variety of places and situations, whether at home or at a popular hang-out spot.

Because, at the mall, having fun is what it's all aboot.