Mine’s religious. For a long time I was on the fence about whether or not a deity existed. And one night I was thinking about just how big the Universe is – more stars in the galaxy than we could imagine, more galaxies out there than we will ever see, and Earth being an insignificant speck in a place much more grand and empty than we will ever know. And when you combine that with how many religions have ever existed, among all people in all places, who all thought they had the answer about why this Universe came to be. What possible chance could one tiny tribe’s desert god have, among all the others, of explaining the vastness of which we’re less than an eyeblink?
And, assuming that there is a deity somewhere out there, why would they care about us – ants on a crumb! – killing each other over the name we call the deity, the rituals that we’ve decided It wants, and what we do, eat, and say every day and think in our tiny heads? Would it care who we vote for for President, what we do to our neighbor, or if there’s one more or fewer ant born on the crumb? Very little chance that any of it matters, that’s what I think. It became very clear, all at once, that deities are human concepts that try to explain the universe through the lens of their own culture, history, and prevailing ethics and food safety practices. I was no longer on the deity fence.
Please, let’s not turn this into a debate about religion… carry on with the Epiphany stories, mmmkay?