Oops, I'm a bad boy

Laurel from PG&B reminds us in her most recent post that Lent ends March 22nd.

Umm, I have given up nothing for Lent. Technically I'm Catholic, but really I just go to church on the major holidays because the rest of the family goes. I just don't think you need to do the whole church thing to be a good person. I don't think I need to go to mass in order for God to hear me. If he exists, then he's omnipotent and omnipresent as far as I'm concerned.

Basically my philosophy is this

"Live my life generally trying to do good things and be nice to people. If I've lived a good life then things will work out in the end."

I'm not qualified to know (or tell others) that there is or is not a God, that he is a certain way, or is created in a certain image. I''m not necessarily saying I do/don't believe, only that I'm not qualified to make that judgment. My belief / non-belief or level of belief has no bearing on my value as a person or my morality. One can be moral without being religious. I really don't care one way or the other so long as others don't act morally superior in the name of being "religious" or try to force their religion upon me.

Here's what I wrote about the subject in May 2005. I can't say my view has changed any since then.

And what is it about religion? Why is it that people feel the need to believe in a certain entity who is above all? Is it because they feel lost and insignificant going about their daily lives in this huge world, and that there must be some meaning, some purpose for them, that transcends the monotony of their lives? I dont mean to offend, but I personally, despite being a churchgoer with my family I never really saw the point. Yes I think there are some good lessons you can get out of sermons, but thats all just common sense stuff that makes you think and reevaluate your life and how you treat others, nothing more in my opinion.It just seems to me that religion stems more hatred, intolerance, war, genocide and other horrible atrocities than it does anything else. Think of all the conflicts started over religion, all the conquests where rulers proclaimed "divine rights" or how those same rulers oppressed those people by claiming those same "divine rights"