Often people will ask me, "What religion are you?" And I find myself for a loss of words. I am not Atheist. I am not Agnostic, I do believe there is a god. And yet in all my life I have never encountered an organized religion that followed my beliefs. So my answer, often enough, is simply that if I go to heaven, and God tells me that I cannot be there because I was not Roman Catholic, or that I was not Jewish, or that I did not believe the right things, then I don't want to be there. The idea that an all loving God would punish a mortal human for his or her sins on Earth, or for his or her beliefs by consigning them to an eternity of pain and torture in hell, I cannot bring myself to believe this, no matter how hard I try.

     Surely there is a God in one form or another, beyond the comprehension of human intelligence. For how else did the entire universe and world come into being? Where they just -always- there? I cannot understand that, and so I place my beliefs in a God, not in any specific religion. It has been said that through the years man has explained the unexplainable with a God. The ancient Indians of America and Asia thought of the Sun as a God because they could not understand it. When a cataclysmic event occurred it was said that someone had 'angered' a God. Perhaps my way of solving the problem of how the universe even exists, is believing that there is a God, but in the end I cannot possibly bring myself to believe that any God that would create a universe and bring forth life in it would then consign those beings to an eternity of pain for one lifetimes mistakes. An eternity. No sin is worth that, no mistake could merit such a punishment. Imagine that there is a mountain the size of Everest, and every decade a bird flies by and flaps its wings upon that mountain. By the time the mountain is eroded into a valley from the wind of this bird, Eternity would barely have started.

     Another problem I find myself confronting with Catholicism is the fact that I am to be held accountable for the sins of Adam and Eve. In my life I have committed many sins, lied and done things I should never have done. But I see absolutely no reason that I should be punished for the sins of a people that existed thousands of years ago. That is akin to saying that a man should be jailed because his ancestors had slaves. For an omnipotent, omniscient being such as a God, this seems to me a completely illogical thing to do.

     When I was younger I was afraid to question my belief of God, because I knew that if I questioned it I would lose faith in Catholicism. I am glad I did question it. What scares me is that there are so many people that never question their faith. There are so many people that never think about the existence of God, and never ask themselves exactly -why- they believe. Is believing simply because you are told to believe faith? Does submitting to the will of an organized religion constitute a worthy belief of whatever God there may be? I think not. Organized religion is a government for people's faith and mind. They tell us, "Believe in God." And we believe. They tell us, "Questioning is a sin! Complete and totally unquestionable faith is required or you shall burn in hell for all eternity." And we do not question. And we believe, without reason. Belief without reason is no belief.

     In the end it is my utter belief that organized religion for the most part does not promote a belief in God, but rather a blind following without any thought. I was never told on Sunday School to go home and think about why I was Catholic, or to ponder whether God actually existed. It seems to me that organized religion has done exactly the opposite of what it was intended to do, forcing people into a faith of nothingness, following simply to follow, believing simply to escape non-belief, and in the end never finding a religion that they could truly call their own.

     Another oddity that I find in organized religion is their need to amass as many possible 'believers' as possible, thinking only of bringing their faith to those that have not heard of it before. We send missionaries to Indian tribes to 'save' them, and in an utter sense of irony go about 'saving' them by threatening eternal torture in hell if they do not 'believe' in some particular system of faith. Why can we not simply show them our ideas, and describe why we believe the things that we do, and then leave it at that? Is there some charge for a person to press his or her faith upon another? Is it my sin if my neighbor does not follow my religion? This I cannot understand.