Gary Kirby: "Journey Out of Religion"

Ultimately, the only journey we can make is the one we make for ourselves. I agree that the whole person travels, not just the head. Reasons and feelings, conscious and submerged, push the journey forward even as the world rushes into them. I have long been fascinated by the wonder and intricacy of everything. I fondly want to know it all, especially what is relatively true and right.

Born a Catholic from a Mother who said she would rather have me dead than ever commit a mortal sin, at about thirteen I began to look on the Catholic sacraments as baloney. This flat circle of bread is God? Dumb and impossible. And if I bit God I would hurt him even though my digestive juices will shortly dissolve him. Dumber.

I attended a Jesuit high school which was heavy on Catholic culture and weak on science. I suspended my anti-religious questioning only because the Jesuit scholastics were so brilliant. I reasoned they knew so much more than me.

At seventeen I made what I later found out was the Pascalian wager—I bet my temporal years against eternity, making the bet of my life that had the odds infinitely in my favor. I decided to enter the Jesuits, give it try, and if it was not for me, to leave.

Brainwashed. That’s the best word that describes my seminary experience. From eighteen through twenty-two I was given one side, the Catholic side, of everything; Catholicism was drummed into my being that belief was all: “If you think white, and the Pope says black, it’s black. You are to be like a stick in your Superior’s hand, and you stay where you are put, and move at his command.” Immersed into a thirty day retreat, I actually began to believe in the existence of the devil and his ability to take physical form (St Anthony). This period of my journey was brainwashing into belief.

At twenty-three I returned to that questioning I had as a thirteen-year-old. I now felt that my brain was as good as my superiors though my knowledge base was less; I felt confident to challenge my beliefs, which I now knew were geographical in origin (If had been born in Saudi Arabia, I would have been a Moslem). My questions were sequential: Is there a god? If so did that god communicate to humans? If so, was it through Christ? Was Christ God? Did he found a religion? Was that religion Catholic? Is the Catholic Church the same religion Christ founded? Do I belong in a military arm, the Jesuits, of that Church?

I spent an obsessive year on that god question during which my philosophy grades plummeted-- I considered all other pursuits irrelevant to that absolute question. Since my life-long bias had literally been baptized in Christianity I aggressively challenge the deity concept. After a year I realized I could spend my life snarled in this one question without getting certain resolution, so I listed all my pros and cons. Since the pro list was longer, I decided to believe rather than not believe so I could get on with the other questions.

Meanwhile the collar around my neck burned. It symbolized externally that I believed in Christ, while inside I did not know. The collar burned with a personal intensity because I detested hypocrites, and now I was now one of them. I left the Jesuits intending to answer the rest of the questions by beginning a doctorate in theology at Marquette, but with the blessing of my spiritual advisor, I dropped my hard intellectual approach and just ‘lived.”

Quickly I “lived” outside of Christianity. From this perspective I saw for the first time that my former efforts, seemingly open-minded, were really just efforts to reinforce my belief. This outside perspective was similar to my travel to Europe, which helped me to know the U.S., or the moon shot of the earth which boosted my astronomical vision. A fish in the ocean cannot know the earth, nor know the ocean either. Fortunately I was not a fish, and fortunately, I got an outside view. My empirical instincts as a thirteen-year-old were right—bread does not become god because of human words: hoc est is latin for hocus pocus, the hocus pocus of the culture I was born in.

Age twenty-six to current: religion has remained a tertiary social and historical interest. I consider all religions to have been culturally conceived, and in so far as the religions help their members flourish in health and happiness, I consider them to be positive. In general I think most religious leaders know full well the human element of their beliefs, and that too many of them are caught in power and greed. This knowledge and self-aggrandizement exacerbates the competition with other religions and increases the need of the leaders to protect and proclaim the preeminence of their beliefs.

My journey has been away from religion and into an empirical, scientific, questioning, searching, open-ended view of origins and ends. That journey has been one of beauty, awe, and wonder, and that is as close as I can come to satisfying my urge to know all. I will die not knowing, but I have sure had fun living, and I do not fear going into that unknown country from which no traveler returns.

While all our journeys are solitary, at times we hold hands and our journeys speak to each other. Perhaps mine might say to yours: Question! Open! Live! Know! Love! Grow! Accept! And say thanks! Thanks to whomever, whatever, and certainly to those precious people whose journeys you have intersected. Thanks!

Dr. Gary R. Kirby
http://www.GaryKirby.com
http://www.TheEarthAct.org