Reason Not Religion :: essays papers

Reason Not ReligionObservations and inferneces from real life perceptions My entire lifeI shoot been a Catholic and have attended Church regularly with myfamily, always believing in God and the stories and tales of the Bibleas pure fact that happened long ago, and of Jesus being the savior,etc. erect this past month I attended a Presbyterian church service with myelderly grandmother in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The church was small tobegin with, and only near one-third of the seats were filled. I wouldhave to say that at least 95% of the people were all over 65, with veryfew young couples at all. My grandma made a comment on the lack ofyoung people who attend the masses now, and she kept referring to thefact that recently slight and less young couples and families everattended church.At first I thought that this church would then seriously have to closeits doors when the current majority of the parishioners died, only if thenI realized another aspect of human behavior and psycholo gy.The characteristic that I see and hear so much about that many a(prenominal) humanstend to possess and practice, is the fact that they become closer togod the older they get. Why is this? It is because of one of thesame big reasons that we even have to have religion in the first placefear about death and what happens to us afterwards. These people seemto be turning to the kind of thinking that shake up the dichotic ideaof PASCALS WAGER. Even if these people were not very religious duringtheir younger years, we can now see a trend of a large section of ourcountrys population starting to attend church more and more and becomemore religious as they produce older. What inspires this shift?--plainand simple, the fear of uncertainty.QUESTIONING ONES BELIEFS MUST GO BEYOND JUST WONDERINGWhen I used to attend Church regularly their was a priest who was an extremely easily speaker and extremelyintelligent. Even though he was a Catholic priest, serving as the pastor of an extremely l arge church, he had thecourage and brains to disagree with some of the rigid dogma setup and enforced by the Vatican. I remember onesermon he gave that has greatly influenced me since, and I am very happy I was fortunate enough to hear it. Inthis certain sermon he talked about his thoughts on it being good for teenagers and youth to question theexistence of a God in their world. He talked at length about this