Reason Not Religion :: essays papers

Reason Not Religion Observations and inferneces from real life perceptions: My entire life I have been a Catholic and have attended Church regularly with my family, always believing in God and the stories and tales of the Bible as pure fact that happened long ago, and of Jesus being the savior, etc. Just this past month I attended a Presbyterian church service with my elderly grandmother in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The church was small to begin with, and only about one-third of the seats were filled. I would have to say that at least 95% of the people were all over 65, with very few young couples at all. My grandma made a comment on the lack of young people who attend the masses now, and she kept referring to the fact that recently less and less young couples and families ever attended church. At first I thought that this church would then seriously have to close its doors when the current majority of the parishioners died, but then I realized another aspect of human behavior and psychology. The characteristic that I see and hear so much about that many humans tend to possess and practice, is the fact that they become "closer to "god"" the older they get. Why is this? It is because of one of the same big reasons that we even have to have religion in the first place: fear about death and what happens to us afterwards. These people seem to be turning to the kind of thinking that inspired the dichotic idea of PASCAL^S WAGER. Even if these people were not very religious during their younger years, we can now see a trend of a large section of our country^s population starting to attend church more and more and become more "religious" as they grow older. What inspires this shift?--plain and simple, the fear of uncertainty. "QUESTIONING" ONES BELIEFS MUST GO BEYOND JUST WONDERING When I used to attend Church regularly their was a priest who was an extremely good speaker and extremely intelligent. Even though he was a Catholic priest, serving as the pastor of an extremely large church, he had the courage and brains to disagree with some of the rigid dogma setup and enforced by the Vatican. I remember one sermon he gave that has greatly influenced me since, and I am very happy I was fortunate enough to hear it. In this certain sermon he talked about his thoughts on it being good for teenagers and youth to question the existence of a God in their world. He talked at length about this