A Reason for Religion

It was a beautiful day at the Manila Memorial Park in Dasma. The sky was of a very clear blue, and the clouds, seeming so near in that relatively high area, were moving in a dreamlike quality, obscuring the noon sun once in a while as huge shadows passed over us now and then. It was a beautiful day for mourning. A beautiful day for one last remembrance. A perfect setting for moving on.

Rotating sprinklers fountained the green uneven land where the dead lay with a fine sheet of water. The sun was intense on my head and on the back of my neck, but a strong wind was blowing so I didn't mind much being out of the shade. I was looking away from the people, and with the park empty, I had an unhindered view of the countryside - country, if only compared to Manila where I stayed my whole life. For that view, any amount of sun is worth it.

In my previous entry, I thought that I wasn't a family person. But I realized that I really am, more than my other relatives in fact. Someone's life has ended. Someone who helped me go through college. Someone who helped my family survive during our periods of hunger. I thought of my dead grandfather as I looked at the sky and the clouds.

It is appalling how my other relatives thought more on the food after the funeral than on the funeral itself. The food wasn't even that great - sandwiches and cupcakes - but they were wolfing it down with zest. They were even having fun, sitting down on the grass like it was a picnic. The immediate relatives of my dead grandfather were of course, subdued while they ate. Talking quietly and looking at the now buried rectangular hole in the ground often.

I wondered about how they felt hearing the happy voices around them, the normal murmur of talk. How they felt about seeing their relatives continue their normal lives as if the occasion wasn't for mourning. Perhaps, my other relatives didn't feel keenly the loss of a distant grandfather. Perhaps. But for my distant aunts and uncles, they have lost a father. My distant grandmother has lost a husband. Yet my other relatives ate the sandwiches and drank the juice merrily. Appalling.

I looked away from all of them to the sky and to the good view, standing under the glare of the sun on a spot a few feet away from the makeshift tent. I had my sandwich in my hand, eating mechanically even if I did not feel like eating lest my other relatives scold me for being aloof again. I ate the sandwich, just so they wouldn't notice how removed I was from them.

I thought on death as the strong wind blew in short strong gusts I had to adjust my footing to avoid stumbling from it. How soon before it was my turn to sit on the chair near the freshly-turned earth? How soon before it was my turn to grieve?

I tried to think on my grandfather during the wake and while the coffin was being lowered. My eyes watered but I shed no tear. He was a loss, from the good things that I hear from my Mom he has done, but I really didn't know him very well. We've only met about three times, and had only talked to him at length once.

So I just sympathized with my distant relatives as they cried while white flowers were being thrown over the lowered coffin. How painful is it to see your parent inside that coffin not to hear him talk again? Not to see him laugh or smile again? Not to feel his presence again? How about my grandmother? How will she be able to bear losing the person she has spent most of her years with? A fleeting vision of Yummy in that coffin appeared in my mind and I almost cried right then. We've only been two months together and it already hurts that much. What more for years, decades of companionship? How will I be able to bear that?

My Mom was crying quietly in a corner. She knew my dead grandfather well. I remembered what she told me during the wake as we stood over the coffin, looking at his face one last time before the funeral. "Nagkita na sila ng lola mo (her mom)..."

A weak smile was my only reply, given my personal beliefs in heaven and religion, but I realized something big about humanity. I may be wrong, but right then I thought that people need to believe in a religion. People need to believe in heaven, in something that will ensure that all the bonds broken in death will be remade in another place. A better place where they will be together forever.

People pray because when they die, they want to be with their loved ones again. People try to live according to a religion's rules to ensure that they will go to that promised place. People don't want their existence to end.

But what if they were wrong? As a man of science, a part of me believes that there really is no God. That humanity is simply making out something to make their lives more meaningful. To make each of them feel important and special. Something above animals and other living things whose deaths are final. A dead plant is dead. A dead animal is dead. There is no heaven for bacteria. Why should there be one for humans?

At this point perhaps some of you will object or be indignant. You will say that of course, we are different from animals. It is that feeling of superiority I'm talking about. Nobody will liken themselves to animals, much less bacteria.

It is our very nature which demands a religion. Because of our natural feelings with other human beings, religions need to exist. Science has to be kept quiet whenever discoveries disprove what was written in the Bible (do not forget Copernicus) for religion's sake. We make excuses whenever our religious dogmas prove untrue, saying that there are different interpretations to its meaning. Everybody defends their religion because if religion fails, everybody will go crazy. With the absence of rules, people will harm each other and will fall on the brink of extinction.

As I've said, I might be wrong. I'm very sure I'm not the first one to think of these ideas. Profound thoughts are not made in Friendster blogs anyway. I might just have made an enemy out of you, or I might have confused you of your beliefs.

I believe in the need for religion. I believe that the good things it can bring out of us (e.g. Christmas) outweighs the fact that all of it might be untrue or make-believe. But I wonder how I can make myself believe in God again with these thoughts in my head. An empty faith will probably be the best that I could have.

Back to the funeral, maybe my other relatives were allowing themselves to have fun because they believe that the dead is in heaven at last so why feel sad and mourn? Or maybe it's simply their human nature which prevailed right then - to eat, and to survive.