Religion's Wrench in Life's Compass

     Today at my university we had a day of service in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hundreds of college students go out and volunteer their time to do some type of community service. The day started out with a key note speaker. He started talking about equality and making the right decisions and how our opinions can change the world or destroy basically. While in the midst of him talking it made me have a flash back to my senior year of high school in AP Literature. We were on the topic of religion in relation to one of the novels we had read in class. Being the highly religious zombies that the townspeople are, one of the students decided to say that religion determines moral character. And in that moment I took a stand and spoke my opinion because I actually had one for once.
     My opening argument was "Does that mean that atheists have no moral compass?" I was so infuriated at the closed-mindedness of people back home. They have had religion shoved down their throats since before they were born. They never had the option to think differently. For some people that is their rock and their foundation and I could not be happier for those people because they have chosen to believe in something and have a faith that cannot be altered. I am in no way degraded the people who have such a strong faith. I wish that I had something to believe in, but my time will come when I find the way.
     The conversation continued back and forth to the point where I was almost angered to tears. He kept trying to say that because to have a religion you have a better chance of making the right decision. My point was that the world, not religion, and your own thought process allows you to make the correct decision. I do not think that good decisions come from fear of an almighty punishment. Even so people make mistakes, Christians make mistakes, all believers of anything make mistakes. Not because of lack of faith, but because we are simply and beautifully human. Religion can't always pave a perfect pathway, but it certainly helps some people. I am not a strong believer of anything and that does not mean that I want to go kill or steal or make any other immoral decisions. Some of the biggest believers commit some of the gravest decisions. People are people and the experiences they have create the mindset of how decisions will be made in their life; faith or not.