Uh-oh. I fell off the political wagon, but am having weird religious thoughts this morning, inspired perhaps by a recent spat of religious debate that normally follows crisis. Random then, and rapid-fire:
Sure, religion and a belief in something beyond us both in boundaries of the earth and in our comprehension of death could be the roots and thus a creation of man himself rather than the reverse. Especially now, when the sky and planets are no longer closed to us.
Historical evidence of a man named Jesus is as trustworthy as much else of history even further back, but not confirmation of His divinity. But heck, it sure sounds like He was someone we could trust, and if He believed so strongly in a God, then maybe He was onto something.
What does it hurt to believe? Crusades and 9/11 and centuries in between have most surely revealed the harm and yet that seems to be a case of extremism, fanaticism, and not the norm for societies but rather for the mobs.
It is only in the past three, maybe four thousand years that man has progressed to a point where he believes himself capable of doing things that formerly were unexplained by science and so more easily given over to a higher power.
Man can imitate, clone, crossbreed and fiddle with life all he wants, and still cannot create a living thing from scratch.
If man created God, then wouldn’t it have made more sense to make Him a bit more lenient and fun-loving?
The Christian faith created a more loving god in Jesus Christ, an obvious need met by former civilizations by naming and worshipping multiple gods and picking and choosing who to please according to current needs. But what if, what if a supreme being is the more demanding God of the Old Testament, or one given to whimsy such as Zeus? We could all be in deep shit then, I guess.
How has a legend such as this, so full of holes and lack of substantiation endured so long?
So-called miracles were a lot more common way back when. But it is time, I think, in this age of growing doubts, for Him to reassert Himself.
Odd, I think, that whereas people used to both blame and give credit to the gods for everything that happened to them in their daily lives from little personal routines to bountiful harvests, while we tend to credit ourselves for our successes now, we point to everyone else but ourselves for our failures.
But what the hell do I know, anyway. Am I not wandering and wondering just like you?
That’s it. I’ll go back to some form of creativity now. Otherwise, as in Lord Byron’s quote that I needed to put up as a permanent fixture on this site, I shall go mad.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Everyone has to find their own way on this one. Everyone, conscious of mortality, has to find their affirmation. For most, it has to do with belief, adopting one of the religions which promise an afterlife, a supreme being in charge of things. For those who decide to walk away from belief, an enormous sense of loss and emptiness follows. For me, it was replacing the leap of faith with the leap of acceptance. I honestly believe that there are enormous benefits to truly accepting the way things are. Focusing on the precious beauty of life, one can fill a life to the brim with affirmation every day. Spirituality, then, becomes your personal connectedness to the world, the universe. But it’s something you create for yourself, not something you learn in Sunday School. Not for the faint of heart, it’s a journey that requires character strength, leading to intense celebration grounded in reality.
I say these things not to convince anybody, but simply to make the point that nonbelief doesn’t have to be a diminished thing. Millions of people, though a tiny minority, have learned to celebrate life in this way.
Hehe..welcome to my world. I love those questions. Denny makes a wonderful point though – just let life be. Things fall into the places they have to at their own time, beliefs being a part of those.
In the meantime, ’tis a beautifully turmoiled universe. Life and death are still out of our hands, so I’ll take the belief in something stronger and more powerful than me. Remind me to send you my notes from my Hebrew Scriptures class this Fall.
Religion and faith and belief are intertwined yet separate ideas for each of us. For some, I’m sure organized religion is an answer, and for some of us, nature and life provides both the questions and the answers. I may say that I talk to the sky and treetops, but what it represents to me is the basis of my beliefs.