Interesting thread on religion! I'll share my experience of being saved FROM the church. I was 44 years old and had been brainwashed frombirth with fundamentalist teachings. I had been having doubts, for years, about all the arbitrary stuff they were telling us at church. I had stopped attending regularly for some time, but still lived in constant fear that if I didn't believe everything I was told, that I would burn in hell for eternity. I had a terrible auto accident, was in a coma for 3 days, and after a lengthy stay in the hospital, came home with both arms and a leg in casts. The church folk started coming by to visit, and instead of offering comfort and asking if there was anything they could do, they were telling me that this was God's punishment for not being faithful to the church.
With nothing to do but sit in my wheel chair and think, I managed to think my way right out of the church and form my own beliefs. I faced up to some questions -
1. How do we know which is the one "true" religion?
Answer: Out of all the hundreds, if not thousands of religions, in the world, most telling their sujects that theirs is the only way to Heaven, how is one to know, which is right?? Logic says they can't all be right, in fact, no more than ONE could be right. Logic (God?) also told me that the God of the universe would not send one of his own to hell just because he happened to have been brainwashed from birth into the wrong religion. Therefore, I concluded, they were all of man and NONE of them were right.
2. Is there a God?
Answer: Which is more likely, that all the vast, infinite universe just "happened", or that there is an infinite power who created it all and controls it? I chose to believe their is a higher power.
3. Did God create the whole thing in 7 days, as told in Genesis?
Answer: What is a day? It is the time it takes the earth to rotate once on it's axis. BUT before the earth was here, what was a day? Maybe it was the time the universe rotates once or maybe the time between one 'big bang, until the galaxy stops expanding and collapses on itself to create the NEXT big bang. Even if the Bible was devinely inspired, it had to be written at the level of understanding of the people of the day and the actual writers, so many of the terms are meaningless.
4. Does God have a "personal relationship" with us? Does He micromanage our lives?
Answer: I prayer gives you comfort, go for it. BUT, if you then sit around and wait for God to answer your prayers, expect to have your faith tested. Remember, God is the controlling power of the vast, infinite universe. We live on a tiny speck of dust orbiting a very minor star in this universe. There are an infinite number of other stars with planets, which surely harbor other intelligent life. Sure, he is infinite and all powerful, but he set this thing up to run according to his natural laws and doesn't need to be constantly fiddling with it. Remember, God is infinite and all powerful. He is much farther above us than we are above that bacteria in the colon someone mentioned, or even an amoeba in our sewer.
5. Is there a place of punishment, i.e., hell for those who do not toe the line?
Answer: As mentioned above, would a loving God (or even an unconcerned one) sentence a person to eternal torment, because he was brainwashed from birth into the "wrong" religion?? Example: A child is born into a radical Muslim family. He is sung to, in his cradle about the glories of martyrdom. He is saturated with this teaching all his life. When he is 14, they strap a bomd on him and he goes to blow up a nursery school. He appears before God (now being all knowing) and say, "I can't believe I did such an evil thing!" Would God not say, "Welcome back to eternity, for you knew not what you were doing"?
My beliefs are now very simple: In the beginning (actually there can be no beginning, or end, of eternity), God created the Heavens and the Earth, along with the entire, infinite universe. How he did it, whether by big bangs, evolution, or whatever, is for Him to know and for us to wonder about. He set it up to run according to His natural laws, so it would continue to operate for eternity.
Then MAN created religion, in all it's many forms, and things have been screwed up ever since!
I have no problem with anyone's religion, if it gives them comfort, and
does not do harm to themselves, or others. If you like my beliefs, welcome to them. If you want to join my 'church', forget it! Go start your own.
