Dear Friends,
Today I am going to touch on something that is controversial but that I think needs to be said. I will only state my opinion and I will not try to say that I am right and someone else is wrong but will ask your indulgence in using this forum to have my say. All that needs to be said cannot be done here today but the universe willing I will be back to expand on a number of points in future writings.
I have read extensively on world religions for many years and I am somewhat bemused by the religious fanatics who seek to place life in some neat pre-packaged bundle because they lack the will to intellectually examine anything other than what was forced down their throats by establishments with ulterior motives. Any religion that requires the acceptance of its ideas on faith alone is admitting that its doctrines cannot stand on their own merits nor withstand any critical examination. They require that their adherents accept as truth their authority, and Christianity is a perfect illustration of this point, and it is not alone. However, as I writing to a predominately "christain" audience I will use Christianity as an example.
The basic problem with Christian morality comes down to it being little more than a primitive system of reward and punishment. Be good, don’t ask questions and stay in line and you will be rewarded. Be skeptical, ask questions and use your mind in a reasonable and rational manner and you are consigned to eternal punishment in the most horrible place, forever. I cannot accept that this is the plan of an omnipitent creator who has created intelligent entities with free will.
In 1984, while standing on a barrack square in the blazing sun at the Barbados Defence Force base in St. Lucy, Barbados, intake 1-84 stood in rigid anticipation as we listened to the click, click, click of WOII Beckles'drill boots on the concrete as he strode unto the parade square. We were all expecting one of his, Yes Sir, No Sir, No Excuse Sir, questioning sessons but today was different. He was in a conversational mood and was asking each of us personal questions. When he came to me he asked me what was my religion and I said, "NONE. SIR!" The Sargeant Major immediately labelled me "atheist" and until my retiring from the BDF he never referred to me as anything else.
I was never allowed to explain that I was not an atheist but that I merely did not understand the usefulness of organised religion in the way that I had been exposed to it as a child.
At the time of her death, my Grandmother was the longest serving member of her chuch. She had been a member for over 65 years. A few months before her death I happen to arrive just as the reverend from her chuch was leaving after visiting her at home and I asked her, "Gran, All these years that you were going to church. What have you learned?" She looked at me for a while and then she said, "God is Good." ......... Seriously! I thought to myself. You were on this earth for over 90 years, going to church almost every week and this is sum of your understanding! Then I thought. Do you really need to know more?
My grandmother still had hanging over her bed a print of a blonde hair, blue-eyed Jesus with a halo over his head. (I am sure all of you had seen one like it, right next to the print of the last supper and under the cross with the figure of Jesus being crucified on it.) I realised that my Grandmother went to her grave thinking that this was the picture of God and that in all the years her church had not sought to change her view of the Creator of the Universe. Were they wrong in perpetuating ignorance? Of course, Christianity, by design, demands ignorance. Both naivet̩ and willful ignorance is at the core of a faith that is contrary to the development of knowledge through reason and rationality. It clearly teaches people not to trust in reason, and to only accept Рwithout question Рthe dogmas of the church.
What is Atheism?
Atheism is the lack of belief in a deity, which implies that nothing exists but natural phenomena (matter), that thought is a property or function of matter, and that death irreversibly and totally terminates individual organic units. This definition means that there are no forces, phenomena, or entities which exist outside of or apart from physical nature, or which transcend nature, or are “super” natural, nor can there be. Humankind is on its own.
If one takes the above definition to be true I am definitely not an atheist. I like most human beings need to accept that there is something greater than mankind behind the workings of the universe. To think that all the processes and mechanics of life and nature as a whole is totally random and that the laws of physics are mere coincidences, defies logic. I just don't believe that man is as yet capable of understanding this supreme force or that he needs to. Do the birds that fly thousands of miles each year with the seasons know why the do it? Do the turtles know what forces compells and guides them to return to the beach where they were born to lay their own eggs?
Not understanding what something is does not mean that it does not exist.
One of my pet peeves is man's need to name God. In the Old Testament of the Christain Bible alone there are over 25 names for God. Mankind has devised thousand of names and concepts for God under the guise of hundreds of religions. Are they all correct?
Why can't they be all correct?
Why must we limit God to what we can understand?
Is mankind so narcissistic, so conceited that we cannot accept that we just are not capable of understanding God?
When I was 14 years old I used to helped teach a Sunday School class to a group of 5 year olds at the church my mother forced my brothers and I to attend every Sunday. One day the senior teacher was absent and I had to find something to occupy these children for an hour so I decided to tell them the story of Moses and the burning bush. It was on that day that I realized that we were not meant to name God.
13 “But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?”
14 God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you. Exodus 3: 13-14.
Over the years I have reserched extensively the meanings of the words. I am who I am. I could write a book on the number of scholarly interpetations of the meaning of these 5 little words. The Septuagint , (circa 300 BC), translates the original Hebrew ehyeh asher ehyeh of Exodus 3:14 into Greek as "ego eimi ho on", which in turn translates into English as "I am the one who is". In the first and second centuries, the versions of Aquila and Theodotion have ehyeh asher ehyeh rendered into Greek as "esomai hos esomai" , which in turn translate as "I will be who I will be"
"I am who I am"
"I am the the one who is"
"I will be who I will be"
Whoever or whatever the creator is, he must be having a good laugh at mankind....or....Is he crying?
If the history of religion has shown us anything, it is the fact that it is inherently evil in its insistence that rational thought is to avoided at all costs. It keeps its believers in line through fear, and some believe is the chief source of a vast majority of crime, either directly, indirectly or psychologically. But that is a story for another day.
Quote of the day
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
Why Did you tell me????Because you needed to know.
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