God and Religion

I have always been interested in religion, ever since my Catholic neighbors, who were learning their catechism at the time, told me that I was going to Hell because I wasn't Catholic. Then, when I started attending Elsdon, I heard a totally different version of the story. I started reading the Bible at an early age, but it seemed to raise more questions than it answered, so I started reading other books and articles on the subject. Somewhere along the line I came to the conclusion that all those different accounts probably had a certain amount of truth in them, but that none of them were 100%.

I still think that what the Bible has to say is important, at least as important as the works of Plato and the other dead Greeks, and certainly more important than Shakespeare. People quote Shakespeare all the time, but I don't think anybody considers him to be a god or prophet. All this stuff is part of our cultural and literary heritage, and offers insights into human nature, both past and present. Whether or not they are religious themselves, most historians will tell you that some knowledge of religion and mythology is essential to the understanding of human history. Religion is more than just a set of rules and regulations, it represents man's attempt to make sense out of things that he doesn't understand, and to become empowered by an association with the source of all power. Nowadays we have science for that, but it wasn't always so and, even today, many people are suspicious of science. I suppose you could think of religion as kind of a proto science, part of man's eternal search for knowledge and truth.

Deists believe in God, but not religion. They believe that the best way to understand the will of God is by observing His works. I suppose you could consider Deism to be a transitional phase between religion and science in that respect. Since all things come from God, it's reasonable to assume that everything that is here is here because God wants it here. That doesn't necessarily mean that God wants it here forever, just that He wants it here for the present. We don't really know why God wants it here, or how long He wants it to remain here, but we believe that, if God wants something changed, He wants us to change it. If He doesn't want it changed, all our efforts will be in vain and, sooner or later, we will figure that out and move on to something else.

The human quest for fairness is probably part of this grand design. It's human nature to try to improve things, and there's probably a reason for that. Maybe we are a species in training. Maybe God is waiting to see how we handle the challenges He has given us before He moves us up to the next level, whatever that may be.