faith

God with a capital G. Period.

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          I just finished reading Justin Kirkland’s “”How can you still be a Christian?” He asked. It’s…Complicated.”” article in Esquire printed originally in 2024. Justin is asked, and then answers the question by a friend/coworker after a tragedy. The article is Justin’s story of his life and his relationship with God, Religion, and people. It’s a little long but it’s interesting not because it reveals new developments about the subjects, but it lays out a framework we should all follow in our religious pursuits. Ai says there an “estimated 10,000 religions  in the world and most have at least one “god” or “deity”. A query about “holy books” brings up a list too long to list, but every religion appears to have holy books or texts with stories, advice, life lessons, and Great Truths.

          So…why do you believe in the religion you believe in? Do you know anything at all about any other religion?

          Apologies to atheists for wasting your time here, and to agnostics for making your potential choice more difficult, but why are there so many religions? Why so many books/texts? There are seven world religions google says have over one BILLION followers. Let’s agree not to quibble about how followers are counted, by whom, and for what reason. A billion is a lot, even with a margin of error of plus or minus 2million. **

          Justin’s story centers around the fact he was “exposed” (the good way) to Christianity as a young person. (We won’t nitpick sects or denominations, here, either.) He never says if he was exposed to any of the other religions of the world, but let’s assume his small town knew nothing of Judaism, Islam, Shinto or the other four “billion believer” religions.

          In Justin’s journey he was tested and confirmed his faith at least once before occasionally drifting away and lapsing, with life-events being contributing factors. I’m trying to not give away too much of his story. Read it. His journey ends where we all should end, eventually, and I struggle to understand why we don’t.

          To this day religious wars are still being fought, and many god-fearing people are dying, whether they are true believers or not, even if they are agnostic or atheists: bombs and bullets don’t care about religious affiliations or potential afterlives.

          So…why all the religious wars? For centuries? Crusades? Holy Wars? Whatever The Troubles were about in Ireland?

          The saddest part of each religion is the need for that religion’s god to be the one and only God. (First Commandment?) A dangerous addendum to the one and only requirement is that anyone who worships a different god is a blasphemer or heretic, and has to be converted, recovered, or eliminated. Why?

          And here we come to The Point: God is God. If you believe your religious God is the one and only, who made all those other Gods?

          The word causing the real problems is “religion.” It can’t be any plainer: What is the point of organized religion or as Ai puts it: “a particular system of faith and worship”? We should have personal relationships with our God, our very own God, and we should let others have the same, even if they want to congregate. We should remember all the Holy Books and Texts, ALL of them, were written by men/women or aliens in the case of some of the smaller, more imaginative religions. Not sure how some of them became “The Word of God” with out studying each book or text. Would God use X or Instagram these days?

         As a lapsed Episcopalian, I find it impossible to believe only Christianity has the One True God. Or Islam. Or Buddhism.

          But I find it possible One God is there for all of us, no matter who we are, if we can only see.

          It is not that simple, but it should be. There are some religions, for example, still requiring living sacrifice, either by animal life or human. What do we do about them? Are they wrong?

          No idea, but we need to start thinking and believing in A God of all the World, not a Catholic God, or Islamic God, or Jewish God. We may want to hold onto the idea of Redemption and Rebirth, but they exist in some other religions, too, including incarnation. (Google “samsara”.) Think about your own relationship with an omnipotent, omniscient God and ask yourself whether or not you need a “religion” to support it and justify it. Just think about it.

          And remember: He is everywhere.

** Made you look. Kidding. 2million is an arbitrary number. Use your own.

Morality? Logic? God? Belief?

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The subjects listed above are “hot button” philosophy subjects debated, discussed, and verbally torn to shreds over the many centuries since man gained enough free time to stare at his navel. Morality is a major topic because it underpins the nature of society, at least a successful one. For my money, I always thought morality came from God. All Christians feel the same way, and it puts atheists in a bad jam: how can atheists be moral if they do not believe in, and hear the Word of God (WOG) directing them?

I did an end run around the conundrum by accepting full-throated agnosticism and allowed morality to be the WOG, if He actually existed. Lazy, lazy, lazy man. There are those among the enlightened who think the existence of evil negates the concepts of morality as the WOG and dumps the whole idea of Morality into a recycle bin for another generation to bring up and hash, I mean, hack to pieces.

At my age its hard to learn a new trick but just now I stumbled upon an article that sparked an “Aha” moment. Entitled “How a Huguenot Philosopher Realized That Atheists Could Be Virtuous” by Michael Hickson, the author exposed me to a philosopher heretofore not on my reading list: Pierre Bayle. In Mr. Bayle’s book “Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet” published in 1682, Mr. Bayle presented an argument for atheism that settled once and for all the question of atheism and morality.

“It is no stranger for an atheist to live virtuously than it is strange for a Christian to live criminally. We see the latter sort of monster all the time, so why should we think the former is impossible?”

In 1682. It is a statement loaded with Logic. (capitalized to show how important it is). Logic. What a wonderful thing. Logic. No matter how many times I say it, it keeps its meaning. Logic is “a particular way of thinking, especially one that is reasonable and based on good judgement” says an unknown google writer, probably an AI personality. No, they didn’t have AI in 1682, nor did they have the benefit of instant communication. Mr. Bayle’s statement, therefore, about the “sort of monster” he sees “all the time” must have been from first hand experience. Sadly, it is a statement as true today as 1682…343 years later. Religion, belief, morality, all seem unchanged after nearly four centuries. Why?

I’m getting the book and reading it, but–with apologies to Spock and all offended Star Trek fans–we might be better off with lives based on Logic instead of Belief. As a possible Clue, The Bible’s WOG “Golden Rule” is loaded more with logic than faith. You have to wonder why.

As usual, a short space makes for an oversimplification, but is it?

Of course it is, since the modern sophists among us can easily rip apart the “reasonable” and “good judgment” parts of googe’s AI statement, But will the rest of us let them?

In this day and age, Logic is taking a beating. Forget–for example–your politics and wonder how many good, reasonable, and moral people there in the world waiting for…aw, forget it. We pay football players more than we pay police. Is that logical?

We’re doomed, but I’m going to find out about that comet.