Quote of the Day

Christianity, in it's pure form, can be a beautiful thing. Just like Buddhism and Islam. Unfortunately Christianity has been bastardized and is now something to be scorned and, yes, feared. - John @ Wild Sects

Religion is unique to the human experience. Animals do not have a god. They are just as they are, and if you think that science is correct, human beings share a common biological heritage with every other creature on the planet. So why are human beings so screwed up?

Lets go back to the beginning - the big bang. If you want to talk about a concept of God, that's a credible place to start. It's the only thing that's ever happened that shouldn't have happened.

One basic principle of physics is that matter can neither be created, nor destroyed. Yet, out of that vastness of nothing, there was something. How did that happen? Because there is something in the universe, that implies that there was a beginning of time where nothing became something.

It really is the chicken or the egg problem. If God created the universe, what created God? Religions answer that question by saying there was no beginning of time, and that God always was. That makes God infinite. I think that's taking the easy way out.

Regardless of how you define that initial moment where the perceivable universe we live in burst into existence, that is the only event in history that can be reliably proven to be "divine". Science says it shouldn't have happened and that nothing should exist.

While God may or may not have a beginning time, the universe does have a beginning time. It's approximately 14 billion years ago. That "zero time" was the instant that a nearly infinite number of rules where created that govern the way things behave. It defines the way atomic particles behave. I suspect it even defines randomness, which of course would mean that if randomness is defined, it's not really random.

There has not been a single event in the universe that should not have happened since the big bang, with the possible exception of conscious thought. That's the monkey wrench in the clearly defined universe.

In any case, human beings are a product of that initial rule set, put in motion all those billions of years ago. The behavior and nature of human beings is simply a product of those rules. So, my question is, why religion? Why would you say that any religion is "beautiful"?

Animals, without any God or religion, are far better behaved than human beings. They hunt and kill for food, just the same as human beings do (we hunt at supermarkets mostly). They socialize and procreate, and all that good stuff. The difference is, generally speaking, they don't kill their own kind, and they certainly don't kill for "sport".

Human beings are very good at killing each other. There are entire industries dedicated to crafting tools that make killing each other easy to do.

So, what is the difference between human beings and animals? Animals have conscious thought. They have society. They have procreation. Everything is exactly the same, except for one thing.

Can you guess?

Religion.

So when somebody says that religion can be a beautiful thing, the beautiful parts are things that are biologically inherent in every species on this planet. It seems silly to me that love, and charity, and compassion, are religious issues. They are not. It's simply a result of the rule set put in place at the time of the big bang. They are our nature, not a product of religion.

The things that are not beautiful about religion defines the evil that exists. It is conscious thought of death, destruction, and pain. It is what causes human beings to do the most horrific things.

Then it becomes a simple equation. I've defined the beauty of existence as a part of nature. Therefore, if you subtract that beauty from religion, all you have left in religion is evil.

Does that make sense? I simply don't attribute the beautiful aspects of life and this world to religion. Religion doesn't deserve that, and religion doesn't have anything to do with that.

All religion does is bring death and destruction - and maybe, just maybe, assuages the natural fear that people have that death is truly the end of existence.

So, if you look at scripture, and Jesus says "Love thy neighbor as thyself". I say, DUH! That is simply human nature, and I'm not really sure why you need to tell me that Jesus. I already knew it.

Quite simply, if you remove religion as a concept from this world, does it remove any of the beauty from it? Nope. But it sure as hell does away with a lot of evil.