a wonderful commentary<\/a> which essentially says we are all born atheists.\u00a0 Think about that for a moment.\u00a0 If our parents or those we associate with did not introduce us to one religious concept or another, would we have come to it on our own?\u00a0 Sure, some folks born to atheist parents become religious, but only after immersing themselves into a religious culture.\u00a0 I believe there is possibly a genetic predisposition towards religious beliefs, but the beliefs themselves are learned things.<\/p>\nThis leads to the question of where religious beliefs came from to begin with.\u00a0 The commentary I mentioned above describes the process as “blind traditions” passed from generation to the next.\u00a0 These traditions, I believe, would originate one of two ways:\u00a0 First, early man would wonder, just as we do today, how the world works.\u00a0 The easy answers would be supernatural:\u00a0 Lightning happens because some powerful being is throwing bolts of them at the earth because he or she is in whatever emotional state such a being would be in to want to throw lightning at the ground.\u00a0 Early man invented these beings and the reasons they did the things they were thought to do in order to explain what he saw, from day and night to thunderstorms to the seasons to anything else he saw happen.<\/p>\n
The second reason is a little less kind.\u00a0 I think I have mentioned this before, but religious power is probably the easiest power to achieve.\u00a0 To obtain political power, one needs to be charismatic and convince a lot of people that one will do a job better than anyone else vying for that job.\u00a0 To obtain financial power, one needs to gain a lot of money, and that is a challenge for most of us.\u00a0 To obtain military power, one needs to spend years<\/em> in training, learning a complicated system, often surviving against difficult odds.<\/p>\nBut to obtain religious power, one only needs to agree with the way a lot of people interpret some holy text.\u00a0 It’s best to memorize that text, so one can quote it to suit one’s needs, but memorizing a book or two isn’t that hard.\u00a0 It can be done in a few weeks or months at worst.\u00a0 Go back far enough, and one is writing<\/em> those texts based on what one believes the people want to hear.\u00a0 Few would consider editing the Bible or the Koran today, but somebody somewhere back in history wrote them.\u00a0 God–assuming He exists–did not<\/em> write them.\u00a0 God is usually described as a perfect being, after all, and most religious texts have contradictions in them, something a perfect being would surely not allow.<\/p>\nOr would He?\u00a0 This is kind of the point I started out trying to make.\u00a0 Who are we to second guess a deity?\u00a0 We fleshy creatures are certainly imperfect beings filled with flaws who make boo-boos all the time.\u00a0 How could we possibly have a clue about the mindset of a deity?\u00a0 In my opinion, we can’t.\u00a0 God is simply too much for our minds to fathom, so we imagine what we can and hope it’s real.\u00a0 We can’t really tell when God has intervened as a result of a prayer or any other reason and when he has not.\u00a0 So we imagine that he has and celebrate the occasion.<\/p>\n
I’ll finish with a joke I once heard which I think illustrates this wonderfully:<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, there was a terrible rainstorm and a river began to overflow its banks.\u00a0 A church sat near the river, and soon enough the water began swirling around it.\u00a0 The preacher climbed up on the roof to wait out the storm and watched as the floodwaters rose to the roof.\u00a0 Some people came along in a speedboat and called out, “Reverend, please get in the boat with us and we’ll get you to safety!”\u00a0 The preacher called back, “No, thank you!\u00a0 God will save me!”\u00a0 The flood continued to rise and soon the preacher was clinging to the church’s chimney as the water rose up to his chest.\u00a0 Another speedboat came along, and again the passengers called out, “Reverend, let us save you!\u00a0 Get in the boat with us and we’ll take you to safety!”\u00a0 Again, the preacher replied, “No, thank you!\u00a0 God will save me!”\u00a0 Soon, the water was up to the man’s neck, and he was barely able to breathe.\u00a0 A helicopter came along and dropped down a ladder.\u00a0 The preacher called out one more time, “No, thank you!\u00a0 God will save me!”\u00a0 The helicopter waited a short while and then left.\u00a0 Soon, the flood rose over the preacher’s head and he drowned.\u00a0 St. Peter was surprised to see him at the pearly gates, and asked, “What are you doing here so soon, Reverend?”\u00a0 The preacher replied, “I do not know!\u00a0 I drowned!\u00a0 I thought God would save me!”\u00a0 St. Peter shook his head and said, “God sent two speedboats and a helicopter…”<\/p>\n
Rant off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rant on. I logged into Facebook this morning and saw an interesting link from one of the people on my friends list. It said: If God has ever answered a prayer for you, press like!!!!!!! on \u2665. I have seen these \u2665 links before, and I rarely like them, but this one stood out. How, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}