Religion

[The Raging Bull]

I've been feeling strange over the last few weeks. When I was little, I used to go to church every week with primary school and I believed in God devoutely.

Then, when I started going to High school a few years back I had a serious crisis of faith and became a complete atheist. I believed the world was created by science and evolution and that when we die that was it, no heaven or anything.

Now over the past few weeks, maybe months I have been rethinking my faith in God and religion. I don't really know why because nothing major has happened. Is this normal in teenagers to have renewed faith when they start maturing?

[platinummatt!]

Maybe god had got back into you...

[platinummatt!]

I suppose hes always in you?

[Smokin']

I basically look at life as live fast, and party hard and I do not follow religion in the least bit.

[Ta Khent]

In reality, the formed beings currently portrayed as both God and the Devil are creations of the human being, not vice versa. This can be shown quite simply by using as illustration the evolution of religion. Religion, as it turns out to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, is not a divine revelation from any god person who created everything and knows all. In actuality, religion is a construct that takes centuries and millennia to complete, beginning with various perceptions of the natural and supernatural worlds around us.

The first perception we have of the "supernatural hand of God" is elemental: the wind, the heat, the cold, the light, the dark, the rain, etc. Because the elements seem to have a mind of their own, human beings love to anthropomorphize them and give them human qualities. Thus, purely atmospheric phenomena come to be viewed as expressions of a humanlike entity with a mind of its own. We ascribe personality characteristics to the various en****** we build up around the elements. For example, Zeus, the Greek sky-god father-figure, takes on a thunder-and-lighting personality.

This is how religion evolves. Although religous people may oppose this notion, all religion is basically mythology built upon limited human perceptions of what is in the universe, and not upon concrete and absolute truths. Absolute truth has no form; hence, whenever God is portrayed as having form, whether human or animal, male or female, black, white or polka-dotted, it is not the Truth.

In looking at religion, you'll find around the globe is a core mythos based on atmospheric elements and planetary bodies or other natural forces with a variety of forms they take on. In places where the skin of the inhabitants is red, the god may have red skin, and where the skin is white, the god may have white skin, and so on. It is completely arbitrary and not based on actual fact.

What happens is that different groups of people--and there have been very many cultures and groups on this planet--bring their distinct interpretations of deity to each other, whether through friendly merger or violent conquest, the latter of which seems to be the norm. During this merger process, the predominant people will force their particular, ethnocentric, egocentric and gender-centric interpretation of deity upon the conquered peoples. At the same time, they will also either make the conquered deities into lesser gods, godmen, heroes or patriarchs in their own pantheon, or they will turn the conquered deity or deities into demons and devils.

[The Raging Bull]

Maybe god had got back into you...

I suppose hes always in you?

Possibly. I'm just really confused.

[platinummatt!]

I believe in God, man. Why its coming back to you now I dont know, anything happened? even a little thing

[The Raging Bull]

I believe in God, man. Why its coming back to you now I dont know, anything happened? even a little thing

Nope. Nothing at all. I have just been thinking real deep lately about everything, and through it all I got my faith back it seems.

[platinummatt!]

Cool, thats really good

[Smokin']

Think about this: What has religion ever done for you?