Scott Free Thinking

Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for “Bible” and you’ll get a hefty plethora of writing, all geared around numerous different bibles, particularly those of Judaism, Christianity, and separately the original Hebrew bible itself. Yet, commonly, perhaps almost mistakenly, we refer to a single book that could easily come in multiple versions for loads of different beliefs as simply, the Bible.

When it comes to where I live and where I’ve grown up, the majority of the people around me are predominantly Christian. When some have asked me if I am religious or not, I have not ever really given them too much of a clear answer because part of me is still stumbling a bit or tripping on the toe as to what my answer should actually be - I’m just not quite sure if I could consider myself religious or not. Having said that, I think spirituality is something that has been heavily on my mind for years. For the purposes of this article, I will be referring to components often from the contemporary King James Christian Bible, the kind you would see here in the new millennium of the 2000’s.

What is God? What happens when you die? Why are we here?

All of these questions we often ask are considered the ‘fundamental questions of life.’ And more importantly, they often cross every human being’s mind on a serious level at at least one point or another in every individual’s lifetime. Some people living today still believe, in accordance with a very literal interpretation of the first book of the Christian Bible, Genesis, that the Earth was created about 6,000 years ago, or in other words - 4,000 B.C.

People who follow the doctrine of modern and widely accepted science might subscribe to different theories of biological evolution. At this point, there is not a theory more well known than that of Charles Darwin’s. What is interesting to note is that at the end of his career and also toward the end of his life, Charles Darwin, the creator of the theory of evolution himself, remarked that perhaps he should not have been taken so seriously. For Darwin, studying the change and difference in animals and plants was a hobby, and in the beginning he focused more on the art of nature than the science.

When you put things into a social perspective, religion is often a difficult thing to talk about. Religious agenda’s can be found at the root, base, and core of virtually every arena of politics and government. Or even without the terms of government, politics with religious principles at their core among people in small scale situations can be encountered. Society has countless different rules being made all of the time, and lawmakers will continue to make laws until there are no more laws to make. We often tend to accept that this should be a universally accepted way to allow people to co-exist within society, but is it really?

To the uneducated, the ignorant, the arrogant, and the intolerant religion and outstanding moral principles can become the very reasons for choosing not to get along. In history, almost every single war that has ever been fought has, at its simplest and most basic foundations, religion. Entire villages, cities, families, homes, businesses, and organizations have been destroyed in the name of God, in the name of belief.

It is interesting to note that in order to get a crowd happy, delighted, and following a cause of any kind requires a distinct sort of talent. It requires a special kind of intuition that few artists have ever mastered. It is much easier, however, to take a crowd and turn it into an angry mob, simply by being vulgar, being disgusting, being hateful. Any particular sort of energy you pour into a crowd socially, the crowd will return it back forward and reflect it directly back at you.

As humans, we are born with a few simple parts that develop within the first 3-5 years of our lives. Our ability for speech, our ability to walk. With walking and speech children often find themselves experiencing an incredible new high during their first times participating in this themselves because there seems to be a natural desire to ascend into a developed adult. Children take great pride in being able to walk and talk, and why shouldn’t they? For children who cannot talk, and who cannot walk, however, there is a unique burden, and a pain that will often last a lifetime as they watch everyone around them move on a plane and level they have never themselves experienced. The result of seeing people who have much when we have so little is discomfort.

There is one thing that as we grow up, we all have in common. We love comfort. Being comfortable is more important than we realize. While comfort may be so hindering in our own development, it should also be equally noted that comfort is also important to our development. Without touch, babies literally die. Without affection, human brains do not fully develop. Without sameness and routine repetition, stress can tend to more easily rise within the body. The reaction we take to relieve discomfort is the reaction we take in a diplomatic, or perhaps just social, situation.

When our beliefs become challenged, often times people will have a knee-jerk reaction that makes them feel uncomfortable and subsequently dismiss that discomfort by denying or dismissing the very difference that the person opposite them may be proposing or holding. If you believe in more than one god, there cannot be one. If you believe in not having sex before marriage, there cannot be sex before marriage under any circumstances. If you believe in good and evil, the existence of a subjective universe cannot enter your perspective with any provable validity.

So what am I getting at here with all of this?

I suppose the real point that could be made is that religion, the word and concept, just might need to die. While I am not an atheist(What is God?) and I do not suggest anyone become one, I would suggest that everyone give their spirituality a complete makeover. Start asking the difficult questions. Start daring to think that the things you’ve always thought were wrong or terrible just may be able to be seen differently. Dare to imagine, because in your imagination you can test any idea.

I was once Christian, and my Christianity slowly got phased out from the time I turned 12 until the age of about 15 years old, where I then re-evaluated my beliefs. An interesting part of my spiritual transformation was the fact that while I was Christian I had no real reason to question my beliefs at all. In fact, my beliefs were not ever really challenged. Instead, I came to question my normal beliefs on my own, did my own research, reached my own conclusions from my own thoughts. There were even times when I had prayed, and my prayers seemed to be directly answered. In times of physical pain, I could often pray my physical pain away. But was it God? Was it a force outside of myself? You might also consider that the brain has the capability to alter its perceptions and remove pain from your awareness.
Spirituality is an important part of everyone’s lives, and in fact in the book, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, I have read that there is actually a part of the brain and processes within the brain that make spiritual activity an ordinary and natural part of any human being’s mental routine. While we as a society are being taught to be scientific and wholly rational, another part of us, something that is inherently biologically and scientifically based is daring us to create thoughts that resemble the extraordinary. To think of God is as natural as to think of food or water.

Question it. Answer it. Do you believe it?