Religion to me is a very peculiar thing. As a child when i asked my parents about god they answered that I had to find god for myself, and choose my own religion. I am now a 27 year old man that has come no closer to "finding god" than when I was 6. I am a scientist first and foremost. But to me the realm of quantum physics and the corrollaries that follow from the laws of quantum physics are about as close to religion as I will ever get. So my reasons for this post are not to inflame people but to genuinely gain perspective on how a typical religious person deals with what i consider serious inconsistencies.

How do religious people deal with the fact that every religion preaches following a different set of rules that are different from every other religion. Rules of what you can and cant eat, how you can and cant behave are different in every religion. Heck you even have to cut half your dinkler off to become jewish. No alcohol, ramadan, no meat on friday.these are all great examples.

Every religious text is the right one, and all the others are wrong. Is god a white man ,black woman, six armed shiva, a man with a beer belly?

Religion is inherently cultural.
There is no such thing as a universal "moral order". this means that there is no right and wrong outside of culture. There just "is".

So these are some good points to get the "juices flowing".(nice juices, not angry fighting juices).

It has been proposed that Einstein was the last great prophet, and with his "Relativity" the universe has been changed forever. Could the universe and all of its parts including us, be god? Is that harder to believe than say believing abraham, or the apostles?

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"Don't get your Golgi in a complex..."

Also you can teach a child to believe anything with his/her entire being. If i told you from the age of five that i was god and if you didnt believe me you would go to a fiery inferno, you d be worshipping me, but that doesnt make me god, just very important to whoever I brainwashed and scared into listening to me.

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"Don't get your Golgi in a complex..."

Maybe no one has any idea what is going on, and we develop our spirituality to meet some ending which has yet to be presented. You have bright parents for teaching you to think for yourself. When we are dead, maybe then we know what's going on, or else we become unconscious as we do when we play with general anasthetics.

I will love to know what teratos thinks about this because his

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Some day I will be the next Goljan/Daugherty/fysher for IMG's all over the world.

All I can say, for myself, is that religion is about giving you a set of principles by which you live your life around...creating a moral code to live your life by. Every religious text and preaching basically boils down to one purpose "how do you live your life and how do you treat others." Religion is often referred to as 'faith' because their is little science and few facts, other than a narrow collection of writings usually compiled together in a text such as the bible, koran, etc. Overall, a small array of sources to make life decisions by. That depth of sources would be insufficient for something much more miniscule in importance, like a 10 page paper on 'Satellite Cell Actions During Skeletal Muscle Tissue Repair.' So faith is an important word when judging the validity of the religious written word.

Parents can do whatever they want with their children, but hopefully as a young child they instilled in you their principles of life: The big picture of what's right and what's wrong and how you should treat others. When you mature of course you take that background, that education, and are free to adhere to it or go off and develop your own personal code for life. The goal should be that you take that moral code and just living life will help you validate it, modify it, or toss it aside if your journey leads you to believe that it is not the right code for YOU. You don't need religion specifically to accomplish this purpose, but when the major religions were first adopted in mass, most humans got little to no education, and religion represented the only education they would receive. And it was usually the law of the land too...which thankfully has changed somewhat over the last 200 years as nations composed of people of different religions could not govern using religion as a basis for regulation without pissing on everyone but one religious group. Of course nothing is perfect even now and there is hopefully an even brighter journey for the world of nations in the future.

The problems most parents have is that they try and teach principles that they themselves don't live by and thus their children grow up suspect due to their lack of example. That's all that matters in life, not what you SAY TO DO, but what YOU do....your actions. That's leadership or a lack of it. You can generate personal power from your actions or generate distrust and disrespect of those around you and dis-empower yourself, as many parents do and have such a rough time with their children during those teenage years when the young mind enables one to perform deductive reasoning at the big picture level.

Religion provides a guide, and many reigious leaders today understand this and respect each others teachings and practices. I went to college and my football team conducted a multi-religion "bible study" where we discussed principles and teachings from all 3 of the major religious texts and correlated them to life. When you do that it is amazing to see how the BIG PICTURE scriptures are very similar and the differences are pretty marginal. It was amazing for us as teammates to realize that despite being from different religions, we could come together and worship with each other. It made us better teammates for sure.

But the bottom line is, parental guideship mostly ends after puberty, at least in dictatorial style, and we as humans typically require guidance and something to lean on in this crazy world until the day we die. There are forces so large at work that our small minds will never understand them. So you grab onto a set of principles in your heart that you feel are RIGHT and you do your best to live your life by them. Religion is really just education for life - it can help you learn from others and grow into a better husband, father, brother, and most importantly, a better human. Its a framework to live within and help you be happy...why are there lines painted on the road telling you which side to drive on? Your a big educated scientist, can't you govern yourself on the road without "lines" and "signs" everywhere? Well its a structure and it helps you be a better driver in a world where you have to interact with a lot of other drivers who are not necessarily going in the same direction as you, at the same speed, nor with the same purpose. Do you absolutely need the structure, the system of signs and lines, well if you were all by yourself, NO, but it helps when your mixed in with thousands of other drivers on their individual journeys. Its "a way." Could the highway system be set up in a different manner and still be effective, sure it can, go drive in Europe, its VERY different in a certain perspective, but then also, its VERY similar. Which one is right, wrong, or better? Neither, but everyone has a framework and it helps us all to navigate together individudally but respectfully of each other. It helps you get where your going in a manner that is best for everyone in your little auto universe not just for you...see the parallel?

Without such guidance to grow on, efforts can be fruitless, and the world can become a chaotic place. The key at this point in mankinds existance I think is the fact that many religions now understand this principle in context and less regularly preach the 'our way is the only way' mentality in regards to how you treat other people of other religions. Those at this stage in the game that don't respect others and respect women and children and preach tolerance and respect...are what's holding back our world from being a better place. From personal experience I can easily say that much of the middle east right now is a great example where a small group of people wed to principles from the 8th century, are hijacking the religion and way of life of entire nations of other people. And nations with no embrace of religion such as communist North Korea, also are repressive and are not focused on enhancing the lives of those they govern and being a positive force in the world community they are a part of. I am not in any way saying anything condescending about any religion or nationality in preference to my own. Christianity and Europe had its own black days in the world...remember the crusades?

So when I die, will I go to heaven? Is their an afterlife? I hope so, but the bottom line is, my religion has helped me be the best person I can be and every night when I lay my head on the pillow, I am encouraged to ask some simple questions: Am I satisfied with who I am and how I have treated those around me, and am I comfortable with whatever comes next...which is out of my control anyways. I don't go to church to EARN points to get to heaven, but to LEARN pointers to help me be a better person while I am here on earth. God has given me the here and now and I am just trying to do my best to love those around me and make their world and my world as good as it can be. Sometimes I fall down and that framework that I have chosen to embrace helps me to know that it's OK to fail, its expected because I am not perfect and will never get anything perfect. It's just important that I get up the next day and try and be better. Science will never help me be better at that. The laws of physics do little in the areas of love, respect, courage, compassion, hope, and faith...which are the components of people and community and our world. Physics just helps you figure out where you and I would meet if you left Chicago driving east at 65 miles an hour and I left New York driving West at 40 miles per hour...relatively easy stuff in context (the answer is Canton Ohio by the way...unless their was heavier than normally construction on I-77). Most 'great' scientists were a mess in the realm of personal relationships with those around them. They typically are so consumed with proving what they can know and can control, they never experience the joy of not needing to understand it all and accept the science of the unknown. Faith is an unwelcome word among many scientists.

...This book can be bought in soft cover at Borders, Books-a-million, and fine book stores everywhere...see local stores for details.

...and he walks away...choir singing Kumbaya....curtains close....lights fade...applause....

religion is the belief of a higher intelligence/power/reason for life. if you do not believe in it, thats ok, but don't judge people for their beliefs and ideals.

the laws and dogma were written by man. though these are considered holy, they are man made laws. they were included for the people of their time, to better them (did you know that jews don't eat pork because eating pork was seen to cause sickness and death ala taenia soleum in the time of the old testament?).

it would make for quite an empty and meaningless life to think that this is all we are.

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But remember that, even when those who move you be kings or men of power, your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say "but I was told by others to do thus" or that "virtue was not convenient at the time." This will not suffice. Remember that.

Is everyone God? I grok so. (refer to Robert A Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land)

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