Do I believe in God?
I don’t believe in the God in whose name women were persecuted and killed as witches in Salem.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name men and boys marched to war in the Crusades.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name Protestants and Catholics killed each other in Northern Ireland.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name Jews and Arabs kill, and maim and torture each other in the Middle East.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name people harass young women and bomb buildings and send threatening mail and kill doctors who perform abortions.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name people fly airplanes into buildings killing people.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name hatred of people who are different than you or who believe differently is taught.
I don’t believe in the God in whose name children are taught to deny their God-given bodies which results in tortured twisted minds that commit rape, serial crimes and mass murders.
Many will say they agree with me because of the way I have stated the case. But if you feel you are in agreement, then are you ready to say that children should be taught to think rather than taught to follow blindly? Blind faith has been involved in all of the above–blind faith that was taught at an early age. Faith in a God that can say “an eye for an eye”. Faith in a God that can torture a good man to try his patience (Job). Faith in a God conceived by men more than two thousand years ago. Faith in a God who claims to be the only God and thus drives many of the faithful to believe that others are wrong where they are right.
Do I believe in God?
I believe in the God I see in the setting sun and the opening flower.
I believe in the God I see in your eyes.
I believe in the God that is accessible through my God-given senses.
I believe in the God that is equated with love.
I believe in love.
I believe love is the most powerful and most wonderful level we can attain in our lives. Love of all, love of ourselves, love of life.
Anyone who has felt this love finds the acts that have been committed in the name of God to be incomprehensible. Whether it be children killing fellow students or men flying into buildings it has never been done by someone who loved the God within them only by those whose love has been misguided to an ancient entity created as separate from all that we know in this life.
Comments 2
“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.”
Posted 09 Mar 2008 at 3:23 am ¶- Abraham Lincoln
Abe Lincoln was a great man, a great thinker. He learned to use his god-given mind, his conscience, to guide him. It may well be that many people were not given a mind capable of finding within themselves a good feeling associated with doing good and a bad feeling with “doing bad”. For those a religion devised by others with heavens and hells must be necessary if we are to believe those who can’t understand how someone who doesn’t believe as they do could possible be restrained from doing bad.
Posted 04 Jul 2008 at 1:17 pm ¶Post a Comment
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