“The Roman did not, like the Greek, think of his gods as having human form; he called them simply numina, or spirits; sometimes they were abstractions like Health, Youth, Memory, Fortune, Honor, Hope, Fear, Virtue, Chastity, Concord, Victory, or Rome. Some of them, like the Lemures or Ghosts, were spirits of disease, hard to propitiate….Never had a religion so many divinities. Varro reckoned them at 30,000, and Petronius complained that in some towns of Italy there were more gods than men.”

Having gods in everything is not all that different from monotheistic belief that God, their single god, is in everything which is certainly a lot easier than having to remember the names of all the different gods. However, I rather like the notion of many gods. I thank the cedar shingle god who has placed the right size and number of shingles in my hand before climbing the ladder; I thank the stone god for missing my bare foot when I drop a stone unwisely; I thank the rain god for holding the rain back until I am through picking the beans and if I give thanks prematurely, I laugh at the joke being played on me.

I suppose those who believe that a loving god could be so self-centered as to make the first three of His Ten Commandments be all about himself will be sure that I am on a course for hell. It is my hope that their beliefs make them as happy as the playful relationship I have with my gods makes me.

The quote above is from The Story of Civilization: Part III Caesar and Christ by Will Durant which I am currently enjoying. I have read four of the eleven volumes and highly recommend them to anyone who enjoys reading history

One of the arguments creationists use to dismiss evolution goes “If we evolved from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?” They ought to look at their own religion for the answer. Catholicism evolved from Judaism and yet there are still Jews. Islam evolved from Catholicism as did Protestantism yet there are still Catholics. There are divisions within Islam and numerous forms of Protestantism all leaving still intact their origins. For those who are confused about how evolution works, I hope this helps.

Understanding evolution doesn’t mean you have to abandon or even question your faith. I would hope this brings you a better understanding of your faith. Genesis is a myth. It is interesting to contemplate how that myth came into being. The majority of Christians, Jews and Muslims already understand it as a myth and yet they remain Christians, Jews and Muslims. Take the good messages on living that the Bible holds and use them. Enjoy the myths as part of your heritage

People who don’t eat broccoli are sinners and will go to Hell. Fortunately, if they eat broccoli on the last day of their life, they will be saved. If you don’t believe me, look it up in the Bible.

The 41^st president of the United States didn’t eat broccoli. He hated broccoli, in fact. There is still time for his redemption but the frightening thing is that by not eating broccoli while he was president we actually had a disciple of Satan running the most powerful nation on earth for four years. We should have read the Bible more carefully before voting.

You say you can’t find anything about broccoli in the Bible? You just aren’t looking hard enough because you can find anything you want to believe in the Bible. First, you have to believe it to be so then you look until you find what you were looking for. Tell a Jehovah’s Witness the next time one knocks on your door that Jesus and all the people who had a hand in writing the Bible thought the world was flat and they will turn to a passage in the Bible that proves to them that you are wrong, that Jesus did know the earth was round and that it was not the center of the universe. I made up the broccoli part but the Jehovah’s Witness part is true.

Wouldn’t life be interesting if everything were as open to interpretation as the Bible? Imagine: speed limit 50 unless you want to go faster or throw an apple into the air and it doesn’t come down if you don’t want it to.

Not only is the Bible not the word of God it is so inconsistent it would drive any editor nuts.

Question: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative?

I asked my friend from college: “Work! I thought you retired?”

“Yes, I do work. I took a couple of years off and went back to work as an auditor-appraiser for the county assessor office. I put values on personal property (boats/airplanes) and business equipment and hand the values over to the tax collector department that translates my value into a property tax much like the real estate tax. I get very other Friday off, plus I needed health care coverage. If I work 5 years, I can retire from the county and get a monthly check based on my salary.”

Did you guess liberal Democrat. He is a bureaucrat, after all, and looking forward to being on the public dole with the retirement. I guess we can’t fault him wanting health care.

Actually, he hates bureaucrats, thinks pensions for labor are destroying the country, and doesn’t understand why people are whining about health care. He has never voted for a Democrat. He also hates taxes which takes all this irony over the top since he is working for the tax assessor. You already know I think there may be a link between fundamentalist republicans and fundamentalist Christians. My friend is a fundamentalist Lutheran.

This is a true story. The quote is an actual quote. Obviously he doesn’t see any disconnect between what he is doing and what he believes. There is way too much of this in our society: the people who bitch about taxes and scream at politicians for not fixing the pot-holes; the people who hate government but want morality laws—government in the bedroom. I have to accept that they don’t see the inconsistency so I watch the Daily Show on Comedy Central with Jon Stewart to get a laugh rather than an aneurism.

No, we have enough religions. No need for more. The religions many have grown up with are imbedded in their psyche. Communism was the largest experiment in getting rid of religion and it clearly failed to do so. However, new religions have formed over the years; some of them, most notably the Mormons in recent times, have been quite successful in drawing people to them from other religions. It is apparent that many people need religion perhaps to help them stay on a moral path or to help them through difficult times or to give them comfort. Religious rituals are important to some; songs and sermons can be uplifting as well as doing good.

I would not for a minute suggest replacing established religions with a new religion. I shudder at the thought of anyone taking my writings (this is not the only place I write) as the basis for a new religion because historically all of the great religions have strayed from the words of the teachers on whom they were founded.

My philosophy is introspective. To follow my path one needs to use his or her brain to think about this life, his or her life. I hope that what you find when you look inside yourself is a conscience that guides you. Much of your conscience may be in step with a religion or, more nearly, with the teachings of the original figure in the religion but the ultimate guide should be totally within you. We are all different. If you want to call what you find within yourself a new religion, fine; but keep it to yourself.

Ask anyone who believes in heaven what it is like and most will tell you they don’t know.

Have you thought about it?

Not really.

Would you say you live your life with the goal of getting into heaven?

Yes, of course.

What would you do differently if you didn’t believe in heaven?

Oh, I don’t know. I guess I wouldn’t necessarily follow the 10 Commandments.

You mean you might kill someone?

No, not that. I don’t know. Maybe I’d commit adultery.

You mean believing in Heaven is the only reason you don’t commit adultery? Some people believe dancing is a sin and even though they would like to dance they don’t because they want to get into heaven. Do you believe dancing is a sin?

No.

Is there anything like that that you don’t do because it would be a sin?

Not that I can think of.

Is masturbation a sin?

Yes.

Do you masturbate?

I’m not going to answer that.

OK. I think you have, but for people who think masturbation is a sin and yet they find it pleasurable to the extent that they do it anyway; if they believe it is a sin, aren’t they constantly feeling bad about doing something that might keep them out of heaven? Does it make sense to struggle with a conflict between one’s god-given body and religious belief of a heaven and give no thought to what heaven is like?

What is heaven like II

Those who do try to describe heaven usually have a lot of gold, silver, diamonds and other jewels radiating bright light. I like to sink my god-given feet into the soil (I seldom wear shoes) so I can’t imagine a worse place than one made of hard metals with stones scattered about. Give me grass, shade trees and garden soil rich in humus. Fill the air with the scents of flowers, moldering leaves, ocean spray. Lift my spirits with chirping brooks and bird songs and, please, please let there be sex.

The purpose of heaven was understood by the believer in the dialogue above. Heaven is the carrot for living a “moral life”—“Moral life” as defined in the same book that invented heaven.

Huck Finn couldn’t see any point in going to heaven if Aunt Polly was going to be there. Heaven for climate, Hell for company. The heaven that most people of faith aspire to is no place I want to be but I have found a heaven that does help me to live my life better. Ironically this “better life” is rather closely aligned with the morality described in the New Testament.

The heaven I have found is a place where everyone loves everyone. Other than that it is pretty much just like life here on earth. I envision a party with friends and at this party there is a game that we can play. We step into this closet or put on a virtual reality suit and we are “born” into this life. Just like with games as we know them here on earth we can play the game over and over and each time we get better at it. Before stepping into the game we can think about how we will play it. We may give ourself certain goals and pick a time and place to be born. Our friends on the other side can come into our game and be characters helping us, challenging us or testing us.

Here is an example of how it works.

I am an organic gardener and one of the things that takes up a fair amount of my time is chasing stripped cucumber beetles (CBs) on my squash plants. I have decided that the cucumber beetles are some of my friends from the party. They were hanging around the punch bowl watching me and…

CB 1 Let’s play hide and seek with Mort in the squash patch.

CB2 I’m game. Let’s make a side bet on who lasts the longest.

CB3 I know what I’m going to do. When he spots me I’m going to drop off the leaf.

CB1 Yeah, that works pretty well where he has mulch but he can spot you on the ground.

CB 2 I’m going to fly.

CB 4 How are you going to fly out of a blossom?

CB2 I’ll be on a leaf and keep my eye out for him.

CB 4 If I know you, you’ll be in a blossom screwing and when he comes along you will be oblivious. Your lady friend will probably start running and you won’t even get off her.

CB2 I guess you’re right. I’m not going to waste a life just hanging out. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he won’t see me.

This dialogue goes on as I mercilessly move down the row of squash plants picking off CBs, chasing those who drop onto the mulch and tunnel in, who drop and play dead or who drop and run. The blossoms will frequently have several mating couples making me think of a luridly painted yellow motel. Sometimes they will see me coming and watch me ready to fly if I move toward them. These I have learned to catch with a swift grab but others fly immediately and escape. This heaven I have invented helps me get through a job that might otherwise frustrate me perhaps to the point of anger. Instead of anger I am feeling playful and forgiving.

Yes, I am living my life as if it were a game. One of my friends from the other side came into the game as George W. Bush to try to take me off my goal of happiness and he succeeded for a time until I put him in his place. The place? Why among my friends who love me. When the game is over, when I die, and I go back to the party with my friends we will have some laughs over how I played the game and I expect some congratulations. I have this image of W pointing at me from across the room wagging his finger and saying, “I gotcha, buddy.” I’ll make my way across the room and we’ll high five and embrace and I’ll say, “Yeah, you got me you son-of-a-bitch.” He will take no offense at the appellation SOB because it was meant as a term of endearment.  

French philosopher Blaise Pascal wagered “that one would be wise to believe in God, since in the end the believer would lose nothing, unbelievers everything, if proved wrong.” Assuming that the God he was talking about is the God of the Bible I argue the opposite. If one leads a life based on a certain belief and that belief goes counter to the way one might otherwise lead his or her life, it could be a wasted life.

What if the purpose of life were pleasure? What if a successful life were measured in sexual intercourse? Picture the Pope arriving at the Pearly Gates expecting to be welcomed warmly but St. Peter says, “Man, you really messed up.”

Pope: What!? I led an exemplary life. I helped people. I was their moral leader. I guided millions of people to do right.

St. Peter: Yeah, you did some good things but you failed sexually.

Pope (hangs his head sheepishly): Oh, God, I didn’t masturbate that much. Forgive me.

St. Peter: I’m not God.

Pope: Sorry.

St. Peter: You misused your God-given body.

Pope: I’m sorry. I fought it all the time but it felt so good and I was weak.

St. Peter: It felt good? Where did that feeling come from?

Pope: The devil?

St. Peter: Did the devil give you your body?

Pope: No.

St. Peter: No. God gave you your body with all the senses. God gave you your erections. You denied yourself one of the greatest features of your God-given body. What did you think when, at the height of your pleasure you gasped, “Oh God”? Did you think this was blasphemy? Did it never occur to you that this was when you were closest to God, closest to paradise? You can come on in if you want to but I suggest you take another life and try again.

This is just a whimsical tale to illustrate a different point of view. Where did the notion come from that celibacy was a good idea? Certainly not from thinking that our bodies were God-given. Who would want to take away pleasures of the flesh? Certainly not the giver of those pleasures.

We are all different so I don’t want to suggest that someone who does not get pleasure from sex should seek it out against his or her senses. If I am to believe the religious people who wonder what keeps nonbelievers from committing crimes, then I most emphatically say that those people should hold onto their belief that they will go to hell if they don’t follow the Bible. We are all different so I cannot say that anyone else has a moral compass built into their being. Personally I would not consider a sexual pleasure other than with a consenting adult or onanisticly. Anyone who does not have those moral constraints built into their psyche or soul should, by all means, hang onto whatever moral rule or law or commandment keeps them from violating another.

If our belief causes us to live out life in a way different than we otherwise would, then Pascal is in error when he says we have nothing to lose by believing.

You don’t know there is a God any more than an atheist knows there is no god. You can believe there is a God. You can think there is a God. You can have faith there is a God. But there is nothing you can do to convince me you KNOW there is a God.

            Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there is something you can do to convince me you know there is a God. What might that be? How about if you told me God had given you the ability to walk on water? OK. Show me. Let me see you walk on water. If I see you walk on water and you told me that this ability was give to you to convince doubting Thomases like me that God exists, then, wow, yeah, I think I would be convinced.

            This is a new thought for me and I think it answers a question I have pondered without resolution before. I think that the teachings of Jesus are really wonderful. Love thy neighbor. Love your enemies. Love everyone. Do not judge others. Really great stuff. My question has been why the supernatural stuff–like walking on water and virgin birth. I simply don’t believe in things that go against all of the experiences that have come to me through my god-given body. It doesn’t matter to me. The supernatural things don’t take away from the wisdom of his words that I can relate to and actually put to good use in the way I live my life.

            So here is how I think the supernatural stuff came into being. There were these men, the evangelicals of their time, trying to get the masses to follow the teachings of Jesus but the masses were not buying it so they started attributing supernatural abilities to him.

Are you one of those who need to have Christ with supernatural abilities? Why? Aren’t his words powerful enough without the virgin birth, turning a fish and a loaf of bread into enough food to feed the crowd, resurrection?

            This is the life God gave you. There is so much to be explored, learned, and enjoyed in this life. There are so many challenges, like living peacefully, like having a meaningful relationship with another, like dealing with our deficiencies whether it be physical handicaps or mental handicaps. What a fantastic game has been developed for us—this game of life with its pleasures and its pain and suffering. There are video games that try to recreate parts of life. Think of life as the ultimate video game and play it well.