Religion

[Jim Colyer]

I tried Christianity at different times. It always caused psychological problems! It goes without saying that we should treat each other with respect. The problems I have are with supernatural things like the virgin birth, miracles of Jesus, and Jesus coming back from the dead and walking around 40 days before ascending into heaven. It sounds ridiculous, a combination of mythology, superstition and lies, not something we might accept as fact. I tried the Bible and church again when my mother died. I basically laid in bed and drank for a year. I prayed her soul went to heaven. At the same time, I could not say there is any kind of afterlife or such a thing as a soul. When I pray, I feel schizophrenic, like I am talking to myself. It seems obvious that when we are dead, we are dead. Yet, there is something in humans that yearns for immortality. Why? Perhaps it is an indication that there is a "God" and some kind of eternal existence. Apparently, animals do not have religion or any longing for immortality. People say that humans are animals. I recoil from the idea. We differ from animals, yet this is still not proof of any kind of Creator. It seems that all religions are wrong! Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam all embrace medieval thinking. I cannot say I am an atheist because I am not. Nor can I say I am a believer or an agnostic. None of these categories apply to me.

Creationists offer no proof. The Bible is mythology, stories made up by men. Ancient Jews had their mythology as did the ancient Greeks and Romans. Science is objective! It deals with nature and physical reality. "The flood story" of Genesis is fantasy. The idea that Noah built a boat and put all the animals in the world in it is ridiculous. Science sets the date of the earth at 4.6 billion years. All the continents have been under water at different times. Fossils of marine animals can be found in the highest mountains. But there was no "Biblical flood" as such that killed all the people except Noah and his family. This is folklore! Charles Darwin started out as a "believer." His faith had to be shaken by his voyage and his findings in the Galapagos Islands. But in the 1830s and in the company he kept, it was dangerous to contest scripture.

After my mother died, I went to Belmont Church on Music Row a couple of times. I did not fit. I asked the preacher how he knew Jesus rose from the grave. He said because of the "empty tomb." I was not convinced. There was no empty tomb. The preacher was confusing a ghost story with reality. Printed words on a page do not make an empty tomb. On the bottom line, the gospels are mythology, although they are not taught that way by the Church. They are taught as fact. But the idea that a man came back to life, ascended into the atmosphere, and will one day return in clouds to catch believers up in some kind of rapture is absurd.

Jesus is a mythological character. So, any number of stories can and have been invented about him just as the ancient Greeks had varied and contradictory stories about their gods and goddesses.

I do not want to be called an "atheist!" It is a dirty word people who believe in mythology call people who know the difference between what is real and what is not.

Life is a result of bio-chemical processes. When those bio-chemical processes cease, life ends. "We are chemistry," as Seth Shostak wrote.

We are chemistry and biology! We are thinking beings with language. We created religions, gods and goddesses and the monotheistic concept of one God. We wrote the Bible and ascribed its authorship to an imaginary deity.