Theological Uncertainty
Like many people that I know, I was raised to believe that there is a God and that he/she controls and created everything. When I was unsure about the way something worked, I believed that angels, God, or Jesus made it work. Lightning was Jesus playing with Heaven's light switch, thunder was angels bowling, wind was God whistling, waves were made by Jesus playing in the ocean, and windmills were pushed by angels. Those make perfect sense to a child that has no other knowledge about the subject and won't question it once it makes sense. Today as I drove to work I watched the windmills outside Dodge Center and was reminded of my childhood theory on the workings of windmills. That's when I started to think about all the religion driven thoughts I used to have and how they make no sense to me anymore. I used to wholeheartedly believe that everything was somehow influenced by the divine. Now, not so much. I stopped seeing the universe in terms of godly influence and in terms of mathematical and scientific laws. I've read both the Bible and also the Quran out of curiosity and while I found them full of wonderful stories, I have trouble believing religious works anymore. I keep finding far too many contradictions for me to find anything in them credible. Just the simple concept of whether or not killing is wrong is contradicted over and over. There's also so much scientific evidence that conflicts with many biblical ideas. The Bible tells us the world is only a few thousand years old but fossils and rock dating tells us that the earth is billions of years old. We're also told to believe that everything was created in a week and that nothing has changed. Man and dinosaurs supposedly walked the earth together and one only survived because of a large boat. Are we to believe that God just decided he didn't like some of the animals he made and wiped them out for the heck of it? And what about neanderthals, cro magnons, and other proto humans? We keep finding their skeletons but the Bible says that they could have never existed. Not only this but many of the things we once believe could only be done by God, we're now discovering ways to do. Cloning is a way of creating life, we can create stars and possibly black holes. We also have the capability to destroy our solar system. Once upon a time, God was the only creator and destroyer and now we can do both. With greater understanding on the workings of our universe, more and more religious ideas stop making sense. In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were punished for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Does that mean that knowledge is religion's or even God's enemy? Am I and others who thirst for knowledge and understanding the enemies of God? All of this begs the greater question. Did God create man or did man create God? I still believe in a higher being and an afterlife...but I don't think I can call myself Christian anymore. If you can still believe in the religion you belong to then I applaud you for having that much faith. As for me, I just don't know anymore.