My Thoughts on Religion

BOOK SUMMARY

I was brought up in a Christian home and sometime around the age of twelve I accepted Christ as my personal savior. However, then I went to college and was challenged by others in my beliefs. At around the age of 20 began to question my faith. I had a roommate who was Catholic and we, with others, discussed religion a lot. We even made appointments with preachers and priests in the surrounding churches to discuss our doubts. We were never satisfied with the answers they provided. At that time I left my religion. In the following I will attempt to explain why.

There are many religions in the world. It seems to me that your religion depends to a great extent on where you were born and brought up. If you were brought up in Egypt or Saudi Arabia you would probably be Muslim, India, a Hindu, Japan a Buddhist. Not only that if you were born and raised at a different time in history such as in the U.S. in 1000 AD or anywhere before Christ was born you would have never heard of Christ. But you would have had a religion. To say that one religion among many is the true one seems to me to be absurd!

In this country we believe in freedom of religion. Why? If one religion is the true one it should be demonstrated and taught as the true religion. Religion is by choice because no one knows what one, if any, is true.

Jesus, who was he? From what I have heard the only evidence of him is in the Bible. It seems to me that if he really existed he was just another rebel that the Romans killed. Jesus was of course sacrificed so that God would not have to punished the rest of the human race who were sinners. The concept of sacrifice is an ancient. But was Jesus really sacrificed? Sacrifice means you give something up for a reason. God never really gave Jesus up since he was risen in three days. He was not really sacrificed at all. How all this turned into a religion is beyond me. By the way I think that most Christians believe the Jesus was the Son of God, like he was God’s only son. In Geneses chapter 6 verses 1-2 says that God had other sons who were interested in the daughters of men and went down and married them. There is no mention of the daughters of God nor the son’s of men. Perhaps the writers of the Bible were male chauvinists! Now if God had sons just how many did he have? Since he has been around for a long time the number must be in the millions. And who were his wives?

People argue that the universe is amazing in its “design” and that it must have a creator. But the concept of God is even more amazing. To think that one super human being created everything makes no sense to me. What was he doing before he started? And if he created everything he also created disease. I read that about two million children below the age of five years die each year of malaria. And that’s just one disease among many. Why does God allow this? And to think that this same God answers your prayers makes no sense.   If he cares so little for these innocent children why would he car for you?

Christians believe that he Bible is the word of God. The Muslims believe it is the Koran. I’m sure other religions have other books. I spent some time in my life trying to understand the Bible. Below is a list of problems I have with the Bible.

1. Did God create man or the animals first? In Genesis 1:20 and 26 the animals came first and in Genesis 2 verses 7 and 19 man came first.

2. Can God add? In both Ezra chapter 2 and Nehemiah chapter 7 is the enumeration of the people who went up out of captivity. In both cases the total is supposed to be 42,360. However, if one bothers to add the figures the total in Ezra is 29,818 and that in Nehemiah is 31,084. If I have made an error in these calculations, I admit fallibility. God, however, has no excuse.

3. Does God repeat himself (or is it herself)? Consider II Chronicles 36:22-23 and compare them to the first 3 verses of the next book Ezra 1:1-3. Notice that they are identical. However, II Chronicles seems to end in the middle of a sentence as the sentence continues in Ezra.

4. The earthquake. The books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all describe the life of Christ. The reason that there are four instead of one, I am told, is to validate the truth of the events by means of four witnesses instead on one, hence convincing the doubter of its authenticity. This seems reasonable. However, let us consider the earthquake which is described in Matthew 27:51-54 and again in Matthew 28:2. This rather cataclysmic event was not described at all by Mark, Luke or John. Perhaps it never really happened.

5. The inscription. According to all four of the gospels a sign was placed over the head of Christ. However, each book reports a slightly different version. Compare Matthew 27:37, Mark 15:26, Luke 23:38 and John 19:19.

6. The genealogy of Christ. Both Matthew and Luke give the genealogy of Christ. However, they are very different. Compare Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38. In Matthew 1:16 it ends with “and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary of whom was born Jesus”. If God was the father of Jesus why do we need the heritage of Joseph. In Luke there is a completely different line.

I have been told that these and other inconsistencies are in the bible because the bible was not actually written by God but only by men who were inspired by God. That God actually made these errors or inspired men to make them is not relevant. If God is perfect then his works should be perfect also.

Here are a few quotes by famous men about religion:

Albert Einstein said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”

John Adams: “This is my religion, only this, my adoration for the creator of this magnificent universe, and delight, joy, triumph and exultation my own existence. Even though I am only an atom, a molecule in the universe, that is all of my religion. I am no Christian.”

Thomas Jefferson: “I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I find in our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. Christianity has made one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.” On Jesus he said “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus be a supreme being as ‘father’, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Thomas Paine: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, not by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.” (I think this is what my wife Virginia believes but I’m not sure.)

George Washington was arguably one of the few American Presidents who was not a Christian He professed a strong belief in God, but did not believe that God intervened in the world through supernatural miracles. His informal religion was Deism.

It seems that these people were what we now call Deists, people who believe in God as a creator, the uncaused cause, who started everything but has no future relationship with humans. This may be what Collins is but it is hard to tell.

Finally, I would like to mention that there are other books on religion that have influenced me, some of which are currently being sold in bookstores. Here are a few.