Thursday: April 14, 2010

Having accepted the Roman Catholic religion when I was a young man and now being the season of Lent I can't help but think of my personal views on God, religion and my relationship with both. Lately I've been reading a lot of news regarding Catholic and Christian ideological teachings, what's it mean to be Catholic and Christian, and different interpretations of the scriptures. Quite frankly after reading everything I am left with more questions that I seem to have no answers for.

So I'm going to layout my thoughts on each:

1. God....Is there a God?

For this question I have only one answer. YES The idea of there being a God to me is not much of a mystery. How do I know? I know because of the complexity of his design. To say that we arose from the primordial ooze and through evolution became the species we are is too simplistic. To say we all come from Adam and Eve is also too simplistic. If we all came from the same 2 people then why don't we all look the same? Why are there Caucasians, Negroids, and Asians with different genetic characteristics? I look at the atoms, cells, and chemical composition that created our bodies, and then I look at the evidence of a mind and spirit that dwells within and operates these bodies, I see the hand of God at work.

Some scientists believe in "The Big Bang Theory" which surmises that everything began with an explosion. The thought, in and of itself, is fine until you get to the question of where did the elements and catalyst that caused the big bang come from. We all know we can not create something out of nothing. A void is just that, void, empty of everything. So, something or someone had to introduce the elements into the void. This is where my affirmation of the existence of God comes into play. If not for him, who?

Other scientists believe in the "Creationist Theory" which says everything we know, our universe and human beings, were created in six days. Human beings and dinosaurs cohabited this planet at the same time. Okay, I still get a good chuckle from that. Scientific evidence, if nothing else, points out the folly of that notion. Our planet is billions of years old, dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago, and humans have been here a mere 200,000 years. My belief is that God used evolution to create the world we know today. To me, evolution is a means by which to understand the purpose of God's creation. To understand the logical steps he took to create all that he created. It is a means by which we can come to understand him and ourselves better.

The bible says we are all made in God's image. I believe this to be true, but not in the physical sense. I believe God's image is our spirit our driving force. I believe God's image is our ability to learn, to adapt, and to change. With each change we evolve into something new. Whether it was our first steps out of the primordial ooze or our first discovery of the use of fire, as a species we have learned, adapted and changed.

This is enough for today....tomorrow I'll talk about religion.