Seriously guys; living in 2009 while maintaining a faithful allegiance to any of the current fundamental religions is mildly put naive. As children, we encounter child-minded tragedies over and over again, as we mature to life and the world. Realizing that the religion, in which you were taught to believe, turns out to be plastered with fraud and doubt, as science reveals the actual truth, leaves you in a similar scenario. But I don’t understand why so many adults have such a hard time dealing with the situation, as we did with tragedies as kids. Of course, religion is a much more complex subject, but adults are also equally equipped to deal with complex issues.

As I got older my confidence in the religion I was born into, started to fade. There is too much propaganda everywhere and I refuse to blind myself from the world, just because some people encouraged me to. It is somewhat illogical to take advice from people, who have no backing evidence whatsoever. I don’t deal well with suspicious authority and I have a hard time coping with people who blindly follow such doctrine. If you stand in the museum of natural history and claim that the 20′ mammal skeleton in front of you is pure fiction and not a proof of an ancient era, then the only thing more ridiculous than that verbal outburst must be your upbringing. Denying that the earth is in fact close to 4.567 billion years old is just as delusional as accusing Mother Teresa of being a terrorist or murderer.

The bible is the most copied book in the world and it contains a rule set that the roughly 1.5 billion people base their life on. How can that be? Granted that the bible makes slightly more sense than most holy scriptures, but in my opinion, there are still too many controversies and unanswered questions. The single fact alone that the bible is continuously updated alerts my suspicion. Like every other product we’re told that “This is it – the best product ever; the peak of technological evolution!”, only to learn that updates and newer products are in the pipeline, while they are selling it. They keep finding new documents that change the original message of the bible, so how do we know what to believe? My way of dealing with it is that we don’t. Heck; the entire group of people who trust in the bible is segmented into groups who each interpret the message differently, so why bother?

The Koran dictates that Muhammad the prophet brought the Koran directly from the hands of God to the people. It should occur to everyone who studies the Koran that it never was the work of a divine entity! Modern respected analysts from all over the world, in their professional opinion, claims that the Koran was written by a madman. There are beautiful passages in the Koran but most of it ludicrous and self-contradicting and if you believe the Koran as a whole, then you are either a chauvinistic male pig or an extremely narrow-minded fool.

Such ignorance is truly hard for me to comprehend and it occurs to me that people who abide by any fundamental religion, must have been under enormous stress to freely choose such belief as adults. It should occur to everyone that you could come up with a more likely belief yourself, especially living in 2009 where the known world, seen from a technological point of view, is the size of a needle head in vast quantities of space. Why is it that so many people think that they need more than Gods approval? Going to a church, a mosque or similar temple or attending any worship service is lovely, impressionable and sometimes even inspirational, granted, but none of those three facts justify why you should put your life in the hands of such religion, and the rules that come with it. The guidelines for every known major religion, claims that God is Omni scientific, meaning that God possesses the ability to know everything, infinitely. That means that God knows when you are praying, no matter where you choose to pray, how you pray or when you pray. Why do so many people need a second approval?

Honestly; if you live your life by the rules of Christianity, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamism or Catholicism the way they were originally intended, then you were lured to become part of one of the world’s largest schemes. Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind, as Albert Einstein said. It is Ok to ask questions when logic and reason is compromised by an authority other than your own morale. We’re left with our own judgement and our own belief, and in the end, it is up to us to choose what we believe in and to act accordingly. Each of us has a responsibility to calibrate our sense of right and wrong and let our moral guide our decisions as we make them.

So what are we left with? Well, I for one believe fully in God. It might not be the same entity or spirit that you refer to as God, but I surely believe in God, his presence and his concern for all living things. My mind is simply too inadequate to accept that everything comes from nothing; that a single zero suddenly became one. There must be a trigger, a catalyst if you will, and I hold that to be God. It might, in fact, be Muhammad, Buddha, Gaia or something completely different. I don’t know but that doesn’t stop me from believing.

Isn’t it about time that we cut loose of the traditions and start to focus on what really matters; Love, affection, honesty, kindness and self-sacrifice? All the major religions carry traces of this and I have a feeling that it might not be about religion at all. We have all done the math and we all know that we won’t be here forever. We have also managed to conclude that the world around us was here long before us, and will continue to evolve without us, long after we’re gone. Each of us will only be here for a limited time, we know it, and I believe it scares us.

Basically, we’re all worried about the same thing: the afterlife, “Life 2.0” if you will. What happens when we die? Well not to worry, if all religions apply, we all go to hell and no more vacation on Eden Boulevard. It’s impossible to be in the good grace of all religions, at the same time. The fact that all religions state that if you don’t support it and it alone, then you’re doomed, screws us all. To me, that sounds more like a bunch of broke investors losing clients fast, so I’m not worried. Seriously I’m not afraid of death. Call me old fashioned but I stick with one guideline: ‘If you do sufficient good deeds in this life, then there’s something equal or better on the other side’. What that is I don’t know yet; maybe it’s just the divine plan?

Don’t take belief in religion so seriously; take belief as a choice seriously instead. People deceive and mislead other people on a daily basis by the billions. Some people even make a profitable living out of it; religion is no exception. We all know that goodness flourishes while hatred parish, and isn’t it likely that a divine being made the rules that way? Maybe it’s just his way of saying “If you want to enter my realm – be good”. It’s really not a half bad deal. Kindness brings you laughter, warmth, love, smiles, prosperity, and life. Hatred brings you grief, sorrow, misfortune, anger, and death. The choice is pretty obvious, isn’t it?

(76)