Since I was a young boy, I was always resistant to the idea that someone else--especially an invisible someone else--could dictate my fate. I found the notion that an absentee father was anything less than enchanting. (I can speak from both reality and make-believe on that issue.)
Sigmund Freud called God a construct of the adult psyche. Humanity could not be thought capable of existing in a world without having someone more sage to whom they could atone. When we flew from our nests, so-to-speak, we had to have someone to be proud of us. We had to have someone bigger to fear when temptation was ripe. There is where we find God.
It is true that more people have died in the name of their deities, whether they be Brahman, Jesus, Allah, or Confucius (among a host of thousands of others). Think of all the lives that could have been saved if religion did not exist. Even with that said, surely we would have found something else to kill each other over on a daily basis, but at least it may have been more tactile.
I think of myths and fables when someone mentions religion. I think of Greek and Roman gods riding bolts of lighting across a wicked sky and smiting mortals with a mere thought. We smile at such childish stories, but at the same time we believe in the same stories, which are told in a slightly different way.
Who can honestly look at the story of the crucifixion and resurrection, with an educated mind, and accept that as gospel (pardon the pun)? I find it more than ironic that an omnipotent god would have to stoop to such mortal levels to get us to believe in him (or her or it). Medical science brings people back from death each day. People who have lived in a state of death (we call it coma today) are returned to awareness. Does that mean they are resurrected, too?
I also wonder why God doesn't perform such obvious miracles as he did once before. How come water can no longer be turned into wine by a single touch? How come cities are no longer destroyed in a hail of fire and brimstone at the biding of a spiteful sky spirit?
It is also fitting that Christians celebrate their holiest of holies on a great pagan holiday, Easter. Easter, or Eoaster, as it was called by Germanic peoples, celebrates the return of life and fertility to the land and womb after the desolation of winter. What better symbol than a beautifully decorated egg to symbolize an unfertilized womb. Youth are turned loose upon fertile fields and meadows to capture as many of the best of these hidden treasures. Their task is to find the most desirable to call their own. It's quite sexual, if you think about it. Also, it employs the first Sunday after the first full moon to follow the vernal equinox in its calculation, which is why Easter does not occur on a regular day.
Next year, Easter will be on April 24. How many Christians think of it that way, though? (Better yet, how many even know?)
Religion is a surrogate for a person's conscience. With that in mind, I have grown beyond the need for a make-believe friend who lives inside of me. I make decisions for my own benefit. I can take care of myself. I am independent and proud of it. I can live my entire life free of the restraints of religious dogma. It will not make me less of a person. I think more-and-more Western cultures are growing out of an infancy that has plagued us for so many centuries. It has bred hate and separated us along invisible boundaries. We are simply products of our environment. We are genetic mutations that have evolved into a subset of the species. One of millions to have inhabited this round, blue orb we call home.
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