Religions, dogma and more sheep

I'd been thinking for a couple of days now what to write about next without going into too personal subjects or whimping at the world again. So whilst I was thinking all this I started to think about God, and how people remember Him at certain moments and not the rest of the time, and what scientific basis there is for religious beliefs and all that.

There are people who will think that the subject is badly thought out, but if you look it up we can see that Religion is not the same as Dogma (great film by Silent Bob (Kevin Smith), though). I myself was uncertain untill I actually looked it up.

Since the beginning of time, the human beeing has sought the explanation for the unexplainable. Back from the discovery of fire (and even before) right up 'till today (and even further). It is, therefore, perfectly true to say that BELIEF is almost a genetic need for the human being.

However. As time has gone by, certain gods have lost the match against science, such as the god of thunder, the god of fire, the god of rain, etc. Some say even the christian god, Yaveh (please, no stoning) will go down the same road.

In the end, believers defend themselves by saying that even though unexplainable things can be scientifically explained, they don't deny, by themselves, the presence of a deity. Once all logical reasoning is exhausted, the believer always has the last ace at hand, the ace of Faith; since Faith is, by it's own definition, the fact of belief even in the face of demonstrations, proof, invisibility, incoherences, etc.

The need for belief has a (not very scientific) very logical basis: the person's own consciousness. It is very hard to conceptualize a beginning and an end of consciousness (even though we loose it every night). We have "first memories" we remember; those very early childhood memories (in my case, some from kindergarden). However, generally, we are not too bothered about not remembering anything prior to that. The reason for that is simple: it's in the past.

However, we all know death awaits in the future. And with it, the possibility that everything is over. It's hard to conceptuallize that: an end to consciousness. An end to I. No more thoughts. No more feelings. No more nothing. Some try to imagine, but it is a futile exercise. A friend of mine expressed it very well once: you cannot imagine consciousness outside consciousness itself.

Therefore, when confronted with a block like that, the human finds an "easy way out": life after death. Naturally, once that concept is created, we must administer it. It is not fair that both good and evil have the same chance to carry on. Naturally, the fair, the good, must receive their compensation. After all, that is what we were always taught: bee good and you shall be compensated, if not in this life then in the next (which is highly dissapointing to those being good in lives filled with injustice and where everything goes wrong). And, of course, we'll have to do something with the wicked: punish them for all eternity (which is a lot longer than you think... isn't that a bit like overkill?).

Btu true good is not in doing good so you get the compensarion, but do it because it is right. The problem is that, if we assume that dogma, we enter a logical conflict, since the moral values change from society to society and even from person to person. Just think, tere are killers out there believeing they're doing God's work. How will God judge them? Our morals and laws don't apply, remember, since man-made laws have no meaning in heaven.

In the end , then, logic reduces this to doing good because it is right, without expectations for compensation (and even expect punishment, since as the saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished"); and we must take advantage of all the guidance at hand in order to define what is good and what is evil. This paradignm, however, if you deepen on it, invalidates the idea of a properly based religion.

So where are the sheep? The sheep obey the rules because they've been given them, withouth a thought as to why and never questioning their validity. Sheep go to church on sundays and then behave like savages in the road, they diminish their peers with pride and fill their lives with small sins which matter not because they'll be cleaned in the next confession.

There are very few Mother Teresa's out there, and even she got unfairly angry at some pont, had temptations and was even evil if viewed from a non-christian point of view.

So don't be a sheep, be good and love like you want to be loved... even if they don't love you... even if they strike against you... because it is right. And when you are unfair, don't beat yourself up about it, for when you know you've been unfair you are already doing the necessary pennance.

Before you have to ask, I'm a respetuous agnostic with a sufficiently open mind to believe, but I will ask no help from God for, if he really does exist, he's not there for that.