The divisions of religious belief

2006-02-16T16:20:00.000-08:00

There are two core belief systems to religion: Gnosticism and Agnosticism.
"Gnostic" means "knowledge of God." Gnostics are people that belief that they know whether or not there is a god/ there are gods, and agnostics understand that they don't know whether or not there is a god or gods. Gnostism is divided into two fields: Theism and Atheism.
"Theism" means "God woship." Theists believe that there is a god/there are gods, and these theists worship this god/these gods. Atheists believe that there is no god/are no gods. Theism is divided into two fields: Monotheism and Polytheism.
"Mono" means "one." Monotheists believe that there is only one god. Examples of monotheistic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. "Poly" means "many." Polytheists believe that there are multiple gods, usually hundreds or thousands. Examples of Polytheistic religions are Hinduism, and the religions of the Romans, Greeks and Norse.

The lacking of an existence of a God

2006-02-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

Let it be known that I am personally not religious and that I have a heavy disagreement and malcontent with religion in the world. Let it also be known that I do understand why people choose to practice religion, but I think that their reasons are illegitimate.
Thousands of years ago, when the human race was still in its infant stage, people became curious about the world around them and they wondered how things happened; how did water fall from the sky, how did flashes of light and loud bangs come from clouds, and why did a bright light circle the sky half the time. These primitive people had not yet developed the ability to scientifically determine how these things occurred, so they turned to superstition. They believed that gods were responsible for these event; they thought that Zeus or Thor, when angry, would send down bolts of lightning to the earth, that Ra or Apollo rode across the sky, and that by appeasing spirits those spirits would generate rain. These people didn’t know where the world came from, so they just gave it a simple, superstitious explanation—a god created the world.
In more recent times, thousands of years since the dawn of religion, the field of science has emerged, and has proven scientifically how these aforementioned events occurred, and disproving those superstitious beliefs. These scientists discovered that there is a giant body, much larger than our world, 93 million miles away from earth, that our planet revolves around, and that we also spin on an axis, so that is why we only see the sun half of the time (more or less). It was also discovered that when heated, water becomes a gas and travels into the sky and becomes clouds. When these clouds become too massive, the water accumulates to form drops large and heavy enough to fall back to the earth as rain. Also, when these clouds are particularly large, winds produce friction between the molecules of water, and due to water’s polar nature, this produces and builds static electricity, and this energy builds up to the point where it is suddenly discharged to either another part of the cloud or to the ground, thereby producing lightning. This lightning heats up the air to the point where it explodes, producing a shockwave through the air that we perceive to be thunder. Superstition is the older, less thought out way of explaining the world where science is the more correct way.
I personally believe in metaphors throughout the universe. There are many examples of similar things happening throughout the universe that are metaphorical. Examples are everywhere—I have written many papers in my career as a student, and I always approach the writing of these papers the same way. When people get married, it’s because they love each other, and how they fell in love is usually the same general course, boy meets girl, the two befriend each other, they take the relationship to higher levels, and they eventually fall in love, similar to when two people of the same gender befriend each other, but that stops at a certain point and doesn’t go any further (this metaphor doesn’t take into consideration homo/bisexuals). Similar to the adage “history repeats itself,” there is an expression of mine that fits for this thought: “The world and its contents repeat themselves.” Therefore, if anything in this universe is imperfect, as many things we see everyday are, than everything in this universe is imperfect, and perfection doesn’t exist within this universe. Most religions/faiths believe that god/the gods are perfect, but if they’re perfect, than they can’t be in or affect this universe. If god/the gods created us in their image as some religions/faiths depict, then why aren’t we perfect? Why don’t we live forever? The concept of perfection and imperfection never coexisting is what I call my theorem of P // I, or Perfection is parallel to Imperfection (this is a metaphor to lines on a Cartesian plane, such as y = x and y = x + 1, those two lines share the same slope and therefore are parallel, thusly they never coincide.)
Religion is something of a childish thing. The idea of a supreme being watching over oneself is an idea similar to having your parents tell you to buckle up when you get in a car to make sure you don’t get hurt. Some people also think that whenever something bad happens, than they say that it was “God’s will,” and that no one is to blame. Well, that is ignorant and foolish—if a person acts stupid and gets them self killed, than that wasn’t a will of a god, it was an act of stupidity, or simply an unavoidable situation—maybe the person was driving a car and all of a sudden twelve deer leapt out from the woods and one ended up in the windshield.
There is also a hypothetical concept that perfection and infinity are related to each other. A perfect universe, under this hypothetical situation, extends infinitely in all directions, and therefore our universe can’t exist. Since we exist, we know that such a perfect infinite universe cannot exist. However, since perfection has never been encountered, than we cannot know if perfection and infinity are connected and therefore it is possible that a perfect universe exists but doesn’t coincide at all with this universe.
In conclusion, the idea of a god existing and ruling over us is illogical. A perfect god cannot exist due to P // I, science proves natural explanations for natural things, and the idea of a god ruling over us is immature and childish. People are religious because they want to make their world simpler and easier, but life is rarely simple or easy. Life is finite, rough, and complex, and understanding that is something that everyone should do.

The Godless Shrine

The divisions of religious belief

The lacking of an existence of a God