Religious Rules

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Just Think About It


Religion… Science… Religious Rule… Scientific Rules

How does one attempt to make sense of the many religions, the rules within them, and science? What drives each of us one way or the other?

Sometimes I think people hide behind the word religion, picking one that makes them feel good or fits their lifestyle. There are so many options out there. So many religious beliefs are handed down from generation to generation. They become something people put faith in. Sometimes, they become traditions and embedded ways of thinking and acting.

I think the key word is ‘Faith,’ and faith is something we believe even if we don’t understand it completely. An example of the difference between knowledge and faith could be knowing your car will start because it started the last time. Faith is believing it will start when you just replaced some wires, and you believe you did it correctly.

So faith is something you believe, but you have not seen the actual outcome. You read the direction on where to connect the wires and have faith that the directions are correct. You turn the key or hit the start button, and nothing happens. What went wrong? You revisit the directions, double-check your connections, and everything looks correct. You try again, and still the same result. Something else must be wrong, or maybe it’s the manual.

The point is that we placed our faith in someone else’s instructions. That’s also true in religious beliefs. So which one do you put your faith in, or do we discredit all religious beliefs and place our faith in the science that tells us we just evolved? That we are just part of an evolutionary world.

It truly takes faith to step out and believe in something unproven or unseen by our eyes.

I’ve often said that we must peel the onion down to the last layer to find the answer. In this case, it is the answer to where to place our faith. It’s a most critical question. Is there more to life that we don’t understand, or do we live for some years and then die?

So we do our research. We double-check the version of the manual we used on our car. It’s a new revised edition. We do some research and find an original version online or at the library and find that they are not the same. Someone made a mistake. You go back and change the wiring, and the car starts.

The point is that we need correct information. To peel the onion, we need to go back to the beginning. We need to remember that the science of evolution is just a theory. Something that evolutionists place their faith in. Their own science still points out that someone or something had to start it all in motion, that the odds are simply impossible for it just to happen. Then we have all the other religious beliefs. Which one is correct? If we go all the way back to the oldest written words, we find the Bible. We find that God created the world and everything in it. Many religions are offshoots of the Bible where man has added their take. They may add rules that they think are needed. There are religious writings that seem to fit a comfort level or even a way of ruling or controlling people.

So when I peeled the onion to the core, it looks like it was either evolution or the God of the Bible. One is true, and one is not. It’s a matter of where to place one’s faith. We need to throw out the what if’s and focus on getting ourselves to the truth of the matter.

Personally, I believe that God is our creator, that Jesus is his son, that he was placed on earth and then died and was resurrected from the dead, that many people witnessed this, and that there is a Holy Spirit that will guide us once we place our faith in God.

The question is:

Where do you place your faith?

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Reflecting on Life


When I look back on my childhood, taking the time to evaluate my life, or maybe I should say the areas that I wrapped my arms around and embraced and those that I didn’t, it brings great joy and in some cases a level of sadness. Turning the clock back to my childhood, growing up on the farm during the 50’s and 60’s with little spare cash, just enough to get by with and sometimes not even that much, I had a good life that taught me more than I ever gave it credit for.

Graduating High School in 1968 while the Viet Nam war was in full swing, seeing many of my friends serving there and returning home not the same person, some in a box, some missing limbs, but mostly changed personalities due to the effects of the war, was a difficult time.

Getting married at age nineteen, building our first house at age twenty, becoming a father at age twenty-one, were huge steps in life for me.

The foundation learned as a youth growing up was never lost, only forgotten for many years. Saddened by so much I had witnessed as a youth and my mid-teenage years in the religious arena, set my life path in motion. Determination set in, a drive to enjoy life, to become financially sound, to take a stand against all that didn’t fit into my version of faith, all began while still in high school.

Working my way up the ranks of my first job, I worked hard. I took on two jobs in those early years trying to earn what I felt was required to be a good provider. Then becoming licensed in the electrical trade and eventually starting our own company my life was very busy. Between work, family and fun, I had my hands full. Then my eyes were opened to the rest of the world when I took a new job in 1986. Being able to travel to many parts of the world, I began to see and feel the effects that war really has. To be close to war, hearing how others dealt with war both old and new, grasping the many religious faiths and beliefs including those that have no belief in God, it kicked in motion my past and the emotions caused me to re-evaluate my understandings of life.

So what does this mean in the grander scheme of things? It shows that from childhood on, our lives and personalities are set in a direction and become altered as we continue to age, grasping new information, learning about others we cross paths with. The real question is; do we allow ourselves the freedom to open our mind and explore what we see and hear? Or do we remain set in our ways determined not to allow change? Do we even recognize that we are closed to anything that may disrupt our desires and beliefs in life?

For me, I spent the time to re-evaluate my past, examine what I had learned and experienced, and to wrap my arms around what I believe this life is all about. I worked hard to eliminate the mental blocks that so often accompanies our attempt to truly understand, disabling any rational outcome. What I found was that I could make a decision for myself, placing my faith in what I had come to understand. While it was influenced by many, it was in the end, my choice, my decision, my beliefs.

So there’s this lingering question

When was the time you slowed down long enough, shoved the distraction aside, threw out the external influences of those that educate with an agenda whether religious or non-religious or educational and dug deep enough that you allowed yourself the freedom to choose where you have placed your faith?

One of the biggest things I learned along this adventure is that it takes faith to believe in life, it takes faith to believe what it is all about. It takes faith to believe in God or to not believe in God. It takes faith to believe in the direction we choose for our lives.

Where is your faith placed?  

 

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No God? – God? – Allah? – What God?


I’m not a Theologian, Pastor, Rabi, Priest, an Iman or any form of religious leader including any form of leader in this world that believes there is no God. I’m just a regular person that does not let skin color, race or anything else enter into my ability to ask questions and think for myself.

The asking of challenging question can be a difficult task especially when we are asking ourselves. Many time we do not wish to hear anything outside of what we believe to be true. To truly understand we must open our minds if we truly desire the truth.

Please read on, give this some thought and you draw your own conclusions.

Is the God of the Muslim belief, is the God of Islam and the God of Christianity the God of the Bible the same God? There are many debates on this, but for just this instant let’s say they are.

If God is who He said He is and God sent or enlightened his Prophets to inform each of us how to live our life, then He cared for everything he created which includes all men, women, and children around the world. If Jesus said to love your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself and Muhammad said to kill everyone that does not believe as I do, then who do you want to believe?

Remember it takes “Faith” to believe either way.

So who do you want to believe? Where do you place your faith?

Do I believe the One that teaches love everything I have created including all men, women, and children – or – do I believe the one that teaches kill men, women, and children that don’t believe as I do?

This is a hard question for some to answer because of the abuse so many have encountered in their lives. However, does it makes any difference who you are, what country you live in, what color your skin is, or how you were raised. All abuse has been handed down by the “hand of man.” If you are a Christian or a Muslim, if you hand down cruelty and hatred, you are not doing what God wants you to do.

Only “WE” can make a difference. It starts as an individual then to our family then to our friends then to the rest of the world.

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Breaking it Down – “Evolution” or “God”


Did we Evolve? Who is God? Is He Real?

Great questions and worthy of investigation by everyone even if one doesn’t believe there is a God of any type. It’s always positive to explore open-mindedly something just for the sake of knowing if you’re right in the beliefs and understandings you currently hold.

Breaking it Down

  • If the world and everything we see, feel, hear, and smell happened by way of evolution then it all start “somehow” at “some time” in the past.
  • Something cannot be made out of absolutely nothing? I expect that human knowledge will tell us that we need something to start with.
  • If the evolutionary theory is actually how everything started, it needed something to begin with just to get started regardless of what took place that began the formation of everything.
  • Where did this come from? Just who or what could have provided these things?
  • To find out who or what could have done these things we should, I would think, go back as far in time as humanly possible.

Food for Thought

When the sciences are exploring and working to find the origin of time, when and how things originated, or how old things are, they go back as far as they can to identify the age and origination. With no documentation available that is dated millions or billions of years ago, it leads one to speculate. Experiments and testing must be done based on the assumption of what we believe things were like when it all began. However, something must have been in existence if we believe something cannot come from nothing. If we have any documentation, we should utilize it and prove or disprove its truth and not just say yes it is or no it isn’t.

Breaking it Down a Little More

  • The oldest book that ever was written was/is the Bible.
  • Who wrote it? It was written by man as all books are written by some man or woman. So human desires and human error can come into play.
  • If the oldest book that was ever written tells us that God created everything from the very beginning of time, then how do we know that the Bible is an authentic book inspired by God?

Food for Thought

If you were to read a novel or some story that has several books that tell the complete story, like a trilogy, would you read only the first book or first couple books and make up your own ending? Most of all, would you know the real outcome of the story? No, it would be your version of the ending.

Breaking it Down Again

  • If one should be of some faith that believes in God (i.e., Muslim, Jewish, Christian, etc.), or even an atheist who believe in no god, then wouldn’t it be a good idea to read the entire book to see if there are truths written in it? Shouldn’t we want to check out every reference noted in the book exploring to see if it has the possibility to be factual? If we place our lives outcome in what we choose to put our faith in, and it does take faith to believe in God, some god or no god, then we should desire to know the truth and there is only one way to find it.

A little more Food for Thought

If one was to write a scientific paper on any topic in the science world, would you read only part of a book and complete your paper? Would you read the entire book and finish your paper? Would you research other writings on the subject and complete your paper? If your desire is to convince people from all walks of life to take what you have written as factual, then you need to address all possibilities showing that you have done research on each area.

So what is this all about?

If God is real and he started everything regardless of how it started, then there is only one God, the God that started it all regardless of what you call Him. If the Bible is truthful and it states, “In the Beginning God Created the Heavens and the Earth,” then science should always take this into consideration. If the Bible is real, regardless of the fact that it was written by the hands of humans, then one should utilize and research the complete story. We should look at everything that was written in the Bible hundreds and even thousands of years before it actually took place. One should not stop at the end of some chapter and write conclusions based on one’s own desired outcome.

My Conclusions

I believe that science works very hard and has so much to offer. I also believe that God is real and that there is only one God. I believe that if science would utilize what is written in the Bible as a possible foundation for how everything started, using all available technologies and findings, they will find that it offers an explanation that can be proven scientifically. I believe that man, religious man, and scientific man, has made many rules and regulations just to satisfy their desired outcome. The only reason I can comprehend is that they crave power and control over people. Maybe it’s just to add some level of comfort to themselves based on something that someone else has told them they were wrong about or something someone has told them they had to do, someone’s rules and regulation.

While I will not tell you what you should believe, I can tell you what I believe.

I believe that God is real, that there is only one God, that He created everything and that He made a very excellent place for each of us to live. I believe He created man and woman with a mind and gave us the ability to make decisions for ourselves. I believe that He never planned or wanted to be a dictator of how or where we place our faith. I believe that what is written in the Bible is truthful, factual, and it can be proven when one seriously looks at all of it. Everything that was predicted within the Bible, excluding the single last prediction, has been proven to have taken place including the story of Jesus. I believe that man has taken it upon himself to mess up this world for his own reasoning when it was so very simple right from the beginning. We were told to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself. If we would just do this, we would not kill because we love our neighbor as ourself, regardless of where our neighbor lives. We would have no need for additional man-made rules because the ones we have been given are enough to make the world live in harmony with each other.

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Breaking it Down: if we could just…


If we would allow ourselves to step outside our current life, dropping for a moment our inner thoughts, forgetting what we have been taught in our schools, our homes and step back from any religious beliefs we have, opening our mind to all we see, what would we like the world to be like?

With everything that is happening around this world, many times in the name of God, or some god, or Allah, or in the name of progressive evolution, one should wonder why. Why does man take something so simple to grasp, add his desires and then drive his agenda?  What is it that makes man’s desire to do evil, to hate, to murder?

If you are a Christian, you say you believe in God. Why do those that kill in the name of this belief, kill at all, when to be a Christian you are to love one another.

If you a Muslim, you say you believe in God. Why do those that kill in the name of this belief, kill at all, when to be a Muslim you are to love one another.

If you acknowledge that God exist, then you should show love to everyone.

What makes man behave as he does? What makes humans make up their own rules just to satisfy man’s own desires?

One of the most basic needs in life is to be loved by a mother or father, a brother or sister, a son or a daughter, a friend or a foe. Yes, even our enemy. If we loved our enemies and we were loved by our enemies, we would no longer have enemies. It makes no difference where in this world you live or what your beliefs are. Love enables each of us to grasp our desired happiness and defeat evil, to stop doing evil, to stop being evil.

Coming back full circle, we step back into our world realizing that love is drastically missing in so many places. We recognize that some force is driving man away from this simple principle of life. Is it intellect and a belief man has evolved and that some levels of man are greater than others? Is it the man-made rules in some religious belief that pits one against another? Is it a form of arrogance, conceit, pride or superiority that separates one from another? Is it aggressiveness versus laziness? Is it an evil force driving the wedge of hate and deceit into our lives?

This is a question we should ask ourselves?

To be loved one must show love remembering that real love is unconditional and real love expects nothing in return. If your religious belief, which includes all religions, (i.e. Christian, Muslim/Islam, Atheist, Buddhism, etc.) includes evil, hate, murder, then maybe you should rethink your religious belief and take a stand for “Love your neighbor” and bring this world back to what it was designed to be from the beginning.