Strap on your helmets, everyone. This is gonna be a bumpy ride. Ready for Tim's Dose of Truth? Here it goes:
Really. I don't.
I personally am a Christian, and a rather open-minded one at that. One must admit that Christ's teachings can basically be found in all of the major religions of the world. Everyone should be nice to everyone else, and everyone should be nice to God / Allah / Jehovah / Yahweh / Krishna / Buddha (either as one who achieved Nirvana or an avatar of Krishna) / Vishnu / whatever. The simple fact that the names are different are of no importance. That some pray to the east and some to the west is a nitnoy. That some walk around the temple clockwise and others walk around counter-clockwise is a silly misunderstanding. That some mumble silently while others wail to wake the dead is simply a slip of the volume control.
Any agnostics / atheists in the crowd are probably wondering if I care about their beliefs either. As long as they're good people, more power to them. I think they're mistaken, but that is their own problem and anything I say probably won't change their minds.
How have I come to be so loose theologically? Here's my beliefs and reasoning behind them:
1. There is a Supreme Being of some sort up there. I don't think It's a He or a She; most certainly not some corporeal bearded guy whose robes fill a room. I think Aristotle (?) was right when he said that if donkeys could paint and draw, they'd make gods in their own image as well. I think that God is some sort of ethereal energy, incapable of being captured nor measured (and therefore proven) with no shape and infinite size, both in time and space. Why do I say there is a God? For one, every single group of people have had a religion of some sort. Whether they pray to nature spirits or worship in the cult of the Big Bang, most everybody believes in something bigger than them. This is probably not coincidental. Secondly, the Universe is much too orderly to be as random as some would believe it to be. Even Chaos has a pattern, although indistinct and unreconizable by human eyes. Every time one drops something, it falls down. In a truly random universe, it could fall any which direction which pleased it at the time in trajectories only definable as mind-bending. Someone or something must have made the Universe as predictable as it is.
2. There is an afterlife. This is completely on faith, other than that most religions have mention of an upper realm, be it Valhalla, Nirvana, Heaven, Paradise, whatever. The freedom of thought that makes us us resides in the brain but somehow expands beyond it. It may be simply a smaller section of the entire Universe God, or it may be a smaller and more fallible version. I do not know, nor do I hazard a guess. Anyway, either I will know when I die or I won't, at which point it won't matter.
3. There is a bad afterlife (Hell). Hell may be getting reincarnated as a cockroach, or it may be the more standard fire&brimstone eternal damnation. The fact that underworlds also exist in many religions seems to support this. However, I mostly believe this because I hope there is some justice in the Universe.
4. There aren't as many people in Hell as us Christians are inclined to think. I simply believe that God is a much nicer person than we make It out to be. As long as someone worships It under some name, and is good, they probably make it to Heaven. If they don't believe in anything, but are still good, they may have to take an entrance exam or something. I don't know.
5. My way is not the only way. Jesus Christ is my personal savior, but everyone has their own link to God. Even those who don't believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God think he's a pretty swell person. Many sects of the major religions are now claiming him as their own. Some Hindus see him as an avatar of Krishna (much as they think the Buddha was), some Buddhists see him as kind of Buddha the Second, many Jews and Muslims see him as a prophet, and a few Muslims think that Jesus will come again only to announce that he was a Muslim all along. I can't complain. I think that Abraham, Moses, the Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, and all the rest are great guys too.
6. Everyone is born neutral. This is based more on my knowledge of science than religion. Everyone has the capacity to become Mother Theresa or Adolph Hitler. Genetics may predispose them and environment my do the rest, but everyone is born a blob of shapeless clay with no inherent good or evil. I think that most people do become good, however.
7. All holy scriptures are not quite as accurate as we hope them to be. Yes, I know Leviticus says homosexuality is an abomination. It also says that slavery is fine, as long as it isn't direct family. The problem with Fundamentalists of any religion are that they belive in blobs of ink on pieces of paper, translated many many times over thousands of years. Even assuming that the fallible humans who initally wrote them down didn't screw it up initially, holy books have been copied, translated, copied again, edited, and retranslated so many times that the true Original Word of God has quite possibly been garbled over the ages. Also, many holy scrips deny the laws of physics, and yet they exist. The stars are not mounted in a firmament, that much is known. The Universe may have been created in six days, but all availiable evidence points to the contrary. Humanity may have sprung up instantly with a wave of the hand, but, again, this seems unlikely. I believe in the Big Bang and Evolution as the tools of God. Anyway, how could the Creator explain a fifteen billion year old Universe and the three billion year old miracle of life to some Hebrew shepard sitting on a rock? Other than that, what's the big argument over Creationism vs. Evolution anyway? The end result is the same--we're all here whining and snapping about it.
8. Everyone should have their own definition of God. Everyone sees the Universe differently; their beliefs should reflect that. If I can talk to my God as a person but you must grovel before yours, so be it. If it works for you, ignore what anyone else says. Only you can define your own positions on the big questions of life; everyone else who tries to do it for you will invariably screw up. Unless, of course, you think what they say is absolutely right.
There are many more things to talk about, yet I run low on space and time. For Heaven, does God grade on effort or achievement? Does It use a curve? Is there extra credit? I don't know. Figure it out yourself.
You made it to the end of my essay. Good job! If you disagree, bully for you. If you agree, bully for you. Do what you do and do it well.