Saturday, December 17, 2016

The Purpose of Faith

As religion evolved, so did the concept of faith. Faith was an important first step because almost all of the information contained in ancient religious texts made claims which violated known laws of physics that were miraculous and could not be explained. At the time there were no scientists to explain the laws of physics. Even today churches still believe there is a living God that performs miracles.

A good example of this is why faith was needed to make religion work. The what I call the first belief, of any religion is belief in a deity. Let's use Christianity in all our examples. God, an all-knowing, all-powerful deity which created everything, requires the step of faith. All other aspects of Christianity requires faith. Faith is a belief in something where no physical evidence can prove an event occurred but belief is accepted without question.

I believe there are two kinds of people in the world, those who accept faith and those who don't. In ancient times what we would call religion was formed about the time of  the cc capacity of the cranium of the human skull reached the size of Neanderthal. According to Wikipedia, Middle Paleolithic societies — such as that of the Neanderthals during the period of 300,000 to as recently as 50,000 years ago, buried their dead with their personal possessions. 

There had to be stories passed to younger members of a group around a camp fire for many thousands of years which changed drastically over time. Until the Council of Nicea, there was no consensus on religious thought in Europe. The Council reviewed thousands of ancient scrolls and there were political factions among religious scholars as to which manuscripts would be included in the Bible. If there is a God as described by the majority of the population, this entity does not interfere in any human behavior or the laws of physics..  


The Garden of Eden

After God made Adam he was naked and lonely. He said to God, you are supposed to be all powerful and all knowing so why would you create me alone and without any social interaction? 

So God put Adam to sleep and took one of his ribs and created Eve. Adam awoke and complained to God saying you made me out of dirt, why did you not make Eve out of dirt? God thought to Himself....already there are only two humans in the Garden of Eden and all I hear are complaints.

God told Adam and Eve not to eat from The Fruit Of The Tree of Knowledge. One day Satan appeared in the form of a talking snake. Now as clever demons go, Satan was known to be the most clever, but a talking snake? This was not one of his best ideas. 

Right away Eve knew snakes don't talk but she played along to see where this was going. Adam wondered why the snake could talk and Eve explained that when people read the story about them, the reader might get confused about the role of Satan so the author made him into a snake as a sinister persona of evil. Adam said, "huh"...and Eve simply walked away thinking, "This is what happens when you make a man out of dirt."

To make a long story short, Eve decided to eat from The Fruit Of The Tree of Knowledge so she could obtain her college degree as part of her life plan. This led Satan to believe he had fooled her but little did he know since he had no experience with women that she was on to him. 

When CNN broke in with a news bulletin telling what Eve did  God got angry since he was an all-powerful chauvinist and threw both Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. But that was ok with them because they felt the rent was too high anyway.