Divine

From where do people get feelings of divine? The divine connection to their particular deity. There are two viewpoints. One is that fully religious persons can actual feel the presence of their god in their daily lives. They receive a quiet ecstasy for staying true, following tenets, and believing in their deity. Their gods give them a feeling of serene that carries them over the rough waters of the day.

The other viewpoint is that there is no god and that feelings of divine are just confused misappropriations of human feelings. These human feelings have a particular purpose in our human biology and the religious have applied their meanings to a particularly non-divine occurrence.

Personally, I believe in god, though a rather non-involved god, a deism god. I see god in the beauty of the world, its scientific nature and in the fine line that so many things were created. Seeing god for me is reading how a beautiful and complex fractal can be expressed in a simple one line equation. I don't, however, believe that humans are the center of the Universe and it was all created for us. To me it seems like a lot of creating to do for one little race, but I digress from the topic at hand.

One question that could be asked is if it could be possible for the human body to generate these feelings? If there is no wellspring for it to come from then it must be divine. If the glove doesn't fit, then you must acquit. However, I see there are many explanations for these feelings. People can achieve transcendent calm through meditation, through a well developed orgasm, high amounts of exercise - the "runners high", or any other paths to achieve that sense of high well-being. Chemically its also easy to find the markers of those feelings. Those chemicals that coarse through our bodies to help regulate our actions. So we have no shortage of scientific explanations.

However, for those that believe in an active god, does it matter if there are scientific explanations? Cannot god reach through the rules of the universe and tweak the bowstrings of peaceful pleasure to give religious ecstasy? Surely for the faithful this is possible, because that's all you really need is faith. This brings up a different question all together. Can you really debate religious concepts using science because cannot all answers be 'faith'? Maybe this is a fruitless discussion because those of the faith will always have that to fall back on as their answer, for everything.

Either way, my believe, based on my scientific understanding of the human body is that religious ecstasy springs from those very same chemicals that aid us in meditation, spear us in orgasm and propel us through exercise. We are human animals who's behavior is coded into our bodies. Behaviors that can be used for any purpose.

Signed,

Ecstasy of Thought

Bible in the Schools

There's an article in TIME magazine about why we should allow non-preachy Bible study in our schools. Their reasoning is that the Bible and Christianity are major forces in the world therefore we should study them. I believe that's not enough to warrant such a viewpoint. High school is about preparing those young adults for the future and giving them limited instruction just isn't enough. Its not that I'm opposed to learning about the Bible in a historical perspective, its just that given the short time of high school and the state of the world right now, I believe that giving a class based on the religious text of only one of the world's major religions is a mistake. We should be expanding minds in high school to give them a taste of the wide world so they can make their own decisions, not furthering our own beliefs.

There is also the issue that Bible study in our schools doesn't do justice to the millions of non-Christians in the country. Therefore, its better, if you're going to have a class about religious text then should learn about all the different texts, the ways they've been used for good and bad over the millennium, the ways in which people change them and the different viewpoints that people learn from them and use them. In this way, we can give our young minds the proper tools to make decisions for themselves.

Signed,

Open Minds