Religion

Written several years ago, but not published until today.

Having finished my reading of the Bible (all of it), I have come to believe that religion is man-made. It has evolved from humanity's attempt to answer the deepest questions. Is there a higher power that is somehow in charge? How did all this come to be? Was the universe created, or was it always thus? If created, what came before? What created the creator?

The best answer I have found is in Plato's "Timaeus", in which a character named Timaeus states: "Everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created... Was the world always in existence and without beginning? or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense and are in a process of creation and created. Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out." That I can accept. That leads me to the believe that such a Creator, if it exists, is beyond our understanding. It would be something unique, so vast and so totally different from anything in our world that we cannot understand it. It is hard to even think about a creator. I'm willing to concede that there may have been a creator. But if we believe that, we must also accept the existence of an entity that had no beginning, and which itself was not created but had the power to create everything else. All of that reasoning is my effort to apply logic and reasoning to a being (if there is one) that is beyond the range of the human mind to grasp. There is no answer; only belief or unbelief. Assuming the existence of such a Creator, would it possess the qualities described in Christian scripture: loving us but also judging us and ultimately sending us to reward or damnation? That seems inconsistent. There is no way to know whether such an entity. It all comes down to a matter of what we believe. What then is the religion I was brought up to believe in? I was baptised and confirmed as a Christian. Where did this religion come from? And if is not true, what good is it? I have the same question about Judaism, Islam, and every other faith. It seems to me that religion as we know it was created by humans to give order to the unexplainable, and show us how to live a virtuous life and run a working society. But as an origin story, and a path to eternal life, organized religion doesn't work for me. It's more of a framework to bring order to the unexplainable, which all humans seek.