I was raised on church. My dad was a minister of music, went to seminary, and he is still a devout evangelical Christian, as are my step-mother and younger half-brother and -sister who live with him in Denver. My older brother and I were in a private Christian elementary school and went to church Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday evenings as well as other miscellaneous youth group events. There was prayer in our house with everything: meals, going to bed, special occasions, holidays, and everything in between.
I believe I had several spiritual encounters as a younger man, but it's easy for that to happen when you are conditioned to believe so strongly that it is normal and expected. I am now what I suppose would be an atheist, but the evangelical Christian I was raised as is not completely gone from my being. It is hard to shake what was drilled into me morning, noon, and night for over a dozen years.
In short, I believe our time on this Earth is all we have. The Earth was created by chance, and there is no intelligent being watching over us and interfering on our behalf. We should treat each other and the Earth well because we are all we have, and it is right to do so--what goes around comes around and all that.
I love my dad and have only respect for those who choose to pursue religion as a means to finding purpose in life. They claim it is harder to have faith in that which cannot be proven. I think it folly; it is far more difficult in my opinion to forgo an eternal safety net and to forge ahead aided only by knowledge, cunning and courage.
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be the change you want
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