Create Your Own Religion by Daniele Bolelli Read Free Book Online Page B

suspicious circumstances? If God is a conscious being, he/she/it could appreciate that anyone born today may not want to rely on centuries-old pieces of hearsay of dubious authenticity that originated among semiliterate people in the desert. Plenty of well-meaning seekers of the truth would be thrilled to hear God's voice and change their agnostic or atheist ways if they only had even a shred of direct evidence. Today, humanity has more capacity than ever to record, communicate, and verify information. If God really has something to say, now would be a good time to say it.
    Anyone with a brain should question why would God choose to reveal him/her/itself only to one individual in remote historical times, expecting everyone else to follow this person's guidelines forever afterward? It would seem that a divine intelligence could come up with a better communication strategy.
Where to Look: Nature and Personal Experience
    Now that we know where not to look, let's figure out an alternative. Thomas Paine, one of the most brilliant writers of the 1700s, offered this advice, “Do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.” 29 As a result of a Christian smear campaign against Paine, many people today mistakenly label him an atheist, but Paine was a Deist. Deists—unlike atheists—believe in the existence of God, but they reject the idea of “revealed” religions. They view sacred books as collections of human hopes and dreams, fears and paranoia projected onto God. According to the Deists, then, organized religions give us nothing but human opinions, conjectures, and wild guesses about God. The reality of God is to be found elsewhere.
    Like Taoist thinkers before him, Paine argued that true religion begins with the study of nature. Whereas language can be manipulated by human beings, nature is what it is: an unadulterated, living testimony of whatever power is behind the creation of everything that exists. If you want to learn about the character of a creator, look no further than his creation. Discover the principles of nature and you discover the secrets upon which the universe is founded. In Paine's mind, science and religion can happily go hand in hand. This is precisely what Einstein meant when he wrote, “I do not believe in a personal god . . . If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” 30
    In some ways, studying nature can turn out to be anything but an uplifting experience. Nature can often be cruel and indifferent to humans and animals alike. Natural selection knows no mercy. The alliterative trio of disease, death, and decay feast on everything thatlives. When we stop to consider that about 98 percent of all species that ever roamed the earth have gone extinct, our fuzzy notions of a benevolent Mother Nature and a loving creator fly out the window.
    On the other hand, any time I see tomatoes growing in the garden, a glorious sunset, or perfectly natural boobs (if given a choice, I'd take the latter over any tomato or sunset in the world . . . ), I feel there must be a good and just God who is responsible for all this sublime beauty. Whatever power created a universe in which I can dip a spoon into a jar of Nutella and partake of this sacrament is worthy of the deepest admiration. If this sounds superficial and frivolous, it's probably because I am. And yet, whether you can relate to my specific examples or not, everyone can see that at times the design of the world seems to point to a higher intelligence. Often, nature seems just too beautiful and amazing to be the product of some random chance. The structure of any living being is too complex to have happened by accident. If nothing else, contemplating nature induces a sense of wonder. We can't help but stand in awe in front of the immensity of the