This is my response to Nicki's blog.

I'm responding to this blog, if you're interested in seeing what I'm jabbering on about.

Hm. Well, I like your point about how religion doesn't hurt a person any more than fables and other children's stories, but I disagree with a lot of this.

I'll be the first to admit I never read the Bible cover to cover, but what I DO know of it has been of contradiction and "borrowing." That's not to say it isn't good for morals, but I don't think anyone should just read it and agree with everything in one way or another just because it's the Bible. Because that IS sort of the definition of brainwashing. At any rate, I'll be the first to admit that I have no desire to read it because, let's face it, ancient speak is painful to slog through.

I'll tell you where religion came from, since you said you don't know. Religion started out as a means for people who earned their survival from working the land to feel they had control of their situation; early agriculturists needed the land to provide for them, but the weather was always temperamental. In classic human fashion, they felt the strong desire to CONTROL how the weather affected their crops, and since weather was such a mystery, they assumed there were beings who controlled such things. Hence the advent of sacrifice--they believed that if they could have some control of the gods by providing sacrifices for favors, they could get good weather and hence good crops, and feed their people. Theocracies were born from there, and religion flourished from that point. Morality did not enter religion until very nearly Christianity's time (I want to say the earliest form of Judaism was the first to incorporate morals into religion, but my memory might be faulty). But if you look at the ancient Sumerians as a single example, who had old time deities, with the faults and fallacies of humans (just with more power), they had such a theocracy, but they also had Hammurabi's code (you will know this as the old addage "eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth"). So they had morals even without religion telling them what was moral or immoral. If you want more examples, look at the classical Greeks and Romans, and the ancient Egyptians. Knowing this, I have never been able to accept that people are doomed to immorality without religion.

I also can't accept it because if we still lived by the original Jewish laws (again, I'm assuming they were the first to incorporate morality into religions--I'm pretty sure they were), women would still be treated as property, and I feel deep down that that's wrong. That's because PEOPLE wrote the moral codes for these religions, and popular culture at the time was for women to be owned by their husbands, sons, fathers, or uncles (or some other such man if she didn't have family). So then one must reconcile contemporary morals to those written thousands of years ago; impossible. Even so, the Bible's been changed many times over before we even got a first look at it, because Bibles were handwritten, mistakes were made in the process, and there's a good chance that sometimes things were changed deliberately by people with personal agendas. People are still looking into that.

You say that Christianity was born in a time of war and depression, and I suppose that is true, but Christianity did not CURE that war and depression. I guess you could say it was borne OF war and depression as much as simply borne IN the time. But it spread quickly because Christianity welcomed everyone and not a select people, one of the first religions to do so. Anyone could get to heaven so long as they followed a set of rules. It also spread when Christian countries conquered non-Christian countries, because people who converted to their conquerors' religion back in that time were often given privileges such as citizenship and the right to own land. Sometimes conversions were forced under penalty of remaining a slave and passing slavery heritage to your children. Christians were not alone in this; it was the way of the conquering nations of the time (actually, up until recently--and some may still do it yet for all I know).

I don't even know what your point is when you say, "I can prove that I have faith, where is your proof that you shouldn't?" The question makes no sense to me, sorry.

Evolutionary theory is vastly preferable to me than faith of any kind. Faith implies a certain degree of blind hope based on things others have passed on--hence the term "faith." I simply don't have it in me to have religious faith. Scientific theories are based in assumptions based on logic and observation, and that's something I can wrap my head around. Not to mention, science is very quickly closing the gaps in Darwin's "theory," and I've no doubts that within a half century it'll be proven fact. However, we'll never be able to recreate evolution in a lab, so some believers will probably not be swayed by evolution until another few million years have passed (will we even make it that long?) and we will have a recorded history to turn to and see how we've evolved.

I think providing your children with the opportunity to learn their options for faith is the right way to go. Not forcing your beliefs on them--telling them your way is fact and every other way is fiction--but providing them with the tools they need to make their own decisions. I think this is your main point, and I can most definitely agree with that.

Zach had the opportunity to go to vacation Bible school last summer, and I have no problem with his going. When he gets old enough to actually begin to understand religion, I will explain to him religion's origins and as many other options for religious belief as I can, because I want my kids to make their own choices in regards to religion.