| You know, for years in school I didn't say "Under God" when saying the pledge of alegence. Even then I was leaning towards the agnostic side, so for me the words were not something I felt I wanted to say. If I didn't know that there was a God, how could I state that our nation was under him? I finally just said that whenever I said the pledge I would say it without the words "Under God." I never told anyone, but not because I feared ridicule. To this day I'm not completely sure that there is a God. I lean towards thinking that there is a God, but not the one in the bible, the coran or the tora. My opinion, mind you, is that all of those are probably wrong. I mean, they got so many other things wrong, like the fact that the sun revolves around the earth. That's just one of the many things that religion has gotten wrong. I don't blame the religions themselves, I blame the people behind them. I'm sure that every religion started out as a way of controling people. Today the big religions of the world still control people. There are people in this world that are willing to kill others simply because they don't believe in their God. Each and every religion thinks that they are the one true faith. Well, what if they were all wrong? I wondered that many a time when I was younger, and I decided to follow none of them. Now this country was founded on the idea of religious freedom. Granted, not every religion was practiced here, but the founding fathers allowed for much growth in the Constitutional interpretation. Religious freedom doesn't mean being free to worship just one religion. It is the freedom to practice any, or no, religion. However, there are still people out there that don't understand that concept. I'm happy for those who have found God. I've found him in the spiral of a galaxy, in the flight of a bird, and in the laugh of a good friend. For that I'm thought of as different. Funny, because I think that I'm actually seeing God, in the creation of all that is around me, including me. I still don't know who, or what, God is. I have several ideas, but none of them are of a bearded old man sitting on a throne in the clouds. I often think that maybe God is simply the consciousness that we all possess, and that we share in a galactic consciousness a kindship with not only each other, but with all of creation. I'm still on the journey to find myself and God. That doesn't mean that I'll find either. However, I feel that if I find either, I will have found the other simultaneously. |
