Travis+D’s+OpEd+Article

== = = =**Religion and the Bible**=

by Travis D. As an ideology, I can respect people who believe in God. I understand that longing for something divine. However, there is a cap on my capacity for understanding; I draw the line at the belief in the alleged divinity of the Bible. There is a large percentage of Americans who believe that the Bible was written by God as a holy text. That’s bull. The Bible wasn’t written by God. It was a product of the minds of simple humans. It’s written by mankind about their experiences with the supposed deity and nothing more. It’s not one cohesive written work but rather a sloppy patchwork of archaic documents authored by dozens of scribes. Why the hell is a huge portion of organized religion based on the Bible? For me, the ‘magic’ that I see in religion is its ability to bring people together in a communal celebration of the human experience. That goes out the window when churchgoers are sitting on rock-hard pews listening to non-relatable stories written for a different generation.

Religion shouldn't be about studying ancient texts that have been translated so many times they hardly resemble the original source, but about having an intelligent conversation about the metaphysical possibilities of our universe. I absolutely cannot stand people who are uneducated in their own belief system; they assume that what they are being taught in Church is infallible. It's a vicious cycle of disillusion constantly being taught to our posterity with no abandon. I am fine with people believing in a God and being Christian, as long as they don't blindly do as the Church tells them. The root of a large portion of this problem is the Bible. The Bible is the general outline for Christianity but it is not some sort of untouchable Constitution that is unable to be amended and yet that's the way people treat it. The Bible leaves no room for contention, and that's a horrible horrible thing. How on earth do churchgoers expect religion to grow and adapt and learn from its experiences if it is based upon immovable ideologies? The truth is is that it can't. The Bible holds Christianity from moving forward. Well... maybe that's not true. After all, quite a few Christians that I have talked to are reasonable. They say that the stories of the Bible most likely aren't true, but they are simply allegories used to portray ideas. But that's not true for the entirety of the Christian population.

I don't understand Creationists. How on earth can they believe that everything the Old Testament says is true? For instance, they actually believe that the world is only 10,000 years old, that some naked couple created all of man kind before unceremoniously being thrown from a garden in Africa, that the first few humans lived for millennia before reproducing and that there was a flood that destroyed all of the world except a man, his family and a barn of a boat despite all of the overwhelming evidence against these things. People who believe illogical things without having any proof for their beliefs besides an incessant faith in a crusty old book bug me... a lot...