For those of you out there watching my blog that are religious, I want to go ahead and apologize up front.  It is not my intention to offend anyone and I’m only offering my own beliefs as I see them.  I, like you, could be completely wrong in my beliefs and only time shall tell.

With that said, I want to go on record to state, that my life has not been spent believing or not believing in God.  I actually spent my entire childhood going to church, sometimes more than once a week.  I spent my youth in church camps and being taught the word of God.  I spent a good part of my adult life studying in depth the bible and what it has to say about all sorts of things.  The conclusions I have, are based not only on the fact that the God that created this universe didn’t write that book, but also on what religion has been used for throughout history.

After years of studying the Bible and trying to put myself in the minds of the people that lived during the times when these stories were written down, I’ve come to the conclusion that what it contains are the truths of the times.  By this, I mean that the Bible contains a lot of facts.  Mixing historical content along with the stories of God was a natural combination of thoughts.  People that don’t understand something that we know happens naturally today, would almost always assign some higher meaning to it.  However, we only need to look at all the things done on a daily basis today, to realize that people’s beliefs or truths can get rather mixed up.  Just poke around the Internet for a while and you’ll see that there are literally thousands of people out there that have beliefs that we view as completely rediculous.  Yet they believe them with all their minds.  What if all the information of the world were destroyed except for those papers,  and thousands of years from now they were found?  What would human kind in the future think about us?

Almost all religions on earth today make fun of the Greeks and their pagan gods as well as their ridiculous beliefs.  I however, see things a little differently.  I see religion as a necessary mechanism for all leaders.  Religion is something to tie things together and allow them to control the people in which they claim leadership.  Is there a single leader in this world that doesn’t use religion to control its people?  Has there ever been a leader on this earth that didn’t speak of God in some sense to lead credence to what he spoke? Heck, there have even been leaders that have changed their nations religion to a single religion when they saw that having more than one was tearing their countries apart.

Countries like the United States, which have allowed more than one religious belief to exist, have fallen apart over time.  Once too many different beliefs start to exist within a single region, you loose any hold you have over the masses.  How many wars have happened in this world throughout history in the name of someone’s God?  How many different God’s are there?  Everyone believes something different, everyone has written evidence, yet none can summon up his/her God for anything.

Is Science correct?  They are as religious in some respects as the churches themselves.  As an example, lets take a look at evolution and how many years it’s existed.  Evolution in a word is stupid!  There is no way that evolution controlled the creation of this planet and the universe as a whole.  People just don’t think, and as such, it’s easy to control their directions.  Take something as simple as the chicken and the egg question and most people laugh.  But seriously, explain it with evolution, I dare you…  You can’t!  Evolution is still taught as fact in schools and on every Discovery Channel special that comes on TV, yet there is not one shred of proof that its correct.  In fact, there are tons of evidence that say its not right, but its still taught as a religious belief.

The fact is, this universe is much more mysterious to us now than ever before.  Scientist are not getting closer at explaining life, they are getting farther away.  However, I tell you something that gives me comfort like no Bible or religion ever could.  Looking at the universe and its complex nature has all but convinced me that we’re not alone.  There is something more to life that can’t be explained and its much more magical than any Bible or religion could ever speak of.

The fact is religion is used to control the masses and make the very few crooks rich.  Governments use it to control their seats of power, churches use it to get more money and power for themselves.  Churches throughout history have even killed people of science or anyone else that threatened their business.  Wars have been waged and in fact, we find ourselves on the brink of WWIII, all because of different religious beliefs.  If people thought with their own minds instead of allowing themselves to be controlled by the crooks, the world would be a much better place.  We’re all different people, with different beliefs, but at some point, we are all people inhabiting the same planet.  We have to get along, or we are doomed to killing each other off and allowing the animals to be masters once again.

No God that created everything we see would ever care what us humans believe.  We are but specks of dust coming in and out of existence so quickly that he’d barely notice us.  Why would he write a book chocked full of errors and contradictions and threaten us with punishment if we didn’t believe in him?  What is with the Hell stories anyway?  They are stories you tell to children to get them to do right.  Yet at some point the children grow up and realize they were all just stories.  As useful as they were to keep them out of the street when cars drive by, they were all tools of more use than adult stories of going to hell if you don’t believe in the one true God.

Instead of trying to condemn the people of the Middle East for their beliefs, why don’t we all try to imagine what it would be like to live their lives?  We have our firm beliefs ONLY because they were taught to us from childhood.  Not because God gave them to us, but because society taught them to us.  The people of the Middle East, Israel, Germany and all the other countries of the world were raised and taught their beliefs the same way.  So us condemning another for their beliefs makes as much sense as them condemning us.  God didn’t come speak to anyone on this speck of a planet despite what people tell you!  All we can do is exist and try to get as much out of life as possible.  Fighting each other over differences of belief in a God that isn’t real, is just stupid, ON ALL SIDES!!!

–glenn hancock