Continuing the religious discussion

[redacted] wrote:
>Hi Stephen,
>
>I hope things are going well with you and thanks for
>writing me back. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving.
>You don’t seem to believe in any absolutes when it
>comes to right and wrong. And I guess that is because
>you don’t believe in God. What do you believe about
>the origin of the universe? Do you believe in the big
>bang theory? If so, how do you explain the origin of
>the material that exploded in the big bang? Do you
>believe it was just always there? But how could that
>be? Doesn’t it make much more sense to believe that
>God was always there than to believe that a big mass
>of material was always there? Don’t you think that
>something we cannot understand is better explained by
>the existence of Almight God than by a mass of
>material that we CAN understand? And if God really
>exists, then he is our judge and we are accountable to
>him for our behavior.
>I’m glad you are interested in talking about
>homosexuality. That’s a confusing subject for a lot
>of people who are dealing with it. And a lot of myths
>about homosexuality are going around, so that makes it
>even more confusing. I know what it is like dealing
>with this and I have been through the struggles of
>dealing with this. God has given me the answers I
>needed to be able to cope with it. I care a LOT about
>what other people are going through! And I spend
>quite a bit of time talking to guys about it because I
>care so MUCH. I have a lot that I want to tell you.
>But I know that some people object to long emails. I
>don’t want to turn you off with a long email. Are
>fairly long emails OK with you or would you prefer
>that I keep it short? Have a good day Stephen and I
>look forward to talking more with you. 🙂
>
>God bless you,
>[redacted]
>

Hello [redacted],

I am disappointed, as I feel like you are more interested in criticizing my beliefs than you are in discovering mine or sharing your own.

I do not know where the universe came from. And I do not find the existence of something else (Including God, Allah, Yahweh, and any other creation mythos you care to name) that created everything I can see to be an inherently more likely explanation. I am particularly skeptical that such an entity would let many different stories of where the world came from, and what reality is spring up all over the world. I believe that you believe in the viewpoint you espouse. And I find it no more likely that you are correct than that any other sect of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism is correct. To be precise, I think the odds of winning the lottery with one ticket are better than the odds that you are correct.

My explanation for religion is that it is part of humanity’s struggle to make sense of the world. And the people who created gods in response to things they could see that they could not control (gods of sun, weather, moon, the sea) are much the same as those that created gods to explain what they could not explain (where the world comes from, for instance). They’re all human, they’re all trying to understand something that they really don’t understand. So they use something a little bit more understandable (a human-like being) to explain it. The modern religions, including Christianity, just came up with stories that were more appealing and harder to disprove than, say, Greek or Norse Mythology. It’s possible that one of these streams of meaning is guided by an outside source, but I see no reason to believe that to be the case, particularly in light of the multiple variants, with similar and different themes across all religions.

I don’t claim to know everything about the world, or understand it completely. But I think that anyone who does think that they have all the answers probably has a great many wrong answers.

Cordially,

-Stephen C. Ulrich jr.