Hoover's Opinion on Religion

Kevin M. Hoover

English IV

KOB

Due: March 7^th, 2013

Religion According to Hoover

            Religion, or at least Christianity, has always stunted scientific progress, and the two tend to clash. In my opinion, this is not a necessity, but rather it is because of the way we choose to interpret the holy books. I was raised Lutheran, and I still call myself Lutheran. I do not believe in creationism, nor do I believe that most of the Old Testament happened. I believe in evolution, I trust science, and I do not see why it is that both religion and science cannot coexist.

            I think that religion is more of a way to set down a moral code. This code is given through a series of stories, not because the stories are necessarily true, but rather so that the common man can easily remember them. In the first line of the first of the Books of Bokonon, Bokonon writes, “All the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.” (4). In my opinion, this quote could be on the first page of every religious text. I interpret the quote as, “In the words to follow I will set forth simple truths, and moral rights, but the tales that I use to convey my point never happened.” This is not to say that I do not believe in a god, I just do not believe that the whole of humanity came from just two people within the last 6000 years.

            All too often the books of the bible a interpreted literally, where the earth, and everything around it was created in seven twenty-four hour days. I choose to interpret this differently, I see the seven days of creation as seven god days, that is to say, seven days of indeterminate length. In these seven "days" God could have gone through any method of creation, and it is my belief that God, if there is such a person, shaped humanity through evolution. In this way, I see God as an engineer, testing thousands of possible models, until he came up with a finalized version, or at least the version he decided to ‘release’.  As God’s invention, I believe that we seek purpose; we forever are searching for why. Why God made us, why birds fly, why the oceans are as vast as they are, why are we the only advanced civilization, or are we? This coincides with Bokonon:

“Man blinked. ‘What is the purpose of all this?’ he asked politely.

‘Everything must have a purpose?’ asked God.

‘Certainly,’ said man.

‘Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this,’ said God.

And He went away” (118).

We see ourselves as important, and special, and thus we want to know what our purpose was, we cannot accept that we and everything around us was created solely for the purpose of making us.

            The way that I look at religion allows it to survive along with science. Unfortunately, conventional religion does not read its holy book as I do. Rather, conventional religion interprets the Bible literally, and essentially tells its followers, “It’s my way, or the highway.” It’s this kind of faith that creates so much tension between religions. People follow these religions with blind faith, and when they see people who think differently, they choose to act out against those people, because their logic is, “if they won’t believe what I think is the truth, then I have to beat it into them.” When people follow with blind faith, they do not know what they are about to do. This is why I tend to believe that organized religion is bad for our society, and I think that Vonnegut would agree with me, after all he had Bokonon tell his followers that they should play along, and do Gods will by killing themselves, and the Bokonists did just as they had been told, because their faith made them blind.

            I believe in evolution as the divine plan, I believe that religion tells humanity to operate with a certain code of morals, and that living with those morals is more important than believing that one man put two of every kind of animal onto a large wooden boat. I do not believe in rigid or unbending faith, but I do believe that there is a God.