A Plate of Arrogance with a Little Ignorance on the Side

A Plate Of Arrogance With A Little Ignorance On The Side:

A Look Into Religion And Its Ability To Make You Live Forever

Human beings have been longing for an answer to immortality and have been trying

to answer why we are here since the beginning of our creation. Answers to these

questions seem to come in similar yet respectively different packets from culture

to culture.

The Jews and Christians believe that God created the heavens and the Earth

by use of His divine, begotten powers and in the process created Man in His

image whom He called Adam. This is what the Old Testament in Bible leads us

to believe or base faith in. From what we can tell, Man was granted everlasting

life and was given free reign over all God had created. He was given the power

to name the plants and animals as he saw fit and after doing so, Man became

lonely. He asked God to bring him a companion. God then put Adam into a deep

sleep, removed one of his ribs and created Woman. They lived together with all

the animals God had created and both Man and God were happy.

Woman, Eve as she had been named by Adam, was deceived by Evil into believing

that by eating a fruit, which God had forbid them from eating, she would gain

all the knowledge that God possessed. She gave some of the fruit to her husband

and told him what Evil had said to her. They ate the fruit together where they

then became aware of their nakedness and when God came looking for them they

hid because they were afraid to be seen now. God was upset with them and with

Evil for tricking them. God banished Evil and condemned Man to mortality. Or

so the Bible says. Many choose to believe that the Bible itself is nothing more

then just another attempt to reach some level of immortality. They believe that

the story of God who is an all powerful, immortal entity that created man in

his image was merely a ploy and no more true or false then the gods that "existed"

in any other culture.

To look at the question of whether man is trying to transcend mortality it

is important, if not needed, to take a rational, almost Atheist view on the

subject. To do so one must believe, if, but for a moment, that there is no higher

being or beings. We must come to understand and accept that for whatever reason

human life just appeared due to a great coincidence and stroke of luck.

With that in mind it is easy to understand man's fear of death. It must not

have, and for many still does not make sense as to why we are here. What is

the point of all this? To live, create offspring, till the land and then die?

Well any rational being would surely attest to such an empty existence so of

course the most logical thing to do is to gain the arrogance that one has the

ability to live forever. The greatest example of this is the creation and then

belief of a higher, begotten entity that is just like us in image, but in addition

they are immortal, all-powerful and all-knowing.

The Bible proposes that we are to live our lives according to the Ten Commandments,

which were sent down by God himself into the hands of Moses on top of Mount

Sinai. These commandments laid out rules for staying in God's good graces and

ensuring life everlasting in Heaven as a reward for doing so. But for those

who did not follow or believe in these rules they were to be sent to Hell where

they would be punished for all eternity.

My favorite description for what eternity is will always be that you imagine

a solid gold sphere that is ten miles in radius and every year a swan would

fly by the ball every so slightly brushing it with the tip of its wing. Now

when that ball was eroded to nothing that would only be the beginning of eternity.

And for all we know the story of Moses on Mount Sinai could be completely fictional

or even if it did happen who is to say that this Moses wasn't just part of an

ingenious plot to keep us under control, which is a conspiracy theory and a

whole other paper in it of itself.

The peoples of this nation were given these commandments with a promise of everlasting

life in Heaven and then from there on there seems to be a great spread of this

belief when the Christians believed that the so called Son of God arrives on

the scene. What better way for a belief to find followers then to have a walking,

talking semi-version of the God they faithfully believe in living and teaching

among them? It is documented in history books that this Jesus Christ was in

fact an actual person so his existence can surely not be questioned, but his

motives, his involvement in what could very