Just consider what Copernicus and Galileo discovered, critical information that they were forced to conceal due to church censorship at the time). And which one is correct, creationism, intelligent design or theistic evolution?
One has to wonder why so many great thinkers, researchers and scientists, past and present, have been forced to suppress information that would be beneficial to all humans if not to the flora, the fauna and the Universe. What was the church’s motive for suppressing knowledge in the first place, and is the church still behaving in the same manner today? Has the church and other religious dogma hindered or advanced the attainment of human knowledge?
The organized church, it could easily be argued, has been a blessing and at the same time a curse to human understanding and evolution. Why? The church has its own established ideas of what represents absolute truth, ideas that have often been debunked - yet the church and other religious groups fight against all other individuals and disciplines that question their absolutism. Is the church alone in this regard, I doubt it? In fact it would appear that the same holds true for most religious and other philosophical groups.
I have, as an example, a theory about homosexuality which is based upon my own research and interaction with homosexuals during my years as a counselor. I suspect that the church is altogether wrong about the origin of homosexuality. I suspect that homosexuality is a result of a chemical biological phenomenon, and that sexual-behavior in humans that weren't born that way can be influenced by environmental factors just as it is in each one of us.
If humans are born either 100% female or 100% male as the church and religion teaches, then there cannot be any deviation at all, correct? Or, when there is deviation, it is because the individuals themselves have decided to violate the laws of nature, at least that is what the church and religions.
Factually, we know that there are many exceptions and deviations in nature. Even when we consider human biology not everything always proceeds along according to design. Humans are born with a considerable number of birth defects as an example to include mongoloidism, epilepsy, autism and other psychological impairments, uneven limbs, missing limbs…! Humans tend to accept all of the above as being a product of nature. And typically, although there are exceptions to the rule, humans do not do not tend to persecute other humans who appear to be different from the so-called norm.
However, the same humans cannot conceive of someone being born that is not purely male or female oriented, when we know that there are intersex babies being born everyday. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the ones with perceived defects are the norm and the rest of us who are considered to be normal happen to be ‘the exceptions’?
Homosexuality is becoming more and more visible in society today given that homosexuals are no longer, in many instances, hiding. At the same time homosexuality is still being discussed in a hush hush fashion at the church (even the homosexual-priest laden Catholic Church). The Church. religion and some humans would have you to believe then that humans cannot be born either psychologically or physically a homosexual.
Interestingly enough when we consider the argument about which came first the chicken or the egg, biological research teaches that with respect to the human fetus that all fetuses are originally female during the early stages of the reproduction cycle. It is only after the injection of male hormones that what was a female fetus becomes male.
Could homosexuality begin at the chemical-hormonal injection stage, resulting in the zygote being less than 100% male or 100% female? We know that many of the neurological conditions that humans experience are the result of chemical imbalances.
Do we accuse humans with neurological conditions of being sinners then?
If the church and religion had its way, most of us would still be saying that the Earth is flat and that it remains at the center of the Universe! One need only to consider the prohibitions by the church that have hindered or prevented scientific research that would extend the human life cycle, consider stem cell research as an example. Why is the church afraid of scientific research? Isn't it because what the church believes is inerrant truth based on the writings of historical figures who who only repeated what they had been taught without doing any research themselves, runs the risk of being debunked?
Frankly, I empathize with homosexuals and I have the courage to say it. From what I understand there have always been humans who live with some incongruence by comparison with their inner selves and their outer biological shell. Homosexuality is just one example, I suspect, of the church and religion drawing dogmatic conclusions without doing any real research. Are people who are born outside of societal generative norms freaks or impaired somehow? Or, like the disciples who wondered in John chapter 9, why was the blind man born blind, did he sin in a previous life or did his parents sin, is the church simply too condemning?
The church like the disciples who questioned Jesus that day were more interested in knowing why the man was born blind so that they could assign guilt, as opposed to accepting the fact that the man was in fact born blind. The church today often does the same thing in too many areas. The fact is that people are born homosexual, some social scientists have concluded that approximately 15% of any population is homosexual.
If the church really wants to help then it needs to get on with the business of helping individuals who have lived their lives being persecuted, and to help them to understand why they are exceptional, and to preach against those who persecute other people including homosexuals! The church also needs to stop fighting against those disciplines and individuals who are willing to engage in unbiased research in order to seek answers that extend beyond mythical or historical inaccuracies.
And if the church were to do like the disciples in the illustration did, and ask God what is wrong with these people, they might be surprised to find out as the disciples did that the reason for the difference has nothing to do with sin – that’s what Jesus answered, neither the man nor his parents sinned that the man was born with congenital blindness.
Back to the findings of Galileo and Copernicus, but let me say this first, whenever you discuss a topic like homosexuality or do any other questioning the status quo, the reader or hearer’s first inclination is to wonder, well then you must be one yourself or apostate. I hate to respond to this question at all whether I am or not homosexual, because it makes me sound as if I am saying that there is something wrong with someone who is born homosexual.
However, I will answer in this manner, I was not born homosexual and to my knowledge I am not homosexual. On the other hand I was born black, and for many including some in the church there is still something wrong with my racial group and they treat us as such. To many whites the norm is to be non-colored, in other words to be heterosexual white is the perfect measure of a man or woman, all others are deviants.
Whites considered blacks, short and simple, to be cursed; of course anyone other than a non-white to them was considered cursed! Were we cursed? I don’t think so, but one thing I know for sure is that I was born this way and I love it. And,I wouldn’t pretend to be anything other than what I am either, particularly not just to satisfy white elitists or those who thrive in ignorance!
Why was the church offended given the findings of Copernicus and later Galileo? The answer is simple; their findings right or wrong conflicted with what the church taught to be truth, a truth that was purportedly revealed by God (himself) at the time. The consequences of these apostate teachings were expected to be devastating in more ways than one' many priests feared that they would have been found to be frauds!
Ironically, when truth could no longer be censored by the church, what the church feared the most did not happen at all – there wasn’t a mass exodus from religion when humans learned from scientist that the Earth was not the center of the Universe. The church simply had to update its dogma to the truth that had been revealed by the scientific community. We will likely have to update the canon and other religious books in time.
Humans are resilient, and it is a good thing that they are resilient given that more information has been revealed that has come into conflict with the teachings of the church and many of man’s major religious and philosophical groups. And just as it did not occur in the past, I am not witnessing a wholesale evacuation from the church or from religion today as a result (just because someone studied learned something that before was considered to be out of bounds in religion or the church. Humans have proven to be very capable of placing the understanding of others within a proper historical context.
We are very capable of understanding why an individual believed what they once did under the circumstances, only to adjust their understanding under different circumstances. I suspect that humans will progress even further once the brakes of religion have been removed and man is freed to pursue knowledge without fear, particularly knowledge that might come into conflict with religious dogma.
During antiquity, humans explained things in a context that he or she understood. The creation of an anthropomorphic God was and is understandable under the circumstances. Given where human learning and understanding was at the time, it is conceivable and understandable that humans believed God to be a flying superman, and therefore God was part biological and part transcendent. Over time, other ideas were attached to this greater than life anthropomorphized God which has given us the idea of God that we have been presented with up and until recently.
Having gotten around the constraints of the church and religion, many humans are wandering today if they have a better understanding of what may be a sovereignty as opposed to the superimposed mysticism and superstition that attended the thinking of early human beings. And trust me; some of those believers keep their beliefs ‘in the closet’ too! The latter are afraid of being considered atheists or secularist. The question remains, can you believe in the truth and not believed in an antiquated idea of God, and not be somehow a deviant!
We may discover that 90% of what early humans believed God to be true might turn out not to be accurate after all. Certainly deities like Horus, Baal, Damon, Zeus…have already been put to bed. To have spoken against any of these and other deities within their context would often have represented sudden death, or at least have been considered blasphemy. However, today humans do not give a second thing thought to assigning these previous myths to their proper relative context.
Does God exist as early humans believed and in the context in which they believe that God existed, I seriously doubt it? At the same time there is proof that the centrality of all things upon which early man, within his context, based all things according to his level of awareness is in fact accurate. In our lifetime we might move beyond antiquated ideas of God all together ourselves and began to grasp truth, which is what I suspect that we should have been doing in the first place.
Once the stigma of not believing in an antiquated God of antiquity has been removed, I suspect that humans will be freed to pursue truth in many of the areas that plague us. We will seek truth as a result of a better understanding of all phenomenon and without fear of repercussion from religious group, or by the associated guilt that attends our minds whenever we consider stepping outside of the box to pursue ideas that have not been sanctioned by a religious group or the church.
Even if we accept church dogma, according to everything we read and according to early religious prognosticators, by now the world would have come to an end and the God of antiquity would have returned to the Earth by now. Even modern day prognosticators, many in the 18th and 19th century have failed apparently, in their prognostications. The Apostle Paul clearly expected that the rapture would occur in his time and prior to his own death, i.e., ‘We shall not all sleep…'.
There is much more to be studied and to be delved into, including medicinal research, and we must have the freedom to do so without the fear or perceived punishment that would come from any group that is guided by myth, guilt and superstition as opposed to having sustainable proofs to justify its teachings and its concerns in the first place.
In other words, the Gods of antiquity may not be God at all, but how refreshing it is to be able to pursue what is actual, even if it turns out to be be something other than what we have been taught! I cannot close without answering the question that I posed in the beginning, what is it that church and religion do not want you to know! The answer is simple, TRUTH!
Peace & Grace
Rev. C. Solomon
Addenda: And if you’re wondering whether or not I still believe, “I Believe” that we ought to always be pursuing what is real, for I believe that there is more to it than what early humans, religion and the politically-divided church held to be absolute truth. If the church is too remain viable and relevant, it must be willing to test its hypotheses and to move beyond absolutism that is based upon speculation and unproven and outdated paradigms.
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