Saturday, July 5, 2008

My Own Evolution - Genesis

I have always had some question.

Not a particular one, mind you, but a plethora of need-to-know dilemmas which have driven my existence from day one. I suspect every human has this innate desire to know, some of us just can not settle down until the most central questions are answered to our satisfaction.

Sometimes the answers are so simple, they are right there. Other times they are difficult to comprehend. To find these answers, our minds must evolve as we grow from the helpless infant state to one of maturity and autonomy where we can process vast amounts of calculations and informative bits to classify and understand our world and ourselves.

When we find the answer it is like a glorious light. I see that light come on for people all the time, it's in the eyes. One second, struggling to understand, then *ding*, a light twinkles in the eyes as the a-ha moment opens up the world a little more.



I was raised in a protestant (baptist) home. My mother is of scotch-irish and native american descent and was born in the Appalachian mountains in the extreme western portion of Virginia, a 'stones throw' from Kentucky. Dad's line is welsh, and they have been centered in the swamps and farmlands of south eastern Virginia and North Carolina. The 300 year old family seat is a still operating farm near Murfreesboro, North Carolina.

Thankfully, my dad had chafed early on to the hypocrisy he witnessed from the church-going community around him, and as a result we did not attend church services regularly. However, my younger brother and I were brought up within the basic tenets of the religion of our parents and their parents.

Of course, my early questions got answers from within a christian worldview. My world was created by this bearded man whose picture was in my children's bible. There was a heaven for good girls and boys and a devil (my mom rarely said 'Hell', it was a curse word in our house) that bad girls and boys went to when they died. But, if we tried to be good, and believed that Jesus was our god's son we would be able to live with our parents and our cousins and our aunts and uncles and our dogs when we got to the pearly gates of heaven....

blah blah blah...you know, many of you grew up in this same bubble.

The problem was, the questions I had about the world I was physically living in were not satisfactorily answered in that illustrated children's bible.

Sadly, it took much more than a few science classes and a couple of years to get to the point where I can comfortably say that I live in a world with no gods, and for that matter no devils either.

I will tell more about my journey later, for now, go in peace and enjoy your day or night whatever it may be. By all means...don't waste it.

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