My Beliefs

More for my own benefit than for anyone else.

My Past
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I was born in Scotland to a Catholic family.  I went to Mass every Sunday, was Baptised, attended a Catholc primary school, where I received the sacraments of Reconciliation (age 7), First Communion (age 8) and Confirmation (age 11).
My High Scool was also Catholic, and by age 16 I was very devout.  I knew quite a bit about my faith, and if there was anything I didn't understand it was people who could *say* they believed without acting it.  People who said they were Catholic who didn't embrace the phlosophy with all their hearts.  Like Jesus, I disliked the hypocrites.  Believe, or do not, that is your choice, but to say you believe and not live your life as if it is the most important thing in the world to you?  That was inconceivable to me.

I left school at seventeen, and went to university.  Suddenly, I worked on Sundays, and no longer went to Mass.  I missed it.  I missed it a lot.  I missed singing the hymms, and receiving the Host, and being in the familiar surroundings, steeped in rituals thousands of years old.  At nineteen, I moved out of my parent's home, renting a flat of my own.  The combination of study and part-time work left no time to go to Mass, and I was now many miles away from that failiar church.  I stayed away.

But a curious thing was happening.  I stopped missing it.  I began to get some distance from what *other people* told me to believe, and began to consider what I believed.

At the same time, I was studying university-level physics and maths, and I'd also done some Astronomy.  My whole philosophy was changing, as I learned how to be a physicist.  How to think through problems, how to analyse, how to spot the logically inconsistent or the bits that just don't make sense.  Both stages are very much intertwined in the evolution of my beliefs.  A scientist does not accept things on faith.  And I was becoming a scientist.

Changing Philosphy
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I discovered that I had many ideas that were different to those taught by the Church.  First of all, the concept of "Original Sin".  It seems to me unfair to claim that everyone is automatically evil?  Why not give them the benefit of the doubt?  I would much prefer a philosophy which assumes I am a good person unless I perform evil acts.  But the Church does not agree with that.
Secondly, there's the issue of sex.  The Church teaches many thing on this issue which I disagree with.  Firstly, sex is immoral outside of marriage.  Secondly, contraception is immoral.  Thirdly, the clergy should be celibate.  I disagree with all of these things.  
Sex, to me, is a powerful symbol of trust, a linking of two people, and I believe that an instant coupling can be just as valuable (between consenting people) as a life-long partnership.  I believe that sexual compatibility is as necessary to a relationship as any other type of compatibility, and that by leaving the testing of that until after marriage, the relationship is being cemented before it has been tested.  I  believe that there's very little that can be wrong with the act of love unless one partner has full control over the other.  As long as everyone involved is comfortable with the situation, I think everyone else should keep their nose out.
I don't know what the church was thinking when it said contraception was immoral.  I think it just feared that the existence of "safer" sex would allow what it terms sexual immorality to flourish.  But eighteen years of being forced to live with an unplanned and expensive child is far more dangerous to the average curious teenager than a condom.  As for diseases, they don't object to vaccinations, and condoms are just one other way to prevent them.
As for celibacy!  Well, sex is an integral part of adult life.  We are sexual beings, we enjoy sex, it forms a powerful bond between people, and it allows a very deep connection with the rest of the world as represented by your partner.  By forcing the clergy to supress their own, healthy, adult, sex drives, it's almost inevitable that those drives will find an unhealthy way to be satiated.  If something so healthy is suppressed and forced into secrecy, it can only find an outlet where secrecy is likely - hence child pornography and rape.  I know not all of the celibate clergy perform these terrible acts, but some do.  And even some is unacceptble from these people who are celibate for the sake of morality.

It's my belief that things that are natural and cause no harm to others or to society cannot be evil.  And here, I find myself disagreeing with my previous religion once more.

The Bible
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Now, I'm going to tackle the Bible.  What is the Bible?  It is believed by millions of people around the world that the Bible is God's word, is how God chose to communicate with us. If you believe that and your beliefs are at all fragile, you may not want to read the rest of this section.

The Old Testament, considered logically, is a collection of Hebrew documents, stories and histories, important to the Ancient Hebrew culture but of dubious relevance now.  The creation story in Genesis?  Adam and Eve who had two sons being the fore-runners to the entire human race?  Who did Cain and Abel marry?  How did they have kids?  Either it's not the whole story or it's an allegory, an attempt by people thousands of years ago to explain their origins and the way that they are different to the beasts.  I don't know the Bible well enough to go into details, but having heard it read at many Masses over the space of seventeen years, having read some of it myself, and being familiar with many of the stories, it makes much more sense that the Bible is the history of the Jews than that the hodgepodge of myth, fact, and geneologies is actually the word of God.

As to the New Testament... Why are there four evangelists?  Did only four people choose to write down the life story of Christ?  Of course not - we've found many more accounts of Jesus' life in vaious archaeological finds in the last century or so!  Many of them cast an entirely different light on Jesus' life.  And even those four that remain cannot agree on certain details - like what happened to Judas after the crucifiction?  Did  Jesus have brothers and sisters?  It seems very clear to me that certain versions of the story were carefully chosen to reflect the Church's politics.  My next question would be, why does a religion centred on Jesus spend so much time examining the lives of His followers?  Jesus was the Son of God, according to Christianity.  And yet the teachings of Peter and Paul, for example, are given almost as much credence as those of Jesus - while, we now know, many aspects of Jesus' life were suppressed.  There's something wrong there.

So, no, I don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible - since it cannot even agree with itself!  I think much of it is culture-specific and the rest has been specially chosen and edited to give the Church's desired message.

The Son of God?
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Is Jesus the Son of God?  Was he bor of a virgin who was herself the "Immaculate Conception", born without original sin?  Did he perform great miracles, and rise from the dead?  Was he a great teacher and healer who ascended bodily into Heaven?

I don't know.

I believe that Jesus existed.  It seems unlikely that he was made up entirely, and also historical sources other than the Bible have indicated his existance.  So there are two choices.  Either he was the Son of God, or he wasn't.
If Jesus was the Son of God, then Christianity, however flawed I believe the current incarnation to be, is true.  Jesus, an incarnation of God, was born on Earth, performed miracles, and was sacrificed to save the whole of Mankind!  What were His teachings?  Not those of the Church, or those of His followers, but those of Jesus Himself?  He preached against hypocrisy.  He spoke about the use of common sense when deciding which rules to follow.  He told the story of the Good Samaritan, which is often interpreted as being kind to people from whatever background or race, but I think, from reading the context, basically says be good to those who are good to you.  But He gave two commandments - Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.
If Jesus wasn't the Son of God, then He was incredibly intelligent.  He could see through the cultural values of right and wrong and decide what is *absolutely* right and wrong, without regard to cultural values. He could see the patterns ahead much more clearly than his apostles, which marks him as a person with a very clear idea of cause and effect.  And funnily enough, his teachings remain the same.  But suddenly, instead of him being our Saviour, we have, within us, the capability to be just as good as Jesus.

Personally, I prefer the option that Jesus was *not* the Son of God, but a man who decided to change the world.  And succeeded.

On the Existence of God
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Does God exist?  Is there some sentient being out there who created the world, created us, and now watches from afar as we muck things up?

In my opinion, God is not the way most people perceive Him.  I don't know who He is, whether one can legitimately refer to God as He, or that He is conscious. Perhaps God is just one more example of mankind personifying an aspect of the universe...

Having studied physics and astronomy at university, there are many things that I've learned and accept as fact that are not well understood by the general population.  One thing I've developed is the ability to think on lots of different scales: from the sub-atomic right up to the galactic, and beyond.  I have decided that Heaven does not exist in the sky.  After all, the sky is not particularly hospitable.  To be the Heaven that we believe in, it has to either involve mankind changing into an entirely new way, or it has to be on Earth or on a remarkably similar planet.  If it's the former, then people are not resurrected after death, but given a new form suited to their new environment.  If the latter, then why does the Earth only become Heaven after death?  Why can it not be paradise now?  After all, the Earth is a wonderful place, just suited to the needs of humanity.

Why is God, the creator, perceived as male?  Surely creation is a female aspect?  Women are, and have been throughout history, the nurturers, the backbone of the family, and the carers of society.  Men are the builders, the defenders, and the hunters.  In any society that works, it works because the masculine and the feminine aspects work together (note: not the male and female, necessarily).  God is assumed to be male, therefore reducing the importance of the feminine traits.  If there is only one God, then that God has to encompass both sexes, has to be father and mother of the world.  By denying the femininity of that God, we understand only half of His(!) nature.  If there are multiple gods, then there are also godesses.  The human race would not last long if there were no women.

On Science
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Science is not an all-encompassing theology.  It does not have all the answers.  It can be, and frequently is, wrong.  

Science is a way of thinking, a framework often minutely adjusted so that it fits the observations.  It includes logic, experimental results, theories and predictions, and a dash of common sense.  People who claim that "science cannot explain this and therefore science is wrong" demonstrate only their ignorance, both of what science is, and of how to construct a logical argument!

Many disciplines fall under the category "science".  At school, it was seperated into physics, chemistry, and biology.  At university, other subjects fall under the umbrella, such as meteorology, geology, astronomy and maths.  Then there are other, fringe sciences, such as psychology o archaeology.  There are social sciences, like history, political science and geography.  It makes me smile, these days, when I see the hrase in the popular press "Scentists claim..." because you'd be hard-pressed to get any two disciplines to agree!

What links all these sciences?  /Questions/.  A scientist poses questions about the world or the universe and then finds a way to answer those questions.  Those answers are then tested, by repeating the experiment, by extending the analogy and testing it in a new way...  Sometimes it takes a long time before scientists realise that they were wrong.  But this is not a bad thing, a shameful thing to be hidden under faith or dogma.  Instead, it heralds a new understanding of a tiny section of the universe, new wisdom.  Therefore it is an exciting thing when scientists overturn old philosophies.

I am rather disillusioned with science, because there are so many mysteries that don't seem to be tackled. Most of them, that I'm aware of, are to do with the quantum world, and so I won't place them here.

On the "supernatural"
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This is a difficult section for me to write, and it will be connected with the above few paragraphs about science.  I recommend that you read them first!

The supernatural is a term used to encompass all things not explained by science.  Some of them will be real experiences, some will have originated in the brain chemistry, some will be false.  I do not disregard all things supernatural, because, to me, the definition of science means that it can only explain certain things.  I also do not accept all things supernatural.  Because I have some scientific training, I know how to tell when a question has been answered, and I can tell when the truth is being hidden behind fallacies.

I do *not* believe in astrology.  It's a human creation, a need for our lives to be bigger and more significant than they actually are.  How much more significant can it be than our destinies being predicted in the constellations?  But the constellations only exist from the point of view of the Earth.  Move a few light years in any direction, and few of the constellations will look even remotely similar.

On pretty much everything else, I keep an open mind.  I'd be very surprised if I ever saw a ghost, but I wouldn't try to dismiss it by telling myself it could not be true.  "There are more things in Heaven and Earth..."  

There is a Russian girl who claims to have X-ray vision which allows her to "see" medical problems in the people who come to her.  If this is true, what a wonderful thing!  A super-human, proof that the human species has not yet reached the height of evolution.  I was impressed by one detail - she can't do it at night.  The sun does give out a small amount of X-rays, some of which do reach the Earth.  But man made light sources won't, because it requires a lot of energy to produce X-rays.  This doesn't make the story true, though.  Firstly, I don't speak Russian, so I have no guarantee that the translator was true.  Secondly, things are easily faked on the TV, as Hollywood has shown us time and again, and so I take anything I discovered from the TV with a pinch of salt.  And thirdly, the fact that I want it to be true is no reason to believe it.  If it's true, it will become known in time.

In Conclusion
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What do I believe?  I believe that what is truly good comes from the mind and heart working together.  I believe that anything which doesn't cause harm to others is good.  I believe that some times bad things are required to achieve good ends, but that there are limits to this.  I believe that peace is a higher calling than war.  I believe that the persuit of knowledge is a great thing.  I believe that my dose of common sense beats your Bible any day, but that I'm unlikely to convince you of that!

I believe that the family is very important, that leisure time is just as important as working, and that everything has its assigned priority.  I disagree with the dictates of fashion.  I believe that people deserve a second chance, and that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances.  I believe that what is right for me is not always right for you.

I believe in freedom of speech, so long as I also have the freedom to tell others to shut up.  I believe that most problems are better solved without violence, and that violence, while occasionally necessary, generally causes more problems than it solves.  I believe in being true to yourself, but also in acknowledging the humanity and the sentience of others.

I believe that the worst evils come from being untrue to yourself.  If you recognise pain and do nothing, then you are an indirect cause of that pain.  And sometimes, when everything around you has turned black and you can't find a way out, all you need is a guiding hand.  There is no shame in asking for help by saying "I need help".

I believe in love, and change, and learning, and thinking.  I believe in freedom and peace and everything in moderation.  I believe that what I like or love is not the same as what you like or love, and that you are as entitled to your views as I am to mine.  I believe that while we are all equal in certain key things - our right to live, our right to peace and freedom and our right to make informed choices - we are all different, and that this is a wonderful thing.More for my own benefit than for anyone else.