Document text
- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us September 12, 2005 CASE IN POINT : Contemporary Religion Despite what the polls suggest, what do we really believe? By Chris Honoré Tidings Correspondent According to a recent Newsweek Magazine survey, 67 percent of Americans polled believe that when we die, our souls go to heaven or hell; 79 percent described themselves as “spiritual” and 64 percent said “religious.” Only 8 percent identified themselves as neither religious or spiritual. When asked if they believed God created the universe, 80 percent said they did — with only one percent saying they did not believe in God. When asked why they practiced religion, 39 percent said it was to forge a more personal relationship with God. Almost two-thirds of Americans pray every day, and 69 percent indicated that the most important part of prayer was to seek God’s guidance, thank God or to be close to God. The fastest growing category identified in the Newsweek survey was “spirituality,” especially among those younger then 60. So if you look at the above results, it would not be much of a stretch to conclude that America is going through a spiritual/religious renaissance of sorts. The boundaries between church and state are constantly being blurred, politicians openly declare they are “born again,” and seekers insist that they want to experience God in their lives. In a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 42 percent of respondents held strict creationist views, agreeing that all living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Is this a significant sea change taking place in terms of our spirituality or religiosity? Clearly, at first glance, America appears to be the most secular of societies. View our entertainment, our pop culture, made manifest by music and film and dress (was it Jay Leno who said intelligent design was a car that got 80 miles to the gallon?), and you get a sense of a free wheeling, barely agnostic society, one in which a majority of young Americans would rather have a personal relationship with the current American Idol than with God. And yet, the polls indicate otherwise, and faith seems to trump science at every turn. No matter the data. In an article in the New York Times recently, it was reported that a team of paleontologists had recently found fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old. The universe, according to scientists, is close to 14 billion years old, and the earth is some 4.5 billion years old. It has been 3.5 billion years ago since primeval life first began on the planet. The oldest hominid fossils are somewhere in the range of six or seven million years old. In other words, the world is not 10,000 years old and life was not created in seven days. Unless you believe otherwise. And many do. The question is why? Certainly, numbers like 14 billion or 3.5 billion are all but impossible to grasp. And when we stand in the dead of night, beneath a canopy of stars, and gaze up at the sky and try and project our minds out, into the heavens, the mystery of our existence can seem impenetrable. Millions of galaxies, drifting like ephemeral ghosts across distances that are incomprehensible. Where does all this vastness end? And can the word “end” truly describe what is beyond the universe? Or are we simply so limited in our ability to grasp what we are observing that our language fails us, as does our understanding? And so, in the alternative, we fashion a collective narrative that can reside within our limited comprehension. It’s called theology. The concepts of time and space and our place in the universe defy ultimate explanations unless framed in religious/spiritual/transcendent terms. Otherwise, what we are left with is our own fragile search for meaning. A journey of startling starkness. Hence, we cling to the belief that our lives must have a greater significance than just the briefest of moments on a continuum of life that has been ongoing for more than 160 million years. Do we reside on a speck of sand that just happens to be the right distance from a sun thereby allowing life to flourish? In a solar system that is infinitesimally small and of no particular consequence? No, we tell ourselves. We are more. All of this is more. It must be. And life, that precious force that surges through us all, will never end but is only transformed and is eternal. Or so we are told by God, thank god, or by those who claim to speak for God. We believe. We choose to believe. We must believe. Or not. Perhaps it is more than we can bear to acknowledge that life is without ultimate meaning, and that we share the same fate as all other animals. There is no divine, omnipresent being, there is no higher purpose — despite all of our best and most scholarly intentions to create an anthropomorphized intelligent design surrounded by a scaffolding of litany, ritual and ceremony. Any meaning or intentionality our lives possess, we create ourselves. And in the end we pass into an unconscious sleep from which we will never awaken. It is a thought that can give pause to even the bravest, for it strips us of all comfort and leaves us staring up at the heavens asking, “To what end?” And what we hear in response, if we are honest, is the sound of silence. No matter that we would wish it otherwise. Case in Point is a weekly editorial column designed to provide in-depth commentary on current events. Responses should be less than 250 words and sent to [email protected] DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams