Life is brief. We can't each experience everything individually, so we rely on the experience and wisdom of those we know and trust to guide us in making our choices. And when we do not personally know a person who claims to have wisdom or knowledge, we must rely on our reason and judgment to assess their claims.
What is the influence of experience on our beliefs? As humans, most of us have innate inclinations towards the spiritual, the religious and the superstitious. We are then raised to believe and act in certain ways, so those who raise us have a profound influence on our early development. Our first religious beliefs are usually the beliefs (or lack thereof) of those in our immediate environment. Cultural influences are very powerful. Language, religious belief, morality, all are facets of our culture and our experience. When we grow up we are building on an immense amount of human experience as focused through our culture.
But at some point in our lives almost all of us become independent. Like birds that leave the nest, we begin to make our own decisions and take responsibility for our own actions. In a sense, we are reborn and become our own persons. This act of rebirth can occur more than once in a lifetime. Sometimes this transformation is profound; sometimes it is subtle, but it is a natural occurrence among people who develop normally. What and whom we trust and believe can be altered by these transformations or rebirths, sometimes dramatically. Sometimes we come to the realization that what we used to believe was merely what someone else believed, but the new person we have become no longer believes such things.
The theme of rebirth is repeated often in various religions. For instance, many of us are familiar with the story of a remarkable person:
- • whose birth was heralded by a star in the east
• who had no history between the ages of twelve and thirty
• who walked on water, cast out demons and healed the sick
• who was transfigured on a mountain and delivered a sermon on the mount that was recorded by his followers
• who was crucified between two thieves, buried in a tomb and resurrected
• who was called the lamb of God, the good shepherd, the bread of life, the son of man, the Word and the fisher
• who was the way to heaven, whose name was written as the "road to salvation", "the Way, the Truth and the Life"
• who the prophets said would reign for a millennium
All these familiar themes come from the story of Horus, also known as Iusu, and they are described in detail in Egypt at least as far back as 1700 BCE. The very similar story of Mithras, the Persian sun god who was born in a cave during the winter solstice, goes back to between 3000 and 2400 BCE.
So the rebirth we all go through has been retold allegorically in many religions that date far back into pre-history. The themes are similar: rebirth and the discovery of the divine within each of us; these are keys to happiness in the afterlife. The basic themes encourage us to be better people. Certainly, there is a lot of excess baggage attached to these themes, but applying reason and logic to the messages allow us to sort out the wisdom from the opinions of the humans who wrote the texts and the clergy who influenced them.
This is natural religion, using our innate human abilities, which include reason, a conscience and an ability to tell right from wrong with minimal instruction. These innate tendencies and beliefs have been described as natural law. Whatever you call them, and whatever religion shaped you in your early years, you end up drawing your own conclusions based on your experience and your intuition, which is based on your experience.
In my view we do not communicate with God directly. I see no credible evidence that we do. Some people put their faith and trust in sources that claim to possess information given them directly by God. I do not find such claims reasonable. If others do, that is fine as long as they do not interfere with my right to believe as I choose. I would not interfere with their rights. But even if I reject their claims of divine revelation, that does not mean that I reject the entirety of their message. That too would be unreasonable. Religions have brought great comfort to untold millions of people. There is good in all of them. Reason and experience allow us to sort out the good from the bad.
I have quoted Mark Twain before: "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." As we are reborn into Deism we often reject our former beliefs, and in my opinion that is healthy and normal, but we should also remember another Twain quote: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." When we are first reborn we see the foolishness in the beliefs that we left behind very distinctly, but when we mature in our new beliefs, we may see that not everything that we rejected was bad. Maturity and experience should be our guides to sorting out the useful from the useless so that we do not lose the valuable wisdom that has helped make us what we are.
(also posted at Nature's God and on my blog)
