I came into this earth filled with nothing. Completely unclothed, unlearned, helpless! Also, completely dependent on other people. All through the past 50 years of my life, I learned to live as the years kept coming. I learned that life is not fair. Life is, at times, a wonderful and beautiful bliss. Other times, it is filled with brazen and ruthless indignations. 'Life is what we make it', a friend told me when, at one time, I was wallowing in self pity. True, indeed! But not all the time. Historically, life endured catastrophes of seismic proportions before humans walked on the face of this planet. And the string of cataclysmic events will continue the daunting task of natural selection, either they are nature's unwelcome wrath or as consequence of human's rampant and selfish indiscretions.
So while there was no instruction manual that came with my birth, I learned to live my life, thanks to the evolution of parental instinct - the care of the young. I know my parents would hate me and label me ingrate for equating the attention and the love they showered upon me to instinct. For it is all instinct, only an exaggerated type!
And then cultures and traditions evolved, becoming more complex with human evolution. Their origins were quite ambiguous. Many of them based on early human imaginings and perceptions about what, later on, seemed to be ordinary events in nature. Some of them are evolutionary legacy bequeathed by those who came before us. Deities, superstitions, myths all popular in the not-so-distant past have continued to contaminate some of the cultures and traditions that were handed down to our present generation. There is an apparent admixture of truths, half-truths and myths in the social environment I grew up. I must admit, with a brain like an empty memory computer, my brain took all of what'd been fed on me as truths - sinker, hook and line. No questions asked. By then, my cerebral cortex was not completely ready to sort out those that make sense from those that don't! And these endlessly continued to inundate my innocent brain as the years kept coming.
Belief systems are part of the traditions humans continue to hold. There is a parade of gods listed in the Roman and Greek mythology books. Fancy celebrations were held and lavish offerings were offered to honor their sacredness. And there is the God of the bible, Allah of the Qu'ran, or some Higher Beings in other religions. Growing up, I started to grasp faith, to a point that I grappled to it so tightly, and into believing that God is the great provider of everything! There was a time I was deeply indoctrinated that I felt the inner peace and harmony within myself. Ahh the god gene at work! Heaven on earth! But that was ephemeral. My brain, later, was engaged in some higher order functions and questions started queuing up. Time has come to pass the ' faith does not give answers but it just stops me from asking questions' mode. And I can no longer take the 'God works in mysterious ways' end of it.
Logic and critical thinking, two attributes that positioned man on top of the animal kingdom. Two mental faculties that emancipated man from the empowering clout of ignorance. I hate to say this but I am inclined to believe that 'Ignorance of nature gave birth to gods. The knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them'. For a long time, the Catholic Church advocated the earth-centered universe, that the earth is only about 10,000 years old, that the species is immutable. Things have changed. Science has provided and will continue to provide logical expanations to events in nature, events used to be considered mysterious in the past. Mysterious events may continue to appear or be reported but that does not mean they really are mysterious. For nature is light years away ahead of the human intellect. And so, the explanations will come in due time. Long before scientists were able to combine genes from different species, nature was already engaged in genetic engineering! With the loads of new information endlessly surfacing, I thought I need to re-examine my faith and the belief system I am in. And this I will do as the years keep coming.
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