As a kid, I believed everything my parents said and taught. Well, I was no different from kids anywhere. When we are young, the world is defined by our parents.
My understanding of god and religion came from them. And then there was school. Science. It was awesome. The scientific explanations were a lot more convincing and beautiful and were, ahem, divine. The tensions grew within between science and god. There were plenty of moments when I kept going back and forth,, until I finally broke away from god and religion. The truth shall set you free, indeed!
Over the decades, I find myself more and more convinced about the vastness of this universe with Carl Sagan's point on there being more stars out there than there are grains of sands on all the beaches on this pale blue dot. It boggles my mind more now than ever before that there could be so many stars out there. The older I get, and the more I think about it, it seems like the idea--no, the fact--is far too impressive, and it is a tragedy that this message is lost among the loud religious sermons that drives many to ill treat life around us.
How could earth be so unique, so special, that we are the only ones with life, out of a gazillion bodies floating around in this universe that has billions and billions of stars? It does not appeal to me one bit.
Back when the internet was in its infancy, I naturally signed up my computer's time to help with the search for extra-terrestrial life. Remember that project on distributed computing? Recall Jodie Foster's movie Contact, which was adapted from Sagan's novel?
Having walked away from religion, I am convinced that there is neither hell nor heaven that awaits us after we die. Hell and heaven are metaphors, not to be interpreted literally. To those of us who couldn't care about the mumbo-jumbo video-games like creation stories that religions offer, life is about the here and the now where we try our best to do not harm. We can create heaven on earth, or condemn all of us to hellish lives.
I will leave it to the Dalai Lama to wrap up this post with a secular message:
We are all here on this planet, as tourists, as it were. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives.
— Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) October 14, 2022
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