Get back to Nature - It’s rejuvenating

God believers are wasting so much precious time and missing out on really living life. God believers of every variety turn to a negative, violent, and depressing book that was written so long ago by primitive people to solve their problems. The bizarre part is that they take it as literal truth. It’s quite irrational when analyzed critically. It would be like people thousands of years from now finding Tolkein’s works and declaring them to be sacred and everyone worshipping the Hobbit Frodo Baggins as their “savior” and donning medevial attire and growing long beards and going to buildings with a golden ring symbol on top and praying to the almighty spirit of Gandalf. (Actually, LOTR is much more uplifting and positive than the bible or koran.)

Another problem with religion is that these people have had so much fear instilled in them that this god is going to send them to some awful imaginary place after they are dead that they fail to live and fully enjoy the only life they will ever have in the here and now. Sad…sad for people who live for death.

I did some thinking on vacation recently as I observed others also enjoying themselves and relaxing and wondering to myself why people just can’t be content with enjoying this life and appreciating this big, blue beautiful planet we live on instead of feeling guilty and not worthy to have existed at all.

My husband and I just returned from a few days by the ocean on Brigatine Island near Atlantic City. We drove down the coast to Ocean City, New Jersey and walked along the boardwalk, looking at all of the people enjoying themselves, having a good time eating hot dogs, ice cream cones, and funnel cakes while laughing and having fun together. Kids and adults swimming and all seemingly happy, families together, old couples together, young couples together and I thought to myself, this is what people should be doing instead of sitting in churches praying to their imaginary god to help them with their problems. I saw old people in wheel chairs, sitting with serene and smiling expressions on their faces as they watched the ocean waves and felt the wind whipping through their white hair. Children ran into the surf and waves chased them back onto dry sand and they giggled with glee. Fathers swung their children in the air, Mothers passed out popscicles and and hugged their little ones. Young lovers sat closely whispering secrets to each other. Some people slept, some read a book, some body surfed on the foamy waves. No one was praising Jesus, no one bowing to Mecca. Everyone was just content to be there amongst other people and enjoying nature and being happy.

I know not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to travel, and there are those trapped living in the cities where even a speck of nature is hard to find. Instead of herding these people into dark churches volunteers should pick them up and take them to the park for a couple of hours to sit under the trees or take a walk through the orange and yellow falling leaves. All cities have parks of some sort. I have sat in Grant Park in Chicago and listened for birds. They are there and you can hear their songs if you “tune in.”

People don’t need religion…they need Nature. Religion causes people to focus on the negative and their weakness and their sadness. On the other hand, if one looks to Nature he or she will find beauty, tranquility, peacefulness…and happiness. I would rather put my energy into enjoying my life and this beautiful planet where I was lucky enough to happen to come into being. We all have problems, we all have trials of some sort. No one is immune from problems. But religion is NOT the answer…the answer is in Nature and inside oneself and how one chooses to deal with life.

“Indeed Christianity passes. Passes--it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.”

-- H.G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 1934, cited by Ira D. Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, 1945