I am bothered by rituals that are meaningless. If it has meaning for someone else, I can understand why they do it, but won't partipate unless it has meaning for me. The things you describe sound like they fall in this category. This is why I avoid most church services: they have no meaning for me. If I am there for a special occasion, say a friend's wedding, then that is the meaning, and I will attend.
I agree strongly with this.
Singing songs once per week and eating a wafer with a sip of wine is not sufficient on its own to living a good life, let alone being a good person.
Also, here is some other information that you may consider "Part 2" of my earlier post.
It is not directed at Satanism/Devil Worship, but is directed at my views on religion and science.
I'm a Roman Catholic, and I'm also a scientist. I am content and happy to have belief in both schools of thought, and in my mind they do not conflict as is the case for many others who think that they must choose between one or the other.
If you're interested, here is how it goes:
HALLAism - Part Deux:
The contents of my first post in this thread and the following information is everything (significant) I've pondered on regarding faith, science, and a majorly compressed summary of a fantastic Western Civilization class I took back in 1994.
The professor was amazing, he taught us so many things that related to faith but that had also been unequivocably verified by sound (e.g. no "hocus pocus") scientific principles/analysis.
I was pursuing a B.S. in Biology at that time, and had already taken Chemistry I & II + both labs, Organic Chemistry I & II + both labs, Calculus I, Physics I + lab, Genetics, Human Anatomy & Physiology I & II + labs, Cell Biology, Botany, Ethnobotany, and Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy + lab.
I've also always been a very avid reader of modern medicine and pharmacology. So, I knew alot about what mankind could "prove" about life, and I also knew what some of the basic yet fundamentally massive limitations of our scientific capability are.
We've practically decoded the human genome but we're only in the infantile stages of knowing what any of it does/means.
We know how to accomplish some things with embryonic stem cells but still can't grow replacement organs/tissues on a widespread basis, only limited now at best.
There are still a ton of diseases that cannot be cured, and that only partially be treated.
We might be able to clone a living organism but we CANNOT CREATE LIFE from NOTHINGNESS.
The final statement is what allowed me to realize that God created LIFE as an ECOSYSTEM, of which we are but a small part of, yet His chosen children. Louis Pasteur was brilliant to isolate meat from flies in jars covered with cheesecloth, as he disproved the theory of
spontaneous generation. And for all the wannabe disprovers of the existence of the creation of life by a supreme being, all they can do is prove that nucleic acids can be formed in the waters of what was the primordial Earth when the elements froze, or were stimulated by lightning. None of them have proved that silicon chips floating around in the primordial seas were capable of serving as a substrate that sucessfully creates an entire living organism.
Hell, the very same gene that initiates the formation of an eye is the same in a drosophila fruit fly as it is for a human being. The "energy powerhouse organelles" of plants are CHLOROPLASTS, which are uncannily similar to the energy powerhouse organelles of animal cells, aka MITOCHONDRIA. Many scientists believe that the dual membrane around mitochondria is a sign that such organelles were somehow "absorbed into" primitive animal single celled organisms, and thus contributed to the eventual evolution of multicellular life, and much later living organisms. Furthermore, the fundamental molecules of LIFE in MAMMALS (hemoglobin) and PLANTS (chlorophyll) have almost identical carbon skeletons, differing most significantly only by the central core atom of each structure, IRON in Hemoglobin, and MAGNESIUM in Chlorophyll. Guess what? They are in the same family (Column 8, Family VIII-B) in the periodic table of the elements.
Yet another amazing dualistic truth about the creation AND evolution of HUMAN LIFE is evident in embryonic anatomy. First a zygote (1 sperm + 1 egg) develops into a blastual, then it differentiates into what looks like a fish, then grows into something that looks like a bird fetus, then a reptilian looking fetus, then a primitive mammalian fetus, and eventually a human fetus. WE ARE THE END STATE OF GOD'S CREATION. Yet, after he created us, and every other living thing in our ecosystem, all of it continued to evolve. More on that later.
So, to anyone who tries to tell me that life on this Earth was not created by a benevolent and supreme being, I tell them to go try and cook up a living ecosystem as magnificent and comprehensively integrated all the way down to DNA and up to embryonic evolution as that here on Earth in the best laboratories on this planet, and lament that if they try the rest of their lives, their efforts will end in utter failure.
Although many scientists have devoted their lives to disproving creation, and many religious leaders have tried to disprove evolution, I must laugh at all of them, because BOTH ARE TRUE:
(1) GOD created LIFE
(2) LIFE has been, and is now EVOLVING due to SPONTANEOUS GENETIC MUTATIONS, ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES, HYBRIDIZATION, MAN MADE INTERFERENCE, and NATURAL SELECTION.
I'm at peace with both religion and science.
Science is the toolkit which we try to make our lives here on Earth as best as they can be.
The love and power of God is what gave everything life, and what we will return to once science fails to keep our human bodies alive and our spirit returns once more to our Maker in heaven.
Those have been my beliefs since I was 20 years old, I am now 37, and I do not see anything out there that is going to make me waiver on any of the ground I base my faith on.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and for communicating.
I hope you are all doing well and are having a wonderful day!
-Alex