“Do I have faith? We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God.”
Stephen Hawking died in March of this year. He was one of Britain’s finest minds. We should take seriously what he says about the existence of God.
Belief in God does not help our relationship with animals
With my respect to believers, I think that if less people believed in a God we would have a better relationship with animals. I don’t want to upset anyone. However, I don’t think that religion does anything for animals. Yes, the Prophet Muhammad loved cats and and he taught respect for domestic cats. However, I don’t think the Prophet’s love of domestic cats has had any influence upon the modern Muslim. Muslims in general don’t particularly like domestic cats. They are not that interested in them as far as I can tell.
Bible
As for the Bible, it is devoid of references to domestic cats. In fact it is devoid a references to cats in general except for the lion. The people who wrote the Bible hundreds of years after the death of Jesus Christ had no interest whatsoever in domestic cats. At that time the domestic cat had been in existence for thousands of years. Dogs are often mentioned.
Human-centered
I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Bible is very human-centered and encourages the dominance of humans over animals. It encourages humans to use animals for their benefit. For me, this is not a good starting point in our relationship with animals particularly nowadays.
Extinction of species
I say nowadays because many iconic species are drifting towards extinction in the wild. The worldwide marketplace in animal parts and live animals is worth 5 to $20 billion annually. It’s massive. Animals are used to make money despite an international treaty to prevent it which is laughable.
There simply isn’t enough commitment towards conservation. Human commitment to exploitation of animals is far greater then for the animals’ conservation.
Afterlife
Hawking also says that a belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. He says that there is no reliable evidence for. It flies in the face of science. I say that a belief in the afterlife is simply a consequence of the human’s fear of death.
“I think that when we die we return to dust. But there’s a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children.”
O’Donohue
We also live on in the memory of others. John O’Donohue, a poet, philosopher and scholar and a native Gaelic speaker believed that the memory of our lives is encased in stone (the earth that we walk on). He wrote the excellent book: Stone As the Tabernacle of Memory.
Good. Mine too.
Well said, and my thoughts only mirror those above.
I denounced my catholic faith in my mid 30’s for a few reasons and to start with is my childhood,my sperm donor took relish in beating me with a 2×4 and he forced me to sit on my hands as he hit me on the head and my shins and a couple times he beat me so viciously I was not allowed to go to school which gave him another excuse to beat me because my grades were failing,I had to take 3rd grade over again,today I still have those scars and I have small white circular scars on my bum cheeks due to my step-mum using a custom paddle made with nails in it,there were a few times where they would lock me in my bedroom with nothing more than a bucket for me to pee in and I was denied food during those times and I used to pray to god to please help me but help never came and once my own mum told me I needed to ask god for forgiveness because I took gods name in vain and I yelled at her that god should ask for my forgiveness for allowing me to be brutalized,raped and beaten and I called her a hypocrite because she wasnt a practicing catholic during the week because she only only went to mass on sundays so yeah I do not believe there is a god and one thing I ask all the time since I was a teenager is why do paintings of Adam and Eve portray them having navals when neither was born of a human woman?
The thing is, humans interpret words according to their own agenda.
The bible (as used across the Church of England) was written at a time when cats were persecuted in numbers not unlike the WW2 holocaust. The word ‘domain’ appears in that bible too.
Domain, means ‘stewardship’ to take all care of the whole wellbeing of the ‘stewardee’
It does not mean domination. Similar to the way that the word discipline, does not mean punishment.
Words matter, their interpretation, even more so.
I would happily burn all bibles and other oppressive creeds. They are nothing but tools to oppress, stifle or abuse, kill.
I have never come across a religion that does not mean oppression and misery for other species and especially human females.
Like ME King, I have never come across any self proclaiming christian who has not turned out to be a thoroughly rotten piece of work behind that fish symbol.
Organised religion keeps people unquestionably thick and encourages compliance to a corrupt, obscene creed. The ‘message’ of all organised religion is long lost.
For other species, that so called message of love, never existed.
Religion is trouble. Nothing but. Dump all of it, everywhere. Be in wonder of life, there is enough in the real world to encourage respect, wonder, reflection. Learn from other species, not exclusively from the words of agenda filled, power crazy, anonymous authors,
Religion keeps humans selectively blind & cruel.
I didn’t want to say it myself 🙂 Thanks ME.
The christian religion teaches that mankind has dominion over animals. Humans then treat animals the same way their sadistic narcissistic imaginary bunghole in the sky treats them.
Without fail the worst animal abusers I have ever come across carry a bible and have a fish on their back bumper.