I do not believe in a conventional god, the image of the powerful man in western society. I think that this image is a pretense to support authoritarian ideas. And yet I do believe in God. The following is a musing on religion and meaning and meat and energy. I don't expect it to get noticed, but I felt like posting it anyway.
I do not believe in the Christian god or the Islamic God or any other institutional anthropomorphic god, but I do believe. I believe that consciousness is as basic part of the universe as is life, neither of which has a good explanation for existence--yet they are there. In my own personal religion, consciousness is the energy of the universe when it is expressed in material form, a quality that is inherent in all of creation and can be coalesced insomuch as we are expressions of the material universe. Consciousness is energy--we are like the lights that glow because of energy applied.
If one considers the idea of God, after all the centuries of argument about various regional gods (think Thor or Vulcan or Athena) and monotheism, one must, with science, agree that the universe is singular and that the idea of multiple gods is an emotional product of the human desire for explanation and meaning. Does this mean that the religious impulse itself is false? Or is there something in the universe that leads us to these emotional theories and beliefs? Is there a rational basis for belief in something greater than our own personal experience?
Teillard de Chardin, a Catholic theologian posited that energy and consciousness were one and the same, and that evolution demonstrated a coalescence of energy that was a coalescence of consciousness. If one follows this idea to its logical conclusion it would mean that consciousness is indestructible, as energy is indestructible. This does not imply the retention of memory or the validity of reincarnation. It does not imply the existence of individual souls. It does imply that ones consciousness is not lost upon death, but remains as part of the energy from which it was derived. Much as the chemical energy from your body is recycled into the environment, so is the energy from consciousness. Our meat is a conduit; without the meat, consciousness does not exist individually, but it does continue because energy does not disappear.
OK so you have my whacko ideas about religion and energy and continuity of consciousness. The point of all of this is that if consciousness is a basic property of energy and simply part of the universe, there are no laws of religion to be followed. On the other hand, if we all have the same root for our belief, if we all have the same source for our conscious being, and we have been given the ability to recognize our commonality, then we are all brothers and sisters in this overwhelming universe.
The hard part in all of this for anyone who is a non-believer is the one that has been emphasized in many different religions--that this consciousness includes love. That God is love. Perhaps this is hyperbole. My own experience is that love is an unstoppable force that seems to emanate from people who are particularly conscious, those who feel the greatest kinship with those around them. Not romantic love but the love that makes the world change. And my belief is that you do not need to belong to a religion to experience and practice this love for those around you. You only need to listen to yourself and recognize our common genesis. And then act on that knowledge to be fulfilled as a human being.
Comment appreciated, and a free beer at the Moon and Sixpence for the first Portland person to tell me I'm nuts.