by W.M. Abel

So many opinions exist on humans, religions, origins, it’s hard to really know what to believe. Religion would have to be the biggest of the group. Man has invented Gods in his own image or his own knowledge base, for the most part, since the dawn of time. Animism, ancestor worship Sun and Moon worship, then deities came along. If all the religious beliefs were correct, all of the others would suddenly burst into flames and disappear. This has yet to happen that I am aware of.

I am a skeptic by nature. I’ve always been a science nut, and really into tearing things apart to see how they work. Occasionally I’d even get something put back together so that it worked right. Pretty much anything that ends in “ology,” I’m at least a bit of a student of, and hold interest in. One of my favorite scientists, and philosopher by my view, was a dude named Occam. One of Occam’s big principles was that for the most part, the simplest explanation, solution, route, answer, or most obvious suspect, was most likely the correct one. They call this “law” by his name now, “Occam’s Razor.”

I’ve applied Occam’s teachings to life, including religion. In college, I took a wide number of courses looking at man’s religions and philosophies. East and West, I looked deeply into the belief systems, and found bits and pieces of each I agreed with. Somehow, like man always does, I think each skews from what the “truth” of life actually is. I view it as a giant tree, the trunk of it is the truth, which takes nourishment from it’s roots, us. Each branch a different belief system, each sect a different twig, and all the words written, preached, and spoken, the leaves that nourish it and the tree. They’re all trying to do the same thing, just different ways. Sadly, several branches just seem to be more into destruction of other branches, but that’s another point altogether. I’ve digressed.

The biggest problem with my acceptance of standard religions is the “magic” factor. I don’t believe in magic, I believe in technology. I believe in science. I believe in the tangible as opposed to the unseen. Science has showed us that there are plenty of other planets out there, ours being created out of nothing and being watched over by a supreme being are a little harder to swallow. Occam’s Razor comes into play. Trillions of stars out there, among billions of galaxies, and planets scattered about. More than likely, we are not the only things growing on the rocks around stars.

That we are not alone is widely accepted. Sightings are commonplace, UFOs are everywhere. Pictures, videos, many thousands of witnesses. Some evidence exists that people have been seeing UFO’s since the beginning. It’s quite possible we ARE some science experiment, zoo exhibit, or test growth in a petri dish in a cosmic lab. Isn’t it quite a bit more likely that some fiddling was done by one of these aliens, or a bunch of them, than that some jealous divine being snapped his finger and suddenly Adam and Eve are standing butt nekkid in the garden getting ready to populate the planet? Occam’s Razor, if applied in this case, would tell you so.

Mankind wars over religion. All of those religions’ biggest edict is to not be killing your fellow man, so what do men do? Go to war over religions. Warfare over religion, to me, is like kids fighting over whose invisible friend can kick whose ass. It’s ground for discussion, but for God’s sake not warfare. If there truly were a being watching over us, the toilet would have been flushed quite long ago. A fresh batch would likely be easier to manage.

This is not to say that I am against religions. If it keeps people happy (it IS after all the opiate of the masses) and more or less on a path of goodness, I’m all for it. I’ve even been seen to attend a service here and there of various sorts. I have friends who are pastors, priests, shamans, preachers, and bible thumpers. I don’t begrudge them anything in their faith. I’m happy they found what felt right for them, and since they aren’t out laying waste to their opponents, at least not directly, let them be. I’d happily be struck with religion and faith, but thus far in life, it has not happened. Nothing has grabbed ahold of me, though bits of knowledge, ideals, and common sense have rubbed off on me.

My take on the divinity of Christ is from the middle of a fence. I don’t know which side to fall on. One side of me says “Mary got knocked up at a stable dance or something,” and another says, “Maybe she was abducted and implanted.” Maybe Jesus WAS the son of being not of this world, but the problem happens to be it’s Commander Zzork from Planet Plutargh, or something like that. Maybe Zeta Reticuli II is where we should be praying to, since that’s where the Grey aliens told Betty and Barney Hill they came from. Who can really say?

Either way, I’m more likely to be watching for flying saucers to be landing than praying in some congregation for my salvation. It’s not that I don’t like the idea that we have something to look forward to after our time here, and get to see all our friends and family that have died ahead of us. Maybe it’s something in dimensional theory that I fail to comprehend. We are aware of four dimensions, and some scientific theory leads to possibly as many as 10 or more dimensions out there. Maybe the energy within us fades into another dimension, the next one up, and further awareness. It could be sort of like reincarnation, with each of us “hoping the next leap is the leap home”.

You could easily interject theories, hypotheses, and conjecture to go through history’s pages and paint UFO’s into the picture. There could be plenty of causal relationship between them stopping by here to pee and let the dog walk and us springing from the biological exchange. Maybe we are just a primitive showplace of how brutal and destructive a species can be. With mankind’s hostility, it’s probably gotten Earth scrubbed off the official travel and exchange list for other planets’ denizens. It’s just the peeking over the hedges and taking pictures from the air that they do, for fear of the violent creatures that abound here, mostly armed with heavy firepower. Maybe someday we’ll know all the answers. When I die and go to Heaven (or more likely Hell), I can be reunited with my friends and family, or when Commander Zzork returns, I’ll be glad to shake his tentacle and ask him what the truth is.