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Welcome to The Secular Gospel According to Jess! In this blog you’ll find everything from cartoons that make me laugh, to quotes that inspire me, to stories of my own personal experience when it comes to dealing with religion and pretty much everything in between. The title of my blog is intended to be ironic, as one doesn’t often hear the word, “gospel”, associated with secularism, but my intent is to preach, for lack of a better word, what I think gospel should really be about: love, rationalism, fairness, equality, human rights, science and truth. Enjoy!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

"The Great Mystery"

People often ask me what I, personally, believe in terms of God, life, death, the universe, and all kinds of other unanswerable questions. What I find myself telling them in reference to God is that it is not the CONCEPT of an unknowable force or "being" that may have played a role in the way things came to be, but solely the idea of God as the ANSWER to that unknowable thing that bothers me and drives me away.

My good friend Rohsler and I were talking about this very idea, and he told me that the Native Americans had a word for God, that translates as "The Great Mystery."

Now THAT is a definition I can work with.

I believe that the earth and its inhabitants have developed over billions of years by a process known as evolution by natural and sexual selection. As to how the earth came into existence in the first place...well, I confess I don't have an answer to that. Most people, especially the religious among us, like to call God that initial "cause" that brought the earth into existence. So far as I'm concerned, a better word (or phrase) for such an explanation is "The Great Mystery."

I like the phrase because while it does suggest that there is a reason for how and/or why the earth came into existence, it describes the process as it truly still remains: a mystery. It does not try to define unanswerable questions with words that only beckon the asking of more.

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