My View of Religious Truth

Gods, Saints and Genes Every culture since time millennium has believed in some form of supernatural force or forces. Some worshipped the elements, such as the sun, wind, and rain, while others have worshipped various deities from cats to a grandfather figure in the heavens. Today, there are literally countless religions and religious sects, each believing they revere the only true god. But how is this possible? How can they all be right? Or are they all wrong? Maybe there is no supernatural force.

But why then does every culture develop some sort of religion. There are certainly good arguments for the idea that religion is political yet, that can't be the true answer, for there are other ways of controlling the masses. Still everyone prays to someone or something when faced with life threatening situations or severe disillusionment.

How can humans possibly comprehend the true meaning of life, the true essence of God, when every thing they know has been passed to them through man -- someone else's interpretation of how we got here, why we're here, and depending on our behavior, where we're going when we breathe our last breath. To know God is to know infinity. Humans are merely creating myths because it is impossible for them to comprehend the truth. There are miracles, those unexplained outcomes that defy reason.

Stories abound, such as a child who miraculously survives days in freezing temperatures, or passengers walking away from a firey crash without a scratch, or someone waking from a coma when all hope was lost, the media is filled with such stories everyday. Miracles happen to people in every culture and of every religion and belief. No one has the market on miracles. They even happen to non-believers and even to those thought of as sinful and worthless. Miracles are not just for the pious.

Some scientists today are doing research on the power of prayer. One study conducted at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri divided 1,000 patients into two groups, one received "remote prayer" from one of 15 five-person Christian-oriented teams, while the other received the usual care (Schrof Pp). After twelve months, the patients who had been prayed for did 10% better on a medical index of complications that was devised for the study (Schrof Pp). Although this is not proof that there is a supernatural power, it does add credibility.

In "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes," Dean Hamer, a behavioral geneticist at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, says that spirituality is part of our nature, thus explaining the presence of hundreds of worldwide religions as well as the growing popularity of nontraditional religion (Broadway Pp). Hamer says he has found at least one gene, VMAT2, that controls the flow to.