IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE LIVING LIFE IN PEACE

I believe there is something rather than nothing because of my faith that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is a First Cause. The divine intelligence that started the Big Bang or whatever was the first catalyst of the process, the explosion of light. "Let there be light, and there was light!' To believe otherwise is to make hydrogen or some other initial matter eternal.

Genesis, the first book in the Bible for the three major religions tells a story of Adam and Eve falling from innocence, in which they ate of the holistic, non-dualistic "tree of life." They bring death and sin into the world by eating of the forbidden fruit from the tree of judging good and evil. Our world is broken in our binary view judging good vs. evil (good vs. bad, black vs. white, etc...) that causes countries, religions, tribes to believe they are the good group and seeks to eliminate the bad. As John Lennon said "Imagine there's no countries, religions, imagine everyone living life in peace..." If only we can get back to the Tree of Life and quit our splitting, our judging of the "other."

I believe we must be hopeful problems can be fixed or we throw our hands up and become fatalistic and don't work for peace and change. We can't just curse the darkness, we must light a candle and help others. I was indoctrinated in my youth by fundamentalists who said "Don't work towards peace and love, there won't be peace until the Prince of Peace comes back to eliminate all the unbelievers..." This sort of toxic theology increases problems, in both the East and the West.

Only God knows the future, but I see two possibilities. Either the fundamentalist Isis type folks who damn everyone not in their group and are excited to see a bloody Armaggeddon (who exist in all religions, not just Islam, to varying degrees) carry the day and lead us to World War 3, or people of peace and love triumph and work towards a more loving, peaceful world.