My Birth was No Accident

Nor was yours

            There is no such thing as an accident of birth.  It is no accident that a child is born in India, Russia, Egypt or France.  Nor is the color of one’s skin, hair or shape of one’s eyes an accident.

            Some people believe in preordination and preexistence, that we were once disembodied spirits with a mind in some utopian place like a heaven.

            For example, some people believe the biblical character Abraham was suppose to be Abraham and was programmed to put a knife to his son’s throat with the intention of sacrificing him to some macabre deity.  They believe it was “written” or “decreed” before the world was created that men like Moses and Joseph Smith were predestined to come to earth and do what they did. The rational half of my brain will not permit me to perceive of such things.  

            No god, angel, demon, devil or supernatural entity rolled the dice and said, “Well it looks like your name is going to be John and you will be born in 1933 to some Jack-Mormons with Welch, Scottish, English and Danish heritages.” 

            Why don’t I believe in religion?  For several reasons, one of which is over the years there has been too much deception on the part of organized religion.  I can’t see gamma rays, X-rays or ultra violet rays but the scientific method of falsification has shown me that although I can’t see them with my naked eyes, through experimentation, I know they exist.  On the other hand, religion has not been able to show any evidence of a soul, preexistent or an afterlife.

            Take John Calvin, what a despicable piece of work.  He promoted the dogma of infinite punishment for the non elite, a condemnation that was foreordained long before the individual was born.  No amount of good works could change the primordial sentence.  Calvin roasted Michael Servetus while he was still alive for the crime of heresy.  Servetus was a devote orthodox Christian as well as a scientist but he didn’t believe in the Trinity. Calvin was a religious reformer who made criticism of himself and church a crime.  He passed laws dealing with morality and everyday life including how a person could dress.  He was a fascist by definition who used the state to do his dirty work.  Servetus by comparison was a free thinker and a scientist.  The religious Calvin was a zealot where belief trumped facts.  He put to death Servetus whose scientific research made life better – while Calvin’s faith dictated how people should live their lives or be punished – another reason why I’m not religious.

            There is still far too much Calvinism in all religions for me.  I just don’t know about all that irrational, supernatural bunk but let me tell you something I do know … that when my father’s sperm cell was embraced by my mother’s egg I was conceived.  It was no accident and it is the only reasonable, authenticated explanation for my being alive.  And my purpose for being alive, the reason I’m on this earth, is to procreate – have sons and daughters of my own so they too can procreate ….  That explanation comes under the heading of biology and thus far no one has been able to provide evidence to disprove it.

            Each human genetic receipt or genome is unique.  Hopefully our parents passed on to us the very best characteristics that had been passed to them.  But just as each sibling has much in common there is enough variation that each is unique and special. 

            The meaning of life must be to sustain life and to make life as safe and meaningful as possible.  Life is meaningful if we can control the environment so that the lives of our offspring are more meaningful and productive than our own. 

            We can’t all be movie stars, rocket scientists or pro football players.  It’s what we do with what we got that counts.  We aren’t accidents or the creations of a caprice god.  We are the natural order of things with consciousness.  Genes are our eternal life.