We humans are obsessed with the concept of God. Driven by fear, hope and intellectual curiosity, we devote much of our lives to exploring, appeasing and expressing our thoughts and emotions related to this great mystery.
Most of us must first resolve the beliefs ingrained during our childhood, judging them in light of our personal experience and education. Many retain those beliefs, though not always in a strict, literal sense; after all, these tenets of faith are closely tied to our thoughts on spirituality and our fear of death. Even those who define themselves as atheists or agnostics often harbor some hope that there is a life force or spiritual plane that science has yet to discover.
I am inclined to view God as a concept that, in the human mind, embodies our hopes and fears and serves to explain all that we do not understand. As our knowledge expands through education and personal experience, our image of God changes in concert; the personal, engaged, vindictive God of our childhood fades with intellectual enlightenment. While organized religions strive to reinforce the ancient beliefs that justify their existence, using fear and guilt as their primary tools, humans are evolving toward a science-based view of our place in the Universe.
