SCION Vs RELIGIENCE? Which Do You Choose... Why I Despise This False Promotion of Opposames

Holey Cheeses I am sick to the gizzards of the tiresome ways we are constantly divided.

I think its almost as backwards as racism to act like either
-you´re so scientific that you can not ever appreciate the magnanimousness of the divine, or
-so religious that you forget youre using science all day, every day of your life.

There are those that would have it be a false dilemma (apologies to those who recall the old spelling of dilemna)

-A False Dilemma is a fallacy in which a person uses the following pattern of "reasoning": Either claim X is true or claim Y is true (when X and Y could both be false). Claim Y is false. Therefore claim X is true. (wiki)

when really it is a false dichotomy -

A false dichotomy is a dichotomy that is not jointly exhaustive (there are other alternatives), or that is not mutually exclusive (the alternatives overlap), or that is possibly neither. (wiki)

It is an attempt to divide us, assuming we identify so much with our thoughts that we will kill and die for them... for some of us this is true, but for most all it takes is a paycheck.

None of us are static. These thoughts and feelings are from many varied sources...upbringing, choices, experience, situation, karma.

I have moved and morphed through several opposing states in my lifetime, and I have no doubt, I may need to be prepared to move more.

I started out, innocent as a flower of course.
Around the age of four I remember my Dad arguing with men in suits with books at the front door, for a whole episode of The Banana Splits

A few weeks later Dad was out the front watering the rhododendrons and again the men -in-suits approached, he chased them down the street with the hose

I had never seen my Dad yell at or treat another adult like that... the main time he raised his voice was at the footballers on the radio.

Some time later Mum tried out taking me to "Sunday School" at the strange church on the corner.
It was sort of fun, we had weak yellow cordial and they gave us paint and glue to eat make stuff .

The lady teacher gave us a lot of cotton balls and I thought we would be removing nail polish.

Instead she gave us instructions. I thought she told us to make a picture of a "dog", as I had never heard the word "God" before.
But the white fluffy balls were just so suggestive of a sheep to me, so I proudly made the best and only sheep.

I think it was the best art I´d ever made. My only critics up to this point were parents and grandparents so did I get a shock when I was told my sheep was wrong!

The nun in civvies scolded me "NO!" I told you to make a picture of GOD Elissa, Of GOD!

She went around the class of all the little Enid Blyton casualties and held up their pictures of Santa Claus(?), one by one.

"Very Good Tim, Very good Susan, see Elissa, everyone else made pictures of God!

??

I told you to make God.

I had no idea what she was on about.
God????
... never heard of it

But Santa Claus by any other name, surely... . .

Later on I took my picture home and showed Dad and told him "my sheep wasnt right because the lady wanted Santa Claus but she called him God".

Dad got so mad!
Almost as mad as he was with the men at the door!
He said "theres´no such thing as bloody GOD, we come from apes!!

That was when he started talking to me about strange things when he would make me weird things like a sultana sandwich, or a milkshake with an egg in it.... ewww. I didnt have a chewy choice if i wanted the chocolate.

The strange lectures always went over my head, but some things stuck.
I think it was the egg.

Im also not sure how accurate a summary this will be 40 years on, but it went something like this....

Dad: Basically, darlin the people at Sunday school believe there is a man in the sky, with a big beard, who watches down on everyone
Me: Santa?
Dad: Kind of like Santa, but not just watching the kids, watching the adults too...and they believe this man, they call him, God, created the world and all the universe, and the first people, plants, seas, mountains...and everything.

Dad: (cont...)
These people believe the man in the sky wrote a book, called "The Bible" with all the rules for life in it, but different people all have different gods with different books, in different countries, even in just this country. They just want to scare people and take their money. In future you can stay home and we´ll have tea and cheese and read our own books
Me: Which book is the best?
Dad: I like science books that tell a whole different story of how the universe began. Science is the art of questioning and putting theories to the test. First, there was a bucket, like your sand bucket, very tightly squashed with stuff, and one day a big explosion happened to the bucket, and that started everything we now see, which organised itself by refining itself over a long long time from the bucket to here.
Me: ooohhhh kayWho made the bucket of stuff? And who did the explosion? And what was in the bucket????

Not long after that there was a total eclipse of the (heart and) sun one day, and we were all instructed NOT to look at it or we´d go blind. Of course we did look, and, of course we didnt go blind, (for long).
Just more rot like Santa Claus... and not swimming for an hour after you eat, and lollies are bad for you.

After the eclipse which was wild by the way, it went dark in the DAY, we were all called into the loungeroom where Dad had set up a (not to scale ; ) miniuniverse model made out of all our superballs, marbles, tennis, cricket, netball, and soccerballs and string.
That lecture confused the faar out of me but I reasoned, aah its ok, Dad knows.

As I grew up the vibe at home was that questioning was always good, and when Mum and Dads answers didnt satisfy, or if I got into the "but whys" too much I got "go look it up in the ´ ncyclopaedia".
..."but whyyyyyy"

That World Book Encyclopaedia sure killed some mysteries for me. Just like Dad when he explained a rainbow. I can hear the gears of his mechanical universe creaking as he speaks.
Oh. Is that what makes a rainbow. Great. Ho Hum. Back to groundhog day.
Who wants toast... or Burnt bread?

A few years later in first or second grade we had our first religious class.
Not long in and my hand shot up "My Dad told me we came from apes!!"
I got my desk moved outside into the hall and I got to do colouring in.

All was going well and normal in the physical material world, I wasnt questioning too much beyond my sphere of influence while over a decade passed. I guess I was getting schooled and that crap took up all my mind...

Then one day in my late teens I ate some magic mushrooms.
To say I found god was an understatement.
I realised everything is god.

God has just been misdefined.
Everything that is or ever was, or may be or may never be , all the material and non material things, all the space and all the possibility of dimensions, and all of the matter, the anti-matter(?) all the good and all the bad.
The all the everything, because how can it not be. Like hate is a part of love, all things are part of "god", the all the originator and the animator, the that which cant be named.

So we couldnt even do science unless we were this organised result of this somewhat incredible unfolding consciousness, and we couldnt appreciate this divine magical homeostatic chaos without the ability to theorise and question all we can recieve and perceive.

Religions have never been for me, i take what I like from all off the ideas and leave the public worship to the posers.
But I have my closeness to the all that is by regularly relating with it.

This thing "god" sure as hell is not a man in the sky but the connecting essence within all things including me, every grain of sand, every leaf, every planet, person and animal and across every plane, we are the feelers on the omnipresent tentacles of god.

I think of the space between all things is the space connecting, not the space dividing.
All is one, and One is all.

I dont even capitalise god because god is so big and grand it dont require the nod.
Nor do I want to capitalise upon it.

I find it profound to be part of the epic odyssey.