A Course in Miracles, Atheism & Agnosticism...

(I'm a writer, not an editor. These are unedited notes and reflections. Please excuse any spelling mishaps.)

When I first started reading the Course in Miracles I was an atheist. Why would read such a book if you were an atheist? Fair question. I bought it because I was attending support groups for single parents and the facilitator, Barb Costello, was teaching the principles to us each week. 

Every week we'd learn something new about moving from fear to love, the difference between truth and illusion and so forth. She never mentioned God (it was a city funded program) so I didn't really realize it had "religious" language until I picked it up.

I remember the day. I drove myself to Barnes and Nobles excited to see where on earth these amazing teachings originated from. I asked the clerk for help and she walked me over to the section. I opened it up and boom. Religious language. Gosh darn it!

I closed it and remember feeling defeated. I hated organized religion. And, rightly so. Many people have experienced trauma in organized religion. However, I also couldn't ignore that many people also found their freedom in religion. 

I made a bet with myself. I agreed to read it for the principles only. If I saw the word God, I would replace it with the word "love." And I decided to purchase the Course.

This was a life changing decision. The Course is one of the only texts that made 99.97% of sense to me. Yet, I grappled with the language. It explained that the language represents aspects of God and our belief in truth is not required for truth to be true. Well that was true.

The Course, if you are not familiar, uses the term "God" for our Source and Creator that gives us life and our eternal Soul.  It uses the term Christ. All of us are Sons and Daughter's of God and Christ is here to guide us as the Way and the Truth and the Life. It uses the term Holy Spirit. This I could grasp due to my religious studies in Native American traditions and Taoism. 

The biggest question on my heart was... Is "God" conscious or unconscious?

Unconscious would be like the big-bang that created the universe and yet was just energy randomly popping around and expanding and reacting randomly.  If everything is energy, then I could conclude that the concept of "God" is scientific and energetic. This could explain why Chinese Medicine and Chi Gong are such powerful healers.

Conscious would mean that God is aware and capable of creation. God could communicate, interact and facilitate outcomes. This would explain why there such a monumental gap between the animal kingdom and human kind, it would explain perfection of design and the sustainability factor that isn't present in chaos theory. It could also explain miracles, which science and medicine just throw up their hands with uncertainty.

Something that trumped me for decades though is the missing link. If evolution is the only means that the planet and all animals developed from then why are humans the only species to have developed 100 times farther than any other species?

Think about this, it is crazy to consider! Animal species all stabilized and capped out around the same level of evolution. They hunt, live, respond to immediate stimulation, etc. Basic. Not complicated.

Human beings somehow magically developed capacities that blow the animal kingdom out of the water! Here is the short list. We... 

• Do calculus, craft scientific formulas, create massive architecture feats, we create art, we dance, create over 20 genres of different types of music, we craft musical instruments, we write poetry, we can make-love and not just have sex to pro-create or "get off", etc...
• Create menus and recipes, we create cars, boats, airplanes, we fly to the moon, we created computers, systems, networks, bombs, guns, machine guns, steel mills, rings, lightbulbs, etc., we hug, cry, laugh, play games, football, charades, we decorate for Christmas, celebrate birthdays., etc...
• Place windows in our homes, rugs on our floors, we destroy anything we want, we use plastic, we fly kites, we create gardens and grow our own food, we sing, we have Olympic competitions, we have ambulances and doctors and medicine, etc...

You can't tell me this is all because of a simple opposable thumb. That's just dumb logic. 

When the Bible and the Course say we were created in the image of God, well we certainly did inherit the ability and capacity to create. If evolution alone was solely responsible for getting us here, then it stands to reason we'd see more species that at least would have met us half way.  If chaos, created us as perfect as we are (have you studies the human body?! OMG it is an absolute miracle) then why did all other species cap out except one?

All of these truths brought me to at least acknowledge that there was WAY more to life than meets the eye. Science is so limited to what can be observed and measured. If something exists we do not have a tool to see or measure, then we will miss the mark. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.