The Bordoni Circle

Science & Religion. What's the deal?

2011-02-22T16:59:00.000-06:00

I am writing this post as a result of someone recently asking me "What do you believe in?" after using the term "Bad Religion" which I've adopted since the testimony I gave at the UMCG a few weeks ago.
It was a great question. What do I believe in?

To understand the depth of this question I am going to start by sharing what I believe in that clashes with a lot of Christian beliefs among some denominations. (Not all).

I believe in Science. I don't believe that science can be proven wrong because the whole point of it is to evolve and learn from it's mistakes and make new discoveries with those mistakes.
Science has given us discoveries that have saved millions of lives, it has given us a view to the universe that we couldn't possibly imagine and the latest DNA discoveries have been nothing short of groundbreaking and the next 20 years are going to be an exciting time for the human race as we discover even more at a rate and velocity unheard of in Human history.
So, when I hear a theory about how we came to be, how we evolved and what we evolved from I tend to listen, read about it and look at what has been discovered as a fact.
Is Darwinism perfect? No. It's full of flaws and mistakes (as are Einstein's theories) but I do believe they came pretty darn close and put us on the right track to find out where we originated from...

HERESY!
I know. According to some Christians this is total heresy and goes against some forms of "Creationism".
What do I consider creationism?
Well, I do believe that everything was created by a higher power and because I am a Christian I will call this higher power God.
Where some "creationists" lose me is when they start making claims like "The Earth is 4000 years old" and start arguing against the scientific discoveries and FACTS (not theories, or assumptions...FACTS!).

Do I believe God made everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th? No. I don't. It's a metaphor...(HERESY!).

Do I believe God took a piece of mud, spat on it and created Man? No. Another metaphor. (HERESY!)

Do I believe that a woman was made out of a Man's rib to be his servant. HELL NO! (MORE HERESY!)

The compilers of the book of Genesis did their best from what knowledge they had at that time to frame a coherent account of Human origins. They tried to address such questions as to why people speak so many languages, suffer pain in child birth and wear clothes to conceal their nakedness for example.
Word of God or not, this was translated by people with very little scientific knowledge at the time and my belief is once again, they tried their best with what they had.

Fast forward a few thousand years and we are discovering that Genesis, if taken literally, is in fact mistaken. Oops.

As a metaphor it works, but to use it to make scientific claims on our origins...ehm...no. sorry.
Lets get past that shall we. (HERESY!)

We have evidence that the Earth is not 4000 years old, just like we eventually proved that the Earth wasn't at the center of the universe...in fact it's not at the center of anything really...and neither are we.

Anyway...I am getting carried away a little here because in all honesty Science & Religion cannot be compared so it gets to me when so many Christian's start arguing against science using the Bible and faith as their argument. It's pointless.

I guess this begs the question again...what do I believe in when it comes to the Bible.
Well. I don't believe it is a history book nor a science book.
I do believe that it is the inspired word of God translated with human eyes, ears, brains, knowledge and emotion.
Inspired is the key word here. As is the fact that most of the Bible was written by human beings...human's that lived in very tough times and that yes, could have been pissed of on a given day and added some spice to their accounts for their own personal agendas and views like we all do today (even the best historians and politicians do this).
Or, they simply tried their best to translate God so that we could understand him in human terms and by doing so they really had to simplify everything so that we could understand...specially for those who 2000 years ago couldn't even possibly imagine the discoveries we have made today....

I believe in God. I believe in Jesus as the son of God and his teachings of love. I believe in God's love.
A love that we can only understand by using human emotions, therefore we cannot claim to understand it in full, otherwise we'd all know the secret to love and we wouldn't be having any problems whatsoever.

I look at the Universe and there are Exo-planets popping up all over the place, tens of thousands of galaxies are being discovered everyday and we have no clue how many of them there really are.
There is so much we do not know about ourselves, how can we possibly claim to know EVERYTHING through one book inspired by the word of God?
Answer: We can't and if you do, then that is a choice you have made and if you have done so by faith, I am cool with that, but please don't claim to know when science is wrong and start screaming "fire & brimstone" when science does discover FACTS and EVIDENCE that clash with what you believe.

I mean, what is the problem with the notion of evolving from Apes? (HERESY!)

For all we know that is how God created us and we are not the end of it either.
In fact evolution is in constant motion and although we do not see it with our naked eye we are evolving right now, this moment, second after second...thats what DNA does, it adapts...and all of this..all of these millions of years in which life has evolved could well be a blink of an eye in God's view.
Heck, maybe God sneezed and here we are...(HERESY!)

None of this takes away the LOVE. The number one subject in the Bible. LOVE.
None of these scientific discoveries alter that love in anyway, in fact, in someway's it's validates it.
This LOVE we believe in is so much bigger than what we are and goes beyond our comprehension.

So here's the deal for me.

If you truly believe that evolution cannot be possibly true, that science is wrong and that what you believe with your faith is the only and true answer, the next time you need a baby delivered go to the Bible and get your answers on how to do that.
The next time you have the flu, instead of getting the flu shot look up the cure in the Bible.
The next time you get a headache I am sure that based on your beliefs you will be able to get rid of that headache by reading something in the Bible right?
The next time you need to get to somewhere distant, instead of flying by plane see if there is something in the Bible that will get you there instead...
The next time you look up to the stars and see planets and galaxies see what you can find out about them in the Bible...wait. Oh Shit. There's nothing in the Bible that answers ANY of these things...
Science did all of that. Well DAMN me...where the hell did you find all of this stuff contradicting Evolution???

Yep...that's what I believe.

Amen.

How the dark side of religion can drive people away from church even God.

2011-02-20T15:17:00.002-06:00

I thought this would be fitting as my first official blog post...Here is the testimony I gave at the United Methodist Church Of Geneva on Sunday February 6th 2011.

Good morning,

When Pastor Bill asked me to share my testimony, at first I was like “Ehh”. When he told me what it was about I was like “Oooo” and when I told my wife Amy she was like “OH NO!”...

Despite the fact I have an italian surname “Bordoni” and that my Dad’s Italian,

I was born in England, my mom’s English and my grandparents we’re Scottish

and we are all descendant’s from the “Clan of the Hutch” which,

I have managed to track down all the way back to when William the Conqueror invaded Scotland and England in 1066 and the “Clan of the Hutch” 1st settled in Scotland.

I am very proud of my heritage and to this day when people ask me were I am from sometimes I catch myself saying “Scotland” although I wasn’t born there and had only lived a few years of my life before moving to the United States.

Up until I was 12 I loved my home, my friends, my school and my life in England...

Then one day I was woken up in the middle of the night and my parents told me that we we’re leaving.

A few hours later I was in Italy.

No time to say goodbye to my friends, no explanation...

I was just in Italy.

To this day I never knew why and this formed much of the anger and rebellion that I experienced during my teenage years.

We moved to a small village of 5000 people called Gropello Cairoli.

A village like thousands of other small villages that surround the bigger cities in Italy.

Here I had my first experience with Church & Religion.

Don Pier Luigi was the priest of the roman catholic church of the village I lived in.

He owned much of the property in town, had political influence over who should be in charge, he was very wealthy and had a lot of power over the people who lived there and that were afraid of him.

One could say he was somewhat of a local mobster.

He did not welcome my arrival.

I was an angry kid. I had long hair, listened to heavy metal and rebelled against everything that surrounded me in this little village.

You had to have a certain dress code, you had to act a certain way, they even chose who you should hang out with and who your friends should be and you had to maintain a certain “reputation”. I simply did not fit in with this culture and I hated all of it.

They were constantly trying to force me to be someone who I was not and they failed.

I got kicked out of the church playground for simply having long hair. It didn’t help when I told Don Pier Luigi that Jesus had long hair too. His response was they didn’t have barbers back then.

I was forced to go to catechism class and got kicked out to for asking challenging questions or making challenging statements.

I was forced to go to church on Sunday’s and was eventually kicked out for wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt.

Now keep in mind this happened in front of everyone.

Don Pier Luigi ordered me to stand up in front of the whole church (which was pretty much the whole village), he pointed his finger at me and yelled “look at his hair and the clothes he is wearing. How disrespectful! Shame on you! Get out!”

I was now 13 years old and here I am being kicked out of a church, being ridiculed in front of a whole village and being considered a misfit for not conforming to Don Pier luigi’s village rules and agenda.

From here on I became an Atheist and for the following weeks I would show up to disrupt the Sunday morning church service by wearing my “NUMBER OF THE BEAST” or “HIGHWAY TO HELL” t-shirts as I stood in front of Don Pier Luigi while he tried to give his sermon.

On several occasions, the local police would have to come and get me and escort me away from the church...

This of course was all happening while I would look up at this enormous cross with this scary Jesus covered in blood looking down at me with a very disappointed expression.

Now, there’s more to this story...and you are more than welcome to ask me how it ended on another occasion.

Fast forward a few years and here I am in the United States.

My wife Amy really wanted us to go to a church so we tried many of the churches within a 25 mile radius and a lot of them reminded me of the church ran by Don Pier Luigi.

Many of these churches spent most of their time telling me what is wrong, what I shouldn’t be doing and if I did bad things I will loose my “Chuck’e’Cheese” tickets to go to heaven.

They spent so much time judging negatively anything from political agendas, movies, fictional books, music and anything that didn’t have the so called “Christian label of guarantee” on it.

They would then follow that with a passage from the bible that to my opinion could be interpreted in hundreds of different ways...to my ears it was the same old story...none of them were teaching me about God’s love and how I can share that love with others.

Amy and I finally found this church in Geneva a few years ago. It’s a good church, full of wonderful people.

A church that even a die hard atheist friend of mine (after attending one of the Third Tuesday suppers) recently said “This is what church should be all about”.

To give you an idea of how big of a deal for an atheist to say something like that, it’s as if Pastor Bill went to a Satanist church and found himself saying

“well despite what you believe this place is pretty cool!”

One could say it’s a miracle I am here today but the fact is God kept showing up in places other than church and religion and wouldn’t give up on me.

For a long time, due to bad religion, I was pushed away from going to a church and in the process the church was pushing me away from God.

I will share my personal point of view as to why I think this happened and still happens to others today.

Whenever a church steers away from the gospel of love it starts practicing bad religion.

Whenever it starts pointing the finger at something or someone, it starts practicing bad religion.

Whenever it leaves out people either intentionally or unintentionally, it’s practicing bad religion.

And whenever it forgets that it’s the people that make the church, not the institution, it’s practicing bad religion.

I grew up surrounded by bad religion but somehow I miraculously met people and places in my life that showed me God’s grace without having to preach it.

They didn’t have to call themselves Christians nor did they have to affiliate themselves with one denomination or the other to prove to me they we’re good people.

Some of these people and friends are Atheists, some of them are Gay, some of them are pagan, some of them simply agnostic...The kind of people many churches spend so much time preaching against.

They accepted me for who I was, helped me even when I didn’t ask for it and showed me unconditional friendship and love without asking or wanting anything in return.

They reminded me of this Jesus I had heard of in stories but so many churches keep forgetting to talk about in favor their own politics of fear.

So here’s another one for you.

Whenever the religion of Christianity fails to see God at work outside of it’s own walls and beliefs. It’s practicing bad religion.

I suspect my atheist days would have lasted much longer if I hadn’t met these so called “non-christian” people and so called “non churchy” places that acted and continue to act to this day, so christ like.

So now here I am today. I’m in a church. Not only I am in a church but I am preaching and giving my testimony in my Iron Maiden t-shirt and nobody’s kicked me out...yet!