By Philippe Orlando -- I was told by a woman that “her God was madly in love with her”. What kind of supernatural , omnipotent , all-powerful creature, other than the one living in your imagination, would fall “in love” with humans? That mighty, all-knowing Being who supposedly created all the known universe with billions of galaxies in it....loves us? That amazing being loves me and needs my love? Me? A human whose body is degenerating by the minute, who has a very narrow and incomplete vision of the universe and who is, by God's standard of time, certainly by the universe’s standard of time, going to die soon. What does it mean to believe that we are loved by such a powerful being? Is this the mother of all ego trips? It looks like it. What kind of Supreme Being is that? I mean, frankly, if you need the love of most of the humans I see throughout my day, you’re in trouble, whether you’re a god or not. If you were God and you were about to create something to love, wou...

By Philippe Orlando -- L et’s assume there is a “God” - with a capital “G”. Let's assume that, like any good person of faith, you believe that God created the world and everything in it. Now, take a really good look at the world around you. What does it tell you about your God? Image by rafaelm via Flickr Do you truly believe a supreme being full of love built it? Look at the way life is organized on this planet. Watch the evening news. Check out the latest offering on Animal Planet. Stop in at the natural history museum . Your loving and compassionate Father cooked up a Garden of Eden based on murder! Let's assume that all the problems mankind is plagued with has been brought onto us by our bad behavior in some biblical past. Let's assume we're paying today for something humans did or didn't do in the past. Fine. But what about the rest of the creation? What did squirrels, elephants and baby antelopes, some of them I've seen being eaten alive by ...

By Philippe Orlando -- I ’ve always wondered, “When did humans realize they were mortal?” When we were Australopithecus ? Homo erectus ? Or did we have to wait until we were fully Homo sapiens ? Image by grinwithoutacat via Flickr Imagine a small group of early humans. What did they think was happening when one of them was killed by a predator and became “something” that resembled the very same meat they had for dinner last night! What did they think? Did they consciously tell themselves “we are just mobile meat waiting to be killed by something bigger and stronger; everything is just meat, including us”? What of the other death? The quiet, incomprehensible one? What do you think they thought when one of them suddenly entered a state that resembled sleep. The others surely waited and waited for him to wake up so they could move on to the next food source. They shook him but he wouldn’t wake up. He was pale and his skin cold. The others didn’t have a choice but to wait. Maybe t...