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Religion has been with us since the beginning of human history. Father Len explains what it is and what it always has been.

Highlights, Ideas, and Wisdom

• Religion is a binding of a relationship and commitment to God and other people.
• Religion can be traced all the way back to the Stone Age, Paleolithic and Neolithic times.
• Early religion was a mix of storytelling, music, art, architecture, astrology, and ritual that brought people together, unified them and tied them to a common purpose.
• Stone Age caves were like churches often containing the same 32 symbols that are believed to be a hieroglyphic response to God.
• Religion is not a monologue from God. Religion is a dialogue between us and God with us responding to God.
• There’s good religion and bad religion. Good religion is one that binds us together and to God. Bad religion is just a structural form for coercion that often divides us.
• Good religion is both educational and unifying. It helps us discover the presence of God in our daily lives.
• Human beings have forever been trying to answer this call from a mysterious thing we call God that binds us together and directs our lives.
• There have been cultural experiments without God in countries like Soviet Russia and Communist China. These experiments in atheism haven’t gone so well and led to lots of bloodshed and millions of deaths.
• Atheism’s failures can be traced to the lack of a higher moral code beyond human reasoning.
• We like to proclaim ourselves as rational, but we’re not. We’re really good at coming up with excuses to justify our behavior.
• Atheism says there is no source of justice beyond “how I view things.” In religion, we say God is the source of justice and our behavior will be judged by God.
• Atheism is a type of religion. It may take more faith to believe that “I am the measure of morality” than the faith it takes to believe in God.
• Taking the Lord’s name in vain is to misuse religion for power, wealth, or violence. To commit evil in the name of God.
• There’s good Scripture and bad Scripture. When you think God is telling you to do something that is not in the Bible, that’s bad Scripture.
• Father Len explains how to choose a religion and why not to choose a religion.
• Love is not just an emotion. Love is also a type of reasoning.
• Father Len shares a fun MacMillan family dinner table conversation to answer the question, “should you choose a religion for your child?”
• Religion is incredibly human because it’s constantly seeking the deep connections we all crave and need in this life.