How to use a Guideline

Religion, past and present, has always had a big impact in human life. Just think about it, strong devotees to strong disbelievers, and still, its impact has not changed. Why is this? Why has religion become such a big part of our lives, even those who claim not to belong to any? Is it necessary? Can we as humans, live without believing in some kind of higher person, deity, energy, force, call it what you may, and still interact the way we do now? Religion plays a large part of life in society. Depending on your group's overall ideology, the way your beliefs are expressed highly influence the way in which you are seen inside that group. Even among non-believers, one cant help know of other religions and some of their main ideas, values, or morals, and base judgment on that knowledge, sometimes such occurrences when this knowledge comes out, can be viewed on badly but isn’t that what religion is for? At least the way I see it, religion is a set of guidelines on how to behave and basically on how to live one’s life. Through the passage of time, decades and centuries, we as conscious beings have indulged ourselves in religions both polytheistic and monotheistic. We have gone from strong believers to questionnaire-ees and some deny- ers. Why could this be?

First of all, what is the ultimate goal of a guideline? The goal of a guideline is to set up a successful way in which to begin making decisions. From there, it provides basic steps to continue moving towards whatever that something may be. Guidelines are not meant to be followed line by line, word by word, but instead, are meant to inspire ways to make good choices that would lead to success. But while much of our population does believe religions serve as a kind of guideline, there are those that disagree. Such that disagree are usually the most devoted, the extremist, they interpret their religion almost close to literally. But the fact that these kind of believers have diminished in number leads me to think, if we take into account the idea of religions serving as guidelines, and guidelines being used to help start off something, could it be that we are slowly moving away from it like a child moves away to college? Could it be that this means that we are now ready to leave religion, and if so, where would we go? I mean, this makes me go back to the question, is possible for us humans to ever stop believing in a higher power, completely?