I am almost 72 years old and have been looking at the current state of humanity, especially in the US of A.  I have believed many of the things that I was told to believe over time.  I believed in Santa Claus, I also believed that the man called Jesus Christ, died so that his believers could join him in Heaven.  I even believed that the US of A was a country that followed the teachings of God.

First I must say that Jesus' last name was not Christ.  Jesus was explained to be the Christ.  Jesus was not a white manand he wasn't an American.

I can put accept the fact that people have believed in gods over the years, religiously.  I haven't found a religion that has any proof of its reality.

Bare with me , please.  I was raised Roman Catholic and even attended the diocesan seminary in my home town in southern Louisiana.  After I graduated from high school, went to a public college/University down in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

Although I was asked to step away from the seminary to develop myself, I tried to remain in the church as I believed that the second Vatiican Council had empowered the laypeople.

While in College I read about the church's position on Conscientious Objection.  I also followed the actions of the peace movement.  I became a conscientious objector to violence based on the nonviolent teachings that Jesus seemed to have been propagating during his life.

Although I was involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a cult like community that the Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barret was a member of, although I never met her as she wasn't even born yet.  I never experienced the so called Baptism in the Spirit or any of the gifts of the spirit.

Christianity seemed to teach that God was divided into three persons, which was not a teaching of either Judaism or Islam.  It taught that God wanted to reconcile with Its creation.  I don't know how a god that loved Its people would send them all to Hell to await the "sacrifice" of Jesus.  Science estamates that God waited for at least 8000 years since god created the first humans.

The church teaches that Jesus descended into Hell to free all of the souls who had died to be rejoined with God.  When I was a child I was taught that after the gates of Hell were opened, only people who had not been baptized or who did not die with an unforgiven Mortal Sin would be sent to Hell.  Now that sounds a little fairer if you believe in Heaven and Hell, but for some reason the Church did not stick to the point of pointing out that believing in Jesus meant believing in living the way of life that Jesus lived and taught.  It appears that Christianity as we know it was changed to a peaceful community to one that is too liberal with the belief that we could kill people and that we could be forgiven after we were made aware of what Jesus was all about.

Now I can admit that I don't know if there is a god like the one in the old and new testaments.  Christianity has a more progressive understanding of the god who lead the Israelites through the desert to the promised land.  I also don't know if there are three persons in God.  I can't imagine that Jesus was 100% man and 100% god.  The Church of Constantine, the Roman Catholic Church and all of the resligions that spawned from it, Needed to make Jesus God so that people didn't have to believe that Jesus expected his followers to do what Jesus taught because it would not have givien the same standard to its followers.  If Christians did not assume that Jesus was God then they would have to admit that what he did was not something that they would do.  The days that saints were predominately non violent martyrs for the teachings of Jesus died after nearly 200 Roman Bishops out of approximately 1800 gave Constantine a warrior god to promote.

I have decided that being a Christian was not for me.  I cannot be a good person just because I fear that God will send me to Hell if I don't believe in a religious tradition that justifies violence.

Now I hope that if there is a god it will be merciful and just if there is a heavenly afterlife.  If there is no afterlife it will be similar as my "before life".

I am not claiming to know all about life history or traditions, but I believe that people can be good people if they actively attempt to live a peaceful life.  You don't need to believe in a god to believe that you can be good.  To all that agree with me in any of my ideas, I hope that you will share my ideas with others, and to those who do not believe in anything that I say, I invite you to tell your friends to read my rantings for grins and giggles.

Peace to all, and if there is a God, I ask It to bless everyone.

Hello to all who enter here, Rey Hinckley.com is my personal web site where I share my opinions with people who are looking for answers to questions that you want to chat about, or just to here someone else's take on them.

If you have been visiting this site over the last few years, you will understand that I haven't been updating it and many may have assumed that I died.  But I'm baaaaaaack.

Since March 12. 2015 I have been unemployed and only worked as a Uber driver for a year until I totaled my 2015 Prius.  My  wife retired after the school year ended in May of 2012 after my son, Scott passed away due to an Aneurysm in the cortex of his brain.  We miss him, but for many of us life goes on.

I retired after the Governor of Louisiana decided that Louisiana couldn't afford giving businesses a lower tax for developing media content at places like the Celtic Media Centre where I was working.  Since then the state decided that ghe governor had made a mistake, but I had been terminated to make up for some expenses that the company could control.