GOD CONNECTION BOOK

The God Connection
Reflection on Religion and its Aberrations
By Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.

"The God Connection" is a philosophical treatment of both good and unsavory aspects of Religion written for the educated layman. It is written in simple and direct language, and embodies scientific insights as well as inspirational passages.

This book point out to you the evils of corrupt religious practices, while it instructs you in sound mystical experiments. The God Connection is a personal adventure into spiritual thought and meditation, complimented with scholarly research of the histories and achievements of great religious movements worldwide.

PREFACE

Dear Reader or Browser:

You are probably wondering now whether this book is a polemic against your particular religion, a deviant view of God, therefore a heresy, or an apology, which justifies Faith and Tradition as seen today. Perhaps you have picked up this unpretentious volume at a bookstore and are skeptical about its sticker price; it should be stacked with the dusty volumes at $2.00 for two, you think.

You may also be wondering whether you will be offended or preached to until you have dozed off. I hope to do neither, but you may catch me lecturing, which is what I did for many years to glassy-eyed students at the University. I am now approaching 70 and retired from that line of work, thank God.

This is a philosophical volume on religion, more quirky and personal than most such treatments of God. My version of the Truth includes some technical and scientific sprinklings of Computer Science, which was my discipline for the Ph.D. that I hold from the University of Southern California.

I was born and raised in Greece near Athens and attended high school at Athens College, a Greek-American preparatory institution that is attended by many of the Greek elite and many scholarship students like myself. I was baptized and indoctrinated in the state church as a Greek Orthodox Christian. The Greek Orthodox Church, which was established by St. Paul, Saul of Tarsus just a few years after Christ’s crucifixion, is similar to Roman Catholicism from which it split several centuries later in the Schism.

Greek Orthodoxy follows a very strict religious discipline. The Madonna is worshipped with ardor as the Mother of God and the source of Divine Compassion. My mother was on very intimate terms with the Madonna; she used to pray to her nightly calling her Mother of Mothers. As a child I attended the liturgy every Sunday and sang with the Church choir. On weekdays I ran after every passing black-robed, bearded, pony tail hair priest with a top hat to kiss his hand and get his blessing.

My dad, a bank manager, was a free thinker and agnostic. He died 17 days after celebrating his 100 years of age. The nearness of death had not stimulated any sense of Faith. He lived with me in his last years when his main interest was his next meal. Then food started tasting bad to him and he died of malnutrition. I lost my mother in 1997 to dementia and finally congestive heart failure at age 92. When mom and dad argued, usually over money that she overspent, she called him an "infidel." I do not recall Dad ever saying bad things against religion and in all his lengthy life he had never done anything unethical; rather he had gone out of his way many times to help others. He had been a Christian in practice without the dogma.

As for myself, I went along with the prevailing faith, unquestioning. My first exposure to atheism came from my brother, two years my senior, when I was about 13 years old. We slept in the same bedroom and there was a period of time when he kept me up half the night with his talk on religion and his doubts about what the priests taught us in church and school.

Later in high school it was the custom for the science students to bait the priest in the class for religious catechism which was mandatory every semester. These fellows were bright, well read and vicious. They could quote readily from Nietzsche, Russell, Lenin and other atheists. Every Church teaching was held up, in their view, to the bright light of Reason and the class roared with laughter as the poor priest squirmed and wiggled desperately trying to get his point across. Finally, he would get so exasperated, he would declare "This is how it is; you have to believe this and answer correctly in your tests or I will fail you." I answered properly and got A’s.

Thus I graduated with honors and left for the United States to study engineering. With a free ticket on S. S. Homeland, tourist class, I stood on the deck and waved to my family on the dock. My poor little mother, dressed in the traditional black dress of the middle-aged Greek women, was in a torrent of tears but I did not care. I was going to America to become learned, rich and famous. For a year I attended engineering school in Raleigh, N.C., then dropped out to become a traveler, occasional worker at a variety of trades and a would-be writer for the next six years.

These were adventurous years for me, with frightful difficulties and privations mixed in with occasional happiness. I remember the beginning of this Odyssey in a rented room in Chicago. I was working as a bus boy. One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1954, after a short nap, I experienced a feeling of complete peace, tranquillity and joy. Also, the certainty that no matter what trials and suffering lay ahead for me, I would be all right in the end and I would eventually succeed in life and be happy.

Five years later, in 1959, I had an intense religious experience; it was very confusing and erratic. I thought I had connected with God and gained vast insights about the Universe and Nature. One of my numerous visions was of planes crashing into skyscrapers, with red flashing flames. It did not seem so serious a matter. I was in the minds of the pilots, firmly believing that this whole show was unreal in a world of illusion and the real world was beyond. I decided that my experiences were not on firm mental ground. I picked up an old volume on college algebra and started sharpening my logical tools again. I reunited with my mother and brother who had by then also immigrated to the United States and with their help I was soon back in engineering school. I did well and received my first degree quickly. I devoted myself to rational thinking and for many years looked upon Intuition and Faith as things to be avoided.

Upon retirement as a university professor I was financially independent and I returned to my old love for the humanities and writing. I began a number of books such as, The Anatomy of War, Machine Intelligence, True Manhood and other subjects that have interested me, which may yet see the light of day. But I settled on God as a philosophical subject, because God has got to be the most fundamental of all issues.

What could be more basic than religion to a human being? Religion attempts to answer the questions of "Who am I or what am I? What am I doing on this earth? Where am I going? How should I behave in order to do the right things? What is the meaning of Life?" For many years I had sought the answers to these questions in scientific studies of evolution, animal and human behavior, history, physics and cosmology. The clues were there, but not any answers. Science does not supply any ethical guidance; it is impartial to Good or Evil. It is a tool, like a knife, which you can use to carve your food or your enemy.

My questions now were the most intimate and fundamental of all. What is the origin of the self, the destiny of the Cosmos and the self’s relationship to Nature and Human Society? What should be my principles of living, my relationship to leaders and prophets, my parents and ancestors? What is my connection to this entity people call God? Philosophy attempts to explore these questions in an impartial and rational manner. It is different from religion because it does not dictate the ultimate Truth. Some philosophers tend to be dogmatic, but in doing so they violate the spirit of Philosophy. A philosopher should be a calm, cool-headed observer and thinker. He or she must consider and sometimes accept opinions other than his or her own and even opinions opposed to his or her own. This is also Science, but Science is not speculative and tends to be strictly rational. Philosophy is allowed to be more intuitive. Philosophy should not create Gods or spirits and should not be involved in rituals and ceremonies. The offerings of Philosophy do not require Faith, but only Reason and Good Sense. Emotions are felt by the sound philosopher, but are not allowed to cloud the clarity of his or her thought.

Gradually this time, without emotional turbulence, I had a new awakening. Many fears I had held since I was a boy went away. Aging, illness, accident and death itself ceased to be worries for me. I took care of my safety out of love of life and not fear of death. I now have an inner peace and tranquillity that stays with me in the midst of disasters; people remark about my calmness. I find pleasure and fulfillment in doing simple tasks. I have enjoyed looking after my aged parents, my young daughters and other relatives that can use my help. I invariably sleep well and if awakened I quickly return to sleep. I have been a happy man for many years now and each birthday that comes to me makes me happier. I cannot claim complete illumination, but I feel I am approaching it steadily.

I feel that I am reaching for the Light. I am not sure exactly what that means, but I’ll share my feelings and thoughts with you in this book on the philosophy of religion. This is not a dispassionate analysis only, but also a personal quest. I am a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in my community. Its ten basic beliefs are such that I can accept without violating my sense of reason. I also attend the Greek Orthodox Church on special holidays and festivals. I want to have Faith, because I can see what wonderful things Faith can do in changing people and the World for the better. At the same time, I am opposed to religious dogma and the sentiment "You are not of my Faith! You are an infidel who will burn in Hell for all eternity!" I see much evil, insanity or plain idiocy in some religious groups. A prime example is Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. And I find the scenes of television evangelists and their faithful to be the most hilarious comedy workshops around.

This is where I come from. What follows are my best offerings to you, dear reader, from a man who has never stopped searching and thinking about the basic questions of existence, and who will not cease to do so until death.

Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
July 2002
Vista, California, U.S.A.

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