Excerpt:

• We live in a generation that prides itself on personal preferences and choices. As a generation, we believe what we want to believe and reject those things that do not fit into our personal viewpoint. This is especially true when it comes to matters of religion. Our generation holds to a bewildering array of religious beliefs today. Some can even be quite religious about their refusal to believe in God! On his deathbed in 1882, Charles Darwin spoke regretfully of what his contemporaries had done with his ideas and speculations on the origins of life: 

   

      To my astonishment the ideas took like wild-fire. People made a religion of them.

   
  Our generation prides itself on being more intelligent, more sophisticated, and more informed about what we believe than previous generations, even promoting critical thinking in our schools. Yet one has to wonder how critical this generation’s thinking really is! The fact is that we are not that different from earlier cultures, including the ancient Greeks.
  
  Copyright 2022 Christopher N. White. Updated and enlarged from a message written for an event at Columbia University in 2007.