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Carsten Rauh
ENGL 1010-018
Dr. Jeffrey Greenwell
June 22, 2015
The Search for Who We Are
Religion was always something that I have struggled with, meaning the thought of a
divine being that would care for me and provide an everlasting life was a comforting thought, but
reality revealed itself as something quite different. The ritualistic oddities and ceremony in all
religious practice never made any sense to me. Why do I have to dress this way, or say these
exact words, or do certain deeds? Nor do any of the holy texts leave me satisfied. It is obvious to
me when I read them that they are created by man and not the works of the divine. Filled with
many contradictions and unsatisfactory explanations as to how things work and how life should
be. The argument I always hear is, where else would you get your morals? Its obvious when
somebody says this to you they have never read the holy book. There are countless acts of
immorality within its pages but we never use these for guides as to how we should behave. We
cherry-pick that which suits us, leaving me to think maybe we were already moral before we
read the book; how else would we know what to cherry-pick? Many believers use the god of the
gaps in their spiritual practice. Meaning that as soon as science cant explain something, they
assert that god did it. History is full of these examples. It was once thought that the earth was the
center of the universe. A perfectly rational assumption when you consider that we (humans) were
the centerpiece of a divine plan. Why would we not be at the center of the universe? The
geocentric view was taught for a long time until science was able to show that actually the sun
was at the center of the solar system and even this is on a far flung edge of the universe. I dont
think that any religious person still believes that we are at the center of the universe. It used to be

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common practice to pray to the gods of rain, and many such deities existed, until science was
able to explain the water cycle. Once it was understood, the need to pray to the rain gods
disappeared. The fact is, throughout its history religion has done a very poor job explaining how
the world works and it is only for the unknown that god becomes relevant. A view like this also
means that gods domain is an ever decreasing pocket of scientific ignorance and that through the
passage of time will become increasingly unnecessary. However, even after everything pointed
me away from religion, there was still something I was missing. Without religion, there was a
certain emptiness in my life and I could not fill it.
It was on one of my many trips, when I was able to be alone with my thoughts, camping
in the solitude of the desert in the American West, that I found it. An idea had been culminating
in my mind, one that had been occupying my thoughts for many years. It all made sense and
came together for me right here.
A small fire was warming the water for my readymade meal. Its flames provided some
relief to stave off the cold that would soon envelop me. Night was approaching and its
accompanying chill would soon be upon me. The quiet was not something that I was used to.
Living in the city, even the night was full of noise, sirens, passing cars, or the low rumble of
distant freight trains, but here in the middle of nowhere, the only sound was the whisper of a
light breeze slowly sweeping sand over the sparsely populated sage brush and the occasional
crack of the fire feeding on wood. My meal was nothing more than nourishment. A freeze dried
pasta something or other that was called back to life by adding boiling water. It did its job.
Feeling contented by the days events, I leaned back into my small foldable chair and watched
the night take hold. My surroundings consisted of my portable tent, that had been pitched and

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prepared after a small hike to camp when I first arrived on site, and a towering sandstone butte
that had now lost all its beautiful colored layers of red and white to the night. Only the silhouette
of its magnificence remained. The moon was a pale, small
splinter arising behind the butte which made the night feel
darker, as a result the stars were left to shine all the brighter. I
had not seen the sky laid open to me like this before. A cluster
of stars so dense that individuals melted into one another
forming an irregular radiant linear white mass across the sky. A
dark starless void, within it stretched its black tentacle like
fingers through its center providing a sharp contrast to the
glowing sky. I was frozen in place by its grandeur leaving only my thoughts to run free.
The quiet and solace of this place was very calming and the night sky almost hypnotic.
The vastness of what I was seeing did not make me feel special or particularly relevant, like I
was the center of a grand plan, having my existence tested and reviewed. Rather it made me feel
insignificant, just a small part of an unfathomable expanse of universe. A blink in a perpetual line
of time. My existence not design, but the inevitable product of time and space.
I was camping in a region full of geological history, after all thats why I was here, to
admire the carved landscape formations. The region I was visiting was shaped by a swell or
uplift that pushed sedimentary rock upwards some fifty million

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years ago. Through the forces of erosion which were evident everywhere, the awesome buttes,
mountains and strange rock formations were left standing for me to admire. Just yesterday I had
visited a canyon where through the persistence of time a river had carved a massive gorge. The

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canyon walls were exposed. It showed layer upon layer of sediment from past time periods, like
a history book waiting to be read. The visitor center perched on the rim had all the layers labeled,
noting time of development and other fun facts of things that were happening in that time period.
I spent a great deal of time viewing the exhibit. It gave me greater understanding of what I was
seeing. It was like looking back millions of years in time just like the stars I was admiring on this
night. They were also an observation of time passed. Some star light that I was observing
originated from such great distances that only the light they emitted long ago was left of them.
Their life had long been exhausted.
Now in the solace, away from all constraints of society, I was able to see the world for
what it truly was. Although raised religious from a young age, I knew that this was not enough
for me. Too many contradictions, strange stories and text that at best only made sense when
looked at as a history written by uneducated Bedouins thousands of years ago and not the word
of god. Science to me was pure. Sure they get it wrong, a lot, but when they do, they rethink,
evolve, and move on, unlike religion that is unbendable, a static set of teaching that seems more
obsolete with the passing of time and knowledge. But with all its faults it had something that I
did not want to do without. I enjoyed the spirituality it provided and the idea of an eternal
existence.
But as I was observing the grand theatre of the universe deep in my thoughts, it occurred
to me. I was having a spiritual moment, without the aid of sermon or house of worship. Nature
was my temple and spirituality realized without the aid of a divine being and after all maybe I
would not cease to be either. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. The atoms in my body would

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not fade away. Instead after my passing they would simply assimilate into new creations and feed
back into the cycle I was observing.
A voice that kept playing in my mind was that of Carl Sagan. In the intro to his show the
Cosmos, his monologue would include these words that I had heard so many times before, the
cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be, and for the first time in my life I was ok with
that. What a wonder I was witnessing and what a great gift it was for me to be in this time, in this
moment that allowed me to be, see and actively participate in this great world we live in.