Christianity and religion have been on the decline inside the human mind since the mid eighteenth century. The reason for the decline of belief in God and the Bible and Jesus has to do with the rise of reason and knowledge. And while those concepts can be soulless explanations of the great cosmic bathtub we’re splashing around in, they are based on fact not belief.

The origins of the word belief come from the root words “to wish”. ” I wish” in God. “I wish in the Bible, “i wish in the resurrection of Christ”. There’s a decree that says your humanity is not enough, that to be truly in sync, you need to worship and “wish” in a far greater power than yourself. A cosmic taskmaster. A powerful Lord to whom you must pay respect or burn in the fires of eternal damnation.

Human beings have been coerced, by force, by torture, by war, to believe in and worship something greater than themselves.This something is invisible and lives in the sky somewhere. Its truly silly and coercive when you think about it. Imagine going through life with some dark shadow hovering above you, keeping track of your soul, your mind, your feelings, emotions, and desires. Keeping track of all that you do so a final judgement can be rendered when your heart stops beating and you brain shuts down

Thats horrible. Why put up with it? Why view life as a ditch through which you must drag a dead ox? Why? Because some feudal priest employed by the Lord of the Kingdom told you that was your way to salvation? To suffer, to whimper before a being greater than yourself, to cower in fear of an invisible sky judge?

My friend Big John in Atlanta was raised under traditional Christian values. There was good and there was bad and nothing in-between. Yet John saw there were grey areas where neither good nor bad measured up. He saw hypocrisy all around him though the people portended piety. So he read books about religion, something few Christians do. In fact, Christians know less about other world religions than any other religious group.

John concluded that despite his religious upbringing, he was, of himself, a good, thoughtful individual that lived successfully by principle and not superstition. He didn’t need a higher power keeping track of his intentions because he didn’t feel the need to bow before something in order to live life. He didn’t need devotion to anything other than living life well and treating other people respectfully. John’s reading also gave him the rigorous intellectual acuity to assess his existential worth without viewing it through the complex and confusing moral prism of religious ambiguity.

The idea that we have to subject ourselves to the code of conduct ordered by an unseen being in the sky contradicts everything freedom means to me. And by reading about religion, I tried to grab that feeling so many people claimed they felt from religious devotion. Relief because of the belief in a being greater than themselves. Someone they could bow before and be granted grace from the misery of life. Someone to whom they prayed to change what cannot, according to their religious imperatives, be changed because of pre-determined destiny. I never got the feeling, never felt that supposedly explosive Christian holey moley. All I understood was that Aunt Ethyl is on her way to the boneyard. Pray all you want. She’s shutting down. And isn’t that supposed to be a joyous time? A time when we get to bury the bullshit and hang with the Creator for all eternity?

Theres only so much matter in an expanding universe which Im sorry to say seems to indicate that we will be incarnated millions of times before we reach the finish line. When the universe decides to stop expanding. So hanging out with the Almighty seems unlikely if we apply the science of proven physics. Matter reforms whether we want it to or not.

Think about the origins of believing or wishing in a greater power than yourself. Its a tradition among the powerful to create order among those they have conquered with myth and superstitious baloney. These traditions settle in as history progresses from one prosperous money making victory over others to the next. And if keeping them afraid of an invisible old man in the sky keeps them from being free, then the powerful will continue to refine the definition of what it means to bow and to scrape before an imagined super something greater than your insignificant self.

How many people are nominated, then inducted into a Hall of Fame? Whether its sports or academic, the Hall of Fame of anything conveys a humbling message to its recipient. The Hall of Fame means you’ve accomplished things your peers have yet to attain. It is humbling because whatever you did to get inducted into the Rhode Island Radio Hall of Fame you didn’t do it on purpose. You did it because it was fun.

I think you achieve Hall of Fame status because you love what you do. You certainly don’t do it for the money or the hours. You persevere in floods of unforeseen failure. Timing and good luck are elements of success.

Radio is not conducive to successful relationships. It is an isolating, crazy, combustible career. You can have great talent and achieve nothing. You can lack talent and be retained on the air for years. You can have number one ratings and be gone tomorrow. You can have lousy ratings and make a quarter of a million a month.

But to make the Hall of Fame you really have to survive. Survive the complex addictions, afflictions, and doubts. The break ups of relationships and the hardships of being in between gigs. The grindstone that threatens to crush your spirit. The exuberant highs of soaring success. The debilitating fatigue of depression following failure.

You take chances to get into any Hall of Fame. Chances in both your personal and professional life. Whether its medicine or celebrity, no one ever gets into the Hall of Fame being a bystander. Hall of Famers have been hit hard. By debt, defeat, and despair.

Yet they survive. Survive eternally in a manila file someplace in a sliding drawer of historical documents. Survive forever in newspaper morgues and government documents. Survive the dust of decay because one hundred years from now someone will want to look it up and see who these people were.

That is why it is both humbling and a valiant honor to absorb yourself into being inducted into a Hall of Fame. It wasn’t a walk in the park. You avoided the trap of the mediocre. You said things that got you fired. You thought out loud and were condemned. You made people laugh and they loved you for it. You were silly. You covered the bases and got hurt. And you learned the ultimate lesson that if you try to please everyone, you please no one. Thats why you’re in the Hall of Fame. Enjoy it. It was a tough ride on a very rutted, and damaged piece of pavement.