Found this beautiful gem of wisdom on the internets! It was originally a facebook post from a father (Redditor: LiquidEyes) to a daughter. The daughter was considering getting a tattoo and a strictly religious friend of hers quoted Leviticus 19:28, which says basically, don't cut or mark your skin. This is his response to both of them:
The observable universe, that's what we see when we look up at the night sky, is 98 billion light years across. The actual size of the universe is somewhat larger but the most distant light is yet to reach us. This means that if you were a photon of light emitted from the most distant star we can observe, it would take you 13.7 billion years, traveling at the speed of light, to reach here.
We know this because we know the speed of light, if we didn't things like mobile phones, the internet, your microwave oven, GPS systems, Wi-Fi and many, many more technological marvels that we take for granted, wouldn't work.
This means that the universe, that big old thing all around us, is unimaginably big, bigger than big, it is phenomenally, astronomically gargantuan beyond imagination.
Asides from the many issues this simple fact presents to those of a theological inclination, one being that a 6,000 year old earth in a 6,000 year old universe wouldn't have any stars shining in its night sky because the distance of the majority of the stars in the sky from us, doesn't allow enough time for their light to reach earth over 6,000 years, do you honestly believe an entity wielding the power to construct an object as majestic, mystifying and awe inspiring as the the universe would be truly concerned about pigments in skin?
You've yet to realize this, but you're both neck deep immersed in one of the biggest mind scams our race has ever conceived. Release your minds, rejoice in the majesty of your unique and special lives, follow your own hearts, laugh, cry, love and explore the infinite beauty of your fleetingly short existence, and even shorter childhoods, unencumbered. You are 21st century humans living in a modern, technological world and a 2,000 year old doctrine, written by people who had no concept of what it would be like to live in our world today, cannot and should not form the basis of how you decide to shape your experience of the short time you have here on earth. Make your own rules, live your own lives. Peace.
The only thing I would add to this is that except for the extremely fundamentally religious out there, I don't think the 6000 year chronological timeline set up by Archbishop Usher in the 17th century is used by many churches. The intent of the message is still the same. Morality is subjective and can not exist without deviance. Deviance is subjective and changes over time. An act by itself is not deviant, no matter how horrible you may think it is. What makes it deviant is the societal response towards that act. Don't believe me? Consider: Rock n' Roll, Hip Hop, Bikinis, Thongs, Shaved Faces, Smoking Pot, Drinking Alcohol, Slavery, Polygamy, any many many others. All of these things were either considered deviant and now aren't, or were not and now are.
I still think that religions can offer some wisdom and guidance, but only if it is cherry picked, as has been the case. People will extol upon the virtues of their holy books, but fail to recognize that much of it no longer applies to modern day living and much of it is downright wrong!
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