Oh religion... how you've made me think over the years. I don't mean any attacks by this, I'm just thinking to myself and evaluating for myself. I'm starting to feel like I'm saying this for the billionth time, but it's still in the "open case" file so I have to think about it.
I've always had reservations about notions of divine intervention. I've never seen it. Of course, I've seen things happen, but there always seems to be a normal reason for it. Much like how if I see a curtain suddenly drift back and forth for a few seconds I'll think "Hmmm... there must be a draft in here that I can't feel" instead of figuring that it's proof that ghosts exist. If I was accidentally tipping over to fall off of a cliff and a miraculous force stopped me mid-tipping and pushed me back upright, or if I ran on empty in my car for 150 miles when I happened to run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere... then I might believe more in divine intervention. I haven't ever seen anything that I would describe as miraculous though. Those things I have seen that turned out great are compounded by many other things that turned out just awful.
It would seem to me that much of the religious community says "See! There's proof that God exists!" whenever anything really good happens, and "See! There's proof that the devil exists!" whenever anything really bad happens. Self-reinforcement.
A few questions have always bothered me:
If God does exist - How could he/she/it judge me as awful for following my own intuition and what I thought was right, when it's the thing that would have given me the mind in the first place? I imagine that would be like me building a spoon and then getting mad at it for not doing what I wanted, which might have been cutting a steak, and calling it evil. I made it that way, how can I be angry with what it does? And if I DO determine that the spoon is evil, isn't it based on my subjective choice that a knife is "more good" than a spoon?
Along those same lines, I'd have to imagine that God, provided he/she/it does exist, would be operating on such a higher, more universal wavelength in terms of thought that it wouldn't perceive good or evil acts. Much like if you gave a toy to two siblings for them to share and they were to get into a punching match over it and then they both were to come up to you and ask which one was good or evil - you might not view either side as evil, but just say "It's a shame you fight so much. That's not what it's all about."
If God exists, then why does he hide? I know the "Don't tempt God" thing, but why? Why shouldn't God give obvious truth to his existence? I am open to seeing evidence, but I don't see it.
If I were to ponder on what God or existence really is and where all this stuff came from based on what I see around me and trying to draw conclusions from it, I could see evidence of this:
This world exists, as do I, and from what I can tell others exist too. The planet seems to have started as a big rock in space made up of a bunch of different materials, much like a lot of other planets are today. This one, however, started swirling around and because of its conditions, over time little things started to move around. Much like how if you have a string of gears together and turn one, the others begin to turn too - but if a few of them are missing or disconnected then only the first few gears turn. This planet just happened to be one where a lot of gears moved about, and eventually along that string of gears a gear called "bacteria" and then "plants" and then "fish" and then "animals" and such started turning. The other planets are missing a few gears though, or else we might see life on them too! Alan Watts would say that as an apple tree produces apples, the planet produces life simply because that's the way it is.
Of course, that's very mechanical. That would be fine if we weren't conscious - if we were similar to planets swirling around one another. I'm inclined to agree with [MENTION=2259]Kmal[/MENTION] on this one, that the universe is composed of systems of varying degrees of scales. We just happen to be a system that has become conscious. How strange!
Looking at matter, scientists have looked down at it and found the elements, then found atoms that compose those elements - protons, electrons, neutrons. Then they found quarks that make up each of those. If I had to extrapolate this, I'd imagine that there's an underlying element making all of this up. I suppose I'd call it spirit, for lack of a better term. All would be spirit, primarily, just different organizations of it. One form would be wood, another sand, another water. The energy would react with itself and do curious things like what we call gravity, and what we call consciousness. I'd say that we are one of the many manifestations of the universe. As such, there isn't really good or evil because we're all just different manifestations of the same thing.
If a boulder happened to fall off of a cliff and break into a pile of pebbles on the ground below and mysteriously become conscious, would the ones at the bottom have any objective validity to segregating themselves as "surfacers" for the pebbles on top of the pile and "underers" for the pebbles below and trying to decide which was better or worse? They're all fundamentally from the same stupid rock, they just don't realize it.
It so happened that we like life - that's because the initial ones of us that enjoyed living and procreating and were good at it tended to perpetuate that system. The ones who thought it would be more of a rush to jump off of a cliff and didn't see a need to continue living (not out of hate, but just out of indifference to the state of being alive vs the state of being dead) jumped off of cliffs and now they're not here anymore because their system didn't tend to be self-perpetuating. A stream continues one way. If a few drops splash to the side they are absorbed by the ground. It is not bad that the drops did not form a new stream, or that the stream didn't change course to follow the drops, or that the drops aren't part of the stream anymore. It's just what happened.
There is no god, what happens after death is that our current form stops and consciousness goes wherever it will - except our brains aren't there to recall memories. It's happened before, and it will always happen. This isn't bad, but we have an aversion to it because our mechanical disposition finds change to be a bad thing.
I think it would wrap up existence quite nicely if nothing existed, but nothing separated itself out into what exists today. As an analogy there can be an instance of "no charge" of electricity on something, and everything is cool and neutral. However, if that gets separated out to a positive charge and a negative charge: the whole system can be neutral overall, but magical things can happen involving the opposite charges that have separated themselves out. The big bang would have been a separation of the void into energy, spirit, consciousness... and whatever its other pole is. That's just a personal curiosity though. I wouldn't aspouse that as anything more than just mindfood. I think it would be funny if it turned out that way though.
Whew!
I've always had reservations about notions of divine intervention. I've never seen it. Of course, I've seen things happen, but there always seems to be a normal reason for it. Much like how if I see a curtain suddenly drift back and forth for a few seconds I'll think "Hmmm... there must be a draft in here that I can't feel" instead of figuring that it's proof that ghosts exist. If I was accidentally tipping over to fall off of a cliff and a miraculous force stopped me mid-tipping and pushed me back upright, or if I ran on empty in my car for 150 miles when I happened to run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere... then I might believe more in divine intervention. I haven't ever seen anything that I would describe as miraculous though. Those things I have seen that turned out great are compounded by many other things that turned out just awful.
It would seem to me that much of the religious community says "See! There's proof that God exists!" whenever anything really good happens, and "See! There's proof that the devil exists!" whenever anything really bad happens. Self-reinforcement.
A few questions have always bothered me:
If God does exist - How could he/she/it judge me as awful for following my own intuition and what I thought was right, when it's the thing that would have given me the mind in the first place? I imagine that would be like me building a spoon and then getting mad at it for not doing what I wanted, which might have been cutting a steak, and calling it evil. I made it that way, how can I be angry with what it does? And if I DO determine that the spoon is evil, isn't it based on my subjective choice that a knife is "more good" than a spoon?
Along those same lines, I'd have to imagine that God, provided he/she/it does exist, would be operating on such a higher, more universal wavelength in terms of thought that it wouldn't perceive good or evil acts. Much like if you gave a toy to two siblings for them to share and they were to get into a punching match over it and then they both were to come up to you and ask which one was good or evil - you might not view either side as evil, but just say "It's a shame you fight so much. That's not what it's all about."
If God exists, then why does he hide? I know the "Don't tempt God" thing, but why? Why shouldn't God give obvious truth to his existence? I am open to seeing evidence, but I don't see it.
If I were to ponder on what God or existence really is and where all this stuff came from based on what I see around me and trying to draw conclusions from it, I could see evidence of this:
This world exists, as do I, and from what I can tell others exist too. The planet seems to have started as a big rock in space made up of a bunch of different materials, much like a lot of other planets are today. This one, however, started swirling around and because of its conditions, over time little things started to move around. Much like how if you have a string of gears together and turn one, the others begin to turn too - but if a few of them are missing or disconnected then only the first few gears turn. This planet just happened to be one where a lot of gears moved about, and eventually along that string of gears a gear called "bacteria" and then "plants" and then "fish" and then "animals" and such started turning. The other planets are missing a few gears though, or else we might see life on them too! Alan Watts would say that as an apple tree produces apples, the planet produces life simply because that's the way it is.
Of course, that's very mechanical. That would be fine if we weren't conscious - if we were similar to planets swirling around one another. I'm inclined to agree with [MENTION=2259]Kmal[/MENTION] on this one, that the universe is composed of systems of varying degrees of scales. We just happen to be a system that has become conscious. How strange!
Looking at matter, scientists have looked down at it and found the elements, then found atoms that compose those elements - protons, electrons, neutrons. Then they found quarks that make up each of those. If I had to extrapolate this, I'd imagine that there's an underlying element making all of this up. I suppose I'd call it spirit, for lack of a better term. All would be spirit, primarily, just different organizations of it. One form would be wood, another sand, another water. The energy would react with itself and do curious things like what we call gravity, and what we call consciousness. I'd say that we are one of the many manifestations of the universe. As such, there isn't really good or evil because we're all just different manifestations of the same thing.
If a boulder happened to fall off of a cliff and break into a pile of pebbles on the ground below and mysteriously become conscious, would the ones at the bottom have any objective validity to segregating themselves as "surfacers" for the pebbles on top of the pile and "underers" for the pebbles below and trying to decide which was better or worse? They're all fundamentally from the same stupid rock, they just don't realize it.
It so happened that we like life - that's because the initial ones of us that enjoyed living and procreating and were good at it tended to perpetuate that system. The ones who thought it would be more of a rush to jump off of a cliff and didn't see a need to continue living (not out of hate, but just out of indifference to the state of being alive vs the state of being dead) jumped off of cliffs and now they're not here anymore because their system didn't tend to be self-perpetuating. A stream continues one way. If a few drops splash to the side they are absorbed by the ground. It is not bad that the drops did not form a new stream, or that the stream didn't change course to follow the drops, or that the drops aren't part of the stream anymore. It's just what happened.
There is no god, what happens after death is that our current form stops and consciousness goes wherever it will - except our brains aren't there to recall memories. It's happened before, and it will always happen. This isn't bad, but we have an aversion to it because our mechanical disposition finds change to be a bad thing.
I think it would wrap up existence quite nicely if nothing existed, but nothing separated itself out into what exists today. As an analogy there can be an instance of "no charge" of electricity on something, and everything is cool and neutral. However, if that gets separated out to a positive charge and a negative charge: the whole system can be neutral overall, but magical things can happen involving the opposite charges that have separated themselves out. The big bang would have been a separation of the void into energy, spirit, consciousness... and whatever its other pole is. That's just a personal curiosity though. I wouldn't aspouse that as anything more than just mindfood. I think it would be funny if it turned out that way though.
Whew!
