musings on God
I often ask myself one question: why? Why are things the way they are? Why do humans hurt each other? Why have Republicans been in the white house for the last 7.6 years? Why do so many people turn to religion? The last question is particularly compelling to me right now. What is it about religion that is so enduring? How is it that so many smart people in this world abandon reason and aspirations toward free will and sink their faith into an improvable, indefinable, omnipresent being---God? In some ways I can understand. Humans crave answers, and there are an innumerable number of important and relevant questions that we simply cannot answer. Although we may think we understand things, the fact is that we don't really know much of anything at all if we crazy even 99.99% certainty. Nobody really knows where the universe came from, where energy came from, where matter came from. Nobody can really claim to understand how it is that we evolved so elegantly. Yes, the theory of evolution is probably correct, and while it certainly makes sense within the limits of what I think I know for sure, the fact remains that we can never really be sure. We cannot look into the past with a time machine. We can derive theories based on observation, but it must be realized that although our scientific knowledge may be self-consistent and seemingly proven, there are still two key things. 1. All the scientific theories we have created and experiments that we have performed have been within the confines of the human brain. 2. In believing in science (whether we are drawn to physics, or neuroscience, or pharmocology, or biology, it does not matter), we are placing our faith in a mathematical construct of numbers and so-called laws of the universe. There is no glaring reason that I see to mistrust science and mathematics. If nothing else, using science the way we know it has led to some amazing inventions, such as computers, space shuttles, bridges, modern medicine, and others. I suppose it could be that it’s all one great coincidence, that our “understanding” of science just so happens to correspond to useful products. The probability of this, in my opinion, is quite low, but it could be true, and that is what matters for the purpose of this entry.
Now we are left in a rather uncomfortable situation. We don’t know anything for sure; nothing is certain. I for one dislike that notion. In my experience, people like to feel in control, both of themselves and of others. The minute we slip away from having at least some semblance of power we feel lost, helpless individuals wondering off the path, the sun setting with no torch to guide us. We need something to turn to, something that can make us comfortable with the uncertainty in life. Pure reason cannot give us this desired certainty, so we desert it, leave it on the rocky path of life and return to the smooth one where glitches are mollified by the ability to turn one’s eye and reach toward faith for help that will most likely never come. While we look toward our faith to get us through hard times, we deal with things, plundering through one obstacle after another, but rather than attributing our successes to ourselves, we thank our higher power for its help. And when we fail, plundered by one problem after another, we do not have to blame ourselves for our own incompetence at surviving life’s hardship. Instead we can say that we were not good enough ____ [insert, for example a religion, ie. We were not good enough Christians] and God is punishing us. When we are alone, wondering about the origins of the universe, trying to decide whether or not to have sex for the very first time when we are 16 and hormonal and think we are in love, wondering what foods are or are not okay to eat, or wishing we could repent for mistakes and take back the past, we do not have to simply accept that there are some things we will never know, that we do have to think for ourselves, and that the past cannot be reversed. We do not have to accept these because we have faith in a religion that guides us and that God’s words are steering us through life. Comforting isn’t it? Isn’t it?
I don’t think so. I find it utterly scary. While science and other constructs designed through reason, observation, and thinking might indeed be false, at least we tried. Unlike blind belief in a God of whom humans conceived irrationally and of whom we learn from fairy tales and power-hungry preachers, reason provides us with beliefs that are commensurate with our brain’s truly amazing capabilities of thinking. Everyone must derive a core set of morals from somewhere. How in the bloody name of hell does it make more sense to simply accept some set because a book that was supposedly written from a God in whom we have absolutely no rational or logical reason to believe even exists, never mind in human form or who could possibly speak a language humans at the time could understand than to think for oneself to decide what is right and what is wrong. Yes, humans may indeed be idiots, all of whose ideas and observations are completely and utterly incorrect, but at least we have some reason to believe in ourselves. Not to mention that we trust our reason all the time. We trust ourselves when shopping for food, when choosing clothing, when cleaning, when driving, and everything else that we do. We have faith in our own reason the great, great majority of the time, so why should we give it up just because we don’t know everything? Why can’t we simply accept that rather than turn to fairy tales? Honestly, believing in Christianity, or Judaism, or Hinduism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or any other religions, is like believing that Indiana Jones films actually happened. All are equally irrational, equally far from reason, and I would assert equally stupid. I completely acknowledge that admitting we do not understand everything and admitting that we are vulnerable to this is both hard and scary. But lots of things are hard and scary, like riding a bike for the first time, and most people don’t believe that...oh I don’t know…that eating dandelion soup will make it easier. Dumb example, I’m sorry, but I assume you get my point, that we are pretty damn sure (based on reason) that dandelion soup and riding a bike aren’t connected. I know, based on reason, that an ancient book and the beginnings of the Earth are with most certainty probably not connected. Yet the latter is routinely believed, while both, when looked at by outsiders, could be seen as really rather equal.
God could exist. One of the world’s religions could indeed be true. But we have no rational reason to believe it. Real belief in any religion fundamentally rests in blind faith, which, by definition, does not depend on reason. Reason is the one thing that humans have that is our best attempt at understanding anything. For the great majority of what occurs in the life of the great majority of people, this is true: reason trumps all. Yet we insist on defiling reason for the sake of “answering” a few big questions and providing a set of morals so that we don’t have to think for ourselves. Does this make any sense? How is this not an enormous contradiction? I really think it is a contradiction, and one that people play out all the time. Any Christian who has sex before marriage is effecting this contradiction. They believe in God and all that Christianity stands for, yet the decide that certain things aren’t important enough to apply to them (they still might think they believe that abstinence before marriage is the right thing to do, but clearly they don’t really believe it, or they would have upheld that belief). Right here we see these people putting their own reason and rational thought before religion. They are living proof that religious not only abandons reason, but also arbitrarily abandons it, causing it to make even less sense to me. In other words, religions says “think before you do things (like picking good tomatoes at a store as opposed to the rotten ones); indeed trust your ability to think and logically determine based on observation what a good tomato is, but don’t you dare try to figure out why humans look like monkeys, or how old the earth is, or what is morally good and what is morally bad.
To me religion both makes very little sense and forces us to throw away one of humanity’s greatest assets: our brains. Blind faith in the flying spaghetti monster is obviously stupid. Well, blind faith in a monotheistic God whose stories just happens to have been told and retold for 6000 years makes just as little sense to me. And who knows, perhaps in another 6000 years humans will discover an etching I made in 7th grade with a little creation poem I wrote at the time for my art class and design a whole new religion around it. Crazy and irrational? Of course. Any more crazy and irrational that what we have today? Well, of that I’m not so sure.
Now we are left in a rather uncomfortable situation. We don’t know anything for sure; nothing is certain. I for one dislike that notion. In my experience, people like to feel in control, both of themselves and of others. The minute we slip away from having at least some semblance of power we feel lost, helpless individuals wondering off the path, the sun setting with no torch to guide us. We need something to turn to, something that can make us comfortable with the uncertainty in life. Pure reason cannot give us this desired certainty, so we desert it, leave it on the rocky path of life and return to the smooth one where glitches are mollified by the ability to turn one’s eye and reach toward faith for help that will most likely never come. While we look toward our faith to get us through hard times, we deal with things, plundering through one obstacle after another, but rather than attributing our successes to ourselves, we thank our higher power for its help. And when we fail, plundered by one problem after another, we do not have to blame ourselves for our own incompetence at surviving life’s hardship. Instead we can say that we were not good enough ____ [insert, for example a religion, ie. We were not good enough Christians] and God is punishing us. When we are alone, wondering about the origins of the universe, trying to decide whether or not to have sex for the very first time when we are 16 and hormonal and think we are in love, wondering what foods are or are not okay to eat, or wishing we could repent for mistakes and take back the past, we do not have to simply accept that there are some things we will never know, that we do have to think for ourselves, and that the past cannot be reversed. We do not have to accept these because we have faith in a religion that guides us and that God’s words are steering us through life. Comforting isn’t it? Isn’t it?
I don’t think so. I find it utterly scary. While science and other constructs designed through reason, observation, and thinking might indeed be false, at least we tried. Unlike blind belief in a God of whom humans conceived irrationally and of whom we learn from fairy tales and power-hungry preachers, reason provides us with beliefs that are commensurate with our brain’s truly amazing capabilities of thinking. Everyone must derive a core set of morals from somewhere. How in the bloody name of hell does it make more sense to simply accept some set because a book that was supposedly written from a God in whom we have absolutely no rational or logical reason to believe even exists, never mind in human form or who could possibly speak a language humans at the time could understand than to think for oneself to decide what is right and what is wrong. Yes, humans may indeed be idiots, all of whose ideas and observations are completely and utterly incorrect, but at least we have some reason to believe in ourselves. Not to mention that we trust our reason all the time. We trust ourselves when shopping for food, when choosing clothing, when cleaning, when driving, and everything else that we do. We have faith in our own reason the great, great majority of the time, so why should we give it up just because we don’t know everything? Why can’t we simply accept that rather than turn to fairy tales? Honestly, believing in Christianity, or Judaism, or Hinduism, or Islam, or Buddhism, or any other religions, is like believing that Indiana Jones films actually happened. All are equally irrational, equally far from reason, and I would assert equally stupid. I completely acknowledge that admitting we do not understand everything and admitting that we are vulnerable to this is both hard and scary. But lots of things are hard and scary, like riding a bike for the first time, and most people don’t believe that...oh I don’t know…that eating dandelion soup will make it easier. Dumb example, I’m sorry, but I assume you get my point, that we are pretty damn sure (based on reason) that dandelion soup and riding a bike aren’t connected. I know, based on reason, that an ancient book and the beginnings of the Earth are with most certainty probably not connected. Yet the latter is routinely believed, while both, when looked at by outsiders, could be seen as really rather equal.
God could exist. One of the world’s religions could indeed be true. But we have no rational reason to believe it. Real belief in any religion fundamentally rests in blind faith, which, by definition, does not depend on reason. Reason is the one thing that humans have that is our best attempt at understanding anything. For the great majority of what occurs in the life of the great majority of people, this is true: reason trumps all. Yet we insist on defiling reason for the sake of “answering” a few big questions and providing a set of morals so that we don’t have to think for ourselves. Does this make any sense? How is this not an enormous contradiction? I really think it is a contradiction, and one that people play out all the time. Any Christian who has sex before marriage is effecting this contradiction. They believe in God and all that Christianity stands for, yet the decide that certain things aren’t important enough to apply to them (they still might think they believe that abstinence before marriage is the right thing to do, but clearly they don’t really believe it, or they would have upheld that belief). Right here we see these people putting their own reason and rational thought before religion. They are living proof that religious not only abandons reason, but also arbitrarily abandons it, causing it to make even less sense to me. In other words, religions says “think before you do things (like picking good tomatoes at a store as opposed to the rotten ones); indeed trust your ability to think and logically determine based on observation what a good tomato is, but don’t you dare try to figure out why humans look like monkeys, or how old the earth is, or what is morally good and what is morally bad.
To me religion both makes very little sense and forces us to throw away one of humanity’s greatest assets: our brains. Blind faith in the flying spaghetti monster is obviously stupid. Well, blind faith in a monotheistic God whose stories just happens to have been told and retold for 6000 years makes just as little sense to me. And who knows, perhaps in another 6000 years humans will discover an etching I made in 7th grade with a little creation poem I wrote at the time for my art class and design a whole new religion around it. Crazy and irrational? Of course. Any more crazy and irrational that what we have today? Well, of that I’m not so sure.