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Important prefatory notes: I do not accept the description of “God” in any religious writing in the nature of a “bible.” Nor do I accept the description of “heaven,” “hell,” “angels,” or any other tangentials in any religious writing. I do not disrespect the person or opinions of anyone who believes any formal religious tenets, nor anyone who does not.
In my view, all religions have been created by mankind in order to (1) explain the inexplicable, and (2) to provide a set of principles and rules for the conduct of life. I do not disrespect any religion for doing so.
This essay is not about religion, but rather about the source of everything in existence, and in particular about the source of “life.” ____________________
I have been studying religion and religion as philosophy almost all my life. I remember as a 6- or 7-year old boy in Religious Instruction classes being taught from a Catechism. [A catechism is a form of teaching and learning by rote from a logically-arranged series of questions and answers.]
I still remember the first questions in my catechism:
“Q: Who made thee? “A: God made me.
“Q: Why did God make thee? “A: God made me to love him and serve him in this life, and to be with him in the next.”
For something being taught to such a young person, with the expectation that it will be understood on his level, that’s actually not a bad start to explaining the inexplicable.
Later in life, however, as I expanded my study of religions of the world and philosophy, it became clearer and clearer to me that those who wrote and taught about religion were trying to explain what they thought they understood to people who did not have the intellect or education to understand it on a philosophical level, so the teachers brought it down to a level they could understand, and often resorted to stories as images of something theoretically more concrete. Importantly, however, the teachers did not tell the faithful that these were poetic stories [fables?] and not reality.
While accepting the concept of a creator and sustainer of life, they were unable to visualize that creator as anything but “a person-like being” with a human-like body, emotions, and thoughts, but with supernatural power, as a simpler description for something so far beyond our ability to conceive.
To complicate my learning process, my study of the sciences and the empirical evidence science provides, gave me an uncomfortable sense that while I could easily reject the fabulous in religious teaching, science kept increasing my conviction that there had to have been a creator and sustainer of life. The longer I lived and the more I learned, the more inescapable that conviction became, as did the other conviction that bible versions of creation were not viable.
I could write for an hour about the observations of Nature which make their origin from a creator beyond question for me. Let me give just a few.
We live in a universe which is literally beyond our comprehension. An untold number of planets are orbiting an untold number of stars in an untold number of galaxies extending across a universe whose immensity is incalculable and actually beyond our imagination. The last numbers I heard are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars. We can’t even imagine the sense of “a billion” anything, let alone hundreds of billions, let alone hundreds of billions of galaxies.
The notion that all of that matter came from nothing is even more difficult to accept; as is the notion that it all came from a “uniformity” — a completely made-up word to name (but not to define, and without proof) what supposedly existed before the universe exploded into existence — and which came into existence all by itself without a creating force named or even defined.
At the same time, we live in a universe which is also small beyond our comprehension. One-celled creatures too small to be seen with the naked eye, yet have life. Bodies in all forms which come into existence from matter that starts with eggs or seeds or parts thereof, also so small as to be unseen with the naked eye, yet having life. Animal bodies which are formed according to a plan to be found in DNA in chromosomes too small to be seen with the naked eye and having distinct parts even smaller. Imagine a distinct life beginning with just two of these chromosomes which combine to begin a process of self-replication followed by self-modification and self-differentiation to make all of the highly-specialized cells in the body.
And those highly-specialized cells cause the most amazing behaviours! Some cells are specifically created to become parts of an eye with connections to other cells which are specifically created to become parts of a brain and allow the animal to “see” everything around it. Others become internal organs which take organic material and turn it into energy, others which burn energy, and others which turn it into waste material, and others which expel it. Others self-differentiate into organs that provide for self-reproduction into organisms exactly like themselves, or more amazingly, into organisms which are not exactly like either parent.
Every organ of the body has its own amazing life story, and all of the “decisions” for all of these characteristics are handed down from the parents within a set of sub-microscope genes within microscopic chromosomes.
And the resulting organisms can live for anywhere from 24 hours (certain insects are hatched, mate, and die within 24 hours) to others which can live for centuries.
[I have not yet scratched the surface of the amazing special characteristics of innumerable astonishingly different species. It would take a good-size library to contain all of the information about distinctive characteristics of different species of animals, plants, and other life forms, all from one lightning strike on some enzymes in a pool of primordial ooze?]
And so we know of things in existence that range in size from sub-atomic to incomprehensibly huge. And we see the outward manifestations of “life” without the faintest knowledge of what life is, where it is, where it came from, or where it goes.
I do know that my body has lived for more than 77 years and that it replaces its own cells in a complex schedule that we can sometimes calculate but can never explain. And it has co-operated in producing three new life forms directly and several others in the next generation, in a process which I can trace in my family back 300 years and which will — or has the capacity to — go on to an unknown moment in future time, and can be expected to continue forward as long as its history is behind.
Did you know that “Otzi,” the man whose frozen body was found in the Alps, who lived over 5,000 years ago, has living “relatives” today, as evidenced by elements of his DNA which have remained unchanged over that time? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24477038
Now. With even that brief statement of the size, complexity, and wonder of this tiny sliver of all creation that we know, how can I imagine that it came about — in all its magnificent complexity — from no cause, or as the result of an accidental lightning strike?
And so I am left with what is difficult for some to accept — a creator and sustainer of life with powers even more beyond our comprehension. [I must repeat here that I am not referring to any biblical “god.”] Some believe that, because we cannot conceive of such powers, and therefore of the nature of any such entity, they must not exist. Tragically, the people who survived the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki could not conceive of such power — or who could have “created” it — yet nevertheless they had empirical evidence that it did exist, and had to have been created by someone. The survivors, like you and me, still don’t know how it works.
I was alive at that time and remember vividly that no-one in my experience had ever heard of an “atomic bomb,” and had no idea what an atomic bomb was, or how it worked, or how much destruction it caused.
This creator/sustainer clearly must be omnipotent — with powers whose effect we can see [if we look with an open mind] but not comprehend — and omnipresent — meaning being everywhere, even within every living organism and thing — and omniscient — knowing all. As a result of having read a number of philosophers on the subject, I see that this creator/sustainer must also exist without reference to time, or is “omnitemporal” in the word I have coined to name it.
Inasmuch as creation continues, with the known creation of more planets, stars, and galaxies, and life itself, it is at least likely that the creator continues also, unless all of creation was set in motion and is simply continuing as designed.
Part of the bewilderment I see in some who do not accept the notion of a creator/sustainer comes from the fact that they cannot comprehend or even imagine such powers; and if they cannot understand the immensity and complexity of creation, they cannot understand a power commensurate with that immensity and complexity. The atomic bomb outcome.
I listen to any of the great pieces of classical music and in my amazed appreciation of what the composer did with nothing but sound, I cannot comprehend how he did it. Imagine Beethovan composing exquisite music while completely deaf, writing on paper the music that he heard only in his mind.
Inventors who were able to use their knowledge of science and their purely awe-inspiring imagination have invented things that we cannot believe can work. Who knew that there was a way to make “radio” waves carry sound across miles — now far out into space and back, demonstrably beyond the limits of our solar system? Who first imagined that radio waves even exist? Or how to harness them, send sound across them, receive them, and turn them back into sound again for our ears? I could go on identifying things man has “discovered” and turned into something useful.
Then explain to me that all of these discovered things — and more — came to be by accident, and how, and from what? Electricity, for example. It’s not a physical entity, but it exists and shocked same puddle of primordial ooze from which life itself emerged, from a random lightning strike?
I first learned from a philosopher whose name has escaped me that it is not the least bit difficult to know that a powerful creator/sustainer brought all of this into existence and sustains it. Just look around you, he suggested. There is nothing but endless empirical evidence that it had to have been created. I add that you have a couple of options — pure chance without impetus, a puddle of ooze, or an unknowable but obvious creator/sustainer.
Some of you will ask me where this creator/sustainer comes from. I don’t know. Neither does anyone who prefers some kind of “big bang” theory know where matter came [comes] from. That the answer, if known, would be astonishing beyond our puny understanding is not a reason to doubt it. The history of mankind is filled with answers beyond our ability to grasp at first, and which have been proven and accepted when known and understood, and those questions are far easier to answer than the source of the creator/sustainer.
Finally, this. Some of you will ask how I know this. I reply by asking how I know that it snowed overnight, inasmuch as it registered in none of my senses, and no-one reported it to me. Well, last night before I retired, the streets, sidewalks, and buildings were clean and dry. This morning everything was covered with snow. I didn’t see the snow fall, but I know it did. Empirical evidence and inductive reasoning. There is no other explanation.
Except perhaps the ever-available puddle of primordial ooze with enzymes struck by lightning — the puddle, the enzymes, and the lightning having come into existence all by themselves in the first place, apparently.
<Thus, Melville wove the role of God in man's existence with Fate, Chance, and Free Will.>
I would respectfully suggest that there are many other quite plausible explanations from an infinite array of possibilities that can comfort our seemingly insatiable desire to "know what's behind the curtain." And the exploration itself can be fun as long as we don't delude ourselves into thinking that any insight gained will benefit anyone rather than confuse us all further ;-)
Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly or maybe I was a butterfly dreaming of being a human being?
The OP's correct in one sense. Because mankind could not comprehend much of what was going on around him/her, it has invented the concept of several (and eventually distilling down to just one) universal creator(s)/controller. Science has spent the best part of 2,500 years since the early greeks knocking this fallacy down but apparently still has a way to go.
The OP's correct in one sense. Because mankind could not comprehend much of what was going on around him/her, it has invented the concept of several (and eventually distilling down to just one) universal creator(s)/controller. Science has spent the best part of 2,500 years since the early greeks knocking this fallacy down but apparently still has a way to go.
The OP's correct in one sense. Because mankind could not comprehend much of what was going on around him/her, it has invented the concept of several (and eventually distilling down to just one) universal creator(s)/controller. Science has spent the best part of 2,500 years since the early greeks knocking this fallacy down but apparently still has a way to go.
ah don't fall into the trap of just going for one Abrahimic creator - there are many more religions out there that espouse several gods.
Thanks for your courteous point as always, with which I do not disagree. The first major point in my OP was this [emphasis added today]:
"In my view, all religions have been created by mankind in order to (1) explain the inexplicable, and (2) to provide a set of principles and rules for the conduct of life. I do not disrespect any religion for doing so."
I then went on to attempt to clarify what I think without the interference of religion.
I must be the most least religious bloke on the planet.Religion and politics, what a load of bollox.I try to be polite by saying I'm agnostic if ever asked,like filling in a job application but in truth I'm a complete an utter atheist who couldn't give 2 shots of monkeys spunk about it.The only thing I can take or have an emotion for from religion is it causes almost every war currently occurring on the planet.
explain to me why your"god"took my child at 5 months old,why give a beautiful life to me and take it away.......it doesnt exist,if so evil exists in it...
Innit, I suffered loss to similar , but now I got my little boy its eased that pain
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