All is well here, I'll give you a call soon.
I'm not trying to deny anybody their beliefs, nor write them off as "silly". My problem with religion is that it has undergone too many transformations through the eras to be able to claim any shred of credibility.
That goes for official, organised religion.
As far as people believing in a god that created us, or at least kickstarted the universe goes, I can understand that. It's an orderly way of thinking and when the line of reasoning is followed as you outlined, it's not an illogical conclusion.
However, it is also possible to reach a slightly different conclusions. Like I outlined above, I believe in the omnipotent power of the collective. Everything combined in this great universe is what is nature and that's where I see divinity. I don't come to the conclusion of one, sentient being that sits around and creates stuff and certainly not one that will pass judgment when we move on to the next life.
That a higher power or force much stronger than us exists is undeniable. Nature has a habit of humbling us every so often in the most dramatic of waysand no matter how imposing some of the stuff we build can be, in no time lichen, algea and other things will start to grow on it, demonstrating to us that nature is not really impressed and will claim back what's his/hers eventually.
I personally believe that this higher power is completely unaware of us. If it is aware of anything at all, it'll be on a galactic scale, not the trifling matters that occupy our lives.
Hey Jay, we are in total agreement re religion; I see nothing there but a human need to belong to a single collective held together with a common belief system; problem for me on that one is, all religions seem to be created by man and there is no religion I know of where you can unequivocally state it's a valid derivative of our creator.
This lack of certainty alone opens the doors for far too many nut-farm products with the US being the main manufacturer of these ready-made 'words of god' which invariably seem to rotate around the dollar as against any spiritual awareness or achievements.
There are over 16,000 religions that can have their creation directly attributed to the US, 16 frikkin thousand ..... over there, religion is merely a license to print money by stripping the foolish or vulnerable of theirs.
I have been over to the US over 50 times and am still amazed how an 'educated' nation can be so gullible when it comes to believing in someone or something that asks for money on the back of their particular interpretation of a set of old writings.... it truly is insane.
Their Sunday evangelical shows, especially in the southern states are mind-numbingly transparent in their purpose.
They are presented on TV by people who most Europeans, leastwise in my opinion and experience, would laugh at … and this reaction would be provoked just because these TV charlatans have all the affectations and ‘look’ of an insincere request for money.
Put it this way, I would have thought a man of god, an evangelical man of god would look and act more like Ghandi than a used car salesman that we always seem to witness on US TV.
I’m not having a pop at the US here, I am merely making an observation, that is all.
We have our fair share of this type ‘religious’ enterprise being nurtured as we speak and so it seems to be a human failing but as of yet, we haven’t all slid down that slippery slope to gullibility just yet.
As for the remainder of your post Jay, I think I’d be right in saying you believe the ‘creator’ is the sum of everything we witness. I can’t agree with your interpretation of nature however because ‘nature’ is, and has to be a product of a creator and not the creator itself.
Why do I come to this conclusion?
I think nature is to god what a table [or anything else we might manufacture] is to ourselves, it’s certainly part of us in terms of our creative abilities but doesn’t explain or contribute to our being in any way.
This is where it gets kinda philosophically quite tricky.
What complicates matters is god’s disappearing act because I can’t ring him up or go visit him for a cup of tea or even watch him on TV letting us know what and how to do anything; that fact alone is one of the major reasons I mentioned earlierthat over 16,000 religions come from the US but this doesn’t help us understand God.
The word ‘faith’ is bandied around at this point and we are asked to believe so much rubbish in the face of scientific contradiction that the term ‘faith’ is now baseless.
Faith can be used as an instrument of doubt in such cases as having faith in a surgeon to cure one’s child of an illness …. We aren’t clinicians, we attach our faith to the doctor even though we do not know the outcome .. this is faith.
But, some of the things we are asked to have faith in from some religious quarters is ludicrous such as the earth being only 6,000 years old and things of that ilk.
And yet there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have this faith in the belief the earth is 6,000 years old instead of the true value which is somewhere nearer the 4.5 billion year age tag.
Science steps in to rescue this misplaced faith but the gullibility of man is sometimes so persistent and frustrating, and he hangs on to his erroneous belief and sees this persistence as some sort of virtue.
And so, we come to it ….. my position is one of an agnostic in that I believe in a creator but at the moment, I don’t think he wants much to do with us at this point which kinda nestles up alongside your take on things Jay and the only thing we really differ on is you believe nature, our universe and everything else is the creator but I believe the universe and nature is but a product of the creator.
At this point, I’m resisting falling into a hole because it would seem as though I am suggesting, you have your faith in your opinion and I have mine, but I would hate to leave it like that Jay because then I plonk myself right in the middle of a lot of people I have just criticised for being foolish or gullible.
My problem now is to come up with a reasonable argument to explain my difference of opinion with you.
I have one argument that goes something like, the most complicated thing in the world leaving aside any natural phenomenon could be said to be a computer, let’s say the world’s most powerful computer [Fujitsu K computer] … it’s performance and complexity are truly mind-numbingly ridiculous.
This cannot in any way be described as part of our being, it is a product of our being, nothing more. And that’s because if we go back 100 years, there was no K computer but we existed and so it’s quite logical to conclude, we are distinct from the K computer, we are its creator.
So far so good I hope ..
As for nature being part of the whole and explaining the emergent property of a greater being needs there to be a total integration of the two .. i.e. the creator and nature being indistinguishable from themselves.
Now, Jay, you are a logical and very clever man, I would guess you are in agreement with the big bang theory because it’s the product of a logical thought process after observations on an expanding universe based upon red shifted galactic light measurements.
If we roll back time from what we see now, it’s wholly right and proper to assume there was a starting point much the same as if you drop a pebble into a pond and watch the ripples flow away, we can rightly conclude there was a centre point for that energy transformation and effects.
That said, if we now take a look at your position in suggesting god and nature are the same … our world, your nature or whatever we wish to tag it as, begun with the big bang and if you concede to this, you can only conclude something had to drop that pebble.
In other words, the initial energy is distinguishable from the ripples because one is within time and the other is outside …. And everything we see in our universe or nature or whatever abides in time.
This is why I think there is a god that created a universe/nature/cosmos/whatever.
God exists outside of time but nature necessarily has to exist within … and just because we cannot fathom anything existing outside of time does not in any way give ground to then assuming there’s no creator, for me, it proves there must be just as I am convinced the pebble dropped.
