The Toaph Manifesto Life Philosophy; Views on Politics and Religion |
When it comes to religion, the first, most basic question always seems to be, "Do you believe in God?" To me, that is not a yes/no question. It depends entirely on how you define God. It's easier for me to say what God is not. I sumarily reject the traditional concept of God. The "Heavenly Father" image of a bearded old man up in the clouds, watching our every move, judging us, and determining our fate is not something that I can buy into. To me this is an obvious anthopormorphization developed over time and history by people whose knowledge and understanding of the ways of the universe were limited pretty much just to things they could see and touch. A more current expression of this concept would be the notion of a "Supreme Being." This is a more anthro-neutral concept, free of things like gender, but is still something I have trouble with. A RACE of supreme beings is something I could potentially concieve of. But one, solitary, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being who has always been here and always will be here, does not reconcile well with my scientific brain. So then the question would be, what kind of definition of God could I accept? There are two ways I could approach it. One is that God is the sum total of all human knowledge. From the most complex conceptions of the worlds most briliant minds, right down to what Little Suzie's favorite dish is, if you lump it all together into one place, you basically have omniscience. That singular accumulation of knowledge could be thought of as being God. The other definition is essentially the inverse. Human knowledge is the realm of humanity. All that remains unknown is God. All that we don't yet understand, all that we can't explain, all that is beyond us, is God. This concept works much better for me. All of the truths of math and science have existed from the beginning of time. Before man understood something, it was God. Once explained, it became human knowledge. There is still lots that we don't know, which means that God is still out there.
The problem with either of these concepts is that you can't really do anything with it. If I fully accepted either of those definitions of God, it doesn't make me any more spiritual or religious. There's no faith there. It doesn't make me a better person. It's just a definition that in the end isn't particularly useful. That's the main reason I've never been particularly tied up with the question. When it comes to God, the rubber really hits the road with organized religion. With respect to my beilefs, can say categorically that any aspect of any religion is the realm of man. I do not believe that God speaks directly to humans, or that prophets can discearn the intents and desires of God. As far as I'm concerned, anything having to do with religion, from the words of the Bible, to deciding what a priest should wear during a service, was 100% concocted by human beings. If I'm being generous, there were humans who truly believed that God was speaking directly to them. More likely, I think that the details of religion came from people who wished to control and manipulate the masses through a power that was irrefutable and could not be contradicted. Having said that, I would like to take a closer look at the Christian religion, and reconcile it with my own belief system. I chose Christianity simply because it's what I'm most familiar with, and is the basis of my contextual culture as a WASP. Taking it from the top, we need to start with creation. I think it goes without saying that I don't accept the literal tale of creation, that God created the heavens and earth in 6 days, and on the 7th rested. But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. If you take the story as parable, and consider the metaphoric message, I think there's some value there. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep. [...] And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." That sounds to me a lot like the Big Bang. I can't say that our explanation of the big bang is exactly what happened, but I can accept it as the best understanding we have at this time. Conventional knowledge is that before the big bang, there was nothingness. Time and space did not yet exist. And with the big bang, in an instant, the universe came into being. In my mind, it was an infinitely bright explostion, reconciling with the whole "let there be light" thing. However I have come to learn that it was just a vast mass of sub-atomic particles. It wasn't until much later that they formed into hydrogen atoms, and You can't kneel and pray to unknown scientific formulas. On that note, the whole concept of "worship" is at the core of what prevents me from transforming the understanding of a concept of God into a religion. If a God exists, to me it is neither loving nor vengeful, neither benevolent nor cruel, neither good nor evil. God is pure neutrality. This concept gets a little close to the notion of "Inteligent Design." That's how creationists seek to reconcile creation vs. evolition. It basically states that everyting played out the way Darwin explained it, but it was all designed by God from the start to play out that way. This appeals to my scientific brain. Man did not create them, but sought to understand and explain them. It was as if the universe were designed to work the way it does. But while this is easy for me to accept, it doesn't translate into God doing a big up-front design before firing the starting gun. formula for the acceleration of a body through space, nine point eight meters per second squared, existed before Galilleo discovered it. It was always there. Before Galilleo, it was the realm of God. After Galilleo, it was the realm of man. Parking Lot |
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