...or is it simply nonexistent?
Why do you believe what you believe? I used to never ask myself this question. I always thought this would somehow equal doubt, and I viewed doubt as a sign of weakness. Now, I can tell you this much is true: doubt is a sign of strength, and mistakes are how we learn.
Think about this for a moment......REALLY try to get out of your daily way of thinking about what you think you know, and try to think about the reasons you have for your beliefs regarding things you aren't for sure of......like INVISIBLE things; things that science has yet to observe. With this post, I'm simply asking that if you ARE a believer in supernatural things such as Karma, faith, miracles, God, or even Santa Claus, just think about these two analogies for a bit.
An explanation for our existence does not necessarily have to be answered by a belief in a "Supreme Creator" and definitely not an "in our own image" God......Instead, think about the infinite number of planets out there and the possibility that when you play with odds like "infinity," you'll win the lotto at some point......
Exhibit A: Sleeping Beauty...she wakes up and hears of the incredible odds her hero survived to reach her. At first she might suspect divine intervention or a miracle from above unless she realizes that others might have made the attempt to wake her, and she wouldn't have known about them. In fact, given the odds, she would be correct to conclude that her hero is most likely not the first knight to beat such staggering odds. (There COULD be others, "aliens.")
Exhibit B: Imagine a revolver that holds a billion rounds, but there is one chamber that is empty. You attempt to shoot yourself, but the empty chamber happens to be the one aligned so that you are spared. Was the cylinder somehow "finely-tuned" for your survival by design? It would seem like it, unless you learned that a billion other civilizations had already died trying the other chambers. Undeniably you're still lucky, but there is no miracle, no "Designer."
The "truth" (let's say there is such a thing) of existence could very well be as simple as this: asking a question such as, "Why are we here?" or, "What created the Universe?" is like asking, "What is North of the North Pole?"(Stephen Hawking). I wonder, do these questions even HAVE answers? Here is my "faith," my "belief"...I think that limiting our existence to a question that only creates more complicated, complex questions is to defy logic. To say, "the Universe is so complex that it must have been created," is to add complexity to the question: "Where did the Universe come from?" Because by stating that a VASTLY more complex, intelligent being like "God" was just "always here," is FAR more impossible than merely saying that "the Universe just happened, no explanation needed." This defiance of logic keeps me up at night because it forces me to ask myself whether I'm missing the "truth," or that I've actually found it.
Always keep in mind Occam's Razor: "The simplest explanation tends to be the most likely."
***A special thanks goes out to my youtube friend Rupert Von Schnauzer for entertaining and enlightening my mind with these analogies.***
2 comments:
I'd love for you to read "Why I Believe" by James Kennedy and "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis. Good stuff. I know the God you don't believe exists is loving you and waiting for the day you'll believe in Him again.
Another exhibit perhaps to consider: If there is a row of perfectly aligned oranges - a square, maybe, of 100 oranges - all perfectly in place, how would you assume they got there? Surely they didn't just fall from random trees and get blown by the wind to fall into exact alignment, right? Someone had to put them there. Someone had to plan for them to be that way. Truthfully, it seems a far greater jump to me to believe that all the world - 7 billion people completely functional and complex in ways we can't imagine and miles and miles of gorgeous earth and sea and animals that exhibit glory and design - came to be this way by "chance" or evolution. Someone had to be behind the world coming to be this way. Things are too well-designed to be chance, and a Creator is by far the "simplest explanation."
For the record, I know some Christians who are incredibly ignorant, and don't know much of the Bible or why they believe what they claim to believe, and I'm sure that's hindered your desires to agree with them. But just because several humans don't research and defend their beliefs, it doesn't mean that God is wrong.
Praying for you. :)
Thanks for the comment! Sorry it took awhile to get back with you.
I used to believe just as you. While I completely understand where you're coming from and why you believe this way, I simply do not agree with that explanation anymore.
Here's why:
If you're willing to say that it was impossible for something as complex as the Universe to just create itself from nothing, then why would it not be even MORE impossible for an absolute Perfect Being to just "always exist." You're willing to let something as improbable as an infinite God just "always existing" off the hook on the exact same grounds that you dismiss our much MORE probable, much LESS complex Universe!
What you're also saying is that it "takes a big, complex thing to create less complex things." Evolution explains perfectly to us how the humble beginnings of a trilobite, through random genetic mutations, evolved into into increasingly complex organisms. The gradual ramp of improvement through non-random natural selection yields the illusion of design, and humans have come onto the scene after billions of years of its' effects!
We share an ancestral history with every organism on Earth that sprang along this "tree of life" over the past 3.5 billion years. Every shred of evidence that science uncovers points to the obvious fact that human beings were not designed by any higher intelligence.
To finish up, ask yourself this: How intelligent would an engineer be to design the human mouth too small to fit all of our teeth? Or to design DNA which time and time again "malfunctions" to cause genetic disorders that kill children?
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