Reason again?

A recent commenter on my post "Reason" stated "God is a meaning larger than ourselves that creates a framework for the randomness that is life and death." I do not disagree with the comment, after all, death is the great unknown, the darkness that is beyond what we know, yet a fundamental fact of life (and for ancient people who died at the age of 45 or so it was even more so). And it is this fear of death that causes so many to cling to the hope of something or Someone in the BEYOND.

I was raised a Christian-- with the devil and hell as deeply ingrained upon my psyche as the idea of god. There was no doubt in my mind for most of my life, including adulthood, that some people would go to hell. But the more I pondered upon who exactly it was that was going to hell, the more ridiculous the afterlife seemed to be. After all, if christians are right (and they sincerely believe they are!) most of us who do not BELIEVE (and note that I am not saying that you have to be good or anything-- you simply have to believe) that jesus is the son of god, that he died for our sins, and will come again some day to save us all, then we, the ones who don't believe that exact line about Jesus, are ALL going to hell. And it is this fundamental fear that still streaks through most Americans, in particular, whether they actually go to a christian church or not. And it is this same fear that the church, as stated in the article I quoted from the Telegraph in my post "Reason" that church leaders hope to capitalize on.

And as far as "the randomness of life" well, I will say that on the most fundamental level-- the quantum level life is random and that is difficult to understand. In fact it is the very randomness of life that seems to keep life on any kind of stable ground. For example: if electrons spun around the nucleus the way they should according to classical physics, the atom would not exist. It would collapse. But because the orbit of the electron is random, the atom is sable. And the atom is the fundamental building block of all life. Even Einstein struggled with the randomness that quantum physics revealed yet his belief did not change the facts of quantum physics. He was a genius, yet he was wrong fundamentally about the randomness of the universe.

Finally, to the idea that believing in god makes people better or gives them meaning that might give them a greater purpose as seemed to be implied in that statement (although if it was not implied by the commenter it does not take away from the importance of making this point)... most people who believe in god do not adhere to a higher standard of living or behavior because there is a god, and in fact too many of them behave abominably and can because they BELIEVE the right thing. They don't have to ACT in any certain way. god forgives them after all and they are going to heaven! (i.e George Bush or Mohammad Atta although these are not even very good examples since both had the very dangerous attitude that they were working on god's behalf. Perhaps Dick Cheney would be a better example of what I am trying to illustrate.)

In actuality, those people that do have a high standard of behavior or have a sense of a higher purpose may attribute it to god but if they gave some in depth thought to their standards they would most likely find that they would behave they way they do with or without god. It simply makes life better and they are able to hold their heads up in dignity. And after all, the life we have today is what we know and what we do actually have. It's worth doing well.

Atheist quote of the day:
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart." ~~ H.L. Menken

Not a myth

Science is always on the hunt for new discoveries. Not in order to disprove the bible as many believers would like to believe but in order to answer questions about the earth and the origins of humans. ScienceDaily.com is reporting today that the largest dinosaur footprints ever found have been discovered near Lyon France. (See the full article at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091009132928.htm)

It should be exciting to all of us to hear this kind of news! After all, we are learning new things daily about creatures who lived, essentially, on a faraway planet in another time and another place. A place we call Earth but as different from the Earth we know as the Moon is from us (although not in the same way!)

Doesn't it make you curious???


Titanosaur (Credit: Image courtesy of Queensland Museum)

Reason

One of the "reasons" (and I use that word carefully as it generally has nothing at all to do with Reason) why many people, who perhaps do not believe or care whether the Adam and Eve stories are historical or not, hold on to the idea that there must be a god behind creation is twofold. One is stated most clearly by the alarm the catholic church recently stated in an article in Telegraph.co.uk "Cardinal George says... he, and the whole of the American Church, must be praying that the certainty of unbelief wears off as the “new atheists” have children and face the prospect
of mortality." In other words, their hope is that people will get scared(by him) of going to hell and will give up the "new atheism".

The other reason is a bit more nebulous and difficult to understand. It is simply a belief that somehow ancient people knew more about god than we do and were more in touch with spiritual matters. There are plenty of monetary reasons why new age and eastern religions perpetuate this idea...I mean, after all, would you really buy a bunch of crystals for gas if you hadn't been told by one of these ancient "wise" spiritual leaders how helpful they were? But the question one has to ask oneself is just WHY we believe that a bunch of spiritual leaders today, who got their "information" from ANCIENT witch doctors and fortune tellers who knew next to nothing about the earth or the body or the universe, would somehow know everything there is to know about god? Of course the easy, no brainer answer for those who wish to keep this belief is to say that science and technology get in our way of knowing god. Yet, if these wise spirit guides had a direct line to god, then why didn't god tell them more about how the body, for example, really worked? Even just a smidgeon more??? (If you think at all about what doctors in the past did in the name of science and discovery, it might increase your own questions about god's lack of communication skills on these matters)

And more particularly, in the case of the bible, why didn't god just communicate the real stories of ancient people that he helped along the way? Why make up stories that could never be verified? After all, god being god would know that god was telling fibs and that we would find that out one day.

Just sayin'

Death and Politics

She pivots and power walks to the six-door stage, escaping the small mindedness that seems to infect the insular inhabitants of small towns like a virus over an open wound. “Alex” His voice floats after her, slowing her progression. “Alexandra.” The inflection holds a magnetic field pulling her back to a childhood where his voice moves her like hands on an Ouija board. She slows, glances back, then turns to watch his approach. For the first time, she realizes his shipwrecked frame. The mast of his shoulders that had once carried her over swells and through desperate storms that blew in from nowhere was now battered and worn. The solid hull which she had gripped frantically when a startling wave large enough to lift her up off her feet and carry her spindly frame out into the tangled arms of the deep came sweeping past the breakers of Taylor Beach, was weathered and frayed. And the jaunty lightness with which he had sailed into the house that had broken the intensity of the two women tug-o-warring over homework or curfew or any of the multitudes of flags worth fighting over when parent and child were in the throes of adjusting boundaries and shifting shores, seemed to have floundered into the depths from whence they came. His dancer’s gait has abandoned him and he steps heavily over a cement slab tattooed with a name as indecipherable as Rongorongo. He stumbles over a specter’s tripwire as he reaches the young woman’s anxious scrutiny.

This is an excerpt from my fictional piece 'Death and Politics at the end of the world' you can read more when you click on the 'Death and politics' tab on my labels of entries on the lower right hand side. )

photo "Old Key West" taken from: http://www.artgally.com/suehess/susanehess-gallery3.htm Her work is visually stunning and inspires me as I continue working on this piece.