I’ve felt obliged as of late to clarify my own theological beliefs to myself. I know what it is that I believe and what I it is that I do not but what I’ve been seeking to understand is why I posses the beliefs I do. These are (only) a few observations I have made:
• If god did not give man freewill, what would be the point to creating him at all?
When a game designer invents a new RPG, he creates a world just as god had. He creates the rules and the materials available; he sets the limitations and punishments; he creates a new world where people plug themselves in online and basically live an alternate life just like the lives people are living right now in the world created for them by god. But why would that man create a world and all the characters and then control everything every one of the characters did? There would be no point to it. It would be boring and a lot of work for nothing. I do not believe that god created us in such a way. And if he had, what does that say about god? When a man robs a bank or rapes someone, did he do this because god controlled it? I think not. I think god has no hand in the action and decisions of man. It only makes sense. I can understand to some degree, the desire to make something that may require hard work and may not seem so marvelous to the creator for the benefit of a third party or an audience. A good example of this is a motion picture. In the instance of Star Wars or many of Spielberg’s films, the film was written, produced and directed by the same single human being. They knew the end of the story before it was written, they controled the fates and every action of the characters and they saw all the nitty-gritty behind the scenes of the film not intended for the audience. For them, the only benefit is the effect of the movie on an audience. They have created a work of art for others to enjoy. The Earth is a beautiful work of art and man is a beautiful creature capable of many beautiful things (understood but irrelevant, that he is also capable of wicked, ugly things). But if this was meant to be so, who is the audience? Certainly not mankind. Just as the characters in the movie are not the audience of the movie. They are simply the characters. They know not that their existence is the futile creation of an artist. The audience must be a third party of equal value of the creator. This would mean that god created the world as a work of art to appeal to something else unworldly. This does not fit into typical religious cannon (though oddly enough it does fit the bill for a select few Native American religious beliefs that I know of, though I am no expert). The only other unearthly figure that appears in various religions often enough to be considered a norm would be the devil or the representation of evil –the figure in opposition of god. Did god create the world and mankind as a work of art so that the devil could marvel it or attempt to appreciate it? I think not. For what other motive could there be to do such a thing? For these reason I must believe that man has freewill to do whatsoever he pleases despite what god wishes.
• What else could there be?
Most religious beliefs focus on the existence of an afterlife –something more beautiful than the present. They strive to achieve this life which is often depicted as a reward for only a select few. For me, the belief of a world better than this beautiful world which surrounds us is a selfish and ignorant belief. Clearly man isn’t happy enough with what he already has. He is afraid of life and he cannot handle the hardships that must come with the beauty. He seeks a Utopian world in which there would be no such hardships. Though it is my belief that it is because of those hardships that the beautiful can appear as so. Everything wonderful will eventually lose its flair. Everything is in recession. Everything is fleeting. Man is dying from the moment he is conceived. Thus is the way of life. Nothing good can last forever. The idea of a place where everything is good for all eternity goes against all reason. Life needs equilibrium to give things meaning. Because we have ugliness, we can have/understand/appreciate beauty; because we have coldness, we can have/understand/appreciate warmth; because we have darkness, we can have/understand/appreciate light; because we have god, we must have the devil. There can never be one without the other. Whatever afterlife there is, it could not exclude one half of these things because they are necessary for the existence of the other.
• What are we waiting for?
As some religions foretell, there will come a time when all of mankind will be stopped in its tracks and forced to participate in the will of god as he ends its time on earth. Essentially, every human being on earth will simultaneously (whether you choose to literally interpret Revelations or not, the concept is the same, regardless of the exact time frame, in many religions) die, old and young, good and evil. And they will be assorted into the proper categories based on their actions in life. And what of the infants? Why are they lucky enough to not even have been tempted with sin? And if these people are to be sorted in the same manner as the rest of everyone else who had earlier died of natural causes (that is, not collected as part of a whole by god as he ended man’s reign on earth), then why, the question must be asked, are these people “special”. For what reason will god decide that the time is right to perform such a task? And how could this be judged as fair? What would become of those that would have repented their sins the following day had god just granted them another twenty-four hours? He could not know if they would have or not because he does not control their thoughts as man most definitely has freewill. Metaphorically, man’s time on earth could be compared to a game show such as Press Your Luck or Wheel of Fortune. As both names suggest, it is only a matter or luck that this act of god would benefit any one person in particular. The participants of the game are men and the duration of the stopping process is the will of god. No matter when he chooses to carry out this last act of judgment on the human race, there will be winners and losers. And many of these people we should understand to not be winners or losers at all. Does the fact that one loses on Press Your Luck simply because he pressed a button make him a failure? Indeed not; it makes him unlucky, for the very same button-press made another “a winner”. This insensible idea of an ending point controlled by anything other than the interactions of human beings themselves does not hold much water in my beliefs.
• What becomes of the world after man?
Man was the last thing created. All other things were created for the pleasure and benefit of man so that he would have them when he arrived. Man needs the nourishment of the earth and the sun. He needs equilibrium in all things (e.g. day/night). All things were created for man. Without men on the earth, the earth no longer serves a purpose. What would become of it? Would it be disregarded? The flora left to wither away and the fauna to go extinct without the assistance of god (and in some instances man)… And what would become of the creations of man? The physical imprint man has made on his home planet… Would it be left as a legacy or removed? And why is that question even relevant? And what of the not so tangible creations of man? Of math? Of time? These are not natural concepts and do not actually exist. They were merely the creations of man to help them make sense of the world around him. Would they also disappear along with mankind? What would it be like in a world without math or time? Could man’s brain function without them? I think not, for he invented them out of necessity in the first place. But these were not creations of god. Would this mean that they would then not exist in his afterlife? Would man be allowed to bring his creations with him to the afterlife? This is an odd question yet one cannot deny it is pertinent. Or would the world be recycled in some way? Would god simply decide to start “round two” –like the game designer will most definitely at some point in the future, create a new version of the same RPG. And if this is the case, who’s to say that mankind is indeed “round one”? It is entirely possible that mankind is already the recycled creation of a former man –perhaps a less perfect man.
• Why are the beliefs of man so similar and yet so different?
And what does that indeed say about the beliefs of man? The fact that many civilizations around the world developed similar religious beliefs without having contacted or consulted one another leads me to believe that man strives for reason. He needs clarification as to why he exists. He needs to believe in something more powerful than he and all that he knows. Yet the fact that all of these religious beliefs are not the same and in actuality, many are quite different, leads me to believe that there was no proof or factual foundation for any of them. I cannot see one as more correct than any other for to do so would be to say that god appeared to the people who developed such a belief and gave them the biased advantage of the truth from which to structure their beliefs and so left the others in the dust so to speak with their false beliefs. This is totally against the concept of god as the creator. No, the fact that everyone everywhere on the planet developed a religious belief in a supreme power(s) and yet none of them are in accordance leads me to believe that all of them are indeed false. They are only similar in that they seek to provide an answer. Yet none of them can prove that their answer is any more correct than the others’. This in itself offers more proof than that made available by any one particular religion.
• What is nothing?
The question cannot be answered. It is impossible for human beings to understand the concept of nothing. It is for this reason that the idea of the creation has held sway so long over scientific theory. To say that before the universe came into being there was nothing, is not something that man can wrap is head around –not something he can accept. Yet the fact must surely remain that before god came into existence, there was nothing. Everything must always have been started from nothing. As impossible as it is to understand (and I firmly believe that it is indeed impossible to understand and always will be impossible to understand), it is a truth I accept. Man’s largest fear is that of the unknown. In fact, almost every fear is derived from this single fear. One may possess a fear of snakes but this fear is brought about because he does not know if the snake will act in a displeasing way (as he knows it can). It was because of this fear of the unknown that man created his religious beliefs. He feared not understanding the purpose of his life and so created something to help him ease this fear. And it is the fear of the unknown that drives the fear of death. For death is the one thing, every human being can automatically understand is impossible to explore, and so our knowledge of it will never improve. Man may learn what brings about death and ways to preserve life but he could never experiment with death without dying. People have died and come back to life countless times –it occurs on a daily basis in hospitals all over the world. But this is not the same. They are at the time, unconscious and their body has ceased the functions capable of bringing them back to life, but nevertheless it is like they are asleep and without dreams –a feeling we all know but cannot understand. One awakes without any knowledge of what has happened or how much time has elapsed. He was essentially dead to the world and unable to describe what had occurred in his state of unconscious. Life is only the conscious. The unconscious is not life but rather, life distorted to a point impossible to understand. For these reasons, man cannot, and will not ever know what will become of him after his death. And because this concept is so easy for him to understand, it is very easy for him to fear. For man fears most, that which is the most obviously unknown. And it because of this intense fear of death/the unknown that man has created the idea of the afterlife to help him cope with his conscious life. The idea of simply living another life after the familiar one has ended is only a convenience created to oppose the fear of death –to create equilibrium for which it is necessary for man to live. It is my belief that what comes after death is nothing –just as is feared. In that sense it is clear, for man did originally have a fear of death until he created the concept of an afterlife and he would not have had this fear if he did not already have the notion that there was indeed nothing after death. Man has always understood this but yet has always chose to oppress this.
