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Foreword:
The Prayer of an Atheist who Loves God
God, oh God, why have You forsaken us all? Why did You
create us with so little knowledge of Yourself? Why are we
so far from understanding You that none of us can say with
complete certainty whether You even exist? There is not the
devoutest among beleivers that could show You to me and none
either that could comfort me with full faith that You are
not. Show yourself to me, so that I can know You. I doubt,
and I am told by those with faith in You that what You want
from me is not the love that comes from knowing You, for the
love from those that know You comes so easily, as we were
created by You in Your image and just as we love ourselves,
if we see You we would love You. No, I am told, instead You
expect from us to see Your beauty without eyes, to hear Your
gentle loving voice with deaf ears. We must eat Your food
without tasting, chewing or swallowing. We must have faith
that You are with us and love You with all our hearts all the
time shadowed with the abysmal fear and doubt that there is
no You. God, You expect too much from us! Miracles come
easily to You, but You created us lowly beings without the
means for miracles. How easy it is to despise You with the
fervor of a lover betrayed!
And it is even easier to disbeleive those who have faith
in You, for they are human like me and cannot see You, cannot
know You. There is no other on earth that I can beleive,
many for lack of trust I can afford them, most of the rest
for the haunting knowledge that they are as easily deceived
as I. Truly, none of us are close to You, and the only
pathfinders are blind, misguided worms such as myself. Do
You delight Yourself in the pathetic attempts we make to find
You? Are You chortling to Yourself over my plight at this
very minute? Did You create us to observe our endless
confusion? Or do You even care?
In the time since I wrote the above I have received no
answer. My heart has not filled with an unexplained faith
that any God exists, nor have I formulated a satisfactory
denial of God's presence. I have no choice but to wonder
where we came from. The first question that must be answered
on the path towards determination of God's existence is
whether or not we can assume human existance.
I do not intend to spend a lot of time discussing
existance, as it is a subject that cannot be fully proven.
The question `how can we assume that reality and perception
have any link whatsoever?' is only answered `we cannot.' So
the fact that we percieve ourselves as existing does not
prove our existance; the fact `I think' does not prove `I am'
within our normal definitions. If, however, we expand our
definition of existance to include our perceptions, the
question becomes a redundancy. It must be remembered that
this does not mean that our perceptions equal reality, but
that our perceptions are a part of reality. If one deludes
him or her self that he or she is a prophet, that does not
neccesarily indicate that he or she actually is a prophet,
but the unreality of what this person is deluding about does
not affect the reality of the delusion. The delusion exists.
It is not a fake delusion; it is a very real delusion. Given
the possibility that we are simply following a set of
illusions that we percieve as life, we cannot fully assume
that reality is as we percieve it, but the illusion (if
indeed that's all it is) is exactly as we percieve it. Our
perception of human existance does not prove human existance,
but it does prove existance, at the very least, of the
illusion.
So if we exist, how did we come to existance? If God is
our creator, then is it not fair to assume that if we find
our creator, we can call it God?
God, according to the faithful, is infinite. Our
universe is also. There are a great many scientists who
would contradict me here, and they have studied the universe
more than I have but sceince, like theology, is merely a
fallable human quest based in human perception. As such,
with no intended disrespect to those who know more than I, I
will disagree. The universe is infinite, undivided, and
unchangable, although we percieve it as being finite,
divided, and malleable. The universe appears finite because
it is expanding (is space expanding? is time contracting? is
there any difference?) and the more distant an object is, the
faster it appears to be moving away from us. The light and
other radiation (the only means we currently have to percieve
almost anything beyond our atmosphere) from those objects
that appear to be approaching the speed of light in a
direction away from us will be completely red-shifted until
the wavelength is so long that we cannot percieve it as a
wave. This gives us a percievable boundary of the universe
of about 15 billion light-years in all directions but does
not indicate that there is nothing beyond this perceivable
boundary. For a more complete (and more accurate) account of
the universe's infinicy, indivisability and unalterability,
read John Dobson's Advaita Vedanta and Modern Science.
Especially any devout athiests will agree with me that
we were spawned from the universe. Life is a product of this
planet which came out of the sun which collected itself out
of a cloud of gases floating within this galaxy which is just
one of many in our universe. So our creator, in a sense, is
the entirety of the universe, something that is infite yet
undividable and unchangable. Sounds an awful lot like many
people's description of God, does it not?
To even the dull witted readers it must be obvious that
I am getting around to a cross between an overmind theory and
an expanded scale Earth-Mother sort of religion. I won't
completely deny this, but emphatically insist on the wider
scope, as there is a lot more to the universe that spawned us
than Earth. I also reject the sexism inherent in the title.
A creator would of neccessity be of a different order of
being than ourselves, perhaps beyond any human biological
labelling of gender, or perhaps simply simultaneously
germinator and geminatee. I am also very wary of the term
overmind. It brings to mind a conciousness far too
anthropomorphised to accept as coming from something as grand
as the universe around us.
Like those that are trying to prove that our Earth is
itself a living being, I will present the theory that
everything is alive. It is perhaps true that we humans have
defined life in a very narrow scope. New evidence of
communication between trees and other plants make me and I'm
sure others, wonder if plants are not only alive (as we
already knew) but concious. It would be ridiculous to assume
that plants' conciousness would be similar to our own, but it
also seems humanocentric to assume that the state plants have
is inferior. The only way that we can claim superiority is
to prove that plants have a state of mind that is similar to
a human state of mind, only stupider. If plants have a
dissimilar state of being, we have no reference to call one
better or worse.
Nobody has yet proven that the earth itself is a living
being, and I believe that if we are looking for a human
conciousness or even plant conciousness, we will never find
one. Could it possibly be said that existance equals, in
some way, life? Biologists and chemists have for decades
posed the idea that humans are merely extremely complex
combinations of certain chemicals and nothing more; that our
perception of conciousness stems from our complexity and not
from a `soul.' Some of these theories suggest that the
computers we have already designed have an extremely far less
complex version of our own sort of conciousness and that by
constructing a computer with bits roughly equivelent in
number to the number of our synapses, we will have created a
rough equivelant to a `conscious' human brain.
If there is nothing special about the things that we
call `alive' that make them so, why is it impossible that a
simple rock could be considered alive? It depends entirely
upon your definition of life. If you feel that life is
comprised of animation, growth and some form of consciousness
then the rock quite clearly is not alive. If, however, you
are willing to accept that the only things that make us seem
alive are the specificity and complexity of certain groups of
chemicals, then a rock can be looked at as a non-specific,
uncomplicated version of ourselves.
Now, a simple rock is not complex in its composition,
but the universe, comprised of rocks, gases, energy, and
space is incredibly complex, as scientists are showing to be
true each day. It seems conceivable that the universe of
which we are several parts, could be considered a living
organism. If the universe is indeed expanding, perhaps we
can look upon this as growth.
This universe/organism has spawned all of us. As part
of its natural process, it has created us. And we are a part
of it. If it is our creator, we can call it God. Each and
every one of us is a very small part of God.
Now that we have unveiled God, how can we worship It?
What could the universe want from us? What can we, puny
mortals give to show our gratitude for existance? I am sure
that God is not aware of us, as we are not aware of our
kidney. I would not want my kindey to worship me. My best
second-guessing of God is that It would only want us to
perform our natural functions. It would (if, indeed it had
any awareness of us) not try to alter the course of our
behaviour. It is up to us to determine the proper course for
ourselves. God, in this theory, is as mysterious as any
other of mankind's gods.
It is because of this mystery that we all strive to
discover God. Perhaps an acceptable form of worship is
study. If we study God, we discover how It works and we are
at a better advantage to thrive within It. I see no reason
why God would be offended at science. If it were aware in a
manner similar to ours, I should think It would approve of
our inquisitiveness of It.
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