What do you believe then? you may be asking yourself. I often ask myself the same question. I'll try to answer this the best way I can in words, because I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the way I believe comes not from what has been spoken to me, what I've been taught, or what I've read, but it comes from the inner me. That feeling I get when I look at the world around me, or ponder the stars and universe that surrounds us all, or when I dive deep into my own psyche and common sense to look at spirituality. Much of this can simply NOT be put in to words, for it is just, I.
As a small child, much of my family and extended family were very religious, its all I knew or had been taught. I had never questioned God, Jesus, angels, the devil, or any of it, to me it just... was. (Sorry in advance for the computer terms, its just me trying to explain my thoughts) You see, the child mind is an amazing thing, but the one flaw I've found is that it can be filled with a lot of malware. The mind has yet to develop any kind of firewall and will take in whatever you feed it. I guess this is by no means a flaw, as it is very necessary to separate intelligent beings, from instinctual animals. Where the problem comes in however, is the fact that it can be trained to limit its own free will by being programmed and not filtering things, such as religion, and I see this as a very dangerous upload. After accepting this "programming" some people will live the rest of their lives discarding any future software that is not compatible with the base program. An example of this is the fact some people will shun some aspects of science in the name of religion.
Around the age of six, I met a friend, more of a big brother really. I don't remember how the subject came up, but I learned he was an atheist. He didn't believe in god, heaven, hell, or anything of the sort. He believed in the evolution of earth, and everything on it. When we died, that was it, we ceased to exist and simply rotted back in to the ground. This did not sit well with me, but I did something many will not. I didn't simply discard the "software", I kept trying to alter it, to make it fit with my base programming. Maybe it was because I was young enough that my firewalls had not yet been erected fully, or maybe it was that I looked up to this man in such a manner, that I wanted to "force run" the software in an attempt to understand him. But when I did this, something amazing happened, I began to develop my own software.
First I began to question the need for religion at all. The answer to that is simple. It is to place answers on our most basic questions. Who are we, why are we here, and where do we come from. The need to answer these questions not only created religion, but the institutions that surround them. This has been going on in human history forever. There have been many, many different religions and gods in our past, I imagine the number to be in the thousands, but who's to say for sure. What I kept coming back to though was, out of all of these beliefs, How do we know Christianity has it right. (I use Christianity as an example because that's what I grew up around) short answer... Christians. Look people, every belief system out there has something to point to as proof. The institutions I mentioned will not so easily give up what they have built. They will take fact and warp it to fit into their myth. This again is proven by science proving things false, and the powers that be doing one of two things, they'll either suggest that what they have been saying all along was misunderstood, or that the two sides really do go together, evolution for example. Sure, the churches will now admit there is something to evolution, but will still point to Adam and Eve as the start of it. If that's the case, better start making some new pictures of them, and they'd need to look like marsupials. My point is, I don't know where "humanity" actually began, but I do know, we just slowly became more and more human, and we're not done yet. Maybe in 500,000 or a million, or even a billion years from now, we may look back at what we are now, and see us as the equivalent of those very marsupials.
My apologies, let me get back on track. Aside from the basic questions of life, there is a need for control and structure. What better way to control someone, then to give them a guide and expectations, tell them he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or be, forsaked. You see what I did there? This is what we tell our children about Santa in order to control them, to guide their behavior, but at the same time, and at a higher level, we're allowing religion to control us as children. Maybe there was a time when this was absolutely necessary to control populations/groups of people, but I honestly believe we live in a time with us being so connected, enlightened, and evolved, that we are at a point where we can control our fellow man not with threats of torture and hell, but with basic morality. Its already happening! We just don't have any practice at it and can get a little out of hand. Look at how politically correct most people have become since the world has been truly connected. Enlightenment has begun, though we still have a long way to go.
Having said all of that, I think it as an almost certainty that any intelligent life form throughout the cosmos, has walked this same road. Though there has to be a point in evolution when a switch is flipped, and the being can start to see things with common sense, and not common myth. I like to think we are just about there.
We also needed our religions and beliefs to help us cope, to deal with death, stress and heartache. Almost all religions tell us of an afterlife, a place where you'll be one with, or at peace with and rewarded based on the life you lived. They gave us something to pray to, to sacrifice for. I'm not saying these things are untrue or worthless, I do believe in an after life, for energy can not be destroyed, only transformed. And prayer holds the power of good will, or hope, which generally carries with it positive, constructive, and healing energies. I do not believe however, that there is some almighty listening and deciding rather or not to answer these prayers. Sure, sometimes prayers are answered, but if you truly think about it, we don't generally pray for things that are just not possible, otherwise, we wouldn't bother asking. So sometimes we are bound to see these prayers realized, it's almost mathematic. I believe that prayer is something that will continue to carry with us throughout time, but who or what we pray to, and how we go about releasing these energies, will change.
Once I was satisfied with why religion was there at all, I started looking at the opposite end of the spectrum. I tried looking at things from my "big brother's" point of view. Are we really just clusters of atoms that happen line up just right to make, us, the earth, the universe around us? Is it all for nothing? Do we really just return to nothingness after our short lives? Well, here is my answer. Look at the age of the universe. 13.82 billion years old right? No... maybe our reality can have some sort of time stamp placed on it, but not all that is. I believe in multiple universes, but not like you might think.
Look at what happens when things are compressed and become dense. We have proven that we can slow the speed of light by forcing it to travel through dense objects. Now imagine if you will a black hole. Light, as they say, can not even escape. Now put yourself within the singularity. Time, space and matter are completely reset, and with it everything we attribute to size. You can take a black hole, within a black hole, within another, and the size of a star be the same within the first as it is within the last because space resets with each new step, Light that outside the black hole could pass in an instant, will now take billions of years to pass through once within. Matter becomes reinvented each time, it is crushed to a solid, a clear solid, that we only know as dark matter. We can't see it, we can't touch it, but we know its there. It holds the universe together, it slows light to a crawl which resets time, and it allows expansion in such a uniform way because as/while each singularity feeds, this new found black matter isn't added where it falls, it becomes one with the rest. Crazy confusing right?
If you take all of these countless resets, stand back, and now look at the real age of all that is, the only word that I can think fits it is, eternity. Now look back at us a the human race, we're not even a flicker in time. The "all that is" that I speak of is divine all in itself. Life is simply a by product the "all that is" becoming self aware and being a living entity in itself. You can't take something so complex, slap an eternity sticker on it, and expect it to never awaken. We did, we're the proof.
It isn't aware of us, it didn't wave a wand to create us, it doesn't judge us, or punish us, but when we die, we become one with it again, become aware of it again, but most of all we see ourselves as we really are, and return to from where we came, and when that happens, it will "feel" as heaven, I hope.
This is why I am not an atheist. I am spiritual. I do believe in more then nothing, just not in a biblical sense. We don't need to fear god to be righteous or kept in control, we're part of it.
(this is a draft, and incomplete)
To be continued..................
First I began to question the need for religion at all. The answer to that is simple. It is to place answers on our most basic questions. Who are we, why are we here, and where do we come from. The need to answer these questions not only created religion, but the institutions that surround them. This has been going on in human history forever. There have been many, many different religions and gods in our past, I imagine the number to be in the thousands, but who's to say for sure. What I kept coming back to though was, out of all of these beliefs, How do we know Christianity has it right. (I use Christianity as an example because that's what I grew up around) short answer... Christians. Look people, every belief system out there has something to point to as proof. The institutions I mentioned will not so easily give up what they have built. They will take fact and warp it to fit into their myth. This again is proven by science proving things false, and the powers that be doing one of two things, they'll either suggest that what they have been saying all along was misunderstood, or that the two sides really do go together, evolution for example. Sure, the churches will now admit there is something to evolution, but will still point to Adam and Eve as the start of it. If that's the case, better start making some new pictures of them, and they'd need to look like marsupials. My point is, I don't know where "humanity" actually began, but I do know, we just slowly became more and more human, and we're not done yet. Maybe in 500,000 or a million, or even a billion years from now, we may look back at what we are now, and see us as the equivalent of those very marsupials.
My apologies, let me get back on track. Aside from the basic questions of life, there is a need for control and structure. What better way to control someone, then to give them a guide and expectations, tell them he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or be, forsaked. You see what I did there? This is what we tell our children about Santa in order to control them, to guide their behavior, but at the same time, and at a higher level, we're allowing religion to control us as children. Maybe there was a time when this was absolutely necessary to control populations/groups of people, but I honestly believe we live in a time with us being so connected, enlightened, and evolved, that we are at a point where we can control our fellow man not with threats of torture and hell, but with basic morality. Its already happening! We just don't have any practice at it and can get a little out of hand. Look at how politically correct most people have become since the world has been truly connected. Enlightenment has begun, though we still have a long way to go.
Having said all of that, I think it as an almost certainty that any intelligent life form throughout the cosmos, has walked this same road. Though there has to be a point in evolution when a switch is flipped, and the being can start to see things with common sense, and not common myth. I like to think we are just about there.
We also needed our religions and beliefs to help us cope, to deal with death, stress and heartache. Almost all religions tell us of an afterlife, a place where you'll be one with, or at peace with and rewarded based on the life you lived. They gave us something to pray to, to sacrifice for. I'm not saying these things are untrue or worthless, I do believe in an after life, for energy can not be destroyed, only transformed. And prayer holds the power of good will, or hope, which generally carries with it positive, constructive, and healing energies. I do not believe however, that there is some almighty listening and deciding rather or not to answer these prayers. Sure, sometimes prayers are answered, but if you truly think about it, we don't generally pray for things that are just not possible, otherwise, we wouldn't bother asking. So sometimes we are bound to see these prayers realized, it's almost mathematic. I believe that prayer is something that will continue to carry with us throughout time, but who or what we pray to, and how we go about releasing these energies, will change.
Once I was satisfied with why religion was there at all, I started looking at the opposite end of the spectrum. I tried looking at things from my "big brother's" point of view. Are we really just clusters of atoms that happen line up just right to make, us, the earth, the universe around us? Is it all for nothing? Do we really just return to nothingness after our short lives? Well, here is my answer. Look at the age of the universe. 13.82 billion years old right? No... maybe our reality can have some sort of time stamp placed on it, but not all that is. I believe in multiple universes, but not like you might think.
Look at what happens when things are compressed and become dense. We have proven that we can slow the speed of light by forcing it to travel through dense objects. Now imagine if you will a black hole. Light, as they say, can not even escape. Now put yourself within the singularity. Time, space and matter are completely reset, and with it everything we attribute to size. You can take a black hole, within a black hole, within another, and the size of a star be the same within the first as it is within the last because space resets with each new step, Light that outside the black hole could pass in an instant, will now take billions of years to pass through once within. Matter becomes reinvented each time, it is crushed to a solid, a clear solid, that we only know as dark matter. We can't see it, we can't touch it, but we know its there. It holds the universe together, it slows light to a crawl which resets time, and it allows expansion in such a uniform way because as/while each singularity feeds, this new found black matter isn't added where it falls, it becomes one with the rest. Crazy confusing right?
If you take all of these countless resets, stand back, and now look at the real age of all that is, the only word that I can think fits it is, eternity. Now look back at us a the human race, we're not even a flicker in time. The "all that is" that I speak of is divine all in itself. Life is simply a by product the "all that is" becoming self aware and being a living entity in itself. You can't take something so complex, slap an eternity sticker on it, and expect it to never awaken. We did, we're the proof.
It isn't aware of us, it didn't wave a wand to create us, it doesn't judge us, or punish us, but when we die, we become one with it again, become aware of it again, but most of all we see ourselves as we really are, and return to from where we came, and when that happens, it will "feel" as heaven, I hope.
This is why I am not an atheist. I am spiritual. I do believe in more then nothing, just not in a biblical sense. We don't need to fear god to be righteous or kept in control, we're part of it.
(this is a draft, and incomplete)
To be continued..................
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