God, Can You Hear Me?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nextors/3972751222/
Taken October 17, 2009 by Nextors.
Bluntly speaking, I am questioning if gods definitely exist. Maybe I am sounding like a jerk for asking such an inappropriate inquiry or someone who lost her way and f aith, but seriously speaking, I am just curious.
I was raised in a Catholic school for over eight years. It taught me to learn many practices of being highly religious and faithful; I had done these without questioning why. Then in the seventh grade, I felt almost apathetic towards the whole concept of praying to God. There wasn't anything God gave me, and it came to my attention that I have to make my own path, not that God placed a distinguished path for me.
And come to think of it, the Bible is nothing but man-made. People have deemed it to be the Word of God. The Bible has been passed down through generations, and parts have been torn apart and reworded. Maybe there were some hateful people who disliked homosexuals and decided to make more fellow believers to trust that God hated them as well by revising a book of the Bible.
While I was searching for blogs that matched keywords of "God exists," I came upon a blog called, Proof God Exists and Does Not Exist at the Same Time.
"Ok here goes. Let us first look at the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment which says that if you take a live cat, place the cat in a box (God exists), then take a piece of radioactive material (God does not exist) and place it in the box too. Next we have to close up the box and never open it. According to all things normal in the world (science) you will say that the cat is dead now however when you put the cat into the box the cat is still alive (religion). Knowing that the cat is still alive takes faith that it is still alive while common sense tells you that the cat is dead. The thing about this thought experiment is that since you can never open the box you can never know whether the cat is dead or alive. Which means the cat is dead and alive at the same time. Thus this proves that God exists and that God does not exist at the same time." I get the point of what the person wrote, and I am guessing I should leave it at that and realize people will never know the truth, but I am not satisfied as the blog poster said at the end.
God Or Science? A Belief In One Weakens Positive Feelings For The Other is an article that I found as I was searching for the same keywords. This explains an experiment conducted by two scientists in the theory that when a person is for either science or religion, he will be opposed to the other.
"It seemed to me that both science and religion as systems were very good at explaining a lot, accounting for a lot of the information that we have in our environment," she said. "But if they are both ultimate explanations, at some point they have to conflict with each another because they can't possibly both explain everything."
So this tells me that people will use a balance of both religion and science to explain certain phenomena.
My plan to answer my question is not find an answer, but find people who agree with my position of the whole topic. My theory is that religion only exists to help people cope with their surroundings. Humans have the desire to explain the 5 W's. Now after researching for this topic, I have come to realize science is similar to religion.
Funnily, I found a podcast, Are Spiritual Encounters All In Your Head?, which is about how the brain can produce hallucinations, in particular, of God or his beings. When one's temporal lobes start getting excited, images and sound can occur making one believe in a higher being. Even the reporter himself tried a little experiment and received images of a black forest or some dark surrounding. "When people have a seizure in the temporal lobe, it's as if the normal emotions have an exclamation point after them, because so many nerve cells are firing in rhythm. People may hear snatches of music — drawn from their memory bank — and in rare cases, interpret it as music from heavenly spheres. They may see a glimpse of light and think it's an angel." This is ironic to me because I honestly think religion is human made.
What do you think?
No hating.
Andrea, Your post is
Andrea,
Your post is really interesting, and your honesty is very refreshing. It's very taboo in America to not believe in God, which I find absolutely ridiculous. Your ideas on whether or not there is a God were really interesting, and I agree with you about the "cat in the box" analogy, but I think I differ slightly possibly because I'm more pessimistic, or perhaps because I also agree with the argument of the flying spaghetti monster, which in case you're not familiar is that it's possible that there is a flying spaghetti monster in the sky governing our actions, but we assume there isn't because we have no proof. That's a really tiny summary, so if you're interested you should check out http://www.venganza.org/.
An interesting quote from your post is "My theory is that religion only exists to help people cope with their surroundings." I know a few people who agree with you, and while I tend to be bitter towards religion (I, too, have attended Catholic school my whole life) I have to disagree. I think it's true that belief in God and even more importantly belief in an afterlife are very comforting to people, and perhaps this helped begin religion and belief systems but I think the reasons people believe what they do tend to be far more complex, and vary from individual to individual. Another interesting point about belief that I came across lately, and I think might interest you, is the argument that very few people legitimately believe in religion. George Orwell wrote about this in 1944, and argued that people who say they are believers simply don't act in accordance with their beliefs, especially when it comes to the idea of hell. It seems a pity to try and paraphrase someone like George Orwell, so I strongly suggest you read th article at http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/.
Thanks for your post, it seems like this topic isn't brought up perhaps as much as it should because it's very easy for believers and non-believers to offend each other unintentionally. I hope your post starts some dialogue, because I don't see any reason why religious debates should always be heated and messy. I look forward to more of your posts!
Cassie