That one disturbing possibility
So, as I note that things like global pandemics underline the fact that our bodies have poor informational security, and are susceptible to virii both informational (religion) and RNA/DNA-based (COVID-19), I find the lack of security to be another compelling case against the idea that we have a perfect creator – or indeed a intelligent designer at all.
On the other paw, there is still this one disturbing possibility that I can not dismiss. Our beliefs act as a filter upon our experience of reality – obviously this must be the case or believers in God wouldn’t continue to believe in God. I mean, the other possibility is that they’ve lost the ability for rational thought – and looking at the fact that they elected Donald Trump, someone who’s about as close to the devil as we’re going to find in this world, and are busy worshipping him, I concede the possibility that they have. But let’s assume for the moment that people have the ability to remember and think..
One possibility that we can’t actually throw entirely out is that God is only real if you beleive in h*, or alternately, that God is real always but your *experience* of God is only real if you believe in h*. This is compatible with the mythos that Hell is the absence of God – certianly the lack of any central planning and the refusal of all collectivism has turned America steadily more hellish.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not clear to me that you’d *want* to have a God as described by the Old Testament. But, and I realize this is stretching credulity to the max, what if there *was* a loving, helpful central authority, the kind of God you’d build if you were building God out of spare neurons. Certainly they’d do things like removing virii before they got out of hand, and making sure that places didn’t end up getting led by people like Donald Trump.
However, I’ve believed in such a being for a few days at a time, occasionally, when manic, and things definitely didn’t get any better for me. Most of the time, it was believing in such things and then testing them that got me arrested. However.. it may take believing for longer to shape the necessary neural network to have the experience.
Note that I still don’t believe Christianity contains the right answers, for a whole host of reasons. But I’m starting to ponder trying to write something that would. The thing is, the whole thing feels a bit insane. Try to believe in something you can’t experience until you believe in it? Then understand that you can’t experience it even when you *do* believe in it until you cross some threshold?
March 15th, 2020 at 5:03 pm
It’s funny, though, how this utterly preposterous idea survived for millennia. But here’s the thing about this Jesus guy. Things back then were way crappier than now. People were utterly miserable bastards. What did the Man from LaMancha say? “Pain, misery, cruelty beyond belief”. And Jesus said “look, all of those laws that Moses had? Here’s the thing. All of them can be distilled into one simple thing. Treat people the way you want to be treated. The rest takes of itself”. So until people en masse can rise to that simple idea, I ain’t writing off anything as far as a possible origin. Cause it’s a seriously good idea. Large things are usually very simple to do. But it’s like having sex or a big meal. Ya gotta wanna.
.02 USD
March 15th, 2020 at 9:58 pm
Even when I don’t entirely agree with what you’re saying, the way you think is fascinating.