As Promised...part 2.1

Greetings and Salutations readers. I’m not going to mince words here in this post…a lot of what I’m about to say will be contrary to your beliefs (most of you)…I just ask that you hear me out. You are entitled to your opinions…and I’m entitled to mine.

I’m definitively unclear as to what I believe as far as religion is concerned. I realize that the term “definitively unclear” is, in itself, a rather pointless combination of words, but I feel that it adequately defines what I think or, in this case, believe. I was taught to think for myself as a child…and I’m going to do that now.

Religion is defined as: “A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe and worship of that being” (combination of two different definitions found in the American Heritage Dictionary).

I’ve read several books here recently (The Koran (in part), Tao de Ching (in part), Gods Debris (in whole) and others) that have gone contrary to everything that I was taught as a child was TRUTH. “Truth”, I realize, is a relative thing…and I’m beginning to think that religion is just another one of those things that is “true” to those that choose to believe. Please don’t think I’m coming down on Christians as I clearly said “religion” and mean exactly that…RELIGION.

The belief in religion covers at least part of every nation in the world and includes well over 5 Billion people. The problem, for me, lies in the fact that these 5 Billion people believe in over 20 different MAJOR religions and many different sub-sects of that major religion…and then SOME believe that they are right and everyone else is wrong. This has been a major area of contention not only for me, but many other people throughout time.

Take Pascal, for instance: I’m sure you’ve probably not heard of Pascal’s Wager. In it, he states that you have a 50/50 shot of making the right decisions when it comes to religion…either you believe in God or you don’t. Taken contextually and understanding that there are many more religions that claim that they are right and everyone else is wrong, the formula for determining whether you chose the right religion to believe in ends up being P=1/N (where P is your probability of choosing right and N is the number of religions you are capable of choosing from). And yes, I’m paraphrasing and extrapolating a bit…but that’s the basic idea. In a world with 20 major religions, your chances of choosing the right one are only 5%, or if you lump the majority of them together with their major groups, you’re faced with only a 20% chance of having made the right choice.

Another conundrum is posed as follows:

* If God is omniscient, He knows what is going to happen in the future.

* If God is omnipotent, His power is limitless.

* If God knows what is going to happen in the future, then free will is an illusion.

* If everything is pre-ordained, and if God has unlimited power, then the illusion of free will is intentional.

* If the illusion of free will is intentional, and if everything is pre-ordained, and God wants everyone to love Him, but He realizes that not everyone will, then He is powerless (or unwilling) to change this.

* If He is powerless to change this, then His power has a limit and, by definition, He is not omnipotent.

* If He is unwilling to change this, then we are being held accountable for decisions that we did not make, or were not capable of making because they had already been determined due to lack of free will.

* If we are given then choice, however, between choosing to follow God or not [these are the only two options, really, due to the Law of Excluded Middle (something can not BE and NOT BE at the same time…except from a Quantum Physics point of view (Thanks Schroedinger!))] then God is not omniscient because there is no way that he could know what we would choose.

One thought I had while getting ready for work the other day was this: How many Middle Eastern people do you know with the name of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or Peter? Not terribly many, I would guess. If there aren’t that many people named thusly, then that means their name was changed from something else to those names. If they were changed from something else, then that means that the “divinely inspired book of the Bible” is anything but. It is, or would seem to be, a collection of chosen, loosely connected stories with a moral string that binds them all together. I said “chosen” because I can’t believe (and I’ve read that the opposite is true) that the Bible as we know it is everything that was written, everything that was intended, and anything resembling it in its original form. It’s been translated several times, added to and removed from so many times that the moral thread and some of the stories are the only things that really remain original.

Another problem I have with most religions is blind faith. I am a very tactile person. I have to hold something, tear it apart, look at it, experience it first hand and understand a thing before I can really believe in its capabilities and/or its intentions. I treat people and machines pretty much the same (except for the taking them apart …hehe) in that I don’t really understand them or trust them until I’ve been around them for some time to see how they work. I find it hard to believe in something that has so many unanswered questions and inconsistencies.

I am, by no means, finished with this…there are many thoughts that have gone through my head (all people are inherently evil and religion is there to promote a stable society, etc), but I think I’ve done more than enough damage already. I do want to leave you all with this thought and finally an invitation: Occam’s Razor states All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.

What are your thoughts? Please feel free to add your thoughts/comments/etc to this blog…or I can just cut and paste emails that I receive about this if wanted. Thanks.