#payitforward
I am not here to try to convince anyone of the existence of God: You either believe, or you don't, and nothing my simple words say will change that. Rather, my purpose is to explore why so many humans do believe, even individuals who, like me, have heroes such as Galileo and Stephen Hawking (who is an atheist).
A favorite parable of the believer to try to convince an atheist of God goes something like this:
You are walking along the beach and find a gold watch hidden in the sand. You pick it up and marvel at its intricate gears and perfect time. You would like to find its owner, because such a beautiful piece of clockwork could very well be an heirloom. You know that some visitor must have left it there, because the beach couldn't have created it by itself.
It needed some intelligence to create it. Therefore God MUST HAVE created the Universe, because it is far more intricate than a gold watch.
Nice parable, but it's got some issues. It wouldn't convince any atheist who has any bit of education. Heavens, it doesn't convince me, and I'm a Christian.
If I were still an atheist, I would respond, "The earth is not a gold watch on the beach of the Milky Way River. You'd be surprised what 13 billion years could accomplish in the cosmos. Alot mote than a few years on an Earth beach."
The truth is, the Earth was created, humans were created. Any hardened atheist would tell you the Universe created you with a big bang and billions of yeard of exploding stars, random events, and evolution.
The real question is, Did the Universe know or care what it was doing?
The believer says Yes!
The non-believer says No.
Many of you reading this have different ideas of what the term god means. He/she/it has many names: Brahma, Allah, and Jehovah are only a few.
Names are irrelevant, other than as titles in the particular language they come from. Many of you humans out there on steemit use aliases (likely, the bots use their own names!) especially if you are a gamer. You are known by many names, too.
Brahma is "the ultimate formless metaphysical reality and cosmic soul in Hinduism" according to wikipedia. He is the Creator, he fills the all of everything. Might we say he is a personification of spacetime?
"Allah" is the term for God among all Arab peoples, whether Islamic, Jewish, or Christian. He is the Creator.
"Jehovah" I find especially interesting. The name is the latinized form of the Hebrew Yahweh, and translates as "I am."
I am what?
Given that there is not an object to the sentence, maybe it refers to everything. It can't be narrowed down so it's left as-is to be interpreted however a believer needs it to be. I will translate it, then, as I exist or existence. That is, sum of everything, everything thst exists. Or, in other words, The Universe. Atheists might think of it as Spacetime.
So, what Christians and Jews interpret as God, atheists might consider as science, using the same words. The confusion and disagreement arise when we don't realize what a name actually means.
Again, the question is, Did the Universe know what it was doing when it created you?
shrug
Illustration of Neural Network
Large Scale Structure of the Universe
Something interesting to consider, though this is an observation, not a point of evidence:
Humans and animals share many characteristics. All vertebrates posess a similar bone structure. Chimpanzees make and use tools. Ravens can solve complex puzzles in order to get at food.
Birds and butterflies follow complex routes passed on from generation to generation. Elephants and dogs love and protect their young. Many animals communicate using calls that can be translated into a primitive language; chimpanzees and gorillas can learn American Sign Language.
Even my dog understands human words when I give a command.
What really separates humans from animals: We are the only entities on earth who look up at the sky and wonder how the stars got there. Why do we crave to know?
Birds and termites build elaborate nests, but only humans build temples and observatories.
Wolves and bison fight over food and the right to pass on genes; only humans fight over ideologies. Why do we seek a Creator? Why do we seek tje origin of everything?
I don't care what God you worship (as evidenced by the Flying Spaghetti Monster at the beginning), or if your devotion is spent at the end of your telescope... provided your God teaches you to love and respect others, avoid violence and intolerance, and to make the world a better place for everyone and everything. I'd be an atheist, too, if I were expected to believe in a God at the expense of my reason, (but that's the topic of a future post: Religion and Science: The Why and How of the Universe).
So, to the atheists out there, don't assume I am deluded and stupid just because I am a believer. I know and love astrophysics and the history of the Universe as well as you do. My brand of religion accepts science and all truth as one of its tenets. Science and Religion don't have to be mutually exclusive, any more than the questions Why and How.
I believe in a loving, all knowing God because when I look up at the sky at night, I don't just see stars or a massive emptiness.
When I see my daughter, I see so much more than her body. She pulses with life and intelligence beyond her shell, and this is what I sense effervescing through spacetime. Maybe you might assume it's just my active (and deluded) imagination. Maybe.
But I am not telling you what to think; rather, I am inviting you into my point of view in hopes you will sense some beauty.
