Hey, it's been a while. About two weeks, if I'm not mistaken. So, I think everything I've been learning has really culminated into this blog post. All the research I've been doing, the late night thinking, the time spent talking with friends. It's all come to this.
Are you ready kids? AYE AYE CAPTAIN.
God. Is he/she/they/it there? How can you find out if such a being exists? I stayed up with a friend until five in the morning talking about God and about the world. We talked about everything, from the God of the LDS faith to the polytheism, etc. We talked about Joseph Smith, about thoughts the world has had on religion, on life. I can't explain half the stuff we went into, but there were a few things that really stood out to me. The first thing was when she was talking about God, she made me remember a few things I used to think are true that may very well still be true to me. How things work in the universe, the fact that people feel happiness, the fact that people are self aware. It really got me thinking about God. Our whole conversation about everything really got me thinking about God, about his character, about just what kind of being he is.
More than anything, I just wondered if anyone or anything was out there.
There are really only two possibilities in regards to Gods: they do or do not exist. There are no other options besides these two. On one hand, we've had men and women telling us for years that there's someone out there that created us. On the other hand, we may have just all been created by chance through the forces of nature. We don't really know either way. You can't prove God exists, and you can't disprove his existence either. Imagine it this way: you're on a trail going to the top of a mountain; one way is believing in a God, the other way is believing in no God. You don't know which way leads to the top because there're no signs, but you've gotta make a choice, right? Whichever way you choose to go, you have to make a choice. It's a leap of faith either way. You either choose to believe in a God, or you choose to not believe in God.
So what does this mean for you and I? There are benefits to believing in God, and other benefits to not believing in God (thought not every religious person would agree with me on that). But there is a truth of the matter, no matter how you look at it. If you're not a truth/knowledge seeking person, it might not matter to you, but if you are then it definitely matters to you. This means study, this means thinking rationally, it means weighing the good and the bad. Ultimately, there may not be a way to know for certain until you're dead, but you can approach it from a logical place (and a spiritual place as well). It depends on who you are, because different people work in different ways. One might need a more spiritual approach, one might need a more rational approach.
My conversation with one of my closest friends caused me to really think rationally. After twenty two years of being in my church, I need to look at things from a perspective that wasn't filled with church teachings. I needed to be logical about it. I don't remember how, but I started thinking about the odds of life forming on its own. A study I stumbled upon suggests that life forming on it's on has a chance of about one in ten to the forty thousandth power. I'll just give you a second to write down all forty thousand of those zeros. That's a pretty astounding number. Those are the odds of life organizing itself on its own. Now, am I suggesting that it's completely impossible? No. That's a lot of zeros, but there still is that one chance. So that was pretty interesting. Then I looked at how live evolved. Why are humans the only beings with self awareness? That feel regret, despair, etc. Why are we the only ones that have a sense of self? Sure, I thought, we may have evolved to be this way (which is of course, entirely possible), but I just couldn't itch this feeling in my heart. I couldn't help but stop and think "ya know, there may be a God." This is disregarding the fact that there are countless people who are "witnesses" of God, saying they have seen him or heard him, etc. (then again, they could have been lying as well). All of this just makes me want to say that there has to be a God.
There's so much more too. How the universe works, the beauty in our world, the fact that we may be one in seven quintillion (there's that many planets in the universe, maybe), the fact that people can love... It's all just incredible to me. It's all evidence of God to me. I might be wrong. Hell, I don't even know if there's just one God or many Gods, or what kind of beings they are, but I believe that there is a God of some sort out there, and that's a good start for me. In the end, it's a leap of faith, but its the best one for me.
If you have any thoughts about this, hit me up in the comments section. Would love to have some conversation with you about it. Either way, thanks for reading.
-JJ the Raving College Lunatic (that's out of college for the summer and looking for a job)
Are you ready kids? AYE AYE CAPTAIN.
God. Is he/she/they/it there? How can you find out if such a being exists? I stayed up with a friend until five in the morning talking about God and about the world. We talked about everything, from the God of the LDS faith to the polytheism, etc. We talked about Joseph Smith, about thoughts the world has had on religion, on life. I can't explain half the stuff we went into, but there were a few things that really stood out to me. The first thing was when she was talking about God, she made me remember a few things I used to think are true that may very well still be true to me. How things work in the universe, the fact that people feel happiness, the fact that people are self aware. It really got me thinking about God. Our whole conversation about everything really got me thinking about God, about his character, about just what kind of being he is.
More than anything, I just wondered if anyone or anything was out there.
There are really only two possibilities in regards to Gods: they do or do not exist. There are no other options besides these two. On one hand, we've had men and women telling us for years that there's someone out there that created us. On the other hand, we may have just all been created by chance through the forces of nature. We don't really know either way. You can't prove God exists, and you can't disprove his existence either. Imagine it this way: you're on a trail going to the top of a mountain; one way is believing in a God, the other way is believing in no God. You don't know which way leads to the top because there're no signs, but you've gotta make a choice, right? Whichever way you choose to go, you have to make a choice. It's a leap of faith either way. You either choose to believe in a God, or you choose to not believe in God.
So what does this mean for you and I? There are benefits to believing in God, and other benefits to not believing in God (thought not every religious person would agree with me on that). But there is a truth of the matter, no matter how you look at it. If you're not a truth/knowledge seeking person, it might not matter to you, but if you are then it definitely matters to you. This means study, this means thinking rationally, it means weighing the good and the bad. Ultimately, there may not be a way to know for certain until you're dead, but you can approach it from a logical place (and a spiritual place as well). It depends on who you are, because different people work in different ways. One might need a more spiritual approach, one might need a more rational approach.
My conversation with one of my closest friends caused me to really think rationally. After twenty two years of being in my church, I need to look at things from a perspective that wasn't filled with church teachings. I needed to be logical about it. I don't remember how, but I started thinking about the odds of life forming on its own. A study I stumbled upon suggests that life forming on it's on has a chance of about one in ten to the forty thousandth power. I'll just give you a second to write down all forty thousand of those zeros. That's a pretty astounding number. Those are the odds of life organizing itself on its own. Now, am I suggesting that it's completely impossible? No. That's a lot of zeros, but there still is that one chance. So that was pretty interesting. Then I looked at how live evolved. Why are humans the only beings with self awareness? That feel regret, despair, etc. Why are we the only ones that have a sense of self? Sure, I thought, we may have evolved to be this way (which is of course, entirely possible), but I just couldn't itch this feeling in my heart. I couldn't help but stop and think "ya know, there may be a God." This is disregarding the fact that there are countless people who are "witnesses" of God, saying they have seen him or heard him, etc. (then again, they could have been lying as well). All of this just makes me want to say that there has to be a God.
There's so much more too. How the universe works, the beauty in our world, the fact that we may be one in seven quintillion (there's that many planets in the universe, maybe), the fact that people can love... It's all just incredible to me. It's all evidence of God to me. I might be wrong. Hell, I don't even know if there's just one God or many Gods, or what kind of beings they are, but I believe that there is a God of some sort out there, and that's a good start for me. In the end, it's a leap of faith, but its the best one for me.
If you have any thoughts about this, hit me up in the comments section. Would love to have some conversation with you about it. Either way, thanks for reading.
-JJ the Raving College Lunatic (that's out of college for the summer and looking for a job)
Hey JJ, I've been reading your blog for a while now. Before I read your last post, I was listening to a talk and I thought, JJ needs to hear this. So please add these 10-15 minutes of your research to include this talk. Here's a link https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/04/dont-look-around-look-up?lang=eng
ReplyDeleteThe only question I have for you now, is which way are you going to choose to look? Because as you correctly said, it is your choice entirely.
Love, a friend.
Thanks for the reference. I'll give it a look. some actual conversation would be cool too, but I appreciate the comment nonetheless.
DeleteI'm down to talk too. How about this. Let me know your thoughts after you watch/read that talk and we can talk about your posts and the talk relates?
DeleteI'm totally down. If you're my friend on Facebook--which I assume you are--send me a message or something. Or we can talk here. Either way.
DeleteJJ, when you have time, take a close look at what honest scientists say about their fundamental understanding of the origin of the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, the earth, star systems, galaxies, the first organic molecule, atoms with more than one proton, elements with more than 55 protons, organic amino acids, a gene sequence, genetic code, a simple DNA molecule, a cell membrane, a cell nucleus, the myriad of a cell's components, cooperation of the components of a cell, the simplest single-cell organism, food for the simplest single-cell organism, cell reproduction (with few mistakes, type fidelity, and limited adaptability), tissue types, organs, organ systems, the broad diversity of life forms, language, etc. and how some these could ever have come to be in a (life-origin unfriendly) harsh chemical environment of water and/or oxygen. It's likely you'll need every one of those many, many hundreds zeros to describe the odds of such fine tuning in the first place.
ReplyDelete(Hint: Candid honest cognizant scientists will tell you they simply are not sure or have no idea that hasn't been roundly disputed.)
College is a great time to explore these types of questions. Pursuing such questions is always fascinating.
As you learn about science and consider all those zeros related to (un)probability, you may find, as I have: I simply don't have enough faith to be an atheist. The odds really are against them, and the clever attempts to explain it all away leave me empty and unconvinced.
If you ever come to a personal conclusion about that primary question, then the next question to consider is: Does God speak?