thinking of....
the great admiration i have for faithful believers and followers despite having to defend their faith from people like me :)
refuting some points...
Firstly, i didn't want to make it personal, in other words, i am not questioning christianity or any other religion, merely the existence of God and religion. This is due to the secular nature of our society and of course the newly added sedition law. but besides those points, i think ther must only be ONE God. Don't you agree? So I am only arguing on the basis of his/her existence... that's why my stream of thought lacked of biblical references or any particular mention of a specific religion...
secondly, like jia neither do i believe in evolution or all the scientific reasons given so far completely. they are intriguing and at times rather enlightening but as we know science is a burgeoning field, formulas are being made obsolette daily and new ones formed. there is no accurate and correct answer and there may never be. some answers may never be answered fully, there will always be loopholes found even if an answer supported with evidence is given.
but i just want to put across a question, if the existence of God is absolute, how come people, seemingly intelligent people are still questioning his existence? after all, there must be a basis for this too. If the concept of God came about, the concept of 'non-God' or an agnostic view must have stemmed from somewhere. the question is when? did it come before or after...
Another thing, Jia seems to think religion was created before man. well, i think to put it politically correct, God was not created by man. but religion, the worship of god was created by man, isn't that so?
Thirdly, the key: Is life meaningless?
Ask yourself this question.
Students, are the subjects you are doing now irrelevant to a better understanding of life, a better appreciation of life?
Adults, are the work you are doing reflects the whole purpose of your life, is it truly meaningful?
What is meaningful? to oneself? to one's society? to one's spiritual self? to one's 'God'?
As Jia said, "Tell me honestly, if life were meaningless, would there even be life?"
She adamantly states NO! But then again what is life, what is death? they are merely connotations given by human beings who have yet to find out more or perhaps complicate themselves more.
What makes you think that there wouldn't be life if it was without meaning? What gives you the idea that life must be with a meaning? why can't we just be organisms floating about, surviving, repeating the age-old vicious cycle of survival of the fittest? why must we have such a clearly defined purpose?
I completely agree with Jia's point on nothing seems to be eternal.
everything that begins, has an end.
then what makes you think that God is an eternal being? he could have started the universe but faded away later. what makes you so sure he/she/ they still exist and will continue to?
Then pray tell me, what's God's purpose? to create humanity and see us exterminate ourselves, let genocides happen, create more destructive technology, question his existence?
then who created God? who is behind our 'God'? is there another 'God'? is there an endless cycle? then what is his purpose?
is there even a purpose behind everything?
aren't we pawns then?
this thought has just occurred to me. could there be a possibility that we are symbiotic beings? we can't survive without a 'God', inner or outer. similarly, 'god' can't survive without our existence, our continual faith and belief in him/her/them.
I seem to be asking a whole lot of rhetoric questions in this post but i want to end with this statement:
"Humans are too young, too naive to perhaps comprehend everything or comprehend the nothingness of what seems like something. we lack of the necessary wisdom. yet with an inquiring and inquisitive mind, we are at least reassured that one day we may get somewhere closer to the mysteries of life... after all ignorance is bliss"
posted by Sze @ 10:53 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Right, I think my tag'll be too long, so I thought I'd drop a comment (:
So indeed, did God create humans or did humans create God? And if God did not exist, would it be neccessary for us to invent him?
I like the questions you guys are asking; they're interesting in that they're unanswerable to a great degree and its answer is very much a personal pursuit. What you posed was reality presented in the form of succinct rhetoric.
But at least it can be said (okay, perhaps arguable) that life, from the Big Bang up to now, has had meaning - the meaning of all of that is human consciousness, the meaning of all of that is us. And we may be the meaning for a future we do not know.
Perhaps I wasn't lucid enough. I made that point to tackle your 'What makes you think that there wouldn't be life if it was without meaning?' question. Well, the fact we are standing here, gazing into a computer monitor means that millions of years of evolution and life has its meaning. We are the reason why the past happened. Just as our lives may be the meaning of something else.
Anyhow, religion, the idea of a God, or a greater power... They are all, well, comforting ideas. It's comforting to believe we are working for a higher purpose, that we will go on to live an eternal life, that our existence is more than a brief century.
Humans find difficulty in reconciling themselves and organic matter. We thus believe we have a soul, instead of merely a brain.
We also find the need to express the tangible concepts of the Beginning, and the End, when these concepts might not be applicable in the equation of existence.
There is a very interesting chapter in one of my books that devotes itself to unraveling the paradox of our existence. I'm not going to regurgitate it; it's not going to do it justice. But just a vague idea - we are a finite something sandwiched between two infinities.
But is it so?
We can't answer this, so we turn to religion, we turn to God. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. This is what faith is.
It is inherent in the concept of faith that there is minimal evidence. If not, religion would demand logic rather than faith. It is also why faith is so difficult to give, that stuff which (occasionally) defies logic, and can be very unsettling for those seeking truth.
Therefore, working on that premise, whether the most logical people in the world, or reknowned scientists believe in a religion or not has no bearing on the authenticity of that religion. Simply because religion does not operate on logic. It pleads for your faith and obedience, not logic.
On the point of your 'which came first? The chicken or the egg?'-esque query on whether the belief of God arose first, or the non-belief in God... Well, wouldn't the idea of God have to exist before it can be rejected?
What I'd like to know is the shape of religion before (using a specific example) Jesus came down to earth, before the bible was preached to the masses. What was before that?
I disagree that worship was created by man. If there is a God, then worship would be how he/she dictated or passed instructions to his/her followers, from the birth of religion. Much like the Ten commandments?
The problem is, we are too vain to see ourselves living one life and dying one death, hence we turn to religion.
That said, and apologies for flooding your comments with this wordy entry, I still believe there is a God.
Just a final query - Is God male or female? And why is God usually portrayed as male? A remnant of prehistoric chauvanism, foisted by males onto the concept of religion? Hmm... ;p
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