Friday, February 25, 2011

The Big Question

  Is there a God? (Yeah it's only my second post, but why not jump in with both feet?)
 A couple gazillion words have already been published on the topic, and many of you have already decided your answer.  But since the subject has come up at our house recently I wanted to share some of my thoughts on matter.

  The arguments against the existence of a higher power presented to me recently are based on a strictly scientific view of the universe.  We obviously have yet to come up with a truly scientific way to answer The Big Question one way or the other (nor do I think we ever will), but I would ask you to consider the following: Almost every record of human societies we have indicates a belief in some type of deity or power outside our normal understanding.  The universality of this experience would seem to indicate that it is intrinsically human to behave in this fashion.  It is in our nature.  From a scientific point of view this belief behavior is irrational, and as such I think it could be considered counterproductive to our survival.  It would then be logical to conclude that the process of natural selection would have eventually acted to eliminate those with a tendency toward this irrationality.  But nothing of the kind has occurred.

  What all this leads me to believe is that humans, all of us since time began, have a God-shaped void inside that we feel a need to fill.   I think this void was left there by our creator, so that we might seek him (or her). We humans have tried to do this in countless ways, many times not even recognizing what we are doing.  But try we have.

  So, is this The Big Answer?  No. I would never presume to know that.  I see this simply as circumstantial evidence.
  (I don't know if my thinking here is original or not, but I don't recall ever hearing things expressed in quite this way.)

It's a start

Thanks for dropping by.  Like Mr. Gump's box of chocolates, you never know what you will get here, but I hope you will find this little slice of my mind informative and entertaining.

OK, so now that I've actually started this thing, I'm getting just a tiny twinge of the pressure the producers at CNN must feel when confronted by the insatiable, gaping maw of the 24 hour news cycle. I suspect the effort is somewhat like this...
We'll see if I have my mind right.