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A View of Philosophy: The Road Less Traveled
How did we get here? Did someone or something create us? What good is faith? Do we have free will? Is there life after death? Some people spend their lives trying to answer or solve some of the questions asked of us Almost everyone has their own answers for these topics or, at least, they would like to think so. Our group, without actually trying, has decided to attack these problems in a very Socratic manner. We are going to ask a lot more questions.
The first problem posed to us is, how did we get here? Christians say that God created everything. From what did everything come? Did He create it out of nothing? If there was absolute nothingness, there was no God. From nothing, nothing can come. On the other hand, there is a lot of scientific evidence to back up evolution. We can see the product of evolution around us everyday by looking at ourselves. We evolved according to the roles we played in society. For example, men are more muscular because they did most of the hunting and women have more fatty tissues to aid in child bearing. But as for the question, how did we begin, we do not know. The most frequent answer was the Big Bang Theory. But when it comes right down to it, none of us were there. We could ponder the question of creation for ages.
The next issue is about faith. American Heritage Dictionary defines the word faith as “a confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” Christians have a lot of faith. They have faith that God exists and that God will save them when the end of the world comes. Let’s suppose, for a moment, I have a devout faith in the fact that I can walk into on-coming traffic and nothing will happen to me. I live my life accordingly. Well, we all know that is just plain silly. At this point, I should mention that the second definition for faith is, “belief that does not rest on logic or material evidence.” Now why is it that the faith I have is silly and Christians have based their entire belief on faith? Well, it is because God is not tangible. I can figure out if I step off the curb into traffic bad things will follow. Christians cannot perform such experiments with God. Therefore, all they have to back up their belief is faith. Faith, I believe, is their safety net. When they exhaust all other explanations for the existence of God they can always say, “I have faith.” Faith is a good thing to hide behind when you get too frightened to continue asking questions. Faith is not a bad thing. For example, a member of our group sent me an e-mail and throughout his message he was doubting God and His reasons for bad things happening in the world. At the end of the message he said he was going to read his Bible for inspiration. He had faith that the Bible would inspire him. I say, “Great!” Whatever keeps you getting out of bed every morning is fantastic. There is absolutely nothing wrong with faith, but every once in a while you have to be logical and honest with yourself and know that everything your belief is based on has no material evidence to back it up.
Free will is also a problem for the Christians. Their God is all powerful and all knowing. So they believe God knows everything that will happen in their life. That means you have no free choices. Every decision you made would be an act of God because God has already chosen that path for you. This just doesn’t make good sense. We are faced with thousands of choices each day, some good and some bad, but we have the free will to choose. So the popular vote in our group is that we are almost absolutely positive that we have free will.
Good versus Evil is a very difficult concept to explain. The Christians will have a field day with it. We know there is evil in the world and in man. Since we know evil exists, good has to exist because they balance each other. We are proposing a modified “yin-yang” theory. Everything has an opposite. It balances life. Good is the absence of evil and vice-versa. There is evil in the world because there is man in the world. The act of being evil is just man’s survival instincts to the extreme. Lord of the Flies is a good example. Now natural evil could work like Karma. Humans torment, destroy and pollute Nature and in exchange we have tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. Nature would go on without us. For example, would we think tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods were so terrible if we weren’t here?
Life after death is a very touchy subject. God promises Christians great rewards after death. Why wait? If He is all knowing, He knows who will accept Him. Is Earth the waiting room to Heaven? If there is no soul, you do not go on to any other place. So live your life best you can trying to do good deeds and better the world. You will live on through the good works you do.
People have pondered these questions for thousands of years and they will continue to do so. All we can do to help the search for truth is not be close minded and to ask even more questions. Our group managed to ask a lot more questions such as, if Jesus was a Jew, why are a all the Jews going to Hell? Questions, such as this, will be pondered until the end of time.
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