I’m no scientist. And I’m no philosopher. I’m not extremely educated, I don’t claim to know all the answers, nor am I in perfect harmony with nature and its secrets. I don’t know if any of the various multitude of religions are true, I don’t know what happens after we die, and I don’t know where we came from. All I have to go on are my own experiences, logic, feelings, and assumptions.
With that said, there is something I believe in with no proof whatsoever, and that’s a higher power. Call it God, god, gods, spirits, who cares. I believe that there is something out there that I cannot understand and that started life. I believe evolution is most likely true, the big bang theory is probably right, there could be life on some other planet, and that the universe is currently expanding. But to me those are just good guesses. The only truth I think I know about life is that some power began it.
Now, some Christians have a hard time coming to terms with evolution, the big bang theory, and parts of science as a whole. They feel that these supposed facts threaten their beliefs. As a person who thinks there is a god, I’ve always had trouble understanding this. To me, science is not the pursuit of discrediting religion. Science is an attempt to understand the world around us, as are most base religions. Humans need answers, we just look for them in different places.
Let’s say the big bang theory is true. How does this disprove any religion? Couldn’t a god have started the universe in such a way, knowing that life would spring eventually? Why did he have to literally breath life into an individual human? And it’s a false belief that scientists and philosophers are constantly out to prove that there is no god. Many of the famous ancient philosophers not only believed in a god but thought that they could prove it through the use of logic. And I agree; each effect has a cause, even if we can’t see it. What created the universe? A bang. What created the bang? Aliens. What created the aliens? Evolution. What created the alien planet? A bang. What created that bang? Other aliens. Whatever the steps, you always come back to the question of ‘who started it?’ I think the answer is some higher power. If the world started with a bang something had to light the fuse. Who or what did it? No one knows and no one ever will. We have a hard time leaving it at that; we’re a curious species. But we may never find the answer, and we may just have to live with that.
Mediocre show. Sheldon is the only funny one.
I agree.
I think the reason many people find these ideas uncomfortable is because they do not provide a purpose to life. If time, or life, or whatever, was set in motion by a ‘big bang’ and then the laws of nature ran their course and have led us to this point than the question of ‘why are we here?’ is hard to answer.
The same goes for evolution. If life is truly guided by this principle then we can no longer see ourselves as the pinnacle of life, or the chosen species, made in God’s image. We are just a mammalian life form that has come about because of a string of random mutations and adaptations on a planet that is one out of trillions that had the proper environment to support life.
Science is scary because it probably means there is no such thing as a soul. Therefore when we die that is that.
It also makes it harder to influence people if you cannot hold certain religious beliefs over their heads.
I, of course, agree with you. But I guess my point is that evolution doesn’t necessarily have to mean that Christians are wrong or that Jews are wrong. Evolution could be seen as prove of a higher power with at least some sort of design. Science doesn’t HAVE to be scary to religious people.