The Meaning of Life

To Whom This May Concern – chapter 5/5

Foreword,
[I propose readers to view the "better" version of this piece on my multiply]

For those who seek the meaning of life, I hope that this chapter provides some insights. It’s a deep and highly fragile subject and not the easiest in the world but I hope I’ve compacted the important parts well and enough, otherwise here’s a quote of the most compact meaning of life there is if you want to be spared the trouble of reading this long chapter:

“Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
-from the movie Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

i) Marbles in the Dark
From the beginning, it was blackness and emptiness. Nothing existed; even vacuum and void didn’t exist. Then suddenly an explosion, of an unknown scale, began everything (well, that’s what we’ve theorized and known so far). During the course of time, life of all possible kinds on this particular planet we call Earth sprung out to grow and to evolve; adapting to the environment and the process which took place. Most importantly, this also managed to lead a certain species to grow to an astounding and marvelous stage where it could speak and understand each other as well as grow a great understanding of how the world and other things on this planet functioned, developed tools of many various kinds which made life and labor easier for them, and most importantly possessing a growing knowledge and understanding over an overwhelmingly lot of things that exist on this planet and outside of it. About how the universe and existence began; for the longest period of mankind’s existence only one theory has been evidently clear, the existence and presence of a higher being. But exactly two centuries ago from this year mankind has grown to understand another theory after the coining of evolution by French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck which then was followed by Charles Darwin’s groundbreaking theory of evolution through natural-selection.
Although the theory of evolution has more or less been declared as fact, it still has “only” explained to us the evolution of the creations that roam and reside on every surface of this planet ever since the so-far discovered prehistory of plantaes and animals… it clearly has gone overwhelmingly far for being just a theory that started 200 years ago, and that’s just from evolutionary theory… scientific discoveries, as far as we’ve dated, have been around since the 17th century BCE. But as far as explaining spirituality and how the universe began is still being under the determined curiosities of microscopes and telescopes, only time will tell.
But all in all that’s been mankind’s conclusion of the beginning of existence, from blackness nothing… whether from the intention and help of a celestial Creator or not.

a. Looking Up (the right way)
Life is both beautiful and miserable; in most cases we’re always feeling miserable and always have something to feel miserable about, therefore it is damn near a cliché when you hear advices from friends or others when you’ve got problems to “Look up to the skies for answers.” In the majority of the cases this saying has something religious about it; referring mostly to look up to God for answers and guidance; it seems to me that people could really miss out on the other more obvious point of that saying. For starters, look up to the skies! (I would strongly recommend you do this at clear nights) How many stars do you see? It can be quite a challenge to count them and keep a track on them for you only get to see a piece of the vast sky at the same time the Earth rotates and revolves. If the mere thought hasn’t even struck you yet, the majority of the stars you see up there is a Sun… just like the one we rotate and revolve around; see rise and set, is a great provider of heat and light plus is a great factor to our planet’s food reproductions as well as provide life on the affected surfaces of the planet. Traveling to even the nearest star would take a very long time and even if we did we wouldn’t know for sure that there’s a planet near that star which can inhabit life or have elements that can be viable for inhabiting life. Just in our own, the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have appreciated the amount of stars to be somewhere between 100-300 billion stars of various sizes and mass… a 100-300 billion Suns, only in our galaxy alone.
We can only put a theoretical similarity and comparison with our own solar-system and if we put an estimation of that up to 9 planets can be seen visible through the help of the Sun; we’d figuratively have between 900-2700 billion hypothetical planets just in our very own Milky Way Galaxy … now try estimating that with the amount of galaxies that are visible with the deepest image of the universe we’ve got taken by Hubble Ultra Deep Field on just one very small window of space it was focused on for 4 months..
Coming from just one image taken by the Hubble Ultra Deep Field at one small window of space just about a tenth of the size of the full moon and which appeared to be complete blackness with no visible stars to the naked eye, there were about 10,000(!) visible galaxies found with the use of Hubble. Another remarkable part is that the image taken depicts the time when the universe was only 800 million years old according to light speed calculations; needless to say, we’re getting closer to discovering the cradle of our Universe.
Now perhaps for comparative similarities, even if we count one Earth-like planet in every star system we’ve so far discovered has a livable environment more or less similar that of ours, there’s still a reasonably high probability of that we’re not the only life forms, with more or less intelligence, in the Universe.

For a practical picture, think of the universe as a pitch-dark mall and you’re standing at the top-floor looking down at the ground-floor as well as the lower-level floor bridges that stand between you and the ground-floor below which are filled with illuminated light bulbs of various sizes scattered around with marbles of various sizes occasionally scattered as well with them; the only marbles you’ll be able to see are the ones that can be caught within the light bulbs’ circumferential luminosity unknowing that there are more marbles lying anonymously in the dark.
It can truly be overwhelming to look up at the skies and feel very small in comparison to the vastness of the universe, it’s no wonder why most people would feel and believe that the Universe was created by some being and that we were put here by a god or creator, and one can’t blame them for thinking that way either… it’s easier.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious.
If a human disagrees with you, let him live.
In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
-Carl Sagan

b. The Ants and The Super-Highway
As a continuation from chapter 4 on the existence of God; what type of god will it be if God did show Itself to the world? One way to look at it is a theistic god who’s had an ultimate plan for everything created in the universe, meaning that every single action we take, regardless of the outcomes being good or bad, is nevertheless still according to God’s plan. Another way of belief is in a deistic god who created the world and then abandoned it to carry on with It’s own agenda leaving the creations on Earth and the rest of the universe to evolve and affect each other on its own without any interventions by the Creator itself… like a farmer who sows seeds in his field and lets it grow to harvest with the course of its own nature because he cannot control the seeds’ growing procedure, all the farmer can do is to help the seeds grow with the help of elements such as sunlight and earth and water, thus the Creator cannot control the growing and shaping from the seeds It had planted.

A paralleled theory that could provide some light to the deistic point of view is the Fermi paradox, which is if there are extraterrestrial beings out there then where are they?!
An analogy of this paradox which was brought more clearly to me was by astrophysicist professor Michio Kaku, is to “picture an anthill in the middle of a forest and right next to the anthill there’s a ten-lane super-highway being built. The question is: would the ants be able to communicate or to understand what a ten-lane super-highway is? Would the ants be able to understand the technology and intentions of beings building a ten-lane super-highway next to the ants? Let’s say however you go down to the ants and say to the ants ‘…I bring you knowledge… I bring you utopia, take me to your leader.’ Is that what you’d say when you bump into ants? No, most people simply step on a few of them.
Again, ants looking at a ten-lane super-highway… they would, first of all not even know what a highway is, they would not be able to detect the presence of the highway, understand their communications, and even if they did would the ants say ‘Why don’t they visit us?’”
With this analogy, it could also perhaps coin the theory that we’ve already had help from higher intellectual beings in the past… either with the intentional or accidental creation (sowing of “seeds”) of life on Earth and/or some time in history when a higher intelligent being had passed by our planet.
Another way to look at it is if we ourselves someday in the given future manage to travel further to other planets and we then, either by intentions or accident, plant the seeds of life on that planet and we then fly off to continue to find other planets where life can be possible to start… perhaps think of it as “space-farming”. We then, would be gods per se.

I want to stop right here before it leads on to science-fiction because that’s the thin red line I don’t want this topic to cross over to… because besides the Big Bang theory and the theory of that a god persona having created existence on this planet and/or the universe out of nothing, how existence really came to be is anybody’s guess, really.
By the way, a little cliché of a side-question for theists to ponder over is; if God created life, the universe and everything…where did God itself come from?
Answering this question by saying “God is eternal by definition” is something regarded as unfalsifiability, the final attempt to logic panicked specifically by religion, a seemingly untouchable corner of solace… it is an argument you cannot beat because it isn’t an argument; not only does the response frankly shut out any form of argument against it, it is in itself an unprovable statement and it also adds even more confusion to the given people’s description of each their own God and stealthily sets up paradoxes in their minds, and only in its own philosophical serendipity does it make perfect sense… a truly dodgy walk in a dark park for believers and people who turn to religion for answers, for tragically, due to the nature of religion’s unfalsifiability they become unaware of the dangers it brings until they notice that the road they’ve been walking on in the dark all along has been filled with ditches and fissures scattered around just waiting for someone to fall right in.

“We live in a very special time: the only time we can observationally verify that we live in a very special time. –Lawrence Krauss

ii) The Big Picture
From ancient documents and philosophies to modern day pop culture we have a wide documentation all about our thoughts of our place in this life, our meaning to existence and what life and existence actually means. The recent notables I’ve come across from pop culture that have managed to make some sense have been simple lines, one came from Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol: “They are blind… wandering aimlessly in a world they will never understand.”
And the other example of a similar philosophy can be found in John Legend’s Ordinary People:
“We’re just ordinary people; we don’t know which way to go.”
In an otherwise complicated and deep way of thinking, these coming three points (I clearly didn’t come up with the Butterfly-Domino Effect, but the rest I did) are the ones I’ve thought of to being closest to picturing our way of life on this planet and how we affect one another, although we may not even be aware of them.

a. Just Slide
It’s amazing how the simplest answers to: our existence, how we connect to everybody on this Earth and how everything else finds its place or order sometimes end up in our own hands without knowing.

On any given day the thoughts strike us; sometimes spontaneously, sometimes deliberately. Most of the times it comes whenever we have regrets, then once it does strike our thoughts we dig deeper and deeper (for we tend to see if things “could get any worse”, subconsciously we want to feel like sh**).
It always starts with the infamous questions: “Why?” and “How come?”
There are a lot of sentences that follow after those words and also depending on the mood or set of events.
We have times when we think in retrospect about choosing different paths we had in front of us in the past; what if I had taken a different road to get to a specific destination or what if I didn't go to work, how would my life had look like afterwards? What kind of balls have I set in motion? Have I messed with destiny or fate? We all ask ourselves these kinds of questions some time in our lives and we try to seek answers, answers we seldom get instantaneously. We are beings who are obsessed with our own destinies, for we simply don’t know how life will look for us or if we have any meaning. Some people turn to religion for guidance, some reflect at the nature of life, and some just continue on living for the sake of not being dead.
When we don’t get the answers or confirmations that we seek we tend to feel lost, which can result in frustration and depression if one dwells long enough on the subject.
Mainly it’s after we think about times we’ve regretted things we’ve done and times we think we’ve made wrong turns that we wish we could go back in time and change those times we’ve regretted and all those other wrong turns. We want to have spotless pasts where things went exactly our way and the way we wanted it… we’re simply that selfish, it’s human nature.
It’s probably true that the things we’ve done, experienced and learned build up what we are at the present and what we’ll later become in the future, which makes it very uncertain to be accurate about what will be of us if we want to see the big picture; for we learn, experience and do new things every day which we mostly never predict when we make our own plans for the day or the week (or the month or the year).
But back to what I mentioned earlier, when we’re holding the answers to our existence and how everything else finds its place in our hands.
Another way I find life to be is like a slide puzzle; the main goal is to complete it and of course seeing the complete picture… but on our way to doing so we must choose which ways to go first, and it’s not that easy if we can’t find any other ways to get that one box where it’s supposed to be without having to move one or a few other boxes away and having to rearrange them all. It’s tricky, but life’s not exactly that easy to solve. It’s not until in the end that we’ll get to see the big picture… if we manage to see it.
Once we do successfully solve the puzzle and see our life’s big picture we’ll tend to be slightly disappointed; for even if we solve it there will always be something missing… that constant empty box.
But we shouldn’t be unthankful for that missing box either, for it enables us to move around freely, it is a “gift” we’re entitled to… the gift of choice. Whether or not it’s from some divine being or that we simply just have it naturally; nevertheless, we should be extremely thankful for that and make the best use of it (while we still are able) for the greater good of mankind.

b. The Butterfly-Domino Effect

“What we do in life echoes in eternity.”
–from the movie The Gladiator

We affect each other, one way or another. Mainly it’s completely oblivious to everyone how far and long our actions can travel, whether they may seem big or meaningless to us, forced or done free-willed. It might be radical of me to say that even by one person doing nothing could make a huge effect and impact on people’s lives all over the world and throughout time.
A simple example of this is to imagine just a handful of the most influential people known to man: Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Carl von Linné, Jesus, Constantine I, Mohammed, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Edwin Hubble, Alfred Nobel, Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Michael Jackson… imagine they were never born or decided to do something else other than become what history had dubbed them, how far behind or how further ahead would mankind be right now in its progress compared to the one we currently are in? How much different had our world, life and reality looked like?
Even if you think of it in minor terms, think of the people who worked on building the roads you travel on so that you could comfortably and easily reach your destination also makes a difference for thousands of people travel that very road daily to get to wherever and of various importance. Just take a look at the objects that surround you right now and you’ll probably see less than 50 objects for example: your computer, cell phone, lamp, chair and etc, even the home you live in… think of how many people it took to get it to where it is now around you; from the people in the factories piecing the parts together, the designer of the pieces and objects, the people who made the pieces, the people who got inspired to design or make the objects in the first place… all the way down to the very first people who began making them in history. The list could go on a bit longer if you include the bright people whose discoveries paved way for the modern objects we are fortunate to have such as electricity and light, and ever since then has been evolving over time with the help of later developers. Think of it, everything we have has been in the hands of hundreds, if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of people from drawing pad to fabrication to distribution… and over in time probably has had a history of inspirations that have been around for centuries, if not several millennia. We are connected and we connect one another, inevitable but we’re more or less oblivious of it for we’re too pre-occupied with our own lives and desires.
Of course there’s the whole “somebody else would’ve filled in the spot” but that’s still a question of “what if?”, “by whom?” and most importantly “when?”

The Act of Thinging
By doing Anything you can change Something.
By doing Something you can change Anything and Everything.
By doing Nothing: Anything, Something and Everything changes…
…but you’d still accomplish Nothing.
-A.C. Fredriksson

c. The Status Quo-Zeitgeist Seesaw
Our lives can go in two branches that can coexist:
1. Living through the status quo of the ever changing zeitgeist (the spirit of the time) and
2. Being a big contributor to the zeitgeist which affects the change of the status quo.
You might look at it as a paradoxical concept in the likes of the Yin and Yang philosophy, so would I, but the strong wind for change lies in the knowing, the determination and the accomplishing of the second branch. If you know you can change the world, then why don’t you?
For example, the world has many places where a functioning education is very well needed and where help is very much needed. The world also hosts a long line of “restless idle people” who happen to be academics and have background in education who could go or be sent out to the places in the world that need “tending to”. The only factors that prevent this are: political and financial issues plus lack of personal interests… the last one is very much understandable for we’re all human with our own interests and goals. But spreading around knowledge is the key to keeping our species existing longer as well as keeping on progressing with the help of knowledge and the hunger for it.
It’s probably a utopian way of thinking but isn’t that how we’d like to picture the world to be and how we try to shape our nations to become? If you think about it, some of us are fortunate to live in countries where it’s practically utopia already. Thus don’t we all have that dream in common which we just shrug away because of the impossibility after seeing all the horrible acts going out around the world due to differences, whether they be political or religious or mental? We just think that there’s no hope for the world and that “somebody else will take care of it”. There are still many places and people on this planet that need to be connected to the common road, they will be connected either how… but the when-factor is a key we, who are aware of these situations, hold. In the end we’ll have to ask ourselves on which side of the status quo-zeitgeist seesaw we’d like to sit on.

iii) The Lone Oasis, Our Only Home

“There’s no place like home”
-John Howard Payne

We seem to be taking for granted of this knowledge, most especially about our planet. We have just recently grown more conscious and everyday keep on scratching the surface of people’s awareness about the rarity of this planet we, so far, can only live in.

a. Dancing (in) Limbo
Up until mankind decided to investigate on the causes to natural disasters which thus led to understanding and discovering the process, its probabilities and predictabilities of their occurrences and nature, mankind over in history (and tragically still ongoing on certain places) have declared one way or another that we were being punished by a higher being for being “bad”; leading occasionally to putting the blame on other people’s promiscuous behavior and lifestyle which “didn’t seem moral or normal”… a horrendous act, if not only an awful way of thinking.
Without developing any devices or technologies that can aid us to understanding how our planet functions we’d be left with nothing other than our gullible intuitions to explain and persuade to ourselves and others why these natural disasters occur… leaving us to reach to the conclusions for ourselves when we hold nothing of rational or logical proof; as I wrote earlier about unfalsifiability.
We have to this date learned and understood more or less what causes earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tornados-hurricanes-typhoons, lightning strikes, high/low tides, severe floods and etc but still some people just can’t seem to grasp it yet and consider it as an act from God.
If the given image of the vastness of the universe, our insignificance compared to the size of other planets thus of how rare our planet and species are weren’t portrayed crystal clear earlier in Marbles in the Dark, then let me put an addition to that viewpoint.
Our planet, as complicated and unstable as it may seem, is the only place in this universe we so far know can live in. We live on just a wafer-thin surface of this planet’s outer crust layer which is on one of Earth’s five geological layers (crust, upper and lower mantle, outer and inner core) and the deeper down to the core of the planet the hotter and uncomfortable it gets. To get to the center core of our planet you must dig downwards roughly around the same distance as a regular flight between Helsinki and Beijing (and survive as well the pressures of heat awaiting you, which you’ll unlikely survive through). The temperatures of the inner core can reach up to around 10,000oC; a level which is hotter than the surface of the Sun. The outer core, where the molten liquid (or lava) floats around, can get up to around 5,000oC. Then we’ve got the lower mantle (closest to the outer core) which can be around 2,200oC and the upper mantle (closest to our crust layer) can get around 870oC… and keep in mind, we humans can only handle around 40oC, give or take the climate we’re used to. And this is just talking about the dangers of the elements below our feet.
We also have a limit in altitude as to how far up we can go to be able to breathe without the use of oxygen aid; the higher we go the thinner the air gets and the colder it becomes as well. For a practical example, Mt. Everest expeditions above 8,000 meters usually take use of oxygen masks for otherwise the limitations of breaths per minute and the lack of oxygen your body gets will affect every single judgment that you’ll make… and just one miscalculation can lead to fatal consequences.
Those who have flown on commercial airplanes have experienced how cold it can get up there at the max altitude of 12,000 meters above sea level. Beyond that is the coldest place on Earth called the mesosphere, which has an average temperature of -100 oC, and going past the radical turnaround temperatures of the thermosphere (which can go up to 2,000 oC due to the absorption and conversion to heat of nitrogen and oxygen with the radiation from space) we’ve managed to detect the cold temperature of space to being around -270 oC.

And against all odds, with other massive bodies in space such as comets and asteroids which in collision with our planet could eliminate our species and everything else on this planet, we always run the risk of being extinct but fortunately we’ve come to a stage where at a certain distance we can monitor and detect any major threat to our planet and also predict its course of path. The space is full of debris which fall and burn up in our atmosphere and almost always won’t reach the ground; down below we see some of them as something we call shooting stars.
In a nutshell: we are not just being threatened by the surprises of space every day and are stuck in between the parallel limits of this planet, but also we’re stuck on this planet until we manage to set a new stepping stone in space exploration where we can live on other planets and moons and keep on discovering the beginning of existence.
It is a long journey indeed to that time we can accomplish such feats, but slowly and steadily we’re on our way to doing so with the help of people dedicated to their work in practical benefit for mankind.

b. Paying It Forward

“There are no solutions in life, only the energy to keep moving forward.”
“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.”
“Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.”
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How did I know of the things I wrote about the human limitations in regard to heat or cold? Of what on Earth are below our feet and above our heads, how far and what lies there? Of how many stars and galaxies are out there to our so-far knowledge, and around where in the universe we’re at? Of names of some of mankind’s most influential people, what they did to become such influences?
This and probably most of everything I know have been because I’ve come across the knowledge and information that have been prepared and shared by other people. Had I not come across of the knowledge I so-far possess or that the knowledge was never documented to be publicly shared, then this 9-page long (A4 computer written) extensive paper on this topic would’ve just been roughly a few pages and would more or less just be filled with ontological arguments stating that “it’s all because of God that everything exists, therefore God exists”.
Without having come across the proper knowledge we’d probably still go around aimlessly and discover certain things for ourselves through the use of experimental curiosity, without knowing that it’s been discovered and shared already… perhaps the time could’ve been used for something else.
The importance of sharing and spreading knowledge is important… but the importance of sharing and spreading important knowledge is vitally and direly important; especially to the ones who need it the most.
We have a responsibility, every single one of us, to maintain the spread of proper knowledge to the world and especially at places where there is none due to political or financial reasons; even by helping, supporting and donating to organizations that aim towards education for all could make the slightest of differences.
As for me, one of my ways of paying it forward is to share of some of the things that I know through my influence in writing and use just that influence to make the slightest of differences… that, I believe, is the least I could do.


CHALLENGE (the Paying It Forward-experiment)
1. On a piece of paper, list and write down 10 random facts (of which you either know or have looked up on encyclopedias, trivial books or any other reliable sources).
2. The listed random facts can be of things that are:
a) relevant to natural science or history of which are not commonly known to people and/or
b) considered unnecessary to being common knowledge, but could be nice to know anyways.
Examples for a:
-The only parts of the human body that can’t get affected by cancer are the optical lens.
-The brain uses ten times more oxygen than the rest of the body.
-Planet Venus is the only planet in our solar-system that spins anti-clockwise.
-Our planet revolves around the Sun with an estimated velocity of 30 km/s.
-It was because of the pasta that the table-fork was drawn to invention.
Examples for b:
-Turtles can breathe through their rear ends (through a single rear vent called a cloaca).
-China has more people who can speak English than of people speaking English in the USA.
-With the use of salt and ice in a bowl of water, a room-temperature canned-beverage can be cooled instantly within a few minutes.
-It is practically impossible to sneeze while sleeping.
-Thomas Edison didn’t exactly invent the light-bulb, there were several others who have made the light-bulb long before Edison… but what he did do was to refine and then claimed patent rights for it.

3. Make copies of this list; let’s say 20+ copies, with a copy of the instructions at the footnote.
4. Like a secret agent, leave one copy of the list at spots where many people will notice such as subway trains and libraries (don’t get caught or arrested for vandalism, etc).
5. Don’t hand the lists out like flyers… let people take notice of it on their own. And also don’t take credit for the lists or the action of paying knowledge forward.


After word
As opposed to the previous chapters you’ll probably notice during your read that this chapter didn’t go so much on the topic of religion, but the reason for that is because the chapter title is the topic and which speaks out to all and sought by all (especially by religion)… and also that this chapter hopes to have compacted yet broadened the understanding of the meaning of life.
I know that by the end of this chapter you still found a lot of holes left open and thought that I haven’t managed to face certain topics about religion or answer important questions during all 5 chapters either at all or not clearly, but that’s actually the message I’m trying to bring; in the end it’ll all be up to you and you alone to seek enlightenment about the topic of religion and faith on your own and that you regrow your knowledge and awareness about this topic as much as possible; not just about your own faith and religion but also grow an understanding about the function of others’ faiths and religion, if not all in general, in an effort to understand each other much better. All I’m doing is lending a push from here on.

I generally find religious people to being more as pantheists rather than dogmatics; it’s just that they’re only convinced that the dogmas of their faith are part of what makes their god as God. Of course the people before the 17th century never knew about the term yet, but many people’s concepts of god, mainly among monotheists, are frankly a Spinozistic god; a higher being who is both matter and thought and whose universe is deterministic.
On another note I would probably have to agree of that it’s slightly glum that the majority of modern scientists disclaim religion based upon their profession’s aims (believing in the existence of what’s provable). But in all fairness, they’re practically the ones who are doing most of the discovering for the benefit of everyone, as well as for everyone’s knowledge and awareness.

I strongly think we must all revise certain things, if not all, to not misunderstand the meaning of life and existence. Religion, especially with its age-old doctrines and beliefs, needs to be re-revised and pushed to motion to be updated, if possible, by the very people who want to share its true message unto others.
There are certainly a lot of things one can learn and receive from all the religions in the world, but sadly ignorance is probably the worst and saddest human attribute there is... and in my most humble of opinion, religion (in general) and atheism both strongly advocates of it; religion shows ignorance to reason by standing behind the rationalities of their faith and letting it think for them instead of what they themselves can think for their own… and atheism turns a blind eye to what can't be provable.

Let us believe instead in the hoping of discovering God some day, not jump to conclusions in order to convince people (either by force, fear or false hopes) of that their conclusions are the ones most reasonable than the others’ conclusions. Until we discover God, or God reveals Itself to us in the most undeniable form… we should keep steady on our toes to not err prematurely.

I'll end this long 5-chapter series on the topic of religion by sharing one of my favorite reflections of all time coming from one of my greatest inspirations of all time, Carl Sagan. Nobody could've put the meaning of our life and existence better than he did.


To You the reader, my friend, thank you for following up to this point. I hope it wasn't a waste of your time.

Yours of the utmost and deepest sincerity,
-A.C. Fredriksson

(if) There is a God!

To whom this may concern – Chapter 4/5

Foreword

I deeply apologize for another yet long hiatus; this will be the last hiatus… I promise! I’ve been busy with moving to a new apartment, studies and also working on my first book-projects (and perhaps a pinch of depression as well) that I haven’t found much room for finishing the final pieces, and I wanted to put as much vital insights as possible on all my pieces so I don’t feel like I’ve left out anything (some chapters will be updated with additional add-ons later on) because this topic is epically thick and almost never-ending. Making them compact like I’m doing so that generally everyone can understand is quite the hard work.

And this time I vow to finish off and post the final chapter this week as well so there’s no need to wait long again and so that I can finally cross this topic off to move on with one less thing on my plate.

I guess there’s no need for me to put any more emphasis in the foreword about the topic since I believe you’ve caught my drift after the first three chapters. Otherwise if you’ve just opened this up and missed or haven’t read any of the previous chapters I suggest you go check up on them before reading this chapter.

Congratulations! …now what?!

Imagine you’re doing whatever it is you might be doing on any given day; Working. At school. Cleaning the house. Mowing the lawn. Plowing the fields. Planting at the rice-field. Traveling. Reading a book at the park. Attending a funeral. Giving birth. Having supper with your family. On a date at the cinemas. Rocking in your chair and looking at old family photo-albums. Robbing a bank or a store. Plotting a terrorist attack. Operating on a patient. Milking the cows. Praying at a church/mosque/temple. At your sports/martial-arts practice. Drowning your depression at the pub. Standing on the edge of a cliff/building/bridge or on the train tracks to top yourself… and et cetera et cetera.

The list could go on and on for there are so many people; coming from such vast varieties of background, choices and mindsets with even vaster varieties of activities in this world. Then out of the sudden blue you hear word; probably from the breaking-news public announcement from the radio/television, calls or text messages from friends/family, or read about it on people’s Facebook status or twits on Twitter, people running out of their homes and take into the streets as if in total disarraying chaos because of the news they’ve come across… of that God, It’s almighty self, finally showed Itself to the World!

[Pause for heavy reflections]


How about that… wouldn’t that be the greatest thing of all time?

A religious person would undoubtedly praise the moment as the greatest, for they finally can be assured that there is a higher being. Even an atheist would attest to it being so. And an agnostic would finally have mind’s clarity about the decision to believe in a higher being.

The whole world would celebrate this easing moment; fireworks, confetti, trumpets, cheers and cries of joy… whatever it is that we do to celebrate, picture that picture… in all the faces of this planet that is populated. It’s like what those cinematic Hollywood and Disney happy-endings have always depicted.

Finally, we can all live happily ever after.

Or… can/will we?


i) Why God Won’t Show Itself To Us Just Yet

Given the situation that God does show Itself (let’s assume that it is one being and not several gods that appear), how will people generally respond to the appearance and what life-altering things are at stake? We cannot just assume that it will all be fade-to-black with a fairy-tale happy ending; what comes at an end must be followed by a new beginning.

Even if we’d all be happy that a higher being showed itself, we all won’t be all that too happy; for all our questions that have been lingering in our minds unanswered will now resurface and take a demanding tone to be answered; now we finally know we have someone who can answer them.

Why didn’t You answer my prayers? How come was I an orphan and not blessed with the gift of family like everyone I know? How come did You allow some people to be blind/deaf? Why didn’t You stop Your creations from killing each other through cruelties such as wars? Can You bring back my lost loved ones so I may spend time with them once again? Are we alone in this universe? Is there such a thing as parallel universes? Does Heaven and Hell exist? Did You create mankind just as experiments? What’s Our PURPOSE? What’s Your PLAN for mankind, if You even have one? Are You the only god or are there more of You “people”?

The list of questions and prayers can be a thousand per person (an approximate estimation), and with a world population of nearly 7 billion… 7 billion simultaneous questions is tough enough to handle for a single person, imagine a thousand times more will be flung at you, but if a higher being can handle them is still and forever will be a mystery which we can only hypothesize about. If the higher being can handle to answer all questions and answer peoples’ prayers then It is an omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing) being. But even if God is omnipotent and omniscient, there will still be disappointments and misery among people just like before the stated God-revealed-Itself scenario; for we’d then have to struggle against understanding and coping with It’s PLAN or in other words God’s Divine Plan… whether or not the plan is convenient for us all, just a few of us or none at all.

Then again, another issue we’d have to think about is which God does appear; will it be the Catholic, the Christian, the Muslim or the Jewish god? Or will it be a collection of several gods that will appear such as the Hindu, the Ancient Greeks with Zeus as overlord and dozens of sub-gods, Ancient Egyptian with Ra, the Norse with such gods as Thor and Odin, Joseph Smith of the Mormons, Xenu of the Scientologists, Buddha, Shiva, Ganesh… or perhaps a collective presentation of all the gods that ever came to mankind’s religious understanding, wouldn’t that be great then… having ALL gods present at the same time (such as the aforementioned lot)? Everyone can be slightly content then of not having chosen the wrong god/religion.

For the issue that will cause global depression of having a god showing itself would be that of having picked the wrong religion; the ones who happened to have chosen correctly will run the tempting risk of gloating or boasting their superiority over the majority that weren’t in the same religious god, and that majority will then chose to either convert to the proper religion or not; leading to a high risk of mass suicides all over the world due to disappointment and depression over unawarely believing strongly in nothing all their lives.

And the segregation will be even clearer, if not stronger, than before God decided to show Itself.


ii) Prayers versus the Divine Plan

There are many paradoxes, contradictions and dilemmas within religion (in general), but the one practical thing that I’ve found to be one of the most vague and oblivious to people’s logic is the collaboration of prayers alongside believing in a divine plan; just like dancing at a party wearing a sneaker on one foot and a fancy high-heel on the other… it doesn’t make sense outside of the party for it’ll make people think you’re either stupid or blind or both, but it’ll work at the party anyways because it’s a party and at parties people become oblivious to the obvious when intoxicated, and you’ll get to see other intoxicated people do or wear things that don’t make sense either. But they take the party wherever they go and are constantly intoxicated; ergo most people are still oblivious to the obvious, even the ones who are not religious and don’t denounce the influence of a divine plan at the same time as occasionally pray due to an intuition or a feeling.

Has anyone even begun to think of the thick red line between prayers and God’s plan?

With the use of God’s Plan there are no needs for prayers; because everything that occurs, occurred and will occur already is according to the Divine Plan… making prayers an unauthorized method like trying to put a Betamax tape into a Blu-Ray disc player.

If prayers were allowed to interfere with God’s Plan it’d be truly annoying to be God not catching any break because people keep messing up The Plan (for a modern practical example and experience of this, go play The Sims and take on the role as god).

And as for prayers, how can one be so certain they work? It’s a nice and comforting feeling when something you’ve prayed for went your way but it cannot be viable for everyone because it worked for you. A person who’s not religious in any way and doesn’t pray can do equally well at an exam as someone who is religious and prayed to do well at that exam.

One other thing about the collaboration of God’s Plan and prayers among people is the instant automatic switch between the two; for example, people praying for the salvation of a person’s life (either they know of them in person or not) who’s health is hovering between life and death after a horrible accident.

-Scenario A: Despite the intense prayers from that person’s close loved ones, the doctors weren’t able to keep that person from bleeding to death. A life lost is always hard to take for the loved ones, but nevertheless they must come to terms and accept it sooner or later. They might even reflect that they didn’t pray hard enough and blame themselves, and later on they wave it off as God had other plans and that it was his/her time. Perhaps blame the doctors as well for being incompetent and not thinking about how much critical time they had to work on the patient from the moment that person got injured to getting rushed to the hospital (circumstances play a major role for life-savers such as doctors).

-Scenario B: The doctors were able to save the person’s life and the loved ones are thankful to God for hearing their prayers, instead of putting all the thankful praises to the doctors for being the heroes.

To become a doctor or even be in the medical field takes a whole lot of work, dedication and patience… added with the pile of years of hard work and studies one must endure just to be entitled Doctor, not even forgetting the amount of social life and free-time they must sacrifice to get to where they want to be. And all of that swiped aside instantly in favor of a higher being’s plan or hearing of prayers… ain’t that a tad bit insensitive for the doctors, if not a figurative slap in their faces?

We have a longing to let out our utmost gratitude when we ourselves or a loved one survived a life-changing happening; for instance during the time my step-father was still alive he was rushed to the hospital on several occasions because he had strokes, when the doctors told us later that he was fine I was more than happy because I loved him dearly and he was the only father-figure I had other than my grandfather, losing him would make my world collapse somewhat. I really wanted to thank heaven for keeping him alive and intuitively that’s what I did, even if I didn’t know if there were people up there in heaven that heard my prayers. Either way, the first and immediate reflex I had was to thank any higher being who saved my step-father.

The other period in my life where I felt most gratitude to have been kept alive was when I was just a small boy and was in a drowning incident with two others. My body was totally filled with water and I’ve been down under water for a long period of time but was fortunately saved by a neighbor along with the other younger kid. I was considered dead on the spot, now imagine an alternative life-story where you’ve never met me (I’ll write about this episode some time soon after the topic of religion because it’s a long story on its own).

A prayer is like a scratch-lottery ticket: a million people can buy the tickets but the mega-big prizes are only distributed to a few tickets whereas there are so many minor-prizes which will make you feel great that you’ve won something; either the equivalent to the same amount of prayer you’ve given or double that, maybe even triple… but still you’ll keep on wanting more in the end. In this given logic there is no such thing as an omnipotent God, for then God would be able to cure all people whom have a piece or several pieces of body parts missing like a leg, an arm or others, and have those missing parts re-grown back.

The hypothetical God is either selective of the people It chooses to save, making The Plan for us others who are not according to The Plan obsolete, or perhaps God’s not omnipotent.

For those who say “God works in mysterious ways” or that “It’s a faith thing”, I will continue in a short moment about that.

So simply, either you believe in Prayers or in God’s Plan… or neither.

Here’s a very humorous clip from the late George Carlin at his very best on one of my favorite verbal tirades about religion (skip to 6:13 - 7:18 for his rant about the Prayer vs Divine Plan logic)


CHALLENGE

Reflect for yourself and pick which tool of faith to continue with, affective immediately: Prayer or the Divine Plan… you may only choose one.

If still unsure, go and try one week having the policy and philosophy of Prayer and then another week using the policy and philosophy of God’s Plan.

In the end, you must choose only one of them and continue your life with that choice.

(The bailout option is: neither of them.)


iii) What’s God Got to Do, Got to Do With It?


“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God.”

-Epicurus


I bet the thing that’s been on some of your minds all throughout this chapter has been “The logic of God is different from our logic.” Now, I cannot vouch for God, I don’t even know anyone can… other than claiming it’s a faith thing.

This is the final resort of anybody who cannot respond to all the illogical, hypocritical, paradoxical and misleading logic of religion (especially organized religion).

A physically baseless clinging to faith as the ultimate backup point is not helpful, by any means even useful, if not advocating arrogance and laziness of accepting the truth. Although we all claim that we one way or another have faith, all that really is is mere intuition, simple as that. We do not know, period!

For some reversal changes it’d be humorous to see or hear star athletes gladly thank their god for losing important games, or landmine victims praising their god for now being limbless all of their lives.

How can one even begin to have faith in an omniscient and omnipotent God when you go to a third world country (or see images from there) and see with your own eyes the miseries of people who live in the worst of conditions … and also find that they are the ones praying the most and intensively? How about the third world nations who have the highest rates of religious followers but are the ones consistently being helplessly punished by Mother Nature’s wrath?

In the given logic, they should be the ones getting front-row seats to God’s prayers-come-true policy… and even get a boost with their economy and development, if not being the leading powerful nations in the world.

For people who still believe in the biblical beginning of the world and existence, the first books of the bible already denounces the omniscience and omnipotence of God, for Adam and Eve were tricked by the snake (the devil in disguise) into breaking God’s rule of not eating anything from the Tree of Knowledge. All the while when Adam and Eve were biting off the fruit from the forbidden tree and the discussion that led to it, where was God all along? Had God been omniscient and omnipotent God would’ve already have known all about what would happen before, during and after thus preventing the devil-snake from talking to Adam and Eve thus prevented them from biting off the fruit of the forbidden tree… unless, God wanted them to. This just advocates that the Divine Plan is being used, but that God, whom in this logic is not all-knowing and all-powerful, had intended for mankind to be miserable in the first place… and there’s nothing you nor I could do but to accept of this so-called Divine Plan.

We have been doing fine without God revealing Itself so far, there’s clearly a gargantuan room for improvements in the way we run the world… but if there is a god who won’t show itself due to this logic then that god has only allowed mankind the gift of freedom of choice, that is if God exists and is also able and willing.

All we simply need is to be nicer to each other and treat each other with respect. Religion is not obliged to claim dibs on morality and virtues. We’re all simply afraid of death, but we shouldn’t give in to stories or myths about the afterlife that comes from other people’s delusions or hallucinations.

I’m not going as far as to claiming that there is no god, but if there was a god who allowed all of the horrible things mankind had to go through… one thing’s certain though, you can cross off Omniscient and Omnipotent off God’s Curriculum Vitae.

One final point that’s probably scratching the surface of your head and wanting to ask me is: What if you’re wrong?

I stand for myself by boomeranging that same question back at you: what if YOU are wrong… and also, will it matter much? If I am wrong then so be it, I’ll accept a wrongdoing. If I burn in hell as well then so be it, hell might be an unpleasant place but I’ll worry about that when I get there… if that place even exists, but for now I am more concerned about what’s real and beautiful in this world and also what’s really happening in front of my eyes thus what impact I can make to this world while I still can. Deciding whether or not there is a god and insuring one’s own spot in heaven should be the last peas on our plates when we see people being collateral damage or casualties of war, dying from famine and affected by natural disasters. It is time we open our eyes to what’s real now, not to what we feel is real.

Live your life to the fullest and allow others to have that very same freedom, not prevent them by claiming you’ll burn in hell or that you are an infidel for doing certain things that might not be acceptable in the social or chosen religious norm. We are simple learning beings, beings that all through our lives learn from mistakes by seeing patterns and determining the best actions and outcome; and even if we make another mistake by that choice we just made poorly… we’ll still learn from it afterwards. A curios child who never knew that touching burning firewood is very painful will learn not to do so again. Some lessons though are clearly more vital and hard learned than others.

The purpose of religion is, in my deepest opinion and reflection, a big lesson in life we must learn from, sooner rather than later. Not for the attesting of God’s existence, but for the mistakes man is driven to by it.


“Wherever there are facts of any kind to be known, one thing is certain; not all people will discover them at the same time or understand them equally well…
…Wherever there are right and wrong answers to important questions, there will be better or worse ways to get those answers, and better or worse ways to put them to use.” –from Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith” (p.145)