Are you a believer?

All I can say is that I do not and cannot know the circumstances that led to my consciousness. The physical body I inhabit and the planet upon which I walk are an abundant vessel for this consciousness, supplied by some agency that is beyond my control and outside of my personal knowledge.

There are arguments between those who favor evolution as an explanation of all that lives and those who favor a divine entity as one who created this rich environment and our overactive mentalities. There are those who think that these arguments have substance. I do not.

I am awed by the possibility that I am part some greater whole than is apparent on Earth. I am equally awed by the thought that I might not be part of anything beyond the apparent senselessness of our daily struggle for bread, water, mental and physical procreation.

The only certain knowledge that I have is that I cannot be sure how thoughts occur to me nor where they originate. My efforts to generate clear thought are merely those of removing obstacles. They are not generative; I cannot set about to manufacture a line of thinking as I might, say, set about constructing an article of clothing. All I can do is to follow the thinking that presents itself to myself, assuming that I can understand its merit and remember the point long enough to make note of it.

Scientists tell us that the physics of our known universe indicates that less than 0.00000001 percent (sic - some very small number) of our personal space actually contains 'matter.' We are beings largely composed of empty space; our bodies are held up by mutually repelling forces of elementary particles standing aground the same mutually repelling force fields.

This is extraordinary, and should, one would think, lead a person to consider the equally extraordinary gulf between our everyday experience of human existence and its physical reality.

It occurs to me that this may be the only subject worthy of religious examination. This massive discrepancy in our perceptive apparatus indicates that we are apparently beings inhabiting force fields rather than 'solidness' and that we do not generally relate to this fact. Thus, humans, by this one fact, can be defined as belief generators, living in the belief that we are situated with a solid "physical" reality.

Once this is established, notions of higher beings are just more of the same, generated by a talent we cannot suppress nor avoid. There may be truth to these beliefs or not. Whether we conceive of personal gods or impersonal natural forces, they are constructed as part of the act of consciousness and as unavoidable as life/death itself.

So, yes, I am a believer, just as you are.

Entrophy

Several converging threads of my life have together dampened my urge to write things for public consumption in this blog. The near death of a family member coincided with what I experienced as another deep disappointment with a beloved religious body. These, among other things, have left me without a place to stand, in terms of public discussion and inquiry. I can find little energy to offer thoughts, questions, and opinions. I do not sense that the endeavor will be fruitful.

Maybe this is the best place to start. I don't know, frankly. What I do know is that there is a better way for all of us to arrange our lives, our medical care, our politics, our economics, our nourishment, our use of resources, our interactions with each other. I think that this way is to tell the truth, to feel our disappointments, to give up competition, to feel our imagined humiliations, to stare into the face of the unknown. Simple things, done simply. Genuine things, done genuinely.

Maybe this is also the best place to end. I don't know, frankly.