Do you believe in God?

I had a conversation recently where  I was asked this question.

I didn’t like being forced to respond in a binary yes/no fashion which is overly simplistic, so instead  I responded, “Yes I do, but differently from you.”

Intelligent Design Question

I’ve been thinking about this idea advanced by some Christians of “Intelligent Design”, where the basic thought is that because we appear to be designed we must be the product of a designer. Seems like a sensible enough idea, and supports the Christian idea of a Creator and a Creation.

As I reflect on this idea, my question is “Who designed the Designer?”

If Christians reply to this question with “No-one, God is outside of time and space and simply IS”, then I could just as easily say this reasoning could apply to everything, including the known universe.

If I remove the duality and simply view everything as being part of All That Is, then “the Designer” and “the Designed” become one and the same and the question dissolves into nothing (or everything!).

Works for me.

the truth … a truth

A few days ago I was wandering through our local shopping mall and I bumped into a member of my former church. He knew I had “fallen away” and so used the opportunity to enthusiastically tell me (again) of how he had been miraculously healed by Jesus a few years back.

In his mind, this was a clear proof that what he believes is the truth.

In my mind, this was clear proof that what he believes is a truth.

Discussion Group Meeting #3

Once I finally got this unruly lot to get onto the actual topic of the evening (that took about an hour), the question we considered was “how do we decide or judge what is right or wrong?”, and the answers boiled down to a surprisingly simple set of ideas (for the record, all the other bits and bobs we discussed were also wonderfully interesting):

1) Does doing this (having an affair, stealing, lying, whatever) make an accurate statement of Who I Am? Does it express a grander version of myself and who I aspire to be?

2) Am I prepared to accept the consequences of this action?

3) If I be still and listen to my heart, my feelings will tell me the truth. Call it conscience or whatever you want, in reality if we are prepared to admit it the fact is we “know” darn well whether or not what we are doing is right by listening to our own heart.

So there you have it. Another of the great questions of life the universe and everything solved for you all. 

What’s in a name?

Consider a chap who is just standing there minding his own business.

One person says “That man is my husband”
Another says “That man is my father”
Another says “That man is an engineer”
Another says “That man is a scoundrel”
Another says “That man is a loyal friend”

What is interesting is that, while these descriptions are very varied, we have no trouble accepting that each is partial description of the whole. We don’t fuss and bother that one persons description is “correct” while anothers is “wrong.”

How strange that so many do not apply the same basic common sense to God who is both All There Is and All There Is Not.

Why is that I wonder?

On Thursdays I play soccer (or football if that makes you happier) and after the game I got chatting with a guy I sort of know about “all this New Age stuff” I’m currently into (a few years ago I would have had a similar conversation only I’d be going on about Christianity). This guy is just your average nice guy. Happy with life. Moseying along, enjoying stuff, just generally OK with his lot. I explained some of the key New Age ideas I’m learning about and he listened carefully, asked some good questions, and really tried to understand what I was on about. But at the end of the conversation he remarked that while he found religious and philosophical discussions of this type interesting, he saw no need to believe in any of this sort of thing for his daily life.

Hmmmm.

That got me thinking. How come he can just get on with his life and not think or worry about “all this stuff” and yet other people (like me) obsess and dwell and dissect and ponder about beliefs and doctrines and truths and wot-not for countless hours, days, months and years?

Why is that I wonder?

PS: Not poor genetic material, please God, not poor genetic material.

Who do you think you are?

“Deciding ahead of time what you choose to be produces that experience.”

“Act as if you are, and you will draw it to you. What you act as if you are, you become.”

(quoted from Conversations with God, Book 3)

If you think “I am an unworthy sinner”, so it is and so you are.

If you think “I am unhappy”, so it is and so you are.

If you think “I am successful”, so it is and so you are.

If you think “I am One with All”, so it is and so you are.

The end of a year, an era, a model.

Tomorrow is the start of a new year, and the start of an exciting new part of my journey.

The picture on the left is a model of a molecule. The coloured spheres represent the nucleii of atoms, and the silver spheres represent the electrons which orbit around them.

No-one has any trouble understanding that this is a model. There are not really tiny little red and blue balls with even tinier little silver balls spinning around them. It’s just a model. Models approximate an underlying reality to which we have no direct access. Our human minds are unable to grasp complex realities directly, so we create models which simplify things to a workable and manageable level. The model helps us to understand that reality by simplifying it to a level that we can grasp. A more accurate model (but also more complex) of electrons, for instance, would portray then not as small hard balls that orbit around the centre of an atom, but more as a fuzzy cloud of energy the totally surrounds the centre of the atom. Harder to visualise, harder to grasp, but also a bit closer to the actual underlying reality that it models. Harder still to grasp if we say that the electrons can be in several places at the same time!

Over the centuries, mankind’s grasp and understanding the reality has progressively increased, and with it the models we use are becoming both more accurate and more complex. There was a time, for instance, when the model used to understand the world was that above the skies where “the heavens”, and below the earth was “the underworld.” Not reality, but a model that was useful at that time. Later on, as our understanding of reality increased, we revised our model. In fact, the earth orbits a star we call the sun, which is itself part of one arm of the vast milky way galaxy, which is itself one of countless galaxies, which is itself … well, our current model runs out that this point!

I have come to the opinion that all religions, Christianity, Islam, New Age, whatever you want, are also models. Approximations of an underlying reality too complex for us to grasp directly. Each model has its relative merits and deficiencies, but each is just a model.

My great liberation of thought that will define 2007 for me is that this was the year I realised that Christianity is just a model, and that for many years I have wrongly believed that it was the truth, not a model of the truth.

It has been said “All models are wrong, some models are useful.” 

It is with great pleasure that I look forward to 2008 as a year of great discovery and growth as I leave behind the old Christian model that no longer serves me, and embrace newer models that God has now revealed to mankind.

So what does matter then?

What would it matter if my doctrine of God, Man and everything was absolutely correct in every way?

What would it matter?

What matters is not that I know or that I believe, but that I do and that I live my life.

What matters is how we express love each day.

That’s what matters.

When you realise it doesn’t matter

I was chatting to a friend today who is a great sceptic and athiest, and also one of the smartest people I know. I asked him when he thought my constant thinking and struggling with/about God would ever come to an end, and he replied “When you realise that it doesn’t matter.”

Hmmmm. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should just get off this endless merry-go-round of trying to sort out this or that doctrine of whatever, and just get on with the business of living my life here and now. Maybe that’s all that matters.