There is a LOT of repitition, bad grammar, etc, but I think only Fairy reads this at all anymore, so off it goes to the internet world, even in this most base and unedited form. Oh, 'tis rambling for sure, but duly copied and pasted nonetheless. And more with the disclaimers . . .:
This is how my beliefs have changed through the years:
First, I believed in a God that apportioned order to the universe, then I realized that people’s suffering really was a testament to there being no God or a God who had less control over the universe than the Catholics attribute to him, or a God who allows entropy to happen and does not divinely intervene.
More reasons why even a supposed God sucks: because he chose to create beings lesser than himself, which means this supposed God is not the type of person I can respect. I will always long for something higher than myself and have a deep belief that something higher than myself is better for me to be around. Also, if I am amongst those lower in intelligence than myself, I feel obligated to open their eyes, and/or have a wish for them to become more intelligent. I cannot respect a God that chooses to create beings less powerful and intelligent than himself, and then demands that we honor and worship him. If he is only a God that is infinitely-more-powerful than humans, and therefore unable to create beings as or more powerful than himself, than mankind has no business worshipping him, for we are on the brink of surpassing him. On the other hand, if God is all powerful, then he has chosen to bequeath us with only a minimal amount of the intelligence he could have bequeathed us with, created us and other beings such that we must compete against one another to survive, and in every way created us as lesser beings than himself. If this is true, than not only do we have no obligation to worship God, but we may view God much as others view the devil.
The point here is that I believe in intelligence above all things, and if God is not intelligent enough to have created a more entropic, less violent, universe, than he is not worth worshipping. There can be no God that specifically created a universe such that people are forced to suffer, because I do not believe that any being can exist such that it is both intelligent enough to create a universe as complex as ours and cruel enough to make it as harsdh
My belief is that there is no higher power. I was disappointed to discover, when I was younger, that the system we have for labeling animals is entirely arbitrary. I had thought that our system of genus:species:class:philo:animal was “divine,” that there was some way of “finding out” what class an animal went into, but in fact, there is no reason to believe that animals are organized, or should be organized at all, it is only that people have decided arbitrarily to classify them. People only search for similar details in various animals in order to label them, and there is no reason to believe that the system we chose is correct, or that the animals we think are linked are really linked at all. This got me to thinking about many things, and I realized that many truths that we accept to be true are not universally true, or timelessly true. There is no such thing as an infallible truth, because humans are infallible, and we are the ones who create the truths. For example, people think of math as being universally and timelessly true, that math would exist as it does regardless of human discovery and/or influence, but I believe that humans could have just as easily come up with another kind of math entirely.
This idea of there being no infallible truth is very related to Gardiner’s essay “On Wonder”, and, like Gardiner, I am inspired by this idea. To me, there is great beauty in there being no higher power, that there will always be something in the universe that no one and nothing knows, including God. This means that humans have an infinite number of things to discover, that infinity as a concept does exist, and can exist, in this way. Like Gardiner, I believe that the universe as we know is unknowable, but that this should not at all discourage us from trying to know as much as we can. Furthermore, although I belive the universe is purely entropic, I do not believe we are mistaken in trying to lend some extropy to the universe. I worship two things: intelligence and the infinitely unknowable.
I also believe in a higher power. By higher power, however, I mean a more intelligent human. I am so passionate about language because, until we discover a way to literally read each other’s minds or handle data transfer the way a computer does, it is the most effective communication that humans have for these things. Even our images have to be supplemented with written or verbal language in order to “transfer” an idea to another human being. Humans need to become as effective verbal and written communicators as possible, so that we learn enough about one another’s thinking process in order to develop a better and more effective method of sharing data, which would be the way a computer shares data.
This belief in a higher intelligence springs from an idea that we should have faith in other people, instead of in a supposed God. There is some evidence that humans “are wired” to have faith, but I belief that this faith is misplaced in ideas of spirits and God. To me, there is only the faith that we can have, and this is in each other or ourselves. However, because I both worship intelligence, and trust in humanity, I trust humanity to become more intelligent. Because I 1) trust humanity to become more intelligent, and 2) believe that, although “God” does not exist, that there is a possibility of a higher power existing in the future, then I must believe that humans will one day create a species that will be vastly more intelligent than ourselves. This new species is my “higher power.” But furthermore, I like the idea of “higher powers,” each created by the species just before it and each infinitely more intelligent than the species just before it, until evolution speeds up so that each new generation is like an entire new species.
However, I don’t believe that we will ever know everything, because I believe in changeable truths. Truths can be guided by nothing other than entropy because our universe was created in entropy and goes through cycles of order and mass disorder. As stars explode and their tiny pieces are floating about in entropy, but then gather and form new masses, I believe that laws of math and science will begin to do the same; that our laws of science and math will be periodically shattered such that we see no patterns in the universe for awhile, and then other patterns will appear.
These are my beliefs:
- intelligence is the ultimate “good” and the goal that all humans should strive for
o we are the higher power of our own age, a fact that should be changed as soon as possible with the creation of beings smarter than ourselves, that we may have something better than ourselves to be our role-model
- the entropic nature of the universe we know makes our universe unknowable in its entirety, if for no other reason than because even when we know all truth, truth will change
o the versatility and changing nature of truth should by no means deter people from trying to discover truth
o this idea should inspire people to realize that, because infinity exists in the sense of an infinite amount of things that we can never know, that perhaps an infinitely long life can exist
• Immortal people are not at all likely to “get bored” because there will always be an infinite number of things to discover
I feel very comfortable with these beliefs, with the idea of a belief in humanity and in caring for humanity.
I have no problem with religion for those in whom religion inspires a love of fellow man or any other form of “goodness.” However, I do see religion as a crutch that will one day be entirely eliminated and replaced with a basic sense of altruism and trust of fellow humans.
Note: all of this has been highly inspired by READING and also slightly by Sir Michael Anissimov. I have been afraid of adopting his beliefs, because adopting the beliefs of another person simply out of love is SILLY and pretentious. However, as I admired him from the beginning for his intelligence, I make no apologies for now adopting some form of his beliefs as my own, especially as I did so not as a result of conversations with Michael, but mainly as a result of reading much of the material he has read.
A short history of my beliefs (because I find it interesting and I’d like to encourage others to be as open and as exacting with their beliefs):
As a child, I was Catholic, and highly interested in learning as much as I could about Catholicism. I wavered many times, especially upon entering middle school, when it came to my faith. However, I did make my confirmation in my eighth grade year, because I wanted order(!) Sometime just prior to this time period, I had wanted to be a nun, and thought of revolutionizing the church to make it better. I still admire those who take on this task.
I had already been playing around with Buddhist concepts, Taoism, etc, when I discovered Camus (thanks to Mr. Crotwell, my English teacher) my Freshman year of high school. Enter existentialism stage left. Spent the rest of my high school years identifying myself as a Catholic without a basic belief in God, but with a very strong belief in the Catholic community I had been raised in (All Hallows church, essentially). As described above, I had discovered that our scientific theories and laws were continuously changing, which, to me, meant that humans were lending a sense of order to a universe that doesn’t really have any order. I also began to doubt that our mathematical concepts were entirely universal. I attribute much of my eye-opening to Dr. Milestone, my biology teacher at the time.
I went through an existential phase in which I believed in the transcendental concept of nature as perfection, spurred on by Camus, Thoreau, Emerson, Dickenson, etc. This lead me away from an emphasis in belief of an afterlife and towards the concept that we should spend our time on Earth seeking to aid humanity. This lasted throughout high school, though, as I said, I continued to identify myself as Catholic. I wasn’t ready to let go of something that had been such a huge part of my life and that continues to be a huge part of my family.
Although I consider Freudian theory to be primarily bullshit, further reading of Freud (spurred on by close analysis of Hamlet, courtesy of yet another influential teacher, Mr. Kim) did introduce the concept the basic impulses of sex and aggression are things we should not embrace as natural, as in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, but things we should try to suppress or eradicate entirely from the human brain. (Not that I have anything against sexual pleasure, but I do find fault with human aggression, greed, and all other negative effects of having been bred by evolution to compete with other human beings for life).
Leaving my parent’s house helped me to find my own belief. Also, discovering the genius that is Martin Gardiner aided me in a realization that refraining from a belief in God or Gods of any sort does not necessitate a proclivity from faith. My faith is a faith that humanity can take evolution into its own hands and that humans can learn to create the type of paradise that we have heretofore associated with heaven. I do not deny faith, because I believe that having faith in people is good for both the believer and the person/people in whom the believer has faith. It is only God and religion that I cannot accept for myself or as a part of what I believe. |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
isentise's journal
