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--- philosophy:whoiam [2024/10/21 14:21] – created Owen Mellema
+++ philosophy:whoiam [2024/10/22 13:23] (current) – [What is God like?] Owen Mellema
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 There is, on the other hand, the absurdity of the belief that God _did not_ make the world. This is absurd for three reasons:
   - How is it that something can come from nothing? If everything in the universe is the consequence of something else, then what was the original movement? If there was no God, there was no original movement.
-  - How is it that the Earth came to be? In the last several decades
+  - How is it that the Earth came to be? In the last several decades we have advanced in our ability to peer into the cosmos. We placed telescopes like Hubble and James Webb into space, far away from the light pollution on the ground. We sent probes millions of miles away from earth to photograph distant worlds. And, despite all of it, we have never, ever found anything except boring, barren, inhospitable wastelands.  This leads us to the remarkable conclusion - life, in *any* form, cannot exist except on Earth. Earth is *special*. It is, as some have jokingly remarked, "God's favorite planet".
+  - How is it that organic matter can be conscious? No one knows what consciousness is. It is furthermore absurd that the ability to think and perceive is a result of evolution, because of the great complexity of our minds. Consider that there are more connections between neurons in the mind than there are are stars in the observable universe.
+This is what I believe: If this question does not seriously confuse you, if you are absolutely confident in your understanding of how the universe came to be, you simply don't understand the problem well enough. You have not really let yourself ponder the mystery. If anything will condemn you to the fires of Hell, it is this -- to shut yourself out from true understanding, out of fear of the consequences of knowing.
+This, indeed, was my first folly on the path to wisdom -- never setting out on the journey in the first place. I was a Christian, which is to say that I knew both everything and nothing about the world. I was so sure of who God was that I didn't have any questions about it. Well, that isn't true, for I *did* have questions, but I just pushed them away. I did realize that there were problems with what I believed, on a subconscious level. I was uncomfortable when people talked about alternative ideas. I didn't consider the ideas except to dismiss them on the shallowest possible grounds.
+Yet, at the same time, in the context of my Christian faith is where I first fell in love with God. God was real because I felt it in my heart, and I felt it in my soul. I felt, at times, that God was in the room with me. I felt that my life had a purpose and a direction. God, it was true, was my greatest love -- to consider the alternative perspective was to risk losing my greatest love.
+It is this fearful attachment that the Buddhists call "grasping", and it is this that they consider the cause of all man's suffering on Earth. They believe that this fearful and selfish attachment spoils and ruins the thing that it is a target of. The classic example is ice cream. I love to eat ice cream, in the moment it is delicious, and a blissful desert. But, if I grasp for it, I might gobble up more and more ice cream, and eventually, I won't even be enjoying the ice cream anymore, I will have a stomach ache, brain freeze. The eating of ice cream will become my own personal Hell.
+I don't know if I believe that this is the root of *all* suffering, I tend to think that Buddhists take these things a bit too far. But I certainly think there is some wisdom in this. The joy and vigor of my relationship with God became a twisted and horrible thing. I was beset with internal conflict and paranoia.
+Part of the reason I am writing this essay is because I think there are other people on this same journey that I am on. From time to time in my life, a "spiritual teacher" has entered my life and told me exactly what I needed to hear, and pushed me in the direction I needed to go in. I think this is the way that God works in the world. If you are reading this, it may be because you need to hear it, because you are struggling with this very thing. So, if this is you, listen closely:
+Leaving my faith was an extremely painful journey, I'm not going to mince words by telling you that it was certainly the hardest and most heartbreaking thing that I have ever done. What I can tell you, however, is that I followed the path far enough to see the benefits of the heartache. My faith in God is different now -- much, much different -- but it is a more perfect faith, a much more joyous and vibrant faith, because I am actually confident in it now. That is to say, I am not afraid I am going to lose it. Like Jacob, I wrestled the angel of God and demanded it's blessing, and I received it.
+Furthermore, and this is something you won't believe, but I think that I am a better person for it. I am proud of the person that I have become, I am proud of who I am, and I am proud of what I do. I am proud because I am *confident* in the way I live my life.
+==== What is God like? ====
+If God is real, is there anything we can say about him? I think there are a few things.
+Firstly, does God hate humans, or does he love humans? Or is he ambivalent towards humans? This is a reasonable question, because there are many bad things that happen to humans. Some people think that the entirety of life, from beginning to end, is a cruel sadistic joke. They think that God made humans to form attachments to things and then to have them ripped away. They think that humans have a capacity to suffer, because God made them to suffer, because he hates humans so much.
+Despite it being a reasonable question, I think we can quickly dispense with the idea that God hates humans, by the very fact that we exist. Why would God create something if he knew he was just going to hate them? It would be an exceptionally foolish thing to do, so foolish in fact that it seems entirely unlikely.
+Secondly I find it unlikely that God is ambivalent towards humans. As I mentioned above, as far as anyone knows, there isn't any life anywhere else in the universe, which means that the Earth is the most interesting place in the universe. And the most interesting thing about the Earth are humans, because humans are able to do so many different things, and have now become so powerful they rival any natural force.
+Could it be that God just really likes Earth, but doesn't like humans, per se? Yes, I suppose it's possible, but again, the existence of humans is an easily solvable problem, and humans create many problems for nature.
+So, therefore, I think that God loves us. Furthermore, I believe that