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====== Who I am and what I do ======

Over many years, I have developed my own philosophy of life. It has been a great journey, and again and again I have found that I have been wrong. I do not find my failures to be a weakness, but, rather, my greatest strengths, for they show that I am in a process of growing, and "becoming" -- that I wasn't _always_ wise, but made the conscious choice to become more wise. 

I am not sure how to format this document, so I will just start writing about the important parts and let everything flow from it.

===== Knowing God =====

==== Pascal's Wager ====

If you have a Christian background, you may know of Pascal's Wager. If not, here is the gist of it: Pascal argued that there were two options: either God exists, or God doesn't exist. If God does not exist, it doesn't matter if he follows God or doesn't follow God, since the outcome is the same -- nothing. If, however, God _does_ exist, the man who follows God gains infinitely (in Heaven), and the man who does not follow God loses infinitely (in Hell). Thus, it is the safer "wager" to follow God.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that there are some serious problems with Pascal's Wager. Indeed, even in Pascal's time, people realized that there were problems with it. (Well, technically, _after_ Pascal's time -- the manuscript including the wager was published after his death). It may, however, surprise you that I actually do believe that there is some value in Pascal's Wager... but I think that the conclusion of the argument is flawed.

Many people don't know that Pascal's point was that it was equally likely that God does exist as it was that God doesn't exist. To Pascal, it was a 50/50 chance, a coin flip. On this, I agree with Pascal, and I will tell you why.

The most vexxing problem for all learned men is how the world came to be. I contend, like Pascal, that there are two ways the world might have come to be -- either the world came from nothing, or God made it. The problem is that neither option seems likely. Indeed, both options seem so incredibly unlikely that they border on the absurd.

Briefly, of course, there is the absurdity of belief that God made the world, which I assume is obvious to all those that approach the problem in good faith. Even Christians recognize the absurdity, as they rely on faith, not sight, as the foundation of their belief. The greatest problem is this: Where is God? Why did the "magic" of creation happen once in the past, and never again? Where did God go after the creation of the world, and after all the stories were written? Where are the miracles? Where is the creation _ex nihilo_ in our modern times? Why is God silent when we speak to him? 

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 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