Infinity

Hey there loyal readers...erm... loyal reader...anyone?

Whatever...

I sat down to write a simple reflection paper for one of my classes today and it turned out being what I can only concede as a transformative moment. You know, one of those moments professors are always hoping you will have in their class?

transFORMATIVE, not transFORMER

Well I had one.

We are reading this book, Encountering God, by Diana Eck, which I hope is her name otherwise I will probably fail that paper. It isn't a book that preaches about God or what people should believe. Rather, it is a book about how God exists in other faiths and cultures and one woman's journey that takes her through all of these fascinating topics and ideas. One of these ideas, which I chose to reflect on, was this idea awareness. It had a Hindu preface to it but I can't remember the exact wording and it was very wise sounding.

Like this guy

The whole concept of this awareness is that when you have this experience you suddenly are alert to some...thing that you can't comprehend and yet you know that it is everywhere all the time. Almost anybody with any kind of religious background will jump in and say, "well of course, it's God." To which I'd respond, "it's my epiphany let me tell it."

Then I'd stick my tongue out and pull their hair

Except I think I'm a little smarter than that kid so I'd come across more like this...

Yeah, take it all in

What I'm getting at are the human senses. As it turns out humans have way more than the five they were taught about as kids. For more on other things you were taught that are wrong you can click HERE. Humans have a sense of time, along with a sense of space. That is why you know how far you have to throw that book to hit the light switch and shut off the light without getting out of bed. That is also why you will be aware that you have wasted more time getting out of bed to get the book and try again than if you had just missed once and shut off the light when you got up. Now generally this works pretty standard. When you enter a room you get a basic sense of how big it is and how much time you have spent in it. This is because you can see the limits of the room (its walls and ceiling) and the time is restricted to a small scale.

Now let's put me out in an open field at night. I have a harder time telling how big the field is because its dark and its boundaries are not clearly defined. This lack of spacial awareness also affects my sense of time because space and time are part of the same fabric (says Albert Einstein)

I still haven't reached the difficult part yet because even though its dark, I can make out a horizon. Because of the horizon I still have some sense of space and therefore time. Now, I look up at the starry night sky. If I look up I lose track of the horizon and suddenly it doesn't seem like I'm standing on the earth now. It simply seems like I am surrounded by space. Now, as I look up and see the countless stars a realization comes to me. I stare at those stars and they seem so close, like if I just tried hard enough I could reach out and touch one (and then burst into flames because most stars are really freaking hot). But I know that I can't because those stars are so far away that it took millions of my lifetimes for their light to reach me. As a matter of fact, it took so long for their light to reach me that they could already be gone. I gaze up and it seems like I can see the very darkest places of space, but I can't see what is really there because I'm only human. I am not the Hubble Space telescope.

Look through all of those pictures and the Hubble story is at the end. For more on astounding space things that will give you a sense of awe click HERE.

Did that give you a sense of scale? According to the big bang theory, the universe is forever expanding. Meaning it is getting bigger forever. Now, as I am laying in that field looking up at the night sky, I try to grasp these immense distances and these incomprehensible amounts of time, and I can't, I just can't do it. I can't wrap my head around infinity. I keep trying though and slowly I am filled with this overwhelming sense. Maybe its just gas, but I try to fart and get nothing so that can't be it. The more I stare up into the infinite reaches of space and time the more aware I become of this feeling. My senses have slowly become attuned to feel this incomprehensible time and space. The reason it is overwhelming is because none of my senses know what infinity is. Sure we all know that it means something that goes on forever, but really try to grasp that concept in your head, try to picture forever.

As a human I have a sense of space and time and now my senses are trying to come to terms with infinity. Something they can't do. The interesting idea is that this infinity is always present, but we get distracted in our daily lives by so many different things. All of these things distract our senses. I can connect this to religion by using Jesus. There is a famous story when Jesus tells a rich man that he should give away all of his possessions so that he can become closer to God. Without all of his distractions he can become more attuned to God. The concept is the same. The infinity is always there, surrounding us all the time. We just have to take time adjust to it and to get in tune with it.

The second part of my transformative experience has to do with me. I am aware of this infinite but I am also aware myself on this scale. To put it bluntly, I don't even exist on this scale. I don't even matter in the tiniest bit. There are no words to accurately describe my insignificance. To compare myself to an ant would be an enormous understatement. I am so small in comparison to infinity. Many people might find this idea a little difficult to handle. After all, when was the last time you were told you didn't matter and it was actually true? That could be very depressing, to think that no matter what you do it doesn't matter. To me this is a comforting idea. It doesn't mean that I don't have to work, or that I should give up my goal of having a family and providing them with the best life possible. It just means that no matter how badly I fail at anything or how great I succeed, the universe will just keep on going.

All of this, these weird ideas, these insane distances and times, all of it doesn't stress me out, it just gives me this incredible calm.

Gods and Aliens

Well now, it has been such a long time since I last posted that I think my clothes went out of style.

Not a bad thing

Since my last post I've done much thinking (bad thing) about worldly things and spiritual things. This is probably going to be a more of a vomit post, not that it will smell and cause other people to also make random blog posts, but rather, it will basically be me pouring my thoughts and belief (most of them of a religious nature) out onto this electronic page. If anyone reads this they are welcome to dispute or converse in a civil manner any of my ideas that conflict with their own and if I've led my life well it should be most of them.

Let the brain puking begin!

1. Ignorance and Hate

A while back I was playing a game online and I was talking with some people and enjoying myself when I eventually ended up chatting to a different group of people with vastly different views on the world. This particular group of people were outlandishly racist. Now here is the thing about racism and me. I have heard and retold many of the racist jokes and such but I've never actually come across any single person who legitimately hated another person simply because they were different. So I couldn't really say for sure if these people were extremely racist compared to other racists but they came across as super racist to me. Kind of like trying to explain colors to a person who has been blind all their life. I knew all those colors existed but I had never really experienced some of them.

There's just so many

Lame metaphors aside, this was an eye opening experience for me. These people made some outrageous claims, among them was the claim that president Obama was completely responsible for the state the economy was in. Now, I'm not a huge Obama fan (See previous post) because of

the whole universal healthcare, which puts people like me and my family in charge of taking care of all the lazy people who won't get a job. I don't hate Obama for it and I don't hate any of the people that will inevitably take advantage of the program. Universal healthcare is basically a whore with a heart of gold. There will be the people who are responsible with it and then there will be the people who abuse it until it becomes the kind of decrepit money system the tax system and social security programs have become.

The future...is still kind of hot?

Digression over, I couldn't fathom how these people were able to completely convince themselves that Obama was completely responsible for the economy when it is a generally understood fact that the economy turned bad during Bush's administration. I'm sure that if I had cited that fact they would have had some sort of information or conspiracy theory that refuted it, but I was just so astounded by it that I was at a loss for words. This all leads me to my point.

I can't understand how someone can be that blind to the truth. I'm not saying that I am receptive to the truth, whatever form it may take, and anyone who knows me will tell you the same. But when the truth walks up to you spins you around and then karate chops you across the face you can't just stand their and wonder where that immensely powerful gust of wind just came from and why your face suddenly feels like Chuck Norris just looked at you funny, you have to drop your pride and notice that YOU WERE WRONG!

The truth

It also happens to be completely ludicrous to hate someone based entirely on their looks or differences. Just because someone looks different or has differences does not make them a lesser or worse person than anyone else. This can be evidenced by the fact that despite all the hate these people had for Obama he was clearly better than them. He was the president of one of the most powerful countries in world and they were a bunch of shmucks who I took excessive pleasure from beating in Call of Duty.

This also applies to such topics like religion and science. I had one of my good friends tell me that he once knew (or heard of, can't remember which) a man who was absolutely convinced that the the universe and earth were created in exactly seven days (technically six) and that dinosaurs never existed. Now you might be tempted to shout to yourself, because face it, if you're reading this no one else is around and all the doors are locked, what about all the fossils and such that prove their existence?! Well, he had a perfectly reasonable and well thought out explanation for them. They were all put their by God to test mankind's faith. Apparently God is less like this:

and more like this:

Sounds to me like God is out to trick all of mankind into believing totally made up evidence so that he can deny most of us from heaven. It's not my belief on the matter, but its the interpretation I draw from the beliefs of that man.

Or how about when Bill Nye was booed off stage in Texas? Bill Nye was booed off stage in Waco, Texas upon stating that the "lesser light" was not actually a light, but instead reflected the greater light's light. Several people stormed out and one lady yelled, "we believe in God." To which I'd like to respond, congratulations how is that relevant and thank you for proving that Texas is at least partially as backwards as I like to believe it is. Let's examine the bible for a moment. It is a book. The stories within are very old. It was WRITTEN by men. It also MOST LIKELY contains old superstitions similar to those that lightning was actually thrown by a toga wearing humanoid who would routinely turn into various animals and have sex with human women.

Thrower of lighting, charmer of women

This leads at least me to believe that actually thought the moon produced its own light, which was a reasonable belief...AT THE TIME. We are now damn certain that the moon does not produce its own light because two very basic things would happen if it did. The first and most obvious is that we'd all have been completely incinerated and the second is that it would be a whole lot brighter during the night than during the day.

I think two examples is enough, next topic.

2. God

Oh SNAP! Now I've gone and done it. I'm going to talk about my thoughts on God and any random person who reads this is either A) going to tell me I'm going to hell B) try and preach to me C) reassure themselves that their beliefs are the only right ones D) receive my ideas thoughtfully and civilly.

So here is to my soul not being eternally condemned to torture!

I'm rather grown now. I've almost completed college and I'm well on my way to graduate school. With this has come some experience and some thoughts to try and hog tie those experiences into something meaningful. Firstly, I would like to say that I classify myself as a Deist. For those of you who may be unclear on that term, a deist is a person who believes that God created the universe and the other stuff (earth) and then retreated into his god lounge to watch his perfect creation run perfectly forever. This version of God is most often likened to a clock maker, since a clock maker creates a clock and then sets it to run primarily on its own and require only slight interventions to maintain proper work.

The universe to a deist

I changed my classification to deist during my senior year of high school. The reason for this change was because I could not understand how an all powerful, ever present, all loving God would let bad things happen to so many good people while the truly evil seemed to flourish. Many people like to reassure themselves that God has a plan and that innocent deaths and unpunished evil are all part of the plan. I HATE that. I don't hate the people that believe it, but I hate that idea. In my mind a good plan by a supreme God who really loves his creations and is involved daily does not allow for the good people to die or have terrible tragedies plague their lives. So it made more sense to me that God was still there but he took more of a passive role in earth's happenings.

Then I ran into a problem during college of rationalizing how an all powerful, all loving, always present being could just sit on the side lines like a disinterested coach whose team clearly needs his help.

He's just chilling

I then had a thought. Any of you good Catholics out there will know it's a terrible one. What if God wasn't all knowing or all powerful? God not being all loving didn't cross my mind, mainly due to the Old Testament. (Some of that stuff is terrifying) If God wasn't all knowing then he wasn't aware that good people were suffering and that greedy and selfish people were flourishing. If God wasn't all powerful then he at least knew about the situation but wasn't able to help all of the good people who needed Him. This still didn't make complete sense because a being who can create the universe is certainly powerful enough to both watch over and protect his creations. I was struggling with it for the longest time, then I went and played Assassin's Creed.

You might scoff (fancy word bonus) at me for adopting the ideas of a video game, but let me remind you that all forms of art have been influencing people since they were first encountered. The big thing here was that HUGE SPOILER in Assassin's Creed the gods are super advanced beings (probably from space) that created man in their image. They weren't all knowing or all powerful but they were more advanced than their creations. Just like I am more advanced than a hammer, or a fork.

Not a spork though, that reigns supreme

Granted, none of those objects can think and act on their own, and I didn't invent any of them because I still eat mainly with my fingers because damnit; its easier. But how long will it be before humans are fully cloned? We have been creating life ever since we were created, it just took a man and woman. Now, it only takes a sperm, an egg, and several tubes of varying size. If we went to a planet and started life it would most certainly be in OUR image. This simple video game provided me with at least part of an answer that I had been searching for. Our creator or creators did not let the good suffer by choice, but because they could not be everywhere at once to take care of us. So he, or they, gave us all the traits we needed initially and the ability to make our own decisions and then watched us grow up.

Its not a solid theory but let's argue and I'm almost certain I could prove that no theory involving God or gods is. I admit, this sounds outlandish and most people laugh when I suggest that God could quite possibly be a super advanced alien, but it makes the most sense to me and quite frankly it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else. It also isn't set in stone. I was raised Catholic, back in medieval times I would have been excommunicated, maybe killed for my current beliefs. But I came to these beliefs through a process and I know that the process isn't done because I'm still alive. I have a great many more experiences in store and I'm sure they will lead me in new directions with my beliefs.

So for now, here is a funny cat picture.