Foreword: The Prayer of an Atheist who Loves God God, oh God, why have You forsaken us all? Why did You create us with so little knowledge of Yourself? Why are we so far from understanding You that none of us can say with complete certainty whether You even exist? There is not the devoutest among beleivers that could show You to me and none either that could comfort me with full faith that You are not. Show yourself to me, so that I can know You. I doubt, and I am told by those with faith in You that what You want from me is not the love that comes from knowing You, for the love from those that know You comes so easily, as we were created by You in Your image and just as we love ourselves, if we see You we would love You. No, I am told, instead You expect from us to see Your beauty without eyes, to hear Your gentle loving voice with deaf ears. We must eat Your food without tasting, chewing or swallowing. We must have faith that You are with us and love You with all our hearts all the time shadowed with the abysmal fear and doubt that there is no You. God, You expect too much from us! Miracles come easily to You, but You created us lowly beings without the means for miracles. How easy it is to despise You with the fervor of a lover betrayed! And it is even easier to disbeleive those who have faith in You, for they are human like me and cannot see You, cannot know You. There is no other on earth that I can beleive, many for lack of trust I can afford them, most of the rest for the haunting knowledge that they are as easily deceived as I. Truly, none of us are close to You, and the only pathfinders are blind, misguided worms such as myself. Do You delight Yourself in the pathetic attempts we make to find You? Are You chortling to Yourself over my plight at this very minute? Did You create us to observe our endless confusion? Or do You even care? In the time since I wrote the above I have received no answer. My heart has not filled with an unexplained faith that any God exists, nor have I formulated a satisfactory denial of God's presence. I have no choice but to wonder where we came from. The first question that must be answered on the path towards determination of God's existence is whether or not we can assume human existance. I do not intend to spend a lot of time discussing existance, as it is a subject that cannot be fully proven. The question `how can we assume that reality and perception have any link whatsoever?' is only answered `we cannot.' So the fact that we percieve ourselves as existing does not prove our existance; the fact `I think' does not prove `I am' within our normal definitions. If, however, we expand our definition of existance to include our perceptions, the question becomes a redundancy. It must be remembered that this does not mean that our perceptions equal reality, but that our perceptions are a part of reality. If one deludes him or her self that he or she is a prophet, that does not neccesarily indicate that he or she actually is a prophet, but the unreality of what this person is deluding about does not affect the reality of the delusion. The delusion exists. It is not a fake delusion; it is a very real delusion. Given the possibility that we are simply following a set of illusions that we percieve as life, we cannot fully assume that reality is as we percieve it, but the illusion (if indeed that's all it is) is exactly as we percieve it. Our perception of human existance does not prove human existance, but it does prove existance, at the very least, of the illusion. So if we exist, how did we come to existance? If God is our creator, then is it not fair to assume that if we find our creator, we can call it God? God, according to the faithful, is infinite. Our universe is also. There are a great many scientists who would contradict me here, and they have studied the universe more than I have but sceince, like theology, is merely a fallable human quest based in human perception. As such, with no intended disrespect to those who know more than I, I will disagree. The universe is infinite, undivided, and unchangable, although we percieve it as being finite, divided, and malleable. The universe appears finite because it is expanding (is space expanding? is time contracting? is there any difference?) and the more distant an object is, the faster it appears to be moving away from us. The light and other radiation (the only means we currently have to percieve almost anything beyond our atmosphere) from those objects that appear to be approaching the speed of light in a direction away from us will be completely red-shifted until the wavelength is so long that we cannot percieve it as a wave. This gives us a percievable boundary of the universe of about 15 billion light-years in all directions but does not indicate that there is nothing beyond this perceivable boundary. For a more complete (and more accurate) account of the universe's infinicy, indivisability and unalterability, read John Dobson's Advaita Vedanta and Modern Science. Especially any devout athiests will agree with me that we were spawned from the universe. Life is a product of this planet which came out of the sun which collected itself out of a cloud of gases floating within this galaxy which is just one of many in our universe. So our creator, in a sense, is the entirety of the universe, something that is infite yet undividable and unchangable. Sounds an awful lot like many people's description of God, does it not? To even the dull witted readers it must be obvious that I am getting around to a cross between an overmind theory and an expanded scale Earth-Mother sort of religion. I won't completely deny this, but emphatically insist on the wider scope, as there is a lot more to the universe that spawned us than Earth. I also reject the sexism inherent in the title. A creator would of neccessity be of a different order of being than ourselves, perhaps beyond any human biological labelling of gender, or perhaps simply simultaneously germinator and geminatee. I am also very wary of the term overmind. It brings to mind a conciousness far too anthropomorphised to accept as coming from something as grand as the universe around us. Like those that are trying to prove that our Earth is itself a living being, I will present the theory that everything is alive. It is perhaps true that we humans have defined life in a very narrow scope. New evidence of communication between trees and other plants make me and I'm sure others, wonder if plants are not only alive (as we already knew) but concious. It would be ridiculous to assume that plants' conciousness would be similar to our own, but it also seems humanocentric to assume that the state plants have is inferior. The only way that we can claim superiority is to prove that plants have a state of mind that is similar to a human state of mind, only stupider. If plants have a dissimilar state of being, we have no reference to call one better or worse. Nobody has yet proven that the earth itself is a living being, and I believe that if we are looking for a human conciousness or even plant conciousness, we will never find one. Could it possibly be said that existance equals, in some way, life? Biologists and chemists have for decades posed the idea that humans are merely extremely complex combinations of certain chemicals and nothing more; that our perception of conciousness stems from our complexity and not from a `soul.' Some of these theories suggest that the computers we have already designed have an extremely far less complex version of our own sort of conciousness and that by constructing a computer with bits roughly equivelent in number to the number of our synapses, we will have created a rough equivelant to a `conscious' human brain. If there is nothing special about the things that we call `alive' that make them so, why is it impossible that a simple rock could be considered alive? It depends entirely upon your definition of life. If you feel that life is comprised of animation, growth and some form of consciousness then the rock quite clearly is not alive. If, however, you are willing to accept that the only things that make us seem alive are the specificity and complexity of certain groups of chemicals, then a rock can be looked at as a non-specific, uncomplicated version of ourselves. Now, a simple rock is not complex in its composition, but the universe, comprised of rocks, gases, energy, and space is incredibly complex, as scientists are showing to be true each day. It seems conceivable that the universe of which we are several parts, could be considered a living organism. If the universe is indeed expanding, perhaps we can look upon this as growth. This universe/organism has spawned all of us. As part of its natural process, it has created us. And we are a part of it. If it is our creator, we can call it God. Each and every one of us is a very small part of God. Now that we have unveiled God, how can we worship It? What could the universe want from us? What can we, puny mortals give to show our gratitude for existance? I am sure that God is not aware of us, as we are not aware of our kidney. I would not want my kindey to worship me. My best second-guessing of God is that It would only want us to perform our natural functions. It would (if, indeed it had any awareness of us) not try to alter the course of our behaviour. It is up to us to determine the proper course for ourselves. God, in this theory, is as mysterious as any other of mankind's gods. It is because of this mystery that we all strive to discover God. Perhaps an acceptable form of worship is study. If we study God, we discover how It works and we are at a better advantage to thrive within It. I see no reason why God would be offended at science. If it were aware in a manner similar to ours, I should think It would approve of our inquisitiveness of It. 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