Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 3 of 3

Belief: if I accept and hold to a religious mindset, then after death I’ll be rewarded with heaven.  If I reject this mindset, I’ll be punished forever in hell.                                                 

Truth: this life is truth.  The opportunity to do what either benefits or harms creation and humanity is truth. The opportunity to live in gratitude for what has been received is truth.  Once someone dies, that person no longer remains a member of humanity, and isn’t seen again, that too is truth.  Life therefore, is incredibly precious; it’s an opportunity without equal.  Life is precious for everyone, not just a select few. 

We don’t know how we got here…we don’t know what happens after we die.  This too is truth.  It’s a really big truth, and somewhat uncomfortable not to know.  If I surround myself with more comforting ‘beliefs’ that insulate me from others, from the state of the world, and from making a real difference here and now, then I have walled myself into that prison or fortress.

If I face my fear, acknowledge that I don’t know how I got here, nor where I go after, and then get about the business of paying attention to what I have to work with, and applying reason, compassion, logic, and love to whatever situation I find myself in…wouldn’t I be doing something positive and wouldn’t that be a grateful response to the opportunity of life that I’ve received?

Nobody within humanity has ever claimed to have created the world and itself.  There is, at least to date, more evidence that something outside of this creation put everything together, than there is for some sort of cosmic accident being the origin of what we see all around us.  Therefore there is at least the appearance of some concrete evidence for a Creator, even if some of that evidence is the lack of anything against it. 

We have the evidence of creation itself as testimony to the character of a Creator.  We see that creation is provided for; we see an interconnectedness, and interdependency between remarkably different creatures.  We see that mankind is somehow different.  Creation doesn’t need mankind; it can manage on its own.  Mankind is unique, with tremendous capacity to cultivate great good or to inflict great evil.  What is mankind's purpose?

To paraphrase Ecclesiastes 12:13...perhaps the whole point of life is this:  be grateful for being here, with honour and thankfulness, and employing reason and thoughtfulness, both enjoy and care for what you have been entrusted with, leave it as you found it, ready for the next person to enjoy, for this is the whole duty of man.

Truth, Reason, Doubt and Faith - Part 2 of 3

Belief is opposed to truth.  To ‘believe in’ something means to have faith that something is so when there’s no factual evidence for it.  Put another way, if there’s evidence of something, if it’s true and verifiable, there’s no need to ‘believe’. 

To hold to ‘belief’ when it separates you from others, when it sets you apart in your mind as special or different, effectively walls you off in a prison of your own thoughts. A prison or a fortress, but a separator nonetheless.

This prison’s keeper is fear and ignorance.  It traps and holds some otherwise very intelligent people.  It causes endless divisions and quarrels.  It sets some apart in their thinking that they’re better than others; not because of anything they’ve actually contributed to the world, but because of what they believe in their own minds. 

For example:  a person believes fervently that they are saved from eternal destruction because they ‘believe in’ God/Jesus/Allah.  Because of this belief, they hold they will go to heaven but everyone who doesn’t believe as they do will go to hell.  They believe there’s nothing they can do to earn heaven, it’s a ‘free gift’, but they do have to believe and not doubt.  It doesn’t seem to register that acceptance of this ‘gift’ constitutes an action; that one has indeed ‘earned’ it because of a specific action taken.  Most maintain that it’s ‘God’s grace’ (and their action of acceptance) that sets them apart and destines them to ‘eternal life’ in ‘heaven’, that those who’ve ‘rejected God’s grace’ and not ‘believed’ are destined for ‘eternal torment in hell’. 

This is somewhat simplified, of course.  Many believers hold that your actions in life matter, though there’s great leeway in exactly how much they matter.  Some hold that you must faithfully observe various rituals through life, others that you must do ‘good works’ though what those are is usually open to interpretation; others insist you must submit to authourity (usually theirs) and not question or rebel but patiently accept in faith. 

The grand motivator for this belief and its lifestyle is the ultimate goal of heaven, or the punishment of hell.  Now there is NO proof of either heaven or hell of course. If there was, there wouldn’t need to be ‘belief’ because there would be proof.  See how belief is opposed to truth?  Hold tight to your belief; if you can do so all the way to death, then the prize is yours!  If this sounds silly, it is.  It’s ludicrous. It’s a deception, but a powerful one.  

Belief is a dead end unless it motivates one to act in ways that don’t destroy or harm, but instead build up, cultivate and encourage.  To leave the world as you found it is a high calling indeed.  It’s quite debatable whether you need belief to do this, its possible it may hinder more than help.