I don’t think like you. I’m not exactly sure when that changed but I don’t know anyone who thinks like me. It’s not easy to explain but here’s one way of understanding:
You think in terms of nouns, I think in terms of verbs.
I’ll try to explain. One of the things I came to realize is that I have been brainwashed my entire life. We all are. Not all if it is malicious. Some of it is necessary to exist. So, I had to go back to the beginning. I’ve been reading some books on philosophy. Kant, Russell, Hume. And, to me, most of it just seemed like words but very little understanding on the nature of reality. Not much seemed true. I mean real truth. Things that everyone can agree on.
So, what do I know that’s true:
1. I am alive
2. I am aware
3. I am part of the universe.
Can we all agree on that? I know there are the skeptics who would say we can’t know if we’re alive or not. I guess they watched ‘The Matrix’. But their argument boils down to this: the only way to know if you’re really alive is to kill yourself. Thanks, but no thanks.
Of course there are skeptics who will claim we can’t know anything for sure. But the skeptic negates his thesis by their own words. If we can’t know anything for sure, then the statement ‘we can’t know anything for sure’ is false. Therefore, we can know truth.
What can I deduce from the statements above?
1. The universe is alive.
2. The universe is aware
3. I am a sense organ of the universe.
How was I able to reach these conclusions? Well, I had to ask myself ‘what faculties enable me to make decisions?’ One thing we all have is the faculty of imagination. We can imagine anything in our mind but that doesn’t make it true. I think of the word ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’. Those are powerful words that spark the imagination. But they are general in nature. If you start to ask specific questions about those words, you don’t get very far. For example ‘can you smell flowers in heaven?’ hmmm, smelling is a function of biology so you really can’t answer that question without resorting to more imagination.
We have the faculty of reason to temper our imagination. Without reason, imagination leads to emotions of fear. Do you believe we were given the faculty of reason just so we should ignore it? Then why do we so often leave reason out of our behavior? Could it be because that’s how we’ve been brought up? Or is there a deeper relationship between reason and imagination. Imagination is ‘lower’ in our core and reason a ‘higher’ function that requires more effort.
If you have had a religious upbringing, you were told to ‘have faith’ when you were a youngster and started asking questions to the strange things you were told to believe. And, if you were battered enough, you finally capitulated and stopped asking. Same thing happened in school. Those who asked questions were just a nuisance to the teachers. They didn’t have time to answer questions that were not part of the curriculum. You had tests to take! You had to learn how to be a good obedient citizen!
Well, fortunately, they never quite killed off that curiosity I had. Yes, I realized I wasn’t going to get answers from adults so I just bided my time. But now that I am adult, I use the faculty of reason and I don’t need to ask other adults to explain things to me. I have learned to trust myself.
When religious people tell you to ‘have faith’, you have to ask yourself what they mean. Of course, they want you to think that they are saying ‘have faith in god’. But what they are really saying is ‘have faith in the men who came before you because you can’t possibly know what they knew’. Have faith in men, not god! Well, I don’t accept that premise for one second. The men who came before me knew nothing about the natural forces that exist in the universe. They were afraid of those natural forces and so they had to believe to be afraid of god. And they had to make others believe the same thing. That doesn’t make it true.
So, I had to ask myself, why would a perfect, infinite, omnipotent force want me to be afraid of it? Something about that just seemed absurd to me. It didn’t make any sense. But what did make perfect sense was that men who wanted to control me would use fear as their weapon.
And what a perfect weapon. If you don’t believe what we want you to believe, then you will go to a place and suffer unimaginable tortures for eternity. It doesn’t get much more perfect than that does it? Do what I say and you will spend eternity in perfect pleasure, don’t do what I say and you will spend eternity in perfect pain. Who can resist the choice? It’s pretty simple. But while you’re alive, you will follow orders and be fodder for our machine.
I have to reiterate, you have been brainwashed to accept your life here is beyond your control and you are part of the machine. But don’t worry, you’ll get your reward when you die! As long as you obey, that is!
Well, here’s the thing, reason tells me that is the exact opposite of reality! And the exact opposite of what the creator designed.
