Neba-Fuh
This is holy week. A week when Christians commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus-The Christ. The tenets of Christian belief center around the resurrection-the act of rising from the death. Religiosity is a complex phenomenon. This phenomenal aspect of religiosity is not what tilt us to our religious beliefs, but the simple fact that man is prone to be religious. What makes religiosity complex is the fact that it is centered on facts and beliefs. The aspects of religiosity that are not provable(not facts), are considered beliefs, making religion one of the known concepts that ignores the proof paradigm. The logic aspect(logos) may or may not be as important as the non-logical aspect(pure belief borne from faith).
The concepts of Jesus-the son of God, the resurrection, the trinity,Mary-Mother of God are just few of many others that curve the line between Catholicism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism Jehovah Witnessing, Islam, Buddhism,etc.
While atheists will outrightly 'believe' the non-existence of a super Deity, Scientists will quest for proof of the existence of such a Deity. Gnosticism will put into question the omnipotence of such a Supernatural Being.
Therefore the complexities are uncountable and most religions expect belief to overtake logic where proof does not exist. That is faith!
Below are excerpts culled from "Complexities of Religiosity" by Neba Fuh (unpublished).*
Nobody truly believes in God if he has never doubted his existence. If the complexities of religiosity center on the existence of an unseen Super Being, then we owe ourselves the obligation to convince ourselves that we are believing in an Existential Being or else we may just be consoling ourselves with a myth.
The inadvertent desire of most human beings is to see God. Visual evidence crowns belief as well as solidifies faith, without which belief and faith culminate to variant outcomes. This is like light bombarded through a prism, resulting to various colours depending on the angle at which each light ray struck the prism.
Religiosity involves adherence to certain rules and regulations in a pious hope of attaining a prescribed level of spirituality which is often presented as better than the present.
Sometimes, this betterment is guaranteed in our present day life. Often it is guaranteed in the life beyond.
The rules and regulations set out by each religious body in its quest for attaining a prescribed level of spirituality are extremely varying, leading to comparison and competition amongst these bodies.
If the aspired level of spirituality sought for, is some communion with some supernatural being, call him: God, Jesus-The Christ, Allah, Jehovah,Buddha, Grand Sage, Natural force etc; then all rules and regulations, despite their divergence converge to a singleton-'Some Unseen Supernatural Force or Initiator-The Initial Cause'. If not, then those who seek a level of spirituality that does not converge to this Singleton, may as well be aspiring to have harmony or harness power from the divergent aspects of nature such as light, air, water, plants,animals,soil and other effects of the Cause.
What about atheists? Those who believe in the non-existence of any Supernatural Being or Force. These are advocates of chance and coincidence. The similarity with atheists and theists is that both 'believe' - while the theists believe in the existence of a supernatural Being, the atheists believe in the non-existence of such a Being. Therefore, if the backbone of religiosity is 'belief', then we may say that every human is religious,irrespective of his alignment.
A great teacher of faith and belief called Jesus, was once quizzed on his teachings and in the process of explaining the criteria for man to 'see' the kingdom of God, said amongst other things:
" I tell you most solemnly, we speak only about what we know and witness only what we have seen and yet you people reject our evidence. If you do not believe me when I speak about things in this world, how are you going to believe me when I speak to you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven; and the Son of Man must be lifted as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him" John 3:11-15 (The Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition).
Jesus taught people with examples concerning things of this world-things that they 'know' and 'have seen', yet some of them rejected his evidence.
He went on to wonder loudly how these same people will believe him if he talked to them about ' heavenly things'- what they haven't seen or known about.
The main complexity of religiosity stems from believing without seeing... Jesus himself knew this complexity, that is why he performed a lot of miracles as signs for people to 'see' and then 'believe'. Prophets of old did also perform miracles for the same reason..
'Seeing is believing' is an adage used to emphasize conviction... Sight is the doorstep in the house of belief. Therefore, belief is stronger- It's more of confidence like attributes bestowed on someone or something , who or which manifest his or its capabilities, commensurate to the aspirations of the beholder. Therefore, to believe in someone you have not seen is doubtful. Moreover, to believe in someone nobody has ever seen(the premise of most religions) seems illusive. Jesus presented himself to have come from God. At the time he lived on earth, he was presented as the son of God, claiming that he was with God, therefore, has seen God(John 7&8; Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition).Only those who believe in Jesus -the Christ as God-come-man (Trinity doctrine), believe in a God, with the credit of visual evidence of Him or someone sent by Him.
For those who don't believe that Jesus-The Christ is Godly or God-sent, their story is different. they live on believing in a God they have never seen.
Is it possible to believe without seeing? Abstraction is the only platform that sustains belief without sight, and the poles that support abstraction are assumptions. How many people explore abstraction? Is abstraction realistic?
If we can't see the Being we so much 'believe' in, then we must find a way of convincing ourselves of his existence, by using the premise or assumption based on what we see and experience around us and abstracting to the Unseen. It sounds complex but practicable...
Our world today is flooded with several religious entities, each with her own package claiming to be the right and only route to a Supernatural Being. Those not pursuing this 'right and only route' are promised a reservation of unending suffering in hell or some spiritual torture or just a deprivation of a better life to come, after death.
Is there a Being who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, but not visible? Is He the cause of the universe? Is he really invisible or is it that he is visible but we have not recognized him?
As kids, asking these questions was really mesmerizing. Sometimes the elders would tell you not to question the existence of God- that anybody who questions the origin and existence of God is sinning. Maybe, it was their own way of expressing their doubts of God's origin and existence. Therefore, the difficulty in proving the existence of someone or something is not necessarily conclusive that, that someone or something does not exist. Portraying 'doubt' as 'sinful' is a mean way of brainwashing.
Despite all the scientific discoveries and the breakthroughs that have engulfed our world today, the universe still remains a mystery. The universe is a complicated array of planetary structures carefully designed by whoever invented it.
"Whatever your view, you will no doubt agree that our universe is a marvel. Consider the galaxies. It has been estimated that there are 100 billion of them in the observable universe. Each is a grouping of from fewer than a billion to more than a trillion stars" (Awake! October 8, 2000)
What an amazing fact! If the Big Bang theory is valid then the cause of the big bang takes credit for this amazement. One can only imagine the number of galaxies in the unobservable universe !
Have we ever thought about the vastness of the land part of the earth's surface? Imagine that this vastness of land we see consists only about one-quarter of the earth's surface. The remaining three-quarters is water. Imagine that the enormous Earth that we live in , has four other planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) bigger than it,out of the nine planets orbiting the sun. Imagine that our enormous Earth compared with Jupiter is like a marble in a oval wine glass. Think of the contents of the earth and the other planets-their composition-how varied they are. Imagine the atoms that make up the elements , that make up the compounds of all these complex structures. Each structure distinctly defined by its composition of atoms held by an exact force,which if altered redefines the structure. Imagine the complexity of DNA and how it defines human traits and individuality. This is ingenuity of the highest grade! Behold! This is just the observable part of the universe.
This revelation marveled Mathematician and Astronomer David Block who remarked that : "we live in a very fine tuned universe... our universe is a home. Designed, I believe, by the hand of God".
Whoever or Whatever created or invented the universe, one fact is clear: that the observable universe is well-ordered,despite its complexity. Even those who propound that the cause of the universe is an outcome of chance or coincidence have never disproved the orderly nature of that 'outcome of chance or coincidence'.
Existence is an effect of origin, and origin is the genesis of livelihood of any entity.Therefore, origin is the first cause. Originality means 'premier' in the crudest sense of the word. Anytime we know the source of the origin of an entity we thought was original, then that entity forfeits the attributes of originality to the source. For example, describing the works of an author, we say 'the original works of X' because we have no knowledge of plagiarism in the works. If research reveals that before X published his works, Y had published similar works, say fifty years ago, then we must investigate plagiarism. If X is found guilty and charged with plagiarism, he then forfeits the adjective 'original' in his works. Thereon, we call X's works 'the original works of Y' - not necessarily because Y is the originator of the works, but because we haven't got knowledge to the contrary. If Z were to be revealed as the first person to have published such works , say a hundred years ago, then instantly Y ceases to be the originator of the works etc. Therefore, if we don't know the source of the origin, then that origin remains the source. We attribute originality to an entity, because we know not of any entity who truthfully and rightfully claimed that originality before.
Therefore, if the beginning of the existence of the universe is the first effect of the origin, then the cause of the origin is unknown. Immediately we know the cause of the origin, then that origin ceases to be the 'beginning of the existence of the universe' , and we attribute originality to the 'discovered' cause or source.
If we present the universe as the whole embodiment of the tangible and intangible, the known and the unknown etc , then its originator must be part of the universe; except we take the other extreme unconceivable notion that the universe has no origin and was not created.
Talking about creation, creation is a twin brother to originality. Man has actually never created, in the sense of it. For example, Before Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity, it was already existing. It had been created.
All we have today as scientific breakthroughs are just ingredients of discoveries put together.
Up till date, Man is still not 100 % scientifically certain of his origin. There are still significant missing links. He is just an agent of discoveries, whom himself is a discovery. We discovered our brains with all its marvelous ingenuity. Today, man has assembled a machine and programed it to imitate the works of the brain called a computer. The best of our so called computers can not march the worst of human brains- That brain that can take decisions on multiple aspects of life. What about the human mind?- The inner storehouse of human emotions-joy and pain, judgment of 'right' and 'wrong' etc.
Coming back to the notion of originator of the universe being part of the universe: If the originator or the cause of the universe was not part of the universe, then the universe will not be the embodiment of every existence-tangible and intangible, known and unknown-that is , the universe will forfeit its quality of totality, because its inventor or cause or originator exists separate from it. Of course we won't call it the universe because there exists an entity which is separate from it. Therefore the creator of the universe exists in the universe, irrespective of the fact that we've seen Him or not.
Our universe today is an effect of the umpteenth cause. That is the first cause, which is the origin or source or the creator, led to the first effect. This effect later became the cause of the later effect, which also subsequently became the cause of subsequent effect and so on. It sounds evolutionary. But it is really not that- the effect of the first cause was rather revolutionary than evolutionary. That revolution became evolutionary as each entity of the first revolution discovered itself and made use of its attributes and talents, which resulted to effects,which themselves became causes of later effects; still guided by the First Cause or Creator- call Him God, Allah, Grand Sage, Supernatural Being etc.
The billion dollar question is can there be a cause that was itself not an effect of a preceding cause which we are describing as the First Cause or Creator?
....To be continued
* This is solely an intellectual piece and does not portray in toto the author's personal religious convictions and why he adheres to them.
Absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence!
Posted by: Michaux | April 26, 2009 at 10:11 AM