Choices of Belief

My son stated to me simply, “I do not remember when I was born.”

My immediate response was to laugh, but I described the world that existed before his birth. I spoke about the other children in our family playing older video games than what we currently own. I mentioned the first time I changed his dirty diaper in the hospital, while Mom asked me to get her Taco Bell instead of survive on Cream of Chicken for the next few days in the hospital.

Later, I took my son's words as a statement of truth.

Most of us, unless those higher human beings tapping into their former lives, do not remember our birth, nor can we trace the history when we lived as a tiny fetus in our mother's stomach. Suddenly, this concept of birth extends beyond human beings and fetuses.

We do not know when the entire human culture was born, for we can only trace back our origin to a particular historical estimation and then we can find major clues through science and anthropology. But, still, we are unsatisfied with this disconnection to the uterus and embryo—both analogies of the beginning of the earth.

We lead then to the ultimate question: the first cause.

What caused the universe to shake? Are we merely products of science and evolution? Is some creator God behind our existence? If so, why would a creator God breed human beings who suffer?

We have ultimately a few answers to consider, and none of these answers may arrive with pure scientific evidence, reason, or rationality. The first answer is simple.

1.We ultimately will never know the first cause beyond identifying a theory, such as the Big Bang. But still, though Science is measurable, we cannot predict how energy and matter first existed, for how can something be created out of nothing? What initiated the Big Bang? We can only conjecture? If the answer is God, which is not a scientific answer but a guess, what initiated God? The riddle continues, and we must recognize the first cause cannot be known.

2.Since the first cause cannot be known, how, then, should we progress in understanding our origin? We can believe what our parents tell us. We can listen to our ancestors. We can read our ancient history and arrive at conclusions from the world or nature surrounding us. We can look at every culture existing on our planet and examine their viewpoint on existence, first cause, and religious experiences and align our path by accepting the belief system. However, we are still guessing and trusting the various histories of religion as evidence of our human commonality to the past. We are looking for that first cause hoping that it will satisfy us.

3.Many people are satisfied with step two, and they may even premise their belief system that faith in their belief system is more powerful than scientific evidence or reason. In other words, humans will completely block out through defense mechanisms evidence of their belief system possibly being false in order to feel the devotion of their service to the belief system—that is either true or false. Many will even ignore evolution to remain innocent in their simplistic view of their religion, for the hard questions ultimately lead some to depression, suffering, and confusion. Who wants to live in this state of mental confusion leading a person ultimately to obsess over the point.

4.Faith is not always important to all religions. Buddhists, for example, decide to take a non-theistic approach to the first cause, and this idea may be the most useful. Buddha says that we can concentrate on the metaphysical elements and never arrive at an answer. Confucius basically says that we should worry less about the cosmos, which we will never understand, because we cannot even improve ourselves. Why worry about the cosmos our entire life? Are we not wasting away social harmony and relationships? Isn't the here and now of things the most important elements to develop? How can we develop if we worry about systems we cannot fully understand?

5.While this idea is appealing, most religions do not accept this form. We must not ignore the cosmos. The Hindus believe we are part of the cosmos, and through many reincarnations, we reach a level of moksha or liberation from the cycle of life. We no longer are human and are merged with the cosmos or heaven. Likewise, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—in their own solutions—reach the same goal as Hinduism. Believe in God and live righteously to attain salvation to enter heaven. Do not accept these ideas and experience hell. The problem, though, with these ideas is the same issue with my point in number two. We are relying on systems that are ultimately developed by humans who may or may not have experienced an ultimate divine revelation.

6.The final thought, then, is to reject history and trust the self in his or her adventure in religious experiences. However, human beings are so random. How do I know when a revelation or thought stems from my own delusion of the truth or the truth itself? I trust the Hindu swami's ideas more than I trust my own expectations, for he seems persuasive, dresses in a neat outfit, and says ideas I have yet to discover for my own.

So, there are the options: trust yourself, trust the idea of common connections of religions, do not ask impractical questions, believe by faith, trust the mythologies of the past, or live in scientific inquiry and reason.

We, of course, can combine many of these ideas, but ultimately, these points represent our choices. Which one convinces you the most?

--Jinglett