The older I become, the more interesting is the question of Beginnings, or Beginning. I realize that we know a lot about both beginnings and endings. We see humans being born and then dying. And we see plant beginnings and endings all around us. And then there are all the other animals that come into our lives and then leave us, a bit sadder, even after a fairly full life.
And I have speculated fairly repeatedly about my view of
human endings. That is, although we use language that implies a journey (they “left
us” . . . “they are gone”) the only evidence we have suggests only cessation.
When humans die, they simply cease to function. Their brains cease operating
and thus nothing follows. And it would seem that is the only sensible
description for all “life forms”, i.e. all animals, and all plant life, which
really means all life forms. Material
forms, rocks, mountains, even planets, stars, seem to come into existence and
then cease to exist in that form. Whether a star, or a mountain can be said to experience
“life” would be questionable, since we currently have no way to communicate
with such seemingly inanimate entities.
But back to beginnings. Yes, we see them all the time. So,
we understand that humans are created, exist in a known form and function
according to certain rules. We can even
trace animal life back to fairly early beginnings, say a billion years. Oddly,
sponges are listed as among the early life developers.
But this complex life development is but one tracing within
our overall universe of life forms and other creatures, like planets and
suns. The universe is an amazing place,
and unbelievably complex. And it always brings me back to origin questions.
Folks like Neil DeGrasse Tyson spend their lives investigating and then
describing the early development of our universe. And others, those of a religious persuasion,
employ other less rigorous descriptive
approaches. See Neil and his BFFs spend their time trying to move us back in
time so as to better understand the actual origins of life. Our religious folks I
guess gave up on that game fairly early.
From their perspective, a God decided to, I don’t know, wave a wand and
thereby create life. They have some
pretty silly stories, like Adam and Eve that can’t withstand too many questions.
Still, at some stage, according to them there was no life, and then life was
formed.
Now, whatever one thinks of the religious origins' tale, when
compared with Tyson’s, my mind continues to wander back in time and always
arrives at the question, “If there is/was a God, Who/What created that God? Even if I follow Tyson back further into the
origin story, I arrive at the same question. How did anything develop? Go back
to before the Big Bang. Something existed then and led to The Big Bang.
Who/What created that something? Was it
God? But, if so, Who/What created God?
See, if God always existed, why not the universe? And if so,
How/Why?
And if humans had decided on a God, and simply left it at
that, then good. Why Not? But then humans had to decide how best to use that
story. And so, humans invented the Tale. You know, God created everything, and,
especially, created humans so as to . . . to what? So as to worship God? How
vain a God would that be? And then came the tales about Death leading to human
forms sitting up on clouds looking down on we still-living critters. So,
apparently, we have billions of entities (no bodies, just disembodied “souls”
wandering about up above us, watching our foolishness play out daily.
And we humans actually have built whole stories and vast,
complex entities called churches and interpreters called priests, who tell us
what to do. How crazy is that? Folks who have no clue are allowed to tell us
how to live nicely. Now, mostly, we ignore all those rules, because we seem to
prefer creating our own rules of living and control. We even seem to prefer
killing other humans, as a form of either sport or simply a way of expressing
our disgust with how life actually turned out.
And largely, we seem to have moved beyond the God-tales, and
have settled on Money-Tales. Oh we still pretend to the God-thingie. Because it
remains a really useful way to maintain control over other humans. See, we create priests who pretend to know
about origins and the God thing. And then other humans place themselves into
positions of control over the priests, so that they can retain total control over
the humans.
Oddly, this system that might have led to peace and kindness
over all of humankind, instead seems to have led to destruction and inhumane
controls. Could we change that? Sure,
but first we would have to decide that we did not need a God, or those folks
who pretend to know/understand God. Humans are perfectly capable of organizing
peacefully and humanely, should we ever decide that was a preferable course to
inhumane methods. Of course, that might
suggest that we stop killing one another. And that would be really hard for
humans. We do so seem to like killing.
It’s almost as though our Gods are watching us play out a sort of Godly TV
game. Peace might just be too boring to Gods.
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