Musings About God

Just some thoughts and looking into my own brain about God and religion in my current mindset.

 

For every religion there are billions who do not adhere it to it. Yet many of these religions claim simultaneously that their idea of God is loving, yet will punish those who do not adhere to it. It would appear to me that the True God has not designed the universe in a way that expects humanity to adhere to a single set of beliefs amoung many sets that are mutually exclusive. If the idea of an exclusive God presented in these religions is the correct one, wouldn't you expect that the choice would be more clearly presented? It is almost by chance that adherents of religions adhere to the religion that they do. In my view, a Sovereign God, and the one that I believe to exist, would not make the "one true path" to him so obscure as the main organized religons present. He would not make the path something that so many people would be deterred from, using their God-given reason.

Many say, if you don't subscribe to any organized religion, why believe in God at all? How can one arrive at the conclusion that God exists using reason? This is a good question, and belief in God does require some degree of faith in something beyond simply reason. Of the classic "proofs of God" the cosmological arguement is my personal favorite. When one thinks about it, there indeed needs to be an uncaused cause of everything. Some time ago the counter to the cosmological arguement would have been "If God is uncaused and eternal couldn't the universe simply have been uncaused and eternal?" This made sense prior to the development of the Big Bang Theory. The expansion of the universe suggests that traced backward through time, the universe began from a singularity and stretched outward. It is now commonly accepted that the universe did indeed have a beginning. The universe could not have been it's own uncaused cause so it would seem that something created the universe. Granted, this cause of the universe could be something else besides God, it could be a multiverse or some impersonal non-living force. However the beauty of Deism is that the power that created the universe doesn't have to be so clearly defined like those of organized religions. Perhaps the Creator is a mind made up of extradimensional membranes or string vibrations. I personally think that since the universe is so intricate in detail and beauty, that the Creator does indeed have a will and thought this whole thing called the universe out pretty well, on a level we could never hope to grasp.

The Eternal Friend

Some stream of conscious writing I did while at work (shh don't tell):

God was there in the beginning, God will be there in the end. Before the big bang, God was there. After the heat death of the universe, God will still be there. We can't know for certain where we will be after we reach the end of our lives. But I am comforted by the thought that I will be in God's hands. Whether theres a heaven in the traditional sense or not, I have faith that we will be in God's care. Enveloped in light, in intamacy with the one who knows our every experience and detail. God is the Infinite Eternal Mind. God is the Limitless. God is the Uncaused Cause of All and the One who Transcends Space and Time. God is sovereign over everything. Though God's intervention is limited, God is the designer of the universe, sovereign over every body, energy, law, and detail. God is the Eternal Friend.

Flirting with Deism

Today I've started venturing mentally into areas I never would have even considered a few years ago. I think I've reached a point where my doubts in the infallibility of the Bible have reached critical mass and now there is a major shift taking place. I've begun to strongly consider identifying as a Deist. I don't think I can believe any longer some of the stories in the Bible, as well as the core doctrine of God only being accessible through the death of Jesus. However I find myself unable to completely reject Christianity, so at the moment I guess I would identify as sort of a Christian Deist, bouncing back and forth.

Deism is appealing to me because of its mental freedom. There is no need to take prophets from thousands of years ago at their word, or faith in a massive collection of stories that cannot be proven. One is free to completely believe in science. I cannot drift over to Atheism however, as my faith and relationship with God is far too important. I would be free to believe in God based on reason, and not by complete faith in a story. I feel that my relationship with God would strengthen and deepen if I didn't have the mental and moral shackles that traditional Christianity requires. Although I don't want to leave Christianity, I am finding it more and more difficult to believe that God requires belief in a penal substitution to enter into a relationship with him/her/it.

I don't know. I have a hard time leaving Christianity behind out of fear of falling out of favor with God because I've made the wrong decsion. But my own logic and reason seem to be pointing me in the direction of Deism, I don't feel much compulsion from God to remain with Christianity. We'll see what happens.