My Belief In God
What The Bleep Do We Know?
The Self-Defining Prophecy, a.k.a. "The Self-Justifying Therapy"
First, let me state that my beliefs are my own. PERIOD.
I think it important that the reader (i.e., you) understand that I am only attempting to outline my beliefs, and that I am not trying to proselytize nor to attempt to influence. If you are looking for "answers", I truly hope you find them and that my rants herein may help in some manner.
My Belief in God
Many people think that Queer or Transgendered people are atheists. Nothing could be further from the truth in my case, and in the case of my many friends. Indeed, if you talk to Queer people, I think you will find that the majority of us are "spiritual" and/or very religious.
If you peruse my "Judaism" page here you will find that I am very proud of being Jewish and that I practice Judaism quite regularly.
This page, however, is intended to outline my beliefs in some detail. So if you don't want to know about my beliefs in God, then I guess you're done reading this page right now!
One begins by trying to answer the unanswerable question, "Is there a God?" I cannot answer that question. I can only analyze the facts at-hand, and as I am a form of a scientist, I tend to analyze things in a scientific manner.
Given the known existence of billions upon billions of stars, and millions of galaxies that contain yet more billions and billions of stars, the possibility that life exists on only one planet seems quite improbable. Now you can go one of two ways from here: (a) you can posit "well, there is no proof of life elsewhere"; or (b) you can posit "there may be (or most certainly is) life elsewhere".
"Sometimes I think that the proof that there is intelligent life somewhere out there is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet."
--Calvin and Hobbes
If you go with the first theory, that there is no life elsewhere, then the possibility of the existence of human beings becomes incredibly remote, and thus the probability of a supreme being, i.e., God, becomes very likely. Otherwise, without some Supreme Being creating us, the gazillion-to-one possiblity of our creation makes us pretty unlikely.
If you go with the second theory, that life exists on other planets, then those other "beings" (for lack of a better term) are either more intelligent than we are, or less intelligent than we are, which implies evolution, which in turn gives rise to the possibility of other beings evolving into one-or-more Supreme Being(s).
Can you see how either of these theories increases the possibility of a Supreme Being to a better than 50-50 chance?
You can argue, "yes, but there is no proof". I agree.
You'll note that the title of this chatauqua is "My Belief in God". I am not attempting to prove that God exists, merely stating my belief.
Let's move on to Judaism.
There is no holiday more important to a Jew than Yom Kippur (the "Day of Atonement"). The nine days between the end of Rosh HaShanah and beginning of Yom Kippur are called the Yamim Nora'im (the "Days of Awe"). Yom Kippur is the final day of the Yamim Nora'im, culminating in each Jew's petitioning of HaShem for inscription into the Book of Life for another year. The Yamim Nora'im are where a Jew reflects on his/her life and how to be a better person).
At Yom Kippur services on Friday night (the "Kol Nidrey" service), I was reading the book "Entering the High Holidays" by Reuven Hammer. There are two quotes in this book that I find enlightening for the meaning of the Yamim Nora'im. These two discussions also are enlightening when considering "what we are doing here" and whether or not there is a God.
First Hammer quotes the Yom Kippur Ne'ilah service siddur:
"What are we? What is our life? What is our piety? What is our virtue? What is our salvation? What is our strength? What is our Accomplishment? What shall we say before You, O Lord our God and God of our ancestors?"
Indeed. What would we say if we were "called on the carpet" by God and asked to defend our life (à la Albert Brooks)? How would we justify our actions?
So whether one believes that God exists or God does not exist is unimportant. Even if one believes that God does not exist, if we wish to answer the above questions - which have meaning for every human - then the disbeliever's self-analysis is the same as mine. The questions asked above are the same for both secular and Jewish humans (and probably for humans of other religions, as well).
Hammer then quotes the U-netanah tokef:
"In truth You are their creator and You understand what motivates them, for they are but flesh and blood. Man's origin is dust and his end is dust. He earns his bread with the exertion of his life. He is like broken pottery, like dry grass, like a withered flower, like a passing shadow, like a vanishing cloud, like a breeze that passes by, like floating dust, like a dream that flies away."
So when I read this second quote, it made me wonder: since our life is so short compared with the temporality of things like the age of the universe, the age of mountains, the age of planetary development from a ball of gas to something that can sustain our life, then why should we waste a minute of it? It would seem like we don't have enough time to spend in a wasteful manner!
If we should utilize every second to the max, then we need to prioritize and understand what is important, what gives us pleasure, and what benefits our fellow humans. In short, we must understand how to maximize the time we have here on this - in my opinion - miserable excuse for a planet.
So one would then do the self-analysis of mores, values, priorities, and the like, and arrive at a "what is good and what is bad" chart that one could interpret as a document that would tell us how to live.
I personally think such a document would be very close to my set of beliefs; i.e., my Judaism. This amounts to "turning the tables" by looking at one's life by saying "Okay, forget about how I got to the place in life that I am at, forget about how I have been running my life, and instead ask myself "what should I do, not what am I doing?"
Whether there is a God or not is a personal belief. I've told you mine.
Caveat legens.
What The Bleep Do We Know?
Thanks to my therapist's recommendation, I watched the movie, "What the bleep do we know?" It is a fabulous movie, full of insights from specialists in the fields of physics, theology, philosophy, and medicine, to name but a few.
Two of the points the movie made I feel so strongly about that I feel compelled to share with you, the reader, are: (a) God is inside us, is us, and we are all God; and (b) the idea that we have a strict dogma by which to live by, and that we have to do things all our lives to please this God - up to and including on our death bed - is the real blasphemy.
God is inside us, is us, and we are all God
A physicist and a "channeler" of an "ancient being of energy" have agreed that we are all God, that the matter of which we are composed is all a part of God and that God is inside us at all times. I won't try to relate the reasoning laid out in the movie (because I want you to watch the movie!) but the way it is explained makes perfect sense and after listening to their arguments, which in my opinion are irrefutable, I find that they are "on to something". To say that they are correct would be to definitively assert that there is a God. That is my belief; however, because I cannot prove it using any type of reasoning or logic, it remains a belief without a proof. Thus, I cannot say that the two people arguing this theory in the movie are correct. I can only say that I agree with them, and because that is my belief, my life has changed.
The Real Blasphemy
I would like to quote the website, www.whatthebleep.com, about one of the speakers:
"Dr. Miceal Ledwith was Professor of Systematic Theology for sixteen years at Maynooth College in Ireland and subsequently served for ten years as President of the University.
"He was a member of the International Theological Commission, a small group of theologians of international standing, charged with advising the Holy See on theological matters. He also served as Chairman of the Committee of Heads of the Irish Universities and as a member of the governing Bureau of the Conference of European University Presidents (CRE).
"He has lectured extensively throughout Europe, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Mexico, and North America. His forthcoming books are entitled "The Message Whose Time Has Come Again" and "The Ascent to God: The Soul's Journey Within"."
Dr. Ledwith stated (and I paraphrase), "the idea that we are not part of God, and we have to spend our lives serving this externalized notion of what a supreme being is by adhering to a strict dogma - even up to our deathbeds - is the real blasphemy".
I couldn't have said it better.
The Self-Defining Prophecy, a.k.a. "The Self-Justifying Therapy"
What would you say if you were talking to someone at, say, a cocktail party, and they told you,
"you are suffering from an unknown, genetic fallability for which there is no cure and the only therapy available is to come to me for advice as to how to follow a set of rules that I tell you to follow, some of which will seem arbitrary and will only make sense when viewed in a historical, tribal-survival context.
"the rules were not written in English; they were written in a long-distant-and-almost-forgotten language, but I will interpret them for you. you should believe in, and trust, my interpretation of the rules.
"you may or may not find that following these rules that i interpret is beneficial to you; thus, you may wonder why you should follow these rules that i interpret. i'm telling you that i know how to interpret the language in which these rules were written, and therefore that i know what these rules mean. thus, you must do what i say.
of course, you should follow the rules that i interpret exactly as i interpret them, because:
(a) you never know when you are going to die, and your last thoughts and acts while you are alive must be according to what I say the book says the rules are (more on this below); and
(b) following these rules will make your life happier if you adjust your goals, values, dreams and views to what I say the book says. that way, when you do what the book says, you'll be happy1. forget anything that you currently want or desire or enjoy that the book doesn't talk about, because if it isn't listed in the book, then it is irrelevant and meaningless.
"now you should know that there is an afterlife that begins when you die. I can't prove that there is, but the book says that there is, and I believe it, and since I have translated this book for you, you should believe it too.
"if you follow these rules throughout your entire life, up to and including the last few seconds of life that you have, then you will achieve ecstasy in your afterlife; however, if you do not follow these rules - even if it's only for the very last few seconds of your life - then take it from me, your afterlife will be an unending series of unspeakable horrors. remember: i interpreted the book and its rules, so i know.
"so you can do whatever you want if you don't care about your afterlife - which I cannot prove exists but I'm telling you, it does, and the only way to have a happy afterlife is to follow my arbitrary set of rules. or else."
What would you say? you might think, "either this guy's whacked or I better listen to what he says." and after all, this is your eternal afterlife we're talking about - taking a chance with that is like playing the highest risk poker imaginable. so you ask him, "yo, gimme the 411 on the rules". and he does. for hours. he gives you a printed set of these rules, and you take them home to study them. and you find out why it took him hours to explain these rules to him - some of them are common-sense, but many of them are steeped in what one can only call fiction, and are nothing but his interpretation of the fiction.
So you call this guy and go to his office and he asks you what you think about the rules, and you get into these discussions and maybe even some arguments, and then
He makes you feel bad because no matter how hard you try you're not following the rules;
and
He tells you that they only way you can assuage your guilt is to talk things over with him;
and
He asks you for contributions to support him in his efforts to get all humans to follow his rules.
So being a good-natured person you think "this guy's on the level and I better give a listen". You cough up some dinero and then you immediately feel guilty because you're not living up to his expectations of what you should do and should not do and you worry that, if this shmok is right, your eternal afterlife is toast because you're not following his rules.
So you work harder to follow his rules. And he gives you a little encouragement at first and then the rules tighten up. "You have just begun", he says, "but you do not understand the rules. You are just beginning, and you've made good progress, but I have news for you, you're not going to have a beautiful afterlife at that rate, you have to work harder". There's more things you can't do." You immediately feel even more guilty than before and ask for his help in following his - whoops, I mean "the" - rules. He consoles you in your grief and guilt and he makes you feel better. You drop some more cash on him, you get more "educational" rules to follow, and you go home feeling better.
And you do feel better - for a while. Then the gravity of the situation hits you like a ton of bricks. And then the guilt sets in. So you call him to make an appointment for "counseling".
Ad nauseum.
We can stop here. you now know enough about "Self-Justifying Therapy", which is nothing more than a mutation of "the self-fulfilling prophecy".
Footnote 1: This is the very definition of a "self-defining prophecy", which in logic terminology is referred to as "a self-defining term". The logic is that "something exists by referring to itself"; i.e., of course the dog is God: the dog says he's God, and if anyone knows who God is, it is God, so therefore the dog must be God. To which my only possible reply is, "Bullshit!".
This page was last updated on / Dernier mise à jour sur 2008/03/29
Copyright / Marque Déposée 2008, T'Surakmaat (aka Yvette Seifert Hirth).
All rights reserved under the Berne and Paris copyright conventions - Reproduction prohibited
Tous les droits de l´auteur réservé au dessous des regles des conventions de Berne et de Paris - Réproduction interdit