User:Avalerion
I was born on October 25, 1988 in Jacksonville, Florida and raised there until we moved to Middleburg, Florida while I was still in elementary. The Lord blesses me with a Christian father, an own-way mother--meaning that she thinks someone can find their own way to heaven--and three younger brothers, one of which suffers from autism.
From an Abductive-Reasoning Scientific Realist, after reading Darwinism Under the Microscope at seventeen, I became a Scientific Materialist/Methodological Naturalist. An Empirical Agnostic Evolutionst since twelve, I searched through various religions after my scientific outlook was corrected, until studying the Faith two years later and then becoming a God-Sovereigntist Christian Creationist. After the primaries for the 2008 Presidential Elections, my political standing changed from neoconservative Republican (now only little 'r') to a paleoconservative Constitutionalist.
I'm also a light-green, free-market environmentalist, an artist, a writer and adopting a vegan diet. While bisexual, having quit such activities but still having an attraction for both genders, I am currently going through therapy to resolve the latter.
Sequence of Thought
An unshakeable foundation is the only place to start building your beliefs. After seventeen years of setting bricks upon quicksand, you can probably understand the devastation and anger of it finally sinking on me. In any case, I’ve learned that fundamentals play a large part on most of the points of our lives. For instance, being an agnostic, it opened up a path of morality and falsehood, including the act of accepting bisexuality as ethically correct.
The only way I understand how to come to this conclusion is to resort to things I know are unquestionable truths. Among those who understand the impossibility of pure objective reasoning within humans, this may sound arrogant, but please consider that this is my user page and, if I truly believe something, I will write it as a fact. However, I’m always up for listening to different points of view and will attempt to have an unbiased opinion on actual articles.
Ground: Book of Nature
Based on laws of science, including the Law of Conservation of Mass, the Law of Conservation of Energy, the Law of Entropy and the Law of Biogenesis, the conclusion I came to was that there is a deity.
- Note that we have matter and energy.
- Note that those two cannot, by the scientific laws of conservation, appear or disappear from reality.
- By those two things, we have many systems.
- According to the Law of Entropy, the systems could not have developed or evolved on their own.
- The same can be said for the Law of Biogenesis which, while already stating that life cannot come from inanimate objects, the Law of Entropy supports that life cannot evolve. The probability of such happening is beyond the accepted statistic in mathematics for impossibility.
A deity created everything. Having made everything, it must be omniscient, since it knows the ins and outs of everything by the rules it placed upon everything.
Here’s where it becomes harder to follow. Regarding time, such a deity must be omnipotent, above the laws of nature, or else it would have decayed to nothing already. It also would not have evolved; it had to be self-sufficient always. Being omnipotent, one could say the deity transcends the three dimensions and therefore is also omnipresent.
Meaning of Life
(Keep in mind that this is my thought pattern. While I don’t mind questions to help my own outlook, this is not to say that there is no other line of thought, just none that I have yet to perceive.)
The question has been asked over and over and over. The only way to solve this is to look at the deity. I’ve already covered that the deity is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. What does it have to gain by making us? If it is omniscient, it already knows everything, so it’s not to learn something new--as there is nothing new to it. If it is omnipotent, we have no power to give to it that it doesn’t have. If it is omnipresent, our presence is not required.
What else is it? It is the original, the standard, and the only source of right and wrong. Like truth cannot contain even a small lie or, by essence, it is no longer truth, its goodness cannot also be evil. Simply the idea that there is good and evil proves that these rules exist in some fashion. The only thing I can think of is a philosophical argument: We should exalt what is good, including the origin of goodness.
Why can’t such a being praise itself? I’m sure it can. Couldn’t it have another all-perfect being, if it’s lonely? Sure but, taking into account what the deity is, another being made purely good and of the same omniscient mind would just be the same being in another form. So, something else would have to be made, something without the same mindset. The only thing that can have such a mindset is one that is evil in some way.
Why would having something evil glorify what is good? By comparison? Simply the definitions of those do that. If something is forced to be evil, isn’t its obedience good? So it must have freewill, but, if the deity is omniscient and omnipotent, it purposely made a creation that would become evil. Doesn’t this mean that the creator is responsible and the creation is not at fault?
Yes and no. The creator is in control and responsible, but not at fault; the creation is. What the creator decides to do is good, it because created all the rules for itself and follows all the rules for itself, because its nature is constantly good. What about the nature of the creation? Originally, it would have had to have a pure, since conceptual evil was present but not physical evil. So why couldn’t the creation follow in the creator’s footsteps and avoid evil?
The only thing I can think of it not having absolute understanding, omniscience. Ignorance of the law, does not mean innocence. However, the deity already supports what is good and wants it glorified, so wouldn’t it tell the creation to do just that? Even so, what if the creation had known just that and not the entire context of the law?
Going on, revering the deity, comes from “exalting what is good,” which also means to adore the creation. Perhaps the creation, not able to distinguish the order of praise with its own limited understanding, made the mistake of worshipping itself over the creator by believing that its own choices dictated its nature, rather than the nature given to it as dictating its choices. Maybe people today do this and do not recognize that their desires aren’t always their choices.
So now what? It made evil choices and is tainted to have an evil nature. How is this exalting goodness or the origin of goodness? That’s just it. Goodness, the deity, must overcome the evil.
Then why not just do it? This doesn’t mean undoing the evil act, since by doing so would be making it nonexistent. What would be the purpose? It means undoing the evil nature, but destroying it? Sure and perhaps it has, but that would destroy the creature and is that all the creator intended?
Are the laws of nature and this transcendent being all that is? Yes.
No, this isn’t some pessimistic outlook on the world; that’s actually how I was as an Agnostic, before I was a Theist looking for truth. Laws are one thing, but by definition there is also charity, giving something beneficial to a person who doesn’t deserve it. By giving some sort of pardon, the deity just gave something that only it could give, but that still keeps evil around, so how did the deity conquer evil entirely?
I think omnipotence would surely just remove the creation’s entire being, since the corruption is in the very nature of it. How about purifying rather than destroying? That means the creator would have to protect the creation in some way, correcting instead of removing. This is definitely a possibility, though leaves me confuses on how it would do so. Perhaps by instilling its own nature into the creation, while still allowing the limited knowledge, thought pattern and choices to the creation.
Had to Have Known
If a creation had to know of the deity to properly glorify it, someone would have had to have known? Would that be where it ended? No, because the challenge to properly glorify the good deity is ongoing with our presence. There should be some evidence that a person had the ability to go search for, even if it was crossing the sea and going through the desert to find it. It should be available today as well, especially since exploration and communication have developed.
This wasn’t originally my standpoint when I went looking at the religions and finally the Faith. After having all of my beliefs knocked out from under me, I had lost the little purpose I had in life: To live it up. I don’t know about anyone else, but if there is a key piece missing I will keep asking and asking and asking for the truth because it eats and eats and eats at me until I do. That’s why I originally looked, but an urge isn’t enough of an explanation so that above is some thoughts more on it.
What I did and still do believe, is that such a book would have to be pure or at least with solid evidence available to those that would look so they would know which parts were pure. I don’t mean drastic corruption, but almost inconspicuous. A being that ultimately can purify nature could certainly keep the holy book from corruption to the point of no return.
Foundation: Word of God
It took two years, going through several religions that first qualified by having a “holy book” and not contradicting it or the qualifications for the deity stated above, until finally reading Christianity. I had held off from it because I was afraid that, because it was popular, especially in the United States, that it would be assumed that I took to it because everyone else around me was Christian. That’s far from the truth. With nineteen years of an unbelieving lifestyle, you can bet that I managed to find the few Atheists, Deists, Wiccans, Armenians and so on in my area, and surround myself with them, because I had no one else to relate to. Even now my understanding is at odds with most of my family and many other self-proclaimed Christians.
In any case, Christianity held up to all the conditions I had wanted, where the religions had failed. (I still need to return the Hindu book, but keep getting lost to that part of town.) The Bible contained further scientific evidence that I had not even heard about before, but I guess that’s understandable. ‘’Darwinism Under the Microscope’’ was five-years old when I first read it.