What if there were no humans, no belief in the infinite, no passion? Would god exist? Is belief in god, god’s existence? Does god exist because someone believes, because someone prays? Is god’s existence merely subjective faith? What does the existence of humankind mean to god?
Or is there an objective god and if so what purpose does
faith serve? It seems to me that if
there is an objective, all powerful god which created everything, such a god
would have had to have been here before time began and surely it would also have
to continue to be here once time ends. An
objective, all powerful god should know everything, all that has ever been and
all that will ever be. Or is the
objective god limited, evolving, just a more advanced expression of
humanity? And in all that this objective
god knows, are there multiple outcomes for my life? If so, this could mean that there are more
outcomes than can be imagined by my, or any other comparably puny human mind. Or does the objective god only know the one outcome
of each life. Is the single fate of
every tree, every dog, every grain of sand, known? What if your prayers do not amend the outcome
of your life? And if there is an
objective god why is faith even an issue?
Why wouldn’t an objective god make itself known and stop sectarian
violence?
If there is only one outcome for each life, why pray? If you pray, you believe in free will and the
power of prayer to influence the future.
If there is only one outcome for each life, is prayer merely an avowal
of faith to a subjective god? And if
prayer is merely an avowal of faith in a subjective god, doesn’t god already know
whether or not you believe and nothing is gained by prayer? I understand why it is written that praying
to a false idle is condemned but I don’t understand why ‘not praying at all’ is
also condemned. Is it because if no one
prays, believes, has faith, god ceases to exist?
What if humans, as the only fully rational and
self-aware creatures on Earth, are a mistake, an aberration, a miscalculation,
a screw up, a fluke, an evolutionary faux-pa, a squinch in a world created for
some other purpose, a destructive byproduct, a side effect? What if rational thought is just an implied
space, a side effect of something useful that is in itself destructive and/or
counterproductive, an experiment gone badly, if you will? What if the real purpose of existence is the balance
of all life on Earth? And what if it can
only be recovered once all humans are gone?
What if we cannot know if something is true? How would we know that we do not know and
even cannot know truth? What if truth is
more or maybe less than just congruence between what we think and what we
experience? If we can know truth, how
would we know that we do know truth? If
facts are true, are there truths that are not facts, subjective truths? What if it does not matter if we know truth? What if it does not matter what we believe? What if it does not matter what we have faith
in?
It is one thing to believe in or have faith in something
that you know to exist, like “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow”. But having faith in the absurd; in that which
you cannot know to be true, cannot experience, cannot prove, is quite another
thing.
