Dear Universe,
I write you this letter in part, on behalf of the millions of people on this planet who will never have the opportunity to write a letter at all, let alone a letter to you, and also in part for my own curiosity. It is innate human behavior to understand our reason for existing. I think this is one of our most common of all questions. Many people search for this truth through various religions and beliefs. Others spend their lives looking for these answers through scientific means. I was recently introduced to the idea that God and the universe may in fact, be one and the same. My dearest Universe, is this possible? In my goal to understand the truth in all things, I have come up short. The quest for truth through Religion seems immeasurably long and possibly unending. Universe, does this sound familiar to you? Even contemplating your vast, infinite nature seems futile. Since your secrets are limitless, how could we ever come to know them all? You seem to have commonalities with God, so I come to you with my questions.Should we continue our search outward, through religion and science, for the answer to our most basic question? Maybe the only truth we can ever truly understand is our own. By searching inward, is it possible to find the answers we seek?
You know, I think just by asking you this question, I have the answer I need. So take your time in responding.
Craig from Newfoundland
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April 21st, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Oh My God - What a statement! Thank you.
I just discovered this site and its incredible. I’m not that much of a believer but I find a real connection here - what profound letters.
thank you all for sharing - its really making a difference to how I think and feel about so many things.
Nikki - NYx
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 am
GREAT WEBSITE. amazing. uplifting. full of love. full of goodness. full of God.
xxxxx NEa
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:09 am
great letter….like everything on this website it blows me away with it’s authenticity….am so tired of the same old theological arguments that don’t seem grounded in real human experience…
but this stuff is
thank God
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Yes, it is in our make-up to want to know and understand the reason for our existence. It does not, however, require an immeasurably long time to find an answer. God created us to have an eternal relationship of love with Him. Today we can enter this eternal relationship through Jesus Christ. Understanding this alone will give you a peace within, so that as you continue search out the things of God and Science, it will become a joy.
The Bible gives answers to the question of ‘Why God created us?’ It is a book of relationships between; God and mankind, mankind and God, ourselves and others, God and creation, and mankind and creation. Science answers the question of ‘How did God create things?’ it is the role of Science to search how God did it. To the question of ‘What are we’, the Bible and Science complement each other to give us the answers.
It is illogical to believe that the universe can create itself and be the ‘mother’ of all things. The God given ability to reason and the Laws of Science tell us that for something to create itself it must be in existence before the creation, that is a nonsense. Reason and the Laws of Science will always take you in a search for a ‘first cause.’ In other words a creator has to exist on a higher level of ‘being’ or existence than the created. Artists are an example of this as they are, and must be, on a higher level of being than their created paintings. This need for a creator to be at higher level of ‘being’ than the created sounds very much like the God of the Bible.
As you continue your search remember, at this point of time, that Religion and Science do not always always understand things as clearly as they should, but all will be made clear when Jesus returns (1Cor. 13:9-12)
April 24th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
And, dearest Craig, am I also not you?
April 25th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
I was not aware that The Universe used email. Sweet and seductive words from The Universe but thats all they are, and as most sweet and seductive words they usually contain little truth, They are, in fact, almost always self-serving. Craig if you are really want to “understand the truth in all things” you need straight-talk not sweet-talk.
April 30th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Cheers Craig, I congratulate you for still searching and not giving in to the temptation to trade your reason for the quick fix of religion. It is all to easy to do when there are so many around us that seem to be content with such a trade. Let me just say that the answer you seek may not be possible to know given the limitations of the human mind and our inability to step outside the universe and observe it from a more favorable vantage point. This does not mean however that we cannot rule out certain possibilities, For instance those that can’t conceive of a universe such as this, made of a limited number of simple atomic elements (which even we ourselves have been able to combine into some simple organic molecules using nothing but electricity) for some reason have no problem at all postulating that a being vastly superior to man and in fact more incredible than any comic book superhero ever envisioned by man is capable of either just popping into existence or has existed forever. Any thinking human should be able see this is not what intelligent beings should do to solve questions it does not have the answers to. When combined with the mountain of historical and philosophical evidence that god is simply a creation of man rather than the other way around, it really does get as clear as day that god is not a possibility when trying to explain our existence, and in fact has caused man untold misery ever since the emergence of monotheism 2000 years ago. But don’t get discouraged that science and religion are dead ends as far as answering the our most basic questions. Learn all you can and continuously seek the real truth with courage where ever you happen to find it, to the best of your ability, and the view you will get from this hard path at the end of your days, will make the religious life seem as shallow as a fetid pond on the edge of a swamp. All the best. Kozz
May 7th, 2008 at 1:18 am
There is plenty of historical evidence, both secular and religious, over thousands of years, for the existence of God. As for philosophy, if you take it to the end you will always find a ‘first cause’, something that existed before the Universe and all that is in it, something eternal. Kozz is correct when he says that a godless mankind is the cause of all the misery on earth. A godly mankind is the answer to the misery. Philosophy will tell us that if you are all the time searching for the truth you will never find it. Even if it slapped you in the face you would not recognize it for you no criteria by which to determine if it is the truth or not. .But if you understand that truth is reality as God perceived it when He created the Universe and all that is in it, then you will find what you are looking for. Craig once again you need straight talk not fuzzy talk.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
wayne,
Really Wayne? This is your quote. “There is plenty of historical evidence, both secular and religious, over thousands of years, for the existence of God”. Come on how about some specifics. Even most religious people recognize that faith in God is blind, resting on nothing, except a desire to ease the pain of not understanding our world, and our own mortality. People use many things to ease this pain. Drugs, Food, Shopping but for those who find it easy to lie to themselves, religion is by the far the most common addiction. Unfortunately, like all those other things, it has it’s side effects. This makes perfect sense, because after all, when you know the one great truth, what else is there to learn. And when you no longer feel the pain of the world, why bother to do the things which would actually fix the issues related to that pain. Unfortunately these two side effects are civilization killers, and the inverse correlation between religion and civilization is very close to perfect. So Believe if you would like, but do you really feel the need to spread your civilization killing disease among the few of us who face the pain courageously and therefore are driven to solve the problems related to it, with the reason we have not traded for a cozy little coma.
May 11th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
The contents of the Bible, arguably the most scrutinized book in the world, go back 4-5000 years with accounts of people and genealogies who believed that God existed. Even the Ancient Greek, who still influence parts of our society today, had gods. For the past 2000 years, and particularly since the printing press, there is ample evidence of people who say that God exists. The atheist when espousing his system of belief (religion) says that there is no God, is acknowledging that there are people who say God does exist, otherwise what he is saying is absolute senselessness or a made up fairy tale. As a seeker of truth seek the specifics out for yourself
There are many “religious” people, as you call them, who also suffer pain, both physical and mental. Once you know God and act on it you know your mortality very well and knowing who you are and what your allows you to live in this world in peace and obligates you to help others.
When you go to your doctor for advise about an ailment and follow the advice given, you are in fact saying I have faith in this doctor, he has authority to give such advise and I trust him. If you ask a friend for advice and you follow it you are saying the same thing about your friend, you have faith and trust in your friend. Just as you have a personal relationship with your doctor and friend so those who have a personal relationship with God do not act in blind faith, hoping there is someone out there to catch them, they know there is someone out there and trust Him. Kozz ask yourself this question. “who or what do I put my faith and trust in that causes me to think and act in a way that brings me pain.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Wayne,
first of all your first paragraph states because there are people who believe in God then this is evidence of his existence. I’m sorry but if you want to be taken seriously at all you will need to pick it up a notch. There are people who believe in just about anything one could imagine, this does constitute evidence in any way shape or form, but your belief that it does in fact says a lot about how qualified you are to judge just about anything.
And do you really believe a faith in God is equivalent to the trust you give to your doctor.Again, please be serious. More accurate would be comparing a belief in God to allowing a homeless guy on the street who told you that he could take out your ailing gall bladder for 10 bucks with his rusty pocket knife, but even in this you would be more correct believing the homeless man. You don’t have “blind” faith in your doctor, you use your reason, and understand he has been highly trained and that he has done your procedure many times before successfully.
As for your final question I don’t think you have any idea what point you were trying to make but I will answer it anyway. I don’t put my trust or faith in anything that causes me to think of act in a way that brings me pain. Hope that was enlightening for you. I live by objective truth, reason, and compassion, these are the qualities which have always assisted man in taking him in the direction of his ultimate potential. Trading these for the false comfort of religion has always taken man in the other direction. It’s a simple choice if you care about humanity as a whole, and a simple one also if all you care about is anesthetizing yourself to the world around you. It’s clear where your priorities lie.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:23 am
Kozz,
So your faith and trust is in your ability to find objective truth through reasoning. In other words, as a member of mankind, your faith is in yourself. I agree with you when you said “science is a dead ends as far as answering the our most basic questions,” so how do you know what objective truth is, by your reasoning? A subjective circular argument don’t you think?
You interpret things from your belief that God does not exist. Tell me how does this differs in essence from those who interpret things from their belief that God does exist. I would be interested in your reasoning. I believe God exists because I have a personal relationship with Him, as have many over the millenniums. Tell me, how do you know God does not exist? A personal relationship with yourself perhaps, a belief in your ‘inner self’
You speak a lot about ‘pain’, it comes out as some sort of mantra you keep repeating. I don’t think you know what pain is. Kozz if you are suffering I feel for you, but don’t give up hope. God often comes to people in their suffering. When He calls don’t turn away but go to Him, choose life.
May 17th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
its an interesting question you pose. as you say we are all searching for an answer. i suppose this means a can’t give you one? im not a believer in god; that is i dont go to church or pray unless i want something really bad (i never get it; whether that baceace “he” doesn’t exist or becuase im being selfish; who knows) no i dont believe. though i find it no more or less feesable that there is some “greater” being or god out there then the fact and atom made the whole place. i dont think there is a purpose to life. honestly wouldn’t we be equipt to do whatever it was (if there was one) rather then just wonder about it?? and if we are achieving it as we speak?? well then great. obviously no one will pop down and say congrats but we do feel a sense of pride for a lot of things we do. maybe one of them is a devine meanfull thing (we just dont see it) — other people might though. do we all have seperate meaning or the world as one or both.
we pretend to be all frustrated at trying to work all this out. honestly though life would be pretty boring if we didn’t have such things to contemplate. be thankfull. think up your own answer. if you dont find any answers at least have some fun.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Wayne,
Your first paragraph not only clearly illustrates that you don’t understand the term “objective truth” , but then you end the paragraph by inaccurately regurgitating the term circular logic, probably because you must be tired of rightfully hearing applied to your own arguments so often. But unfortunately this doesn’t mean you can use it anywhere you think it sounds good. These errors render the paragraph completely and utterly meaningless and therefore very hard to respond to except to provide you with some definitions.
First of all, objective truth is what makes the computer you are typing this on work. The fact that every one of the trillions of individual instructions executed on our computers while writing these replies, were executed without error, is testament to the fact that it does exist in this reality. The fact that you don’t have to worry about the building where you work vanishing and reappearing in some other random location is another example. We could go on and on. Objective truth is what science is based on, and if it didn’t exist there would really be little reason to practice science at all.
Now for the definition of circular logic. It is simply when the proposition one is trying to prove is contained within the premise. For instance, if I were to say, I know God exists because it says it in the bible, and I know the bible is correct because it was written by God. This is what people mean when they tell “you” your arguments are circular. Your use of the term simply makes no sense in the context in which it is used. I know God does not exist in the same sense that I know there are no pink unicorns flying around Venus. There is simply no evidence to suggest that there is, and there is in fact a mountain of physical laws (objective truth) that would indicate the impossibility of such a proposition.
As for how an interpretation of the world based on reason is different than one based on faith, I think the last paragraph touches on this, but I would add that the biggest difference is that a life view based on reason will always encourage the seeking of knowledge, since knowledge is the basis of it’s power. Religion, on the other hand, abhors knowledge. It starts with a proposition that God exists and then everything that supports this proposition is accepted as truth, and everything which contradicts this proposition witll be ignored. After all Wayne. You have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe, what use do you have for man’s knowledge. You have the one true God who speaks to you, just like the Muslims who fly planes into building, and those who blow themselves up daily along with dozens of innocent people. Try and understand Wayne, if you were born a Muslim instead of a Christian, the same blind faith that drives your beliefs now, could be driving you to perform such atrocities yourself. Or even if you remained a Christian, but were born 500 years ago, perhaps it would be driving the burning of people alive for their blasphemy .
One final thought, you mention my obsession with pain, but in fact it is religion that is obsessed with pain, and the elimination of it in ones “own” life. Notice the word own. Religion is never concerned with the pain of others except as far as it could be relived in others accepting the beliefs of a particular faith This is really not far removed from a Drug addict encouraging others to become addicted themselves. The pain of this world is not there so that we can learn to medicate ourselves with religion. Pain is always a sign that something needs to be done, whether it is taking your hand off of hot stove, or helping to solve the homeless problem. But you don’t solve the homeless problem by simply lessening their own pain with drugs or religion, you solve it with reason and compassion. You figure out what is the root cause and think how best can we go about lessening the problem.
Now I’m sorry to leave you arguing in a vacuum but I’m afraid I can’t afford to continue responding to anyone who has such little regard for the rules that define rational argument. I will only hope that one day it will become clear to you that such a disregard drives the inability of humanity to solve certain problems facing it’s continued progress, and is, in fact, responsible for the creation of nearly all of those problems in the first place. Another name for this disregard is blind faith, which in turn is the very basis of every religion. So enjoy your personal relationship with the one true God, while those of us without such a relationship, go about trying to solve the problems created by such delusions.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:03 am
Kozz
I see that you have changed your mind. Previously you said that “science is a dead end as far as answering the our most basic questions.” That is,God exists and He has a purpose for creating mankind. Your ‘objective truth’ then had no reference point except yourself, that is why it was circular and still is. Now you say that God does not exist based on facts (objective truths) established by science. You have bombed out again, you obviously don’t understand how scientific facts are determined. You refer to ” physical laws” but before they become laws they have go through a procedure generally called the ’scientific method’. It requires that if a hypothesis is to achieve Theory status (not yet a law) it must meet certain criteria. In the most basic form these criteria are: (1) It is guided by a natural law (2) It is explained by reference to a natural law (3) It is testable against the empirical world by measurement, observation, experimentation, etc). (4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., they not necessarily the final word; and (5) It is falsifiable.
Tell us Kozz, as the God under investigation exists at a higher level of being than mankind, what natural laws guided you to determine there is no God? How is your belief explained by reference to natural laws? More interesting, how did science get to this higher level of existence to make measurements, observe, and carry out experimentation? In fact Science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, something that Science agrees with. Your blind faith, yes blind faith, that science can prove what you believe will not happen. Even a small amount of research would have told you that.
You may be interested to know that modern science is what it is because of the belief ( by people of the Jewish, Islamic and Christian faiths) that God exists in a higher level of existence than His creation, therefore there would be no sacrilege against God or offending the gods of nature if they started to examine the physical, chemical biological etc aspect of this universe. Most of these founding fathers believed in God. As you know, and apparently choose to ignore, there are many Christian, Jewish and Islamic scientists who believe in God. Are you saying that these scientists do not know what ‘objective truth’ is, that only those who don’t believe in God do? Be careful what you say, you have got your foot far enough into your mouth already. So much for your contention that ‘religion (what ever that means) “abhors knowledge.”
I hope your final thought is not founded on ‘objective truth’ as it is ludicrous, the scientific community must be cringing. Don’t you think that you would have to be thick not to take your hand off a hot stove because the pain is your ‘own’. Christians suffer pain the same as you or anybody else, of course they would take their hand off a hot stove, the question is would you. The history of Christian compassion and the acts that follow speak for itself, the knowledge of which seems to have evaded you Most people know that global Christian charitable organizations such as World Vision and the Salvation Army, to name two, have no strings attached. The same applies to thousands of other global, national, and local Christian aid organizations. Certainly those who have received comfort and help from these organizations know it.
Tell us Kozz, what have you done to solve the pain and problems of this world, especially the homeless you refer to earlier? I fear it is all navel gazing, or should that be navel reasoning, unfortunately navels only produce fluff, which is not very useful for feeding the hungry or housing the homeless.
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:07 am
My brothers, can you agree with me, that maybe believers and non-believers in God (preachers, pastors, bishops, priests, simple folks, etc.) who make different comments, make it difficullt for everyone else, I mean for everyone, just because thei think (sometimes they are sure) they KNOW.
Are you sure abut what you are saying? What are you fighting for if not for a certitude of your own convictions, beliefs, ideas.. fears.
What can our statement do for the world today? Maybe we personally need it, but most of the others dont. Do we really have to proove the other is not true? Is he totally false, am I 100% true?
Can’t we just everybody mind our own buisness, our “personal God” whatever or whoever he is? It would probabily be a perfect start to a normal humanity.
Is one religion good, and all others bad? Must one man be wrong in a two (or more) person discussion? Can we talk about the things that brings us together instead of the ones that separates us?
“The Universe”, has a point, in my opinion. NO ONE can make someone else believe, love, hope, if that person does not have has a personal adhesion, meaning he understands and wants. And in the end, concerning what we believe, hope, I guess no one decides for us, but us!
Anyhow, I tend more and more to believe that some persons are not made to (at least) understand some things !!!