Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
Choice selection is unlimited, so select any choice that applies to you.
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Choice selection is unlimited, so select any choice that applies to you.
I have several direct experiences that were sufficiently convincing regarding the reality of Brahman. As I have written in my profile:-Choice selection is unlimited, so select any choice that applies to you.
I have several direct experiences that were sufficiently convincing regarding the reality of Brahman. As I have written in my profile:-
A loaded question. Upbringing and environmental factors for one, personal predilection and philosophical attraction to the given concept being another.
I certainly don't think a 'Supreme Creator Being' is necessary for making sense of the universe. In and of itself, the Standard Model of physics has proved largely adept at doing that. The physical world is mechanistic (in terms of classical Newtonian physics/general relativity) and probabilistic/indeterministic at the subatomic, ‘quantum’ level. It is not teleological. God isn't needed here.
Natural selection is entirely sufficient for explaining the diversity and origins of organisms, and it is not a guided, directed or goal-driven phenomenon. No God needed there either. A magical hand from above breathing a vital force into the earth is definitely not required or consistent with the evidence.
So, why do I believe in God?
While I believe that science is all we need to understand the cosmos and biological life (and religion should stay out of it), I don't submit to the notion that it is all we need to understand us, by which I mean not the muscles, DNA and matter of our physical constitution but rather our conscious awareness as purposeful beings, capable of leading meaningful lives, in a universe that is seemingly devoid of any purpose.
I'm talking here about possibility spaces. Human beings are capable of leading meaningful lives or finding purpose in their experiences yet we have to accept, nonetheless, that the natural world (viewed as separate from the world as experienced by conscious beings) is not itself guided by any purpose.
All of human history is characterized by purpose - our love, hate, war, progress, regress, culture - which has come into being in the universe through our species.
I would argue, being a theist, that the reason purpose comes into existence is because it is possible for purpose to come into existence and the reason why there is this possibility of purpose coming into existence is because the laws of nature which we have are not brute facts (i.e. eternal, immutable, universal, precise, pre-existing mathematical axioms that we just have to accept as a pre-existent given) but rather emanate from a real space of 'abstract' existence, distinct from physical existence, which I view as hailing from a supreme intelligence who willed to create a universe with physical laws that made the emergence of purpose-driven conscious life possible.
How does purpose and meaning and awareness and qualia just emerge from purposelessness, meaninglessness and consciouslessness inert matter, unless the possibility for this to be so first exists somewhere in the abstract along with mathematical objects and the laws of nature themselves? We are the universe, inert matter, aware of itself - able to reflect on itself, study itself and relate to itself. This is only so because we live in a universe with laws of nature and fundamental constants that allow for the possibility of beings like ourselves to emerge from mechanistic physical processes and natural selection. They needn't have had to. Theoretical physicists have used modelling software and their own knowledge to conceptualize innumerable ways in which the laws of nature or constants could have been different, with just a few minor tweaks in values here and there, resulting in no possibility of complexity of any kind emerging - like stars, planets and galaxies, let alone conscious life - other than clouds of hydrogen and helium floating around eternally in a vacuum.
As the great theoretical physicist Professor George Ellis stated in an interview a few years ago:
George Ellis
"From my view point, existence isn’t just physical existence: there’s these abstract existences. That space of abstract stuff (i.e. truths of mathematics, world of ideas) was sitting waiting to be discovered and eventually minds reached a sufficient complexity that they could discover it."
There are many other reasons, but that's my first one.
I have several direct experiences that were sufficiently convincing regarding the reality of Brahman. As I have written in my profile:-
This is my reason as well. But I would add they came unbidden, and surprising.
I get both kinds now. Since I'm basically lazy, I much prefer the spontaneous kind. Much less work.Same. The initial was a spontaneous experience...the others, through meditative practice.
I get both kinds now. Since I'm basically lazy, I much prefer the spontaneous kind. Much less work.
Mine take a bit more effort. My mind does not easily reach stillness on its own accord.