(no subject)

It seems to have only affected this part of the country, but for the last couple weeks, since that one hurricane, we've been having gas shortages here. It's not that one can't find gas for filling up one's car (at least, here. I've heard it's worse in Charlotte), but that, for any given gas station on any given day, one can't be sure till one drives by, whether or not it will be out of gas. It feels interestingly unusual to see empty gas stations with bags over all the gas nozzles, and stations with signs taped to the pumps, saying that only regular is available, not plus or premium.

Gives one an eerie inkling of how it might feel, if the gas supply were completely cut off.

(no subject)

Walking along, lost in random thought. Something catches my attention momentarily, and I decide to stop, go back a few steps to look again... and I stand still. Noticing things. Listening. A little fly walking on the wood railing. Sunlit leaves on a sapling. A repetitive chirping noise from a cricket to the left. A more constant higher-pitched noise from a cricket (?) to the right. The roaring noise of the highway in the distance. Each one of these things comes into my attention, then fades as I focus on something else. The birds singing. How my body feels, balanced on my feet. Is there any scent in the air? Not really. Trees, leaves, the water in the stream flowing. I am standing still, with all this surrounding me, all this happening around me in the world. So much going on all the time, which I do not notice, except when I focus my attention on it. What things may exist, which I have never noticed, because I have not focused on them? What things may exist, which I don't know how to focus on... maybe there is something out there, but I have not learned (or have forgotten) how to sense it?

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Religion. Were my random thoughts about religion? I was thinking about how it is not wrong for someone to believe in a religion (or anything), just as it is not wrong for someone not to believe it. How can one be wrong for believing something? Belief simply is. Just as non-belief simply is. And religion is about things which cannot be proved nor disproved. As much as I find some beliefs, religious and otherwise, to be strange or unbelievable, or even offensive, still, how can I think that people are wrong to have those beliefs? They simply do, for whatever reasons. Their brains simply are that way.

The idea of a God creating the universe, creating humans, does not make sense to me. The idea of a God, existing alone in emptiness, before it decided to create the universe, does not make sense to me. What would such a God have been like? Did this God have thoughts? What kind of thoughts could a being have, without a universe to give those thoughts context? If nothing else existed yet, what kind of thoughts could a being have? It does not make sense to me, and so I cannot believe it.

But many people do. So... supposing there was a God... it must have created some people with a belief in a God, and it must have created other people like me, without such a belief. Or it must have left whether or not any particular person would believe in a God, to chance. Either way, in doing so, it was affirming the rightness of both ways of being. Otherwise, why create both?

Or perhaps there was one god (or several gods) who created the people who believe in religions, and there was another god (or gods), who created the people who don't believe.

Anyway. Why would a god create the universe? One cannot fathom a god's thoughts or a god's reasons, some say. The god was lonely, and wanted to create humans who would adore and worship it, others say.

So. Suppose there somehow was this God, alone in a vast emptiness, before the universe existed. And suppose that this god was bored and/or lonely (supposing that such thoughts/feelings could exist in a void). And suppose that this god had a power of Creation. And so it Created Something, to stave off the boredom and/or loneliness. (How does creating a universe stave off boredom and loneliness? How does having beings believe in you, and worship you, and pray to you, stave off loneliness?) If I were God, and had created this world, would it not have been in order to experience it? Would I not choose to be every piece of my creation, experiencing every facet of it? I would be every rock, every tree, every atom spinning in the void.... I would experience every person's experiences, sense every being's senses... Perhaps that might stave off boredom. Perhaps.

It still doesn't make much sense to me though. Not enough for me to have any belief.

My own existence doesn't make sense to me either, and yet I exist. So I do not deny the possibility of a God or Gods, or something magic and special and unknown, which exists outside of my senses. There just hasn't been anything so far, which has made enough sense to me, for me to be able to believe in it.

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Another reason I am not able to believe in a God which created the universe, is that it doesn't answer the question about how the God came into existence. If everything that exists must have had a creator, and if God exists, then who was God's creator? In contrast, if it is possible to believe in a God that has always existed (and had no creator), then why is it so different or difficult to believe in the possibility that the universe has always existed? Why do people believe that the universe must have been Created, but don't believe the same thing about the Creator?