Letter 7: Hey Joe!

I don’t think I’m a bad person, but I certainly would not consider myself a righteous one either. I grew up running with the wrong crowd and eventually I got into enough trouble that I landed myself in the local jail at the ripe old age of 19. At the time, I would not say that I was an atheist, although if you had asked me if I believed in God I would have said no. I was instead simply unconcerned with such things as God and religion. However, I had an experience while in jail that left me with little room for doubt that there was at least something out there, and this made me interested in God.

 

After my release, I started investigating God and religion (mostly from the Bible), and while I was learning, I began remembering things that I had learned in science classes which caused me to raise a few questions in my mind. I therefore ramped up my efforts to learn and this led me to speak with a man who knew a lot more about science and religion than I did. In our conversation, he unloaded a mountain of evidence on me that seemed to indicate that the Bible was not accurate. He showed me many points of comparison between the Bible and science regarding the origin of the Earth that did not add up, and I found that everything he said was quite accurate. So, as a result, I began to seriously consider the validity of religion and the Bible. However, I continued to search, exploring both Bible and non-Bible based faiths to see if I could find anything that would better support God’s creation of the Earth. However, I found nothing. Thus, I hit a point where it seemed rational to disbelieve in God. However, I could not get past the experience I had in jail. I knew somebody was there and this led me to do something that I had never done before (at least not seriously) - pray, assuming if God did exist, He would defend Himself on the issue.

 

It wasn’t much of a prayer. I simply directed the question verbally to God regarding His creation of the Earth, and I was surprised when a response came instantly. As soon as I asked my question, a different question popped into my mind: How would anyone know how I created the Earth? This thought led to a string of thoughts that entered my mind as follows: “The Earth is a place where I test the faith of my children, and there can be no faith if there are no options for choice. I purposely created the Earth in such a manner that it would appear as though I both did and did not create it, so that both options would be viable.”

 

These thoughts took me off guard because I had never even considered such a concept. I found myself laughing out loud as I contemplated what it meant, and I asked one more question (out loud) without even realizing that the words were coming out of my mouth. “You mean you planted false evidence?” I never got a reply, but that is what I gathered from it.

 

Thereafter, I tucked this experience away in my mind and I moved on. This left me believing in God and it settled my mind and so for quite some time, I did not actively engage in my search for truth but instead went about life (college, marriage, kids, job, etc.). However, from time to time I would think about what I learned from this prayer and I would try to envision God creating the Earth.

 

Given that my natural disposition in life is that of a smart a*s, I could only envision a scene that left me laughing every time - God directing the Angels, “Hey Joe, have your men bury a few more dinosaur bones over there and make it look believable. And oh yeah, make sure the Neanderthal skeleton gets in the right place.”

 

Anyway, after having this experience with prayer, I went for some time not knowing what to do with this information, but later in life when I started discovering the amazing things that science has revealed about matter, the light in my mind turned on and everything started to make sense.

 

So, with this new thought, let’s go back to the analogy of the Matrix-like world and universe and assign some assumptions to it: (1) there is a God; (2) He has children and He wants them to learn faith via hands-on experience; (3) in order to create a situation where faith could be learned, He purposely created all things in a way such that there would be viable evidence for both theories (God existing & God not existing, creation & evolution); and (4) He created the Earth and universe in a virtual way, using light and conscious energy (like the Matrix) which he then plugs his children into systematically so they each get their respective chance to learn.

 

Under these assumptions, consider what life would be like in that world and universe. As far as I can tell, it could be exactly like ours, if God wanted it to be. Thus, how do we know it is not ours? Everything I find thus far tells me that our lives are similar to this, but not quite so simplistic. There is more to it than this that brings it out of the movies and into reality. In the next letter, we will begin discussing what that is.

 

Until then,

 

Joshua 

Reviews

[RainQueen]

I like this very much. Written with your usual clean skill, the addition of life experience, personal viewpoint enriches the thoughts expressed, adding layer of understanding for the reader. Nicely done!

[Amata Luna]

Well written when it comes to Science and religion's point of view. I remember a friend of mine once said, "Science defines the natural faith, not faith defining science". That's pretty agreeable for the Creation/Evolution thing.

[Lizzy]

This is pretty good writing.