Reason Not Religion

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Reason Not ReligionObservations and inferneces from real life perceptions My entire lifeI have been a Catholic and have attended Church regularly with my

College Essays on Reason Not Religion

family, always believing in God and the stories and tales of the Bibleas pure fact that happened long ago, and of Jesus being the savior,etc.Just this past month I attended a Presbyterian church service with myelderly grandmother in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The church was small tobegin with, and only about one-third of the seats were filled. I wouldhave to say that at least 5% of the people were all over 65, with veryfew young couples at all. My grandma made a comment on the lack ofyoung people who attend the masses now, and she kept referring to thefact that recently less and less young couples and families everattended church.At first I thought that this church would then seriously have to closeits doors when the current majority of the parishioners died, but thenI realized another aspect of human behavior and psychology.The characteristic that I see and hear so much about that many humanstend to possess and practice, is the fact that they become closer togod the older they get. Why is this? It is because of one of thesame big reasons that we even have to have religion in the first placefear about death and what happens to us afterwards. These people seemto be turning to the kind of thinking that inspired the dichotic ideaof PASCAL^S WAGER. Even if these people were not very religious duringtheir younger years, we can now see a trend of a large section of ourcountry^s population starting to attend church more and more and becomemore religious as they grow older. What inspires this shift?--plainand simple, the fear of uncertainty.QUESTIONING ONES BELIEFS MUST GO BEYOND JUST WONDERINGWhen I used to attend Church regularly their was a priest who was anextremely good speaker and extremelyintelligent. Even though he was a Catholic priest, serving as the pastorof an extremely large church, he had thecourage and brains to disagree with some of the rigid dogma setup andenforced by the Vatican. I remember onesermon he gave that has greatly influenced me since, and I am very happyI was fortunate enough to hear it. Inthis certain sermon he talked about his thoughts on it being good forteenagers and youth to question theexistence of a God in their world. He talked at length about thisquestioning and finished up the speech with thesummation that even though we can question, it all comes back to God.I continued to believe in this way for a very long time. That there weremany questions concerning the actual andtrue existence of God, however due to certain things like the design ofthe world, everything had to relate back toan almighty creator. Just recently I have started to realize the problemwith my previous concept of questioning,as well as this particular priests. In the manner that he was referringto this concept, he was very right in the factthat everything has to come back to God. The reason that this is trueis due to the fact that just questioning isexactly that if all we do is say to ourselves, is Gee I wonder?, thenwe of course will not be able to come up withany alternative except to continue believing in the existence of agod.Questioning one^s faith must not only encompass asking yourselfepistemological and metaphysical questions,but we must explore, learn, and above all gain knowledge about theevidence and the arguments from both sidesof the debate. We must have dialogues with others who believe the sameas us, as well as those who share acompletely different, even blatantly contrary view. Only by these meanscan we ever come out with a greaterunderstanding of the issues surrounding the questions about theexistence of a supreme being. If this procedureis followed and we always continue to learn and accept new, validinformation then we will eventually find ourown sense of the truth, and our own philosophy for our lives.MY JOURNEY TO FIND THE TRUTH, AND SUBSEQUENT LEAP OF REASONThis past year I really started examining my own beliefs and faith inGod. As I read Homer^s Iliad, informationabout Mithra (Jesus^ immediate mythological predecessor), and many othersources that put questions in my mindabout the validity of my faith, I began to seriously doubt whether Godwas something just made up by humanssince the beginning of time to explain their world, or was really thetruth.I am sure now in my mind that the images and symbols used to representGod and initially gods, werecontrived simply to explain phenomena of the planet, mysteries of life,and to satisfy that extremely strong need ofhuman beings to feel important. This past point I feel is the mostpivotal in understanding the human race^smajority view of the existence of a supernatural power. There are somany people today that of course we can^t allhave jobs that most would consider important and help lead the holderof that job toSELF-ACTUALIZATION, so a god makes up for that. It is written andspoken by Christians and the Biblethat all human beings are equal and that they are all loved the same byGod, therefore everyone is extremelyimportant because the maker of us all values them on par with everyoneelse. A respected businessman whohas worked for his fortune is the same as a neurotic drug addict beggingfor money; often times the former is seeneven as more evil.THE FALLACIOUS ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF A GODIn my quest to find the truth about the existence of a God, which willalways be going on and never end, I havealso made it a point to study those arguments which are manyphilosophers^ and theists^ base for their belief in analmighty creator. I will begin by explaining the thought that goes intoeach argument, and how the people whomare proponents of these such arguments validate their claims. I willthen therefore proceed to point out themistakes that I believe each of them makes, some more than others. Thesethree main arguments are as followsTeleological Argument for the Existence of GodThe teleological argument for the existence of God is one that uses theactual existents we know in reality, in thiscase the entire planet and universe, and uses these in a somewhat welldeveloped theory for the existence of agod.The simplest way to define this argument is to use the simple analogy ofa clock maker to a clock; or intelligentdesigner to an intelligent design. This is the conscious basis for atheory that states that due to the fact that welive and exist in a wholly technical and advanced-level world wherethings such as the existence of life andhumans are very intelligent, then there must be an intelligent creatorthat first shaped us all and everythingaround us. This theory has been changed and developed even more over theyears into modern versions.The main ideas that I find inherently wrong with this argument come fromthe fact that first theists believe thatGod just exists and always has, however he too would be an intelligentbeing, and according to the teleologicalargument itself, would He then not necessitate an intelligentdesigner? And so on and so forth^Å Thereforetheists who believe in the existence exists idea in terms of a God,and also tend to endorse the teleologicalargument, are contradicting themselves because of a conflict in whichthe premises of their two parallel beliefs areat odds. Those making this contradiction must check their premises.Another more abstract theory that can act to somewhat disprove thevalidity of this argument is that of theOSCIALLATING UNIVERSE THEORY. This theory in a nutshell states thatthe universe is constantly eitherexpanding or condensing, as long as matter is present in the universe. Acorollary of this theory also says thatthere is substantial evidence that the universe has expanded to itslimit and then shrunken down again into onepoint of infinite density, temperature, and curvature, only to explodeagain (the big bang), a total of 100 times!With the potential of an entirely new universe being created each timethis has happened, with the potential ofcompletely different laws of physics and the behavior of matter, thenthere is definitely the increased possibility ofour planet simply existing and being able to support life by a chancecreation of the universe we live in, created bythe current expansion and creation that has been happening for anestimated 10 billion years. The fact is, with thatmany worlds being created over time, there is a sure chance that out ofall those planets created, at least one, ours,could support life.The Ontological Argument for the Existence of GodThe Ontological argument for the existence of a God is more complex,and more utterly unfounded then the one,previous argument that we have examined. This argument basis its entireproof on floating abstractions madeabout the brain of man, his conscious, and the things it is unable todo. This argument is commonly referred to St.Anselm, its primary creator. The argument goes like this We all havesomewhat of an image or idea of what Godis in our minds, even atheists who don^t believe in any god still havesomewhat of a conception of what agod, if one existed, would have to be like and capable of. Ourconception of a God is fairly limited because toconceive of a being so great and powerful is hard for us to do in thefirst place. Anselm holds that because we cantherefore conceive nothing greater than God, one must exist.Let^s look at that in simplistic form due to the fact that I canneither think nor conceive of anything greater thanthis entity, the particular entity which I can not go beyond thereforemust exist. How absurd of an argument isthis? Its only foundation lies on some unconnected idea of aphilosopher, randomly applied to reality. The mainproblem that I have with this argument is that it takes a rule and lawof reality and reason, and applies tosomething that we simply can have no conclusion ever made on whileliving on earth. If I say that there is nothingworse and more scary that I can conceive of beyond death, so thereforedeath must exist, I am right because deathdoes exist. In this case the ontological argument for the existence ofdeath works. How do I know itworks?--because I can see and perceive death in reality and I can knowit beginning with my sense perceptions.The existence of, and my knowledge of death, is hierarchical. Howeverthe concept of God can^t not be tracedback to basic sense perceptions (where all concepts must be originallyderived from), and is therefore unable to begrounded in reality and truth. In order to gain higher knowledge ofsomething as complex as a God, we fist mustperceive basic facts of reality. There are no basic facts of reality toperceive when it comes to the concept ofGod.Think of any concrete that almost all men believe in and their can be noreal intellectual debate about without oneof the parties being totally irrational in even disputing the fact^×thatconcrete concept can be traced back to thetraced down on through the line directly to man^s ability to perceive.God^×this concept can not be brokendown into anything close to reality and perception. It is because ofthis fact that even if you do believe in God,in order to retain any sense of being able to think, you must remainagnostic. If we refuse to recognize the fact thatthe existence of God is impossible to perceive, then human knowledgewill perish into an abyss of unconnectedand unsupported beliefs in irrational and ungrounded faiths, which wewill fool ourselves into believing is reality.The Cosmological Argument for the Existence of GodThe Cosmological argument hinges on a property which is a corollary ofthe axiom of existence. This law is the lawof causality^×which states that all things that occur do so because theyare caused. The proponents of thisargument then take this law, which we apply to every day reality onEarth, to the beginning of the universe. Theysay that the universe just couldn^t have existed for all time, but thatit would have to had been created just likeeverything else. They then take these beliefs even farther when theyassert that the process of creation andexistence can not be infinite in either moving forward, or lookingbackward.For instance, these people believe that God created theuniverse^×therefore the universe has a cause. Howeverthey do begin to get into contradictory waters as soon as they areconfronted with the fact that they believe oftheir God^s existence^×was God created too? No^×they say that there has tobe some beginning that just was andalways will be^×there can be no infinity in either going forward, and noinfinite progression backwards throughages of cause after cause. This first contradiction is plain and obviousto the educated interpreter of the argument,the others are more deeply involved with other problems.If these people believe in the phrase existence exists when it comesto their God, then why can^t this just beapplied to something such as the universe? Why do we need a fancifulGod to explain the beginning of theuniverse when the cosmological argument already asserts that things cannot simply progress or regressinfinitely? The reason is due to the concepts we discussed earlier ofthe need of human self-actualization andthe reassurance of an afterlife where we can finally fully enjoy ourhumanity and existence.This argument is right in one respect the very entity that initiallycreated the universe itself was not caused orcreated. In this correctness however they fail by failing to correctlyidentify that thing which did create theuniverse^×it was not God, but something which contained the entireuniverse and still is a part of that universe.(FOR A CLARIFICATION OF WHAT I AM REFERRING TO HERE, READ THIS.)FINAL CONCLUSIONSMy final conclusions so far in my quest to understand the basis forbeliefs and proof for the existence andnon-existence of God are short, small, and completely unfinished. Theyare my final conclusions for this paper,at this point in my life. One^s true final conclusions on these matterswill only be able to made some day if there issome place, perhaps not necessarily a heaven, where we will have time tothink and reflect on what we havelearned during our lives, and perhaps even after them.For now I know that no matter what paths we follow as human beings onjourney to cognitive understandingabout God, we must always remain agnostic for the complete duration ofour mortal lives, primarily because ofthe lack of a hierarchy of knowledge which we can see and deduct for theconcept of God. Finally, we must alllearn as much as we possibly can and can volitionally motivate ourselvesto in order to understand this debateand conflict in human belief. Please note that this sample paper on Reason Not Religion is for your review only. In order to eliminate any of the plagiarism issues, it is highly recommended that you do not use it for you own writing purposes. 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