Sunday, August 27, 2006

THREE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

I have been asking people to answer a few questions. 
There are no wrong answers because these come from
your innermost feelings at the very moment that you
answer the questions.

Who are we, really?
Why do we exist?
What is our purpose?


Please do not write down what you have been taught. I
want to know what is in your heart at the moment you
answer the question. It may be completely the
opposite from what you were taught to believe. And
that is just fine. I find that when I allow my "soul"
to have a voice, new insights emerge and my
understanding of those questions gets clarified a bit
more.
What we were taught is a model, an attempt to answer
those questions. But what we were taught is some
else's answer, someone else's model of thier reality.
I want to know that your answers. Perhaps, when we
all put our answers together, our own understanding of
our own answers will spark an enhanced awareness of
who are we, really, why we exist and what is our
purpose.

Don't be surprised if your answers begin to change as
you start answering these questions.
I will be answering those questions myself, for myself
and posting them.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mushroom,

Those are great questions and I am sure everyone has a different answer, rightly so. I believe we were created to love each other unconditionally like Jesus (God) loved us. Jesus also gave us free will to love him and make the choice to love him. He did not want to exert his control over us, so he gave us free will to make our own choices.

As for our purpose here on earth, I believe everyone has a different purpose in this world based off of God's will for us. Ultimately our purpose should reflect our obedience and love towards God and his will for us!

Have a blessed day!

Sara

Anonymous said...

I have addressed your questions in reverse order, because the answer to the third question affects the answers to the other two.

3. What is our purpose?
This question presupposes an intelligent creator. If there were no creator, where would we have come by a purpose?

No matter how hard we try (and mankind has been trying for thousands of years), we cannot describe the creator. The creator is unfathomable. We can guess at our purpose but we can never know our purpose or the purpose of any other element of creation.

We probably cannot describe our purpose better than this: our purpose is to serve our unfathomable creator in the way the creator sees fit.

2. Why do we exist?
We exist to interact with each other, all other life forms, and the entire universe at the unfathomable pleasure of the creator.

1. Who are we, really?
We are an element of the creation. We are a part of the unfathomable creator’s creation.

Anonymous said...

1. Who are we, really?

“You are a fluke of the universe. You have no right to be here.” (National Lampoon’s DETERIORATA, a parody of Les Crane’s 1971 Desiderata.)

We—meaning all of what is commonly referred to as Creation—are simply products of a complex universe. Whether an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being is behind creation is a matter of faith. It is unlikely that science will ever penetrate the veil of the Big Bang. (What an absurdly inadequate name for the birth of the universe!) I am too obsessive to succumb to faith—it long ago consumed me and spit me out. Reason is my refuge.

2. Why do we exist?

There is no why, only how. We exist due to a process, whatever the ultimate cause of creation—be it plan or fluke: certain molecules, using materials and energy around them (once thought to be the sun, but perhaps heat at seamounts...), began to self-replicate, to make more of themselves in a way that was different than crystals did. Materials and energy from some self-replicating molecules were consumed by other (mutated) self-replicating molecules and the arms race of life was begun. We call it evolution. There is no destination, no goal other than to survive and make more self-replicating molecules. Simple observation, especially of insects, makes this abundantly clear.

Of all the uncountable individual organisms of millions of species that have lived and do live on this planet, are we the only ones to think of questions like these? It has been suggested that size and structure of brain is more significant for “intelligence” than brain to body ratio. Elephants, dolphins, and great whales all have much larger brains than humans. Elephants grieve for their dead. What do they contemplate? Our treatment of other creatures—and of the planet itself—is based on dangerously outdated survival mechanisms from our hunter-gatherer days of small populations and on the religiously inspired conceit that all but humans are expendable. And, for those who believe in a coming “Rapture,” even most people are expendable.

3. What is our purpose?

Our purpose is what we decide it to be. Man was not created in the image of God; we create our gods in the images of men. (And on rare occasions, women. Isn’t it strange that throughout history religion and war have been almost exclusively under the authority of males?)

If you are appalled at my apparent hubris, be assured that I have no desire for debate nor do I want to attack anyone’s faith—with the specific exception of those who believe that they walk the ONLY path to salvation and use that as an excuse to treat others with disdain—as many Christians and Muslims have done century after century after century.)

If you declare your purpose to be divinely inspired, why should anyone argue? Perhaps it keeps you from doing bad things. Perhaps it even motivates you to do good things. Either way, we all benefit. The error that many who believe in God commit is to assume that those without such faith are somehow deficient, are somehow more likely to do bad things. History is full of examples of the consequences of one group believing that other people are inferior: the European conquest of the Americas comes quickly to mind, as do slavery and all manner of “ethnic cleansings” in the past and present.

I believe that rule by law is necessary so that an individual may decide his or her purpose in life and pursue it without being constantly in fear for their life. Yes, this is a contradiction. Rule of law requires enforcement: Might makes right, which must interfere with what some see as their purpose in life. The alternative is the chaos of anarchy.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776 claimed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This was not a statement of fact; it was a political statement to prepare the readers for what follows: “ — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” If Jefferson and the other revolutionaries had not claimed that rights are “unalienable,” and that governments are instituted “to secure these rights,” would enough of their countrymen have committed treason against England to make the Revolution successful? The really huge idea is this: Governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That takes power (though not always force, as Ghandi and Martin Luther King demonstrated).

“We” don’t have a purpose. You have a purpose that you create—or accept, if you believe it to be from God. I have a purpose that I create. If they are compatible, it’s easy. If not, things can get complicated...

As a Catholic child I was taught that God put us in the world to know, love, and serve Him, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. That was before I understood that not everyone believed in the same God, or in any god, for that matter. But it took me a long time to grasp the ramifications of this and other teachings. My older sister was smarter. She realized that because our Dad was Lutheran instead of Catholic, he would burn forever in Hell when he died, while we rejoiced in Heaven. Needless to say, this caused her some grief. Fortunately, Dad converted to Catholicism before we were out of high school. Oddly enough, in middle age my sister embraced the Conservative Catholic movement and told both of our parents that they were going to Hell if they continued to practice the rites as changed after Vatican II. (She’s backed off on the condemnations because she saw how much it hurt them, but I think she still believes that they are lost.)

Robert Meyers

Anonymous said...

Oh, and clarifications.

The emphasis of the comments of others and Mushroom’s own life indicate that, as far as I can tell, none of you are like my sister. You do not seem to be prone to threaten those who believe differently. You are kind and loving.

I would like clarification on this issue of free will. Sara wrote that “Jesus also gave us free will to love him and make the choice to love him. He did not want to exert his control over us, so he gave us free will to make our own choices.” Does this mean that if a person does not choose to love Jesus that he or she will simply cease to exist when they die? After all, if the choice is to love Jesus or suffer forever in Hell, that is not really a choice, is it?

Robert Meyers