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Thoughts about a creator . . .
My personal belief includes the following:
The universe is so vast that we are not yet capable of understanding its complexities any more than our minds can visualize a billion or a trillion of anything. Observing the orderly composition of what we do understand and the complex functions of what we do not understand, convinced me that there has to be a creator of some sort. While civilizations throughout history have sought to explain and define this creator, the continuing revelation seems to indicate that we have yet to understand it.
I do believe that the way of life guided by Christian principles is the best available. I am, however, troubled by paying homage to a creator named "God." This is a deity that was envisioned centuries ago by the same primitive minds who also believed the earth was flat. They believed this "God" punished non-believers with plagues, earthquakes, and floods. They also believed all of what we have was created in seven days. In other words, they used religious-based mythology to explain what they did not understand.
So . . . what have we learned . . .
. . . and what do we do with the knowledge and experience we have accumulated during this lifetime?
Questions:
How much of what we learned is factual and how much is simply faith-based?
Can we pass it on or do we let the next generation re-learn it for themselves?
A Quick Review:
Throughout known history, man has tried to answer questions like "where did we come from" and "where are we going after we die?" Their search included trying to identify a creator, trying to understand our physical world, and the purpose of our existence. Man has sought answers through supernatural means, he has theorizing based on ancient relics, and he has conducted exhaustive examination of the universe with the tools available to him at that time.
In the last few decades, we have sent men to the moon, sent space probes throughout our solar system, and sent missiles crashing into the moon, a planet, and into a comet. We have been listening with radio telescopes for signals from outer space and studying photographs taken with a high-powered orbiting reflecting telescope.
With all our technology, there are still many events such as UFO sightings, paranormal experiences, and archeological findings that we can't explain. We can determine the age of the earth, the age of the known universe, track most evolutionary trails, and find evidence of specie extinctions, but we still can't answer most of those haunting mysteries of our beginnings.
We have studied the human mind and have developed an elementary understanding of how it works, but we cannot make advance detections of brain flaws that make us brutal, delusional, or develop insane behavior. We have designed computers that imitate the human functions using sensory input and call them robots. We have enhanced healthcare and surgical procedures, plant propagation and food production, global travel, and the dissemination of information.
However, after viewing most of the calamities we experienced in the last hundred years, we must strive to answer another set of questions.
"Where have we gone wrong?"
"Which time?"
"What are we going to do about it?"
As man bumbled his way through history making many mistakes, suffering through wars, surviving plagues, and enduring natural disasters, we have arrived in the 21st century. Through knowledge, experience, and creative thinking, special people spawned a system of government unlike any previous concept and that democracy still functions on the North American continent. But as did happen to ancient Rome, we face corruption from within.
How we, along with the rest of our world, come to grips with the current set of challenges, will decide whether or not we bumble along for another century or two. Just maybe we can learn from the past and hear the message of our greatest thinkers.
This book probes history for real truths and examines the evolution of knowledge in the big picture. With the gift of hindsight, we are able to see how knowledge has been accumulated and what it did for civilization.
The first twelve chapters contain selected areas of learning acquired mostly by trial and error. The examination of those areas is an attempt to take an objective look.
The remaining five chapters deal with what we can do with what we have learned while acknowledging some of the things we are already doing.
Interestingly enough, what we do is a measure of what we have learned.
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"What we do with what we learn is critical you see,
To man's continued living, together blissfully."
Special quotes are from a song written by Michael Don Fess in 2008
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