The Importance of Being Philosophical

What is God? Religion? Faith? What do they really mean? How do I apply them to my life? Should I even try? How do they impact what I say and do? Who or what is God, if it is at all? Did God create the universe, or did the universe come to being independently of any other sentient being? What if God did not make us any better than other organisms? Do we overrate sentience because our self-awareness is of course the thing which tells us that sentience is so great? Is God a force as natural as gravity, or something so powerful it created everything that we observe and experience? Does it pervade everything in existence? Does it sit apart from everything? Is its role in our lives nonexistent? Does it interfere intermittently? Or does it control EVERYTHING we think and do? Are the answers to these questions knowable? And do the answers make a difference in our lives? If they make no difference, then what do they matter? Why even ask? Does asking the questions make a difference in our lives?

Think about that last question for a second. We ask so many questions every day (see above) but few of them have the power to change our lives. "Will you marry me?" is an example of an important one, but the answer, "yes/no/maybe/other?" determines what happens next.

Do people gradually live better lives because they ask the BIG questions about God and religions? I can easily get caught in circular questioning (see above) without going anywhere, so that can’t be all there is to it. But those who ask these questions are most likely curious individuals who are investigating other mysteries in their lives as well, be they natural, political, social, psychological, etc. Their desire to know and understand how things work, to question why things are the way they are, predisposes them to do well in life.

Naturally, it is hard to focus on these and other questions when something lower down in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is not met, like food or security. Even if all your lower needs are met, there are other obstacles. Some are cultural – if you’re raised to believe word for word what you’re taught from a young age, then you’re less likely to question why things are the way they are. Some people are naturally more curious than others. I don’t mean to say that people who are more curious are better than those who aren’t. As kids, we were all more or less equally curious. We all wanted to know how things worked and why did that bug just eat that other one EWWWW GROSS ooooooo neato! As I said in an earlier post, kids have to have free time to explore their world to develop their natural curiosity, or they will eventually stop asking.

So asking these questions gets you to think of more questions, which beget even more questions... ad nauseum. Even though most questions have no definitive answers, they show us what we already think. They help shape and reveal to us our own personal truths. That is really the secret of philosophy. It gets you to figure out, not The Truth, but your personal truths. Even if you think that you know everything about yourself, you still learn more about what you believe about the nature of life, the universe, and everything. People who never ask what these truths may be never truly understand what makes themselves tick, and I believe they will always be searching in vain for an external source to answer those and other questions.

Religion is a handy way of getting bunches of people together who belief roughly the same thing about how things are run, but when used properly it’s not really an external source of meaning. I can’t stress this enough: I speak of what religion can do for mankind, not how people have used it to hurt others. When used to enrich lives and bring people together, it’s as if a bunch of people compared notes and realized that many of their answers to the above questions matched up. They shared views about mortal issues as well – social, policitcal, etc. – and decided to worship together because it gave them comfort and security knowing they were not alone. This is, of course, not exactly how it happened. People tended to believe that theirs was the only true religion with the only acceptable answers to the above questions. Religions developed in a variety of cultural and geographical niches, so that where you were and the race/socio-economic status of your parents determined what you believed. This is still very true in most of the world today, although many parents encourage their children to explore other religions before settling on one. Amish young adults are told to go out into the world explore other ways of life, a time in their life called Rumspringa, which can last as long as they choose. At they end they must decide whether they will join the Amish church and return to their community or join the rest of American society.

But I digress. My point in all this rambling is that I think that everyone should question their faith, their beliefs, in order to understand them, rather than to tear them down. People who know what they believe and how it differs slightly from their religion’s orthodoxy, what personal beliefs they have that no one else shares, and what aspects of their religion’s canon they completely agree with, these people are the happiest and most at peace with their lives. They think for themselves, and this allows them to believe for themselves rather than hacking up what someone else shoved down their throats. You must be able to (literally) play devil’s advocate in order to know yourself completely and to know that you are living your faith.

Walk in beauty.