I saw a Bill Maher video clip where he was ridiculing religious people as crazy and un-thinking. I think that people who believe there is no God are the ones that are not thinking correctly. If there are varying degrees of intelligence, then the greatest of all is God. To think that the human is the most intelligent being is awfully conceited and ignorant of the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Those who believe only in what they can see are not critical thinkers. Those who put their full faith in science fail to realize that humans are fallible, or they fail to make the connection that imperfect humans create imperfect science. Science has been wrong many times in the past. How can anyone think that science is entirely correct now?
Point of view
If you’re a lab rat in a box, and all you knew from the day you were born was that box, then that box is your world. You don’t know anything beyond what you can see in the box. Denying that there is anything outside that box is like the “thinker” who denies that God exists because he can’t see God. We have been blessed with the five senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. These interact with matter in their own way. Why do we think that if we can’t sense it, it doesn’t exist? What exists that we cannot sense? We simply do not know. Is there another kind of matter than we cannot sense?
Life after death
If you haven’t decided whether or not you believe in life after death, now is the time to plan ahead, because the way you live your life now should take into account what happens in the next life. If indeed God exists, then you better live your life as God commanded us so that you will be happy, not only in this life, but in the next as well.
When I was wrestling with the question of life after death, I asked myself why do I not experience any visits from those beyond the grave, if indeed there is life after death. I came up with several explanations. There are many plausible explanations we can come up with, but here are some I thought of. 1. Once you die, you can’t show yourself, or influence physical matter. 2. You’re not allowed to. 3. You don’t care. 4. It’s a practical joke. 5. Life is like an amusement park ride. 6. All I was taught in the LDS faith growing up was true.
Happiness
Happiness has been defined as the pursuit of worthwhile goals. Some say “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” This attitude is selfish, and does not produce happiness. It is the pursuit of pleasure, which does not bring happiness. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings true happiness, not only in this life, but in the next life as well. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. We see that nations that fall into moral decay also fall into economic poverty. Your personal moral code is your religion. I fear those who claim they are atheist or have no religion. How can you trust someone who has no moral code of ethics, or feels free to change them at their convenience?
Defining Reality
Our five senses, as wonderful as they are, are very limited in comparison to the reality around us. For one example, we know that matter has a gravitational field, but we can't sense the image of the gravity from an object. We know some objects have magnetic fields, but we can't see, taste, smell, or hear magnetic fields. We can only see electromagnetic wavelengths in the range from 0.4 to 0.7 micrometers. We can't see sound. We can't hear light. We can't see radio waves. We can't smell anything that doesn't enter our noses. We can't sense neutrinos. Before humans developed the technology to detect these, we didn't know about them. We had to convert their effects to one of our five senses. We explain the physical world in terms of our five senses because we know no other way. If we assume that reality is limited to empirical data, we would be ignorant and conceited.
A Sixth Sense?
We have a sixth sense. This one is difficult to interpret because of the conflicting signals we receive. We receive messages from two sources. From one direction, we are lied to and tempted by Satan. From the other direction, we receive truth and inspiration from the Holy Ghost. We don't all experience the same messages at the same time. If we did, it could be as easy to verify as asking "did you hear that?" Then it would be regarded as reliable as hearing. It would be universally accepted as reality. But such is not the case, and one of our challenges in life is to learn to decipher where the messages come from, then choose the right if we want to be happy. When deciding where these messages come from, keep in mind that anything good comes from God. Peace, love, and truth come from God.
Originally posted May 31, 2012
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