Wordviews Essay, Research Paper

First Quarter Project

“Worldviews”

I have many ideas about god and who he means to me, but there is no other image that strikes me more positively than God being the one who has created the earth and all its inhabitants, and through all this blunder took the time to create me and allow me to have life and experience all that there is to experience in this world. God to me the awesome father figure who watches over us all to make sure that we are all under his wing and follow in the ways of his son, Jesus Christ. It is through his example that we can get closer to God and ultimately be with him in heaven.

I do not know when I first began to believe in God but I assume that my parents were the first to introduce me to the belief. In the above statement I outlined my most striking image of God, but for the longest time I have not thought of him in this way, I have lost some of my faith. I am not sure why except that in the past three years I began to examine other ideas on how we might have come to be and how we are going to end.

This does not mean that I do not believe in the presence of God I just have a big problem with blind faith. For some reason I cannot trust in the fact that there is truly a god and he created the earth and all that lives on it. My ideas are based on the scientific evidence that has been present for years, which are bases for theories on our creation and the evolution of life on this planet. With all that we know about the earth today and how evolution works I have problems with my faith. Do I truly know if there is a god of not? No. But for the sake of myself and the rest of the world I truly hope so. I believe that deep in my heart lies my faith and my mind needs some sign to let me know that there is a God and he watches over us.

Within these hopes and believes I have another ideology, and that is my take death. I have never truly sat down for hours at a time and pondered death and what it is all about and why it happens, but there have been times at night where I have thought about it for at least two hours and what I was pondering began to scare me. My thoughts were based on one main idea – if there is no God then there can be no afterlife. We are taught in school that after life we are forever reign in heaven or suffer in hell eternally. This belief drives us to be more like Jesus Christ and his father. If we lead a good life on earth then we will enjoy all of life’s pleasures in heaven with God, but if stray from the more serious of the Ten Commandments then will suffer with Satan, the fallen angel and all of his minions. Say for instance that this was not the case and in fact there was no God, and therefore no heaven or hell. What scares me is what happens when you die – if there is no afterlife then when you die there is nothing. You can try to describe this nothing, this black void, but unfortunately you have to experience death to see if there is an afterlife or not. Even though you would not be able to feel or see anything the thought of not being alive and being able to enjoy all of life’s pleasures to their fullest extent is what makes me and I am sure others nervous. If I were to die I would probably have wanted to go back and change all that I had done wrong in my life. I would regret having a close member of my family die and not have been on good terms with that person, those are the times when faith needs to be the strongest because it helps you to pull through. With the reality of God theoretically one could make amends with their family member in the afterlife and eternally live in peace. These are all ideas and concepts that come with the firm belief in God, and through this belief you can live forever with God in heaven. My view on death is not uncommon and I believe that there are many people everyday who face problems with their faith and it can be solved. People like me believe that their faith can only be reaffirmed through a visible sign and we have to realize that faith is blind and we have to accept it as it comes.

Allow me to exit from bad thoughts and ideas for a paragraph or two to talk about humans and our purpose. The human being is one of the most complex living machines on the earth. We have the most ability to thrive and succeed on so many levels. One question people try to answer is why are we here and what is our purpose? I unfortunately do not have the answers to these questions but I hope to provide some insight through my opinions and thoughts. From a religious standpoint, humans were brought to this earth by God to live out holy lives with respect for others and all that exists among us. We are created in God’s own image and likeness from “the soil of the earth” and from this he molded each of us with individual qualities and personalities. From an evolutionary worldview we were not created by God but evolved from a primitive form of ape and over millions of years humans have evolved and currently rule the earth with highly evolved brains and technology. Each worldview has their own thoughts and ideas about the origins of the human race, unfortunately there is a “missing link” in both views. From the religious standpoint there is no hard evidence that links humans to God in heaven, instead our “blind faith” holds that chain together and the arguments end there. In the evolutionary worldview the missing ling is the genetic connections between the primitive ape and the human being. There is no blind faith explanation and people are still researching to try and find some incriminating evidence to link us to the apes. We probably will never know which belief is true but in the event that hard evidence comes to light those on the losing side will have some questions to ask themselves. All these questions will surround faith.

What exactly is faith? To me faith is a lot of things. You can have faith in the lord, faith others, or faith in a material object. Our daily lives involve faith on so many levels we cannot count the number of things we rely upon, our cars, our friends, or in God. Sometimes people use faith in others as a crutch for their fears or defaults. A good example is in football. On my team when games are played, people do not believe that as an individual they can make things happen. They rely on the handful of star players to pull it through for the rest of us. They have faith that these people will always come through when it counts, and when it doesn’t happen that way then they question themselves and curse those they used as a crutch to get through their problems. One theory I came across (as Jesse Ventura points out) that religion is the greatest crutch of all. This theory explains what they thing is origin of religion. Back when man could first talk and communicate with other humans there was much chaos in the world and no reasons to explain the actions that were happening all around him. This scared the first humans and naturally they needed someone to look up to, a leader of sorts. Someone or something that could be relied upon by others as an explanation for things, a scapegoat worshipped by all who believed. This primitive form of faith brought people to the idea of a higher power. They believed that if they could create someone for everyone to look up to and set laws then there would be no chaos. Thus the formation of a God-like figure came into play. This first idea of God would be used by those who belied to worship for material gain or for good luck upon themselves or others, then came the idea that maybe laws could be set up to regulate the behavior of people that is considered “unacceptable.” A creation of some type of “commandments.” Through this idea the leaders of the human race at the time could control those around them with the institution of an angry god a healthy” fear could be drawn out of those who believed and they would obey the laws set by their god. This is the basic ideology of that theory on the origin of God and how it comes into play in today’s world. With thoughts like this it forces many people to strengthen their faiths even deeper so they can be as close to god as possible.

In conclusion religion and individual faith is challenged everyday by atheistic ideas and thoughts and we must be strong inside so that we can overcome our fears and grow closer to God on many levels.