In Response Kolb's Corner (5/2/2010)

First of all, I understand your blog post, and I agree with the main idea of it; yes, people generally want more of something they like after they first get it. I agree that this is a part of human nature in a general sense, and that we see many examples of this in society. With that said, I completely disagree that this need for more is just a part of human nature, and that there is nothing that a human can do about it. Money is a great example of the need for more that you bring up. The majority of people want to have money, and once they get a certain amount, they usually have the need for more. You are correct when you outline the fact that the need for money and other related things will never satisfy a person, but I think that you make the mistake of believing that all we can do is accept the idea that nothing will ever fulfill us, and therefore we mine as well attempt to get more money.

I think I am right when I say that there are things in life that can actually fulfill us; things that will give us the feeling that no amount of money or fame could ever come close to achieving. This idea relates to the Hindu idea of the human condition. Hindu’s believe that humans have a strong desire for cravings, such as money, which will never fully be satisfied. Even though your blog post agrees with this basic idea, I think that other Hindu ideas could be beneficial for you. Using Hindu principles, it seems to me that you are making a mistake by believing that your ego is your true identity. The idea that you are addicted to money is the perfect example of this. I think that the desire for money is fine because money is great, but thinking that money is going to fill your need for happiness or some other need is very problematic.

Continuing with Hindu ideas, it seems that you and anyone else who believes that money will fulfill them would be suffering from the “Identity Problem”. Money only will fulfill people’s egos, or their false identities. According to the Hindu ideas of human nature, we all have a real self, which is at a deeper than our conscious self. While I do not agree with everything that Hindu’s believe, I agree with the idea that we have a false idea of who we are, and I feel that this applies to the need for more. I think that all of the problems in peoples lives relates to the idea that people tend to make the mistake of believing that they are their ego. I think that we can combat this problem by living in the present moment whenever we can. Leading back to my earlier statement that there are things that can actually fulfill us, I would say that the only things that actually can fulfill us are things that do not relate to our ego.

Making a difference in someone else’s life is a great example of something that can fulfill a person. This type of activity brings someone in touch with their deeper self because it brings them in touch with the world around them; what I mean by this is that an activity like this causes a person to realize that everything around them, including themselves, is a part of God. Even though I use the word God, I think that you could call this deeper sense of unity any other word; it does not have to be called God. With that said, the important thing to realize is that after performing this type of service, the person will be in touch with their true identity, as long as they did not perform the activity to help their ego.

As I said in class the other day, I think that as long as people attempt to live in the present moment, and silence their ego, then I think it is okay to want money. Wanting money only becomes problematic when a person starts to believe that wanting money is truly part of who we are. The constant need for money and other similar things is not part of the real identities off humans. I think that the real identity of humans is a deeper state that some call enlightenment. Even though few will ever reach enlightenment, I think that is important for people to understand the benefits of realizing that their ego is not their true identity. As long as person has a balance between wanting things like money, and having the understanding of a deeper self, then I think everything will work out great for them.

Do you think it is problematic that the desire for money is so great in today’s world?

In Response to Misty and Alex’s Response to My Original Post

http://bacton.blogspot.com/2010/05/benefits-of-believing-in-something.html
http://alismadia.blogspot.com/2010/05/response-to-bryans-post.html
http://themindlessadventures.blogspot.com/2010/05/greater-beings.html

As far as Alex’s response, I think that it is great, and I agree with most of the points that he makes. I agree that people generally make too big of a deal about believing in a certain God or a specific higher power. As long as someone is benefiting from believing in something greater, I do not think it really matters which God or higher power that the person believes in. This idea leads into his conclusion, which is my favorite part of his response. I think that Alex completely understood the purpose of my article, because he brings up the point that everyone should believe in something greater because it empowers him or her. Alex goes on to say that, whatever that person believes should make sense to them personally; I take this to mean the point I made earlier, that it does not matter what someone believes, as long as it works for them. In regards to Alex’s direct answer to my question, I thought it was great that he made the point that people often forget what it means to believe in something greater, and I noticed this theme in our class discussions on this topic.

It seems to me that the main issue in regards to this subject is that people get too distracted by religious principles that they do not understand my ideas about the benefits of believing in something greater. When I am talking about believing in God or something greater, I am not talking about following all of the strict principles that some religions have; people make the mistake by getting the belief in God confused with the many rules that religions teach. This goes back to my point that people need to find whatever beliefs work for them, and it is my opinion that having a belief in a higher power can be extremely beneficial. I do not think many people really ever give the belief in God a chance because they are too distracted from strict religious principles. People need to separate the belief in something greater from general religious doctrines.

I am glad Misty responded to Alex’s post because she provides an example of some general ideas about the belief in something greater that I disagree with. I do not know why other people believe in God or something greater, but I do know that I believe in God for completely different reasons from what Misty identifies; with that said, I respect Misty’s opinion, and I think she makes some great points. As I said in my first post, I believe that there are many benefits in believing in God or something greater because the belief empowers you; I think that my belief in God helps me get through the struggles in life. However, it absolutely does not distract from my process of daily living. Misty argues that people believe in something greater because they hope that it will protect them from unfortunate events. I am sure that some people do this, but this is not the point of believing in God; as I said earlier, believing in God or something greater empowers you and helps you get through the struggles of life. People should never believe in something greater in order actually reduce the number of unfortunate events.

I agree with Misty that people can do good without believing in God or something greater, but that argument does not change the point of my original blog post. I am not saying that you are a better person if you believe in God or something greater; I am saying that there are many benefits that are created from this type of belief. Sure, you will do just fine if you do not believe in God, but that is not my point; my point is that the belief in something greater can be extremely powerful in regards to making positive changes in people’s lives. I think it is perfectly fine if someone if does not want to believe in God or something greater, but there is absolutely no reason why someone should think that people believe in God because they do not want to take responsibility of their life. Believing in God or something greater is not about trying to create an excuse for life problems; it is meant to give people the faith that everything is going to be okay, even when things do not look good. The goal of my original post was to help people realize the many positives that can be made of believing in something greater; it was not to say that people have to believe in God or something greater to be a good person.

I think people with Misty’s point of view are right about the problematic nature of religion; I too feel that it is not right for people to follow a religion because they believe it will make them moral, or because it will help them go to heaven. Religions create problems because they often encourage people to follow strict moral guidelines and use fear to get people to follow them. Even though I understand that religions can be problematic, my original post is not about religion, it is about the simple idea of believing in God or something greater. I think that it is great that people with Misty’s point of view do not need God to make positive change, but I never claimed that this was what the belief in something greater should be used for. The point of my original blog post was to say that the belief in God or something greater can help give a person a greater strength than they already had. I was not trying to say that people should depend on their belief to make positive change in their life; their belief should just help them. In addition, it is important that people do not associate the belief in something greater with strict religious doctrines, because that type of association makes the belief in something greater seem problematic, even though it can be extremely beneficial.

Do you think the belief in something greater would work out better for people if they made their belief more personal (change their belief in their own personal way)?

In Response to Courtney Martin (5/2/2010)

Q: “what about people who do not believe everything of a religion, people who only choose to agree with parts of a religion? Do they have faith in that religion?”

I think that your question is a good one because I know many people, including myself, who believe in only parts of a religion. I do not think that a person would have faith in their entire religion if they did not believe in every part of the religion; the person would not have faith in that exact religion, but they would have faith in their own version of that religion. With that said, I do not think I fully agree with the idea of having faith in a certain religion. If someone asked me if I had faith in my religion, I would probably say that I had faith in God, and not necessarily my religion. The religion is a part of me, but I do not really have faith in the religion itself; sometimes I feel like people become so controlled by religious principles that they forget about what their religion is based around: the existence of God. Even though I do not fully agree with the idea of having faith in a religion, I would probably say that I do have faith in my religion, but my true faith is in God.

I was brought up as a Christian, and I have not lost my faith in that religion. With that said, I do not fully agree with all of the values that Christianity represents. Specifically, I do not agree with the very strict nature that some Christians have in regards to other Christians not following every specific rule; I feel like Christians use the idea of heaven and hell to force people to follow every type of specific rule. The point I am trying to make is that I believe in my own version of Christianity; if I were to say that I have faith in my religion, I would be saying that I have faith in my own version of Christianity. This leads to idea of whether a person is still supporting a certain religion if they do not agree with every idea of that religion. If I do not agree with every part of Christianity, then I am wondering if I can still call myself Christian.

I think the question of whether I can be a labeled a Christian is an important one, and I have my own idea of what the answer is. I think that this type of question would have to be answered on a case-by-case basis; this means that there is no solid answer of whether someone should be considered a Christian or something else. To find the answer, I would have to look at what parts of the religion that a person does not agree with. For example, I do not think that people who do not believe in God should call themselves Christian. With that said, I guess they could say that they are supporting their own version of Christianity; this is a very difficult question, and we briefly discussed this in class earlier in the semester.

Again, as far as your question specifically, I think that people generally have faith in God, more so then they do in their religion. In addition, I think that people who only agree with parts of a religion have faith in their own version of that religion and not that specific religion. Most importantly, I think your question leads to the significant question of whether a person is right to say that they believe in a certain religion if they do not agree with every part of that religion.

Can someone still call themselves Christian (or some other religious label) if they do not believe in every part of the religion? Explain.

The Benefits of Believing in Something Greater

In class last week, we spent some time generally discussing the belief in God or something greater. A theme that I noticed during the discussion was that people had generally negative feelings about the belief in God. I heard many different comments relating to the problematic reasons for believing in God. One comment I heard was that believing in God is just something people do because they are bored with the process of daily living. After hearing other comments similar to this, I felt that people were completely forgetting the many positives that come with believing in God. With that said, I completely understand the problems with believing in God as far as reasoning goes; there is no way to prove the existence of God with evidence, and this is something that we talked about in our last class (I talked about this in my previous post). In addition, I understand that the belief in God could cause problems with a person’s life because they could spend their whole life waiting for something to come after they die that might not happen. Even with these potential problems, I feel that people are wrong when they imply that the belief in God is just something that distracts people from the process of living.

My belief in God relates to the idea that I feel there is something greater than what we cannot discover from conscious reasoning. This idea that there is something greater was said to be a type of faulty reasoning in class, but even if it is faulty reasoning, I do not think that should mean that it is problematic to believe in something greater. I think that people who believe in something greater will many times have an advantage over people who do not. I feel this way because I think that the belief in God or something greater actually empowers people. Every person will go through extremely difficult struggles during their lifetime, and I feel that a belief in something greater can help a person get through these tough times. A great example of this would be something that Laura said in class on Friday. She said that she believes in God because she had some very difficult experiences during her childhood, but she was able to make it through them by praying to God every night. It seems like her faith in God gave her a type of strength that she could not have had normally. When I experience difficult life circumstances, and life just seems completely unfair, my belief in something greater is able to get me through. Even though I cannot prove that God exists, I think that my faith in God is great because it provides me with an inner power that helps me succeed in my daily life. I think it was great that Laura explained how her faith in God has helped her; her story was a perfect example of the ways that the belief in God's existence can make a positive impact in someones life.

Many times, people’s reasons for believing in God or something greater can be problematic, but because of the reasons that I explained, I think the belief in God’s existence can be a great thing. As far as problems with believing in God or something greater, I think it is a major mistake to believe in God simply for the hope of making it into a better world after death. With that said, people need to remember the wonderful things that come from the belief in something greater. I am not saying it is bad to not believe in something greater, but I just think it is ludicrous to say that people who believe in God or something greater do so because they become bored with their normal life. Believing in God or something greater can make an extremely positive impact on a person’s life and it is important that we do not forget this.

Do you think the idea of believing in something greater should be separated from believing in God specifically, or are they the same thing?

Why I Believe

Today in class, we spoke at length about the concept of faith. The conclusion of our discussion was that it is misleading to attempt to explain the existence of God with evidence because there really is none. In addition, using an event as an example of the existence of God cannot be done if there is a more reasonable explanation for that event that does not relate to God. This is why many of the people who believe in God do not try to explain God’s existence, but they have trust in God’s existence without needing proof. These people know that they cannot prove the existence in God with evidence, but they still have faith in God’s existence.

From the way today’s discussion went, it seemed to outline the idea that believing in God is mistake. If Occam's razor is correct, than believing in God would be a mistake unless there were no better explanation for why something happened except for God. I do not think there would be any events that could only be explained as God’s work, and therefore it seems that the belief in God’s existence would be an error. However, I still do belief in God’s existence, and I think that I can explain why I believe in a different way than the things we discussed in class.

I do not try to use evidence of God’s work in my life to explain why I believe in God’s existence; however, this is not saying that I do not believe that there are examples of God’s work that have shown up in my life. I choose not to use these types of examples as explanation because of Occam’s razor. I agree that as long as there are more reasonable explanations for events that I believe are examples God’s existence, I cannot try to use the events as proof of God’s existence. My explanation of God’s existence relates back to a strategy that Freud used to explain his theories. This is the idea that God’s existence or human nature cannot be explained because it does not exist at a conscious level. We cannot label what God is because we can only label using our conscious mind. For me, the existence of God can only be truly understood at a deeper than conscious level.

The reason why this relates to Freud is because Freud described his theories using the basic idea that everything really happened in a persons unconscious mind. It is hard for Freud to be wrong about what he said because he can reply to every argument by pointing out the idea that we do not truly understand the unconscious, and therefore we cannot argue against it. When I brought up a basic idea of my belief in God during class, Dr.J pointed out its relationship to Freud’s ideas;I feel that I was not able to point out that my idea is very different from Freud’s. When I am talking about the existence of God, I am trying to not make the same major mistake that Freud did. I think that Freud made an important error because he tried to explain the unexplainable; he pointed out that everything in human nature related to an unconscious that we cannot understand, but somehow he understood how it worked. When I am trying to explain my theory regarding the existence of God, I am not really trying to explain it at all; I just know that it is deeper than the conscious level. Just like Freud feelings about the unconscious, I feel that small pieces of God existence can leak into our conscious realm; however, I do not think that God’s existence could ever be explained fully with words.

My idea that God’s existence cannot be explained in the conscious realm starts to relate back to the idea of faith, because I think that you just have to know that God exists without the ability of explanation. The only difference that my theory of God’s existence has from general faith is that I think that God’s existence cannot be explained because the complete understanding of God’s existence can only be understood at a deeper than conscious level, but general faith explains that there is no need for any type of explanation for God’s existence. I feel that my idea is different because I am able to give a reason for why we cannot explain God’s existence.

I understand that the problem with my idea is that I cannot really explain the existence of God with something I do not understand (a deeper than conscious level). I would respond to this argument by saying that while I cannot fully understand the existence of God, I think that there are ways of understanding God that on a conscious level that are not fully explainable. It is a form of knowing which no one can explain. My conclusion would be that faith is very important when it comes to my belief in God, but my faith relates to the idea that God's existence is unexplainable because God exists at a deeper than conscious level.

Is the idea that God can only be understood at a deeper than conscious level just making the same mistake Freud did by trying to explain the unexplainable?

In Response to Austin Bodzioch (4/21/2010)

Q:"Do you think that people will ever go back to the simpler ways of life or do you think that humans will continue the never ending cycle of advanced technology and other incredible ideas..?"

I am not exactly sure what you mean by a “never ending cycle of advanced technology and other incredible ideas”; I does not seem like it would be a never ending cycle if we continued the same process of coming up with new technology. With that said, I think that you bring up a great question, and this question was one of the main ideas of our discussion in class.

In regards to the situation of us going “back to the simpler ways of life,” I tend to agree with the graph that Dr.J drew on the chalkboard. The graph showed the constant human process of going above nature, and then heading back down to nature. As Dr.J mentioned in class, I believe that we are already showing signs of getting back to nature or the simpler ways of life.” A great example of this would be the recent explosion of organic products. If you go to any large supermarket, you are likely to see an organic section, which is usually popular. People are starting to realize that the best foods to eat are not things labeled “low fat,” which are filled with artificial sweeteners, but are actually organic foods. The habit of shopping for organic foods is a recent craze, and I think that it is a sign that other habits will arise in the future that involve going back to nature.

As far as advanced technology, I do not think humans will ever stop trying to come up with new ideas that could change our way of life. We may start to change back to nature, but I do not think everyone will stop trying to come up with new technology; People are always trying to look for new ideas. Furthermore, I do not believe that we should ever stop trying to invent new technology. I do not believe that new ideas create problems for our society; I think that a problem is created once we start to have a dependence on these new ideas. An example of this would be our general history of transportation. Humans have created bikes and other simple ways of transportation that have not, and will never cause any problems. Humans have invented many things that have moved away from nature, but they do not cause any problems. An issue comes into play when humans start to depend on technological advances too much. I do not think automobiles were extremely dangerous to our future well-being when we first created them. Now they are dangerous to our environment because our whole world has become dependent on them to get around.

Humans should not be afraid of new ideas, but we should be careful about becoming dependent on them. As long as we do not move away from our roots in nature then I think we will be fine. I think the main problem with moving away from nature is that people think we can invent technology that is almost better than nature itself; they feel that we can come up with ways of almost beating nature. They need to learn that we will never beat nature. If people do not eat healthy because they think that a pill invented in the future will cure their health problems, then they are completely wrong. We should always be trying to improve our way of life with new ideas, but we need to make sure that we are not forgetting about nature.

What other recently new habits other than the organic food craze, can you think of that show our path back to nature?

In Response to Megan Cooney (4/22/2010)

Q: “What is it that changed the minds of people to become more accepting of atheism?”

I enjoyed reading your blog post because I think that it highlighted something that we did not really discuss in class about Darwin’s ideas. It does seem that a major consequence of Darwin’s idea was that society began to accept the idea of being an atheist.

I think the fact that people changed their minds about atheism relates to one of the main reasons why religion is popular in the first place. Most religions have a story of why humans exist, and what will happen once we die. In addition, humans are afraid of the unknown; this is exactly the reason why religion is so popular. Religious beliefs provide people with the feeling of security because it provides them with a purpose and the certainty of knowing what happens after death. There are many unknowns in our world, and most religions are able to provide answers to these unknowns.

As far as unknowns, the question of how humans were created is one of the most important unknowns that exists. For this reason, I think that Darwin’s ideas were able to use scientific evidence to prove an explanation of this unknown, and his ideas were the first that could give a scientific answer to the question of how humans were created. This leads to the idea that people began to accept atheism after Darwin’s ideas because before Darwin, there was no way to scientifically explain how humans were created. Many people accepted the ideas that religions provided as an explanation for the creation of humans because there was no other idea that could be proven.

Once Darwin’s ideas began to become accepted, people began to realize that some major religious ideas could be wrong. This is exactly why I believe that people began to accept atheism. Darwin’s ideas proved scientific evidence of why religious ideas could be incorrect. Before Darwin and other scientific breakthroughs, there was not much science that could disprove religious ideas. Once the idea of natural selection could be proven, I think people began to second-guess religion.

There are things that I like about religion, but I absolutely hate their exploitation of human uncertainty. Most people are extremely afraid of death, and I believe that certain religions, especially Christianity, take advantage of this human characteristic. I see things all the time that try to convert people into being Christian by saying that they will go to heaven if they choose to be Christian, but hell if they do not. This whole strategy turns into a type of scare tactic into getting people to convert to a certain religion. I do not believe that an all good, all powerful being like God would want people to be scared into obeying his standards. For me, religious values relate to things like peace and love, not fear mongering.

The idea that religions often use the exploitation of the fear of uncertainty to convert people relates back to your original question because Darwin’s ideas helped remove one of the human uncertainties that religions used. Even though I highly doubt it would ever happen, if someone were able to prove what happens after death scientifically, then I believe atheism would be accepted by people even more than religion was. With that said, I believe that religion will always exist.

What do you think about theories that combine Darwin’s ideas with religious ideas?