A journey into the thoughts and beliefs of Chris Greene
To completely view and analyze something, you have to look at it from 'outside of the box,' so to speak. As a human, part of understanding us comes from staying inside the box, of course - but to further understand how we work we have to step back and watch, and also make rational assumptions based on already-proven classifications of the human psyche.
With that in mind, let us first communicate with other humans and ask what heaven and hell are to those believing. Without a doubt, most responses were:
Heaven - An eternal resting place for the soul after death, populated with the sinless/forgiven souls and generally associated with 'where the good people go.'
Hell - An eternal place of suffering for the soul who either did bad deeds or weren't 'saved.' (Interestingly it is not enough for just the people who sin to be here, but it has also evolved to include the ones who don't accept a particular religion now, regardless of how kindhearted and charitable that soul may be.)
Now, there are some other ideas and tags along with those two concepts, but for now we'll just stick with the core 'facts' of these two words. You'll have to forgive me now, but I must digress a bit to help form part of my ultimate statement:
There are many interesting concepts humans have created and have adapted to the thoughts of. For example, humans have (from early days) realized when they are by themselves, they are alone. (redundant much? keep following me) We have created this word, 'alone' to explain our positioning and feelings at times when we don't have the pleasure of another human being around or something of equivalent value to alleviate the pain of loneliness.
Another thing we have created is an idea we're definitely all familiar with, democracy. Humans have found this idea of democracy pleasing and more fair than other societies. Indeed, through its flaws it stands up more than other types of societies or governments do. But the point is humans who have been under this system for a long period of time grow used to it, so when they see another form of rule that seems to be unfair, they complain and are outraged - especially if they feel their own 'rights' have been breached.
Coming back a little from the digression, humans have also adapted to the thought that doing good for others is the right thing, and doing bad is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the death of people or anything crazy like that. I'm simply stating this is what we have learned, not what we're necessarily born with. We have been taught that doing good things is well, good, since we benefit from them and nobody is hurt. And we've been taught that doing bad things is bad, since they usually involve the hurting of another living being.
Eventually we became so used to these ideas that when others did great things, we believed they deserved benefits. Kind people were rewarded. Mean people were punished. Do you see my point now?
Heaven and hell are concepts used to pacify and/or scare human beings. The concept of heaven kind of gives us that push to do good deeds for our fellow humans, and the concept of hell has been extremely exaggerated to keep us from doing hurtful things to others.
Think about this; you're 5 years old and your mother and father read you a scary bedtime story about the bogeyman. You're scared half to death afterwards, and probably have a little trouble sleeping. The next day, you're acting obnoxious and unreasonable, so your parents tell you, "If you're not a good boy/girl, then the bogeyman will get you!"
The fear of this 'bogeyman' scares you away from doing bad things. As a result, you behave...and for the sake of this story let's say your parents present you with a piece of candy afterwards for behaving so well.
Heaven is the piece of candy in this metaphor, and hell is the bogeyman. Only this is on a much larger, believable scale - why? Because all in all, humans have no earthly (no pun intended) idea on what's after death. Since we don't know exactly what will happen, a surreal place where souls go and are punished or rewarded seems not necessarily believable at first, but we've grown with the idea. Humans will always create a concept for something they don't understand. We have to have a word for it, and idea of it - otherwise we'd go crazy. We don't just believe, we HAVE to believe that bad people don't experience joy after death. We HAVE to believe the somebody good can't be tortured forever and experience pain unlike that which a bad person would experience. Why? Because it would be unfair. And who created the concept of fairness and equality? The human mind.
In short, the concept of heaven and hell are nothing but thoughts to pacify or scare the mind, and this works because we don't have any knowledge of what is after death. Our lack of certainty makes this otherwise unbelievable thought, believeable.
Now earlier I mentioned something about humans and loneliness. Humans can't bear loneliness for long. (Remember "Wilson!" from the movie Castaway?) And the early humans couldn't explain a lot of things about the world - lightning, the creation, life, why we're here, etc. We still can't explain some of these ideas today. But let's go back and think about this:
1. Uncertainty to why the world exists, how it was created, etc 2. Unbearable knowledge that we, as humans, are alone for the most part - with only others of our kind to communicate with. 3. The belief the good people should be rewarded and bad people should be punished 4. The want to make life fair, despite its seeming cruelty. 5. Uncertainty to what happens to our consciousness or psyche after we perish.
What do these all combine and make?
God.
Why does the world exist? Because God made it. Are we alone? No, God is watching over us. God punishes those who do evil and rewards those who do good. God is just. God and the angels dwell in heaven and await the souls of the righteous, while demons and fire wait those who do evil or don't accept the belief we have.
Sound familiar? God is the easiest answer for us to apply to these questions. And since God is supposedly omnipresent, omnipotent, and all of those lovely 'omnis', we can make him be anything we want him to be, and advocate anything we want him to advocate.
Now why do I believe God is a concept created by humans? Well most of what I typed is evidence enough to me, but let me take you to another metaphor.
CHALLENGE: Give me an idea or concept you know nothing about.
You can't do it. You can't think of something you don't know. I'm not talking about something like the lack of knowledge in physics or algebra; either way, you know what the word physics is and you know the word itself, therefore you're thinking of it.
You can't do it. If you try and think of something you know nothing about, you're still coming up with a word or concept you know of. Catch my drift?
Now think about what we know about God, generally. He is fair, just, caring, giving, sometimes jealous, wise, (sounds like a loving grandfather so far, doesn't it? ) and then we get into omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.
These are all concepts that we are familiar with. And if we know the concept, we've created it. A square isn't really a square to the entirety of everything; it's just a name we use to classify that particular shape. The word, 'square' is just something we've come up with to explain and communicate that shape to others. We've created the concept of a square.
God did not create us in His image - we've created God in our image. God is the ultimate cure for loneliness and the inability to explain why we're here and we've given him all kinds of humans traits to help us relate to him.
Please, consider one more thing.
Do you know the feeling when something horrible happens to somebody and you can't relate? Like if they were never able to walk, or they've never had true parents because both died before the child was able to remember them?
Same story. You want to say, "I know how you feel..." but you can't, because really you don't. For the sake of argument let's say you've always had parents that loved you and you cherish every memory of them. Or you've always been able to walk. You can't relate to how that person feels...
...but you can Imagine.
We can't relate to something we know nothing about, but we can imagine. Think about it.
If we were not able to relate to God, the idea would have long died out. But instead we have given this Grand Idea human qualities and characteristics to further identify him and place him as a beacon of goodness and equality.
I'm all for a reason to be kind to people. But unfortunately, this original concept of God has long died out.
Now since this God can be morphed to back almost anybody's argument up, we now use this extremely popular concept as an excuse to kill people, belittle people, embarrass people, threaten people, and anything else to convince a person who doesn't believe what you believe that he's going to forever be enveloped in aeons and aeons of incomprehendable pain and suffering.
We can make this God do anything now. The abstractness of the Bible doesn't help; there are all kinds of loopholes. I do know a lot of laws were set in Leviticus and some in Exodus, but today we have a new humanoid figure - Jesus - that comes into play. Not only does he nullify much of the laws of the old testament (except, conveniently, the ones that we still want to keep), he also is another being we can relate to.
So much that we have keychains of him, pictures of him (even though we are not supposed to pray to material things and images), wristbands asking what he would do, symbols of fish that represent him on the backs of cars, and almost anything you can think of.
Jesus has sold out, man. Everybody's loving him, and apparently, he loves everybody back. And it's hard to disagree when you'd have 2 billion angry Christians bitching at you.
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Nycto's blogs, last updated : June 18, 2008
) and then we get into omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.
And it's hard to disagree when you'd have 2 billion angry Christians bitching at you.