Big Thoughts

You don't get to choose what you're interested in. Ideas, in a way, have you rather than the other way around. One such idea is God. I love big ideas and nothing is bigger than God. I can't get away from it. I stopped going to church because Christianity feels like bullshit to me now and yet I can't stop talking and thinking about God. Some people call it "The Universe" but come on we all know what you're talking about. Even if you don't believe the bullshit in the Bible you still believe in bullshit. There is no God except the one in your mind, that construction of moral rules that makes life easier to understand. The notion of a soul that inhabits your body seems like the source of all religion. It's hard to imagine that we are our bodies. It's hard to think of not existing one day. But anyone who doesn't think their mind and body are the same thing has never gotten drunk before. But then I think if my mind is my brain and we have no idea how these pattern create mind, how could we rule out patterns in the greater world around us creating a mind there as well? 

My mind is a network of nerve cells firing in patterns. Somehow those patterns form thoughts and construct models of the world using sense organs and imagination. The signals from your body to your brain connect you the world around you but in a way never get outside your head. There are so many theories of mind I can't get into them here, but when it really comes down to it we don't know what the hell the mind is. We know it's activity. It's a lot like a gyroscope that in order for it to work it has to keep spinning. It's a network of energy contained in large bundle of spongy tissue. If that somehow creates a higher order structure known as a mind, who is the say patters found throughout the cosmos but especially throughout living things also create higher order consciousness?

So... am I really an atheist? I'm not sure that I am. I know I don't believe in anything supernatural, but does that really mean much? I mean there are so many natural phenomena that would seem like a miracle to me. The mind feels like a miracle to me, though I know that it's based in a physical reality. Anything with a consciousness feels like a miracle.  So if there is a God, and part of me feels certain that in some way there is, then that mind is based in a physical structure. in some way an energy that permeates moves and flows throughout the universe could form thoughts and ultimately a being that you could call God... somehow.  At least that's what I choose to believe.

I can't think of anything bigger than God. If I try to think about the God that I believe in I start to try to see how everything is connected. I try to think about the way things interact and how maybe they are all related in some way in the mind of God. Then I think about my place in that world and realize if God is real then I am a part of the mind of God. I wonder how my actions ripple out into the world and affect it ways I could never imagine. And then I think there is so much life acting and moving and interacting that the mind of God would be an amazing mind. Amazing and completely unknowable. 

Maybe.

It could be I need a God and just make him up to externalize all the mental constructions I need to survive. The knowing the world is all a construction in you mind is such a depressing thought that we all create ways of distracting from the man behind the curtain. Who knows? I don't. But it is fun to think about. At least to me it is.