Question Everything

In class last week we talked about the "philosophy" of the Bible, if there is such a thing. Up until this point in the class religious views of the philosophers we have studied were minimal if there were any at all. Their polytheistic beliefs did not make it too far into their philosophy. This leads me to wonder why monotheism promps such devotion among human beings. I think perhaps that we want to feel like we're not alone in the world and most people find comfort in knowing, or at least believing, that there is something else out there, perhaps anything else. Our ability to wonder about things like no other animal in a way makes us very lonely. We are in a constant fight to figure out what is wrong and what is right, what we should do and shouldn't. I think that each one of us feels like there are things about us that nobody else will ever understand. What a lonely life of misunderstanding we live. I think, then, that it is only natural to look to something beyond human beings in the hope that there is some reason for this misunderstanding among us. There must be someone, or something, that understands the smallest things that make us who we are. If there is not, what's the point? Why even bother wondering about huge questions unless someone out there has the answer? No matter how far we advance as a race we will always have questions that remain unanswered. In class we called this the "God of the gaps." People fill in God where they cannot find answers. We look back on the Greek Gods and laugh at how they seriously thought that those Gods could have existed. Are we doing the same thing? Are we just filling in God for all of the answers. The more we know, the less of God(s) we need, thus monotheism. Will God ever cease to be important and the human race become completely secular? I don't think so. I think that even with all of the answers we have to look beyond ourselves for something more, something bigger, something that we cannot ever understand and perhaps are not meant to. Ignorance is bliss, after all.


Do you think what religion people grow up around ultimately influences what God they believe in. For example, do you think if the Christians that grew up in America had grown up in Iran would be Muslims today?