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The book "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine really convinced me that something like a personal God doesn't exist. I've been raised a Christian, so changing the
by wsc981 12y ago
The book "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine really convinced me that something like a personal God doesn't exist. I've been raised a Christian, so changing the Christian mindset was not easy for me, it took a course of several years to stop believing in a personal God.
- lutusp 12y agoMy favorite picture of god was Einstein's -- or Spinoza's, which is where Einstein got his idea: a god that isn't remotely like a religious person's idea of god, an entity roughly equal to nature, and one that couldn't be bothered with our small problems. When I see something in nature that speaks to a deeper level, that connects apparently unconnected things, that's as close as I get to a religious experience (i.e. not very close at all). For example, there's a cicada that has evolved a survival strategy based on prime numbers: http://arachnoid.com/prime_numbers/index.html#Mathematical_Locusts http://arachnoid.com/prime_numbers/index.html#Mathematical_L... I always like finding examples that connect mathematics with nature, so this one was particularly satisfying. My point? I can easily picture natural selection brutally filtering out everything that didn't make an ingenious (and chance) use of prime numbers to assure survival, but by the same token I can't picture nature caring at all what I think.