"WHERE I STAND"


First and foremost, I do not consider myself a religious person. Maybe this is because of my interest in science, maybe because I was never raised by anything. Whatever the fact, I still see myself as a moral person and I try to lead my life in a moral fashion. Now I’m going to try and piece together “where I stand” even though everything is relative and my statements are merely a matter of opinion.

I am not sure if there was a creator, but I think there had to have been something that initiated life because everything on this earth seems all too complicated and interconnected to just be a “fluke of nature”. Therefore I think creation came into existence when some greater being, which I do not think was necessarily God, catalyzed a reaction and then, like dominos tumbling along, that reaction initiated a chain of subsequent reactions and so led us on this endless system of cause and effect.

During all this cause and effect, I believe evolution took place. Humans eventually came into existence and evolved from that initial being to what we are today. I think it makes sense then to see humans more as animals rather than something “created in the image of their creator”. What I think sets humans apart from other animals is our brain. We have the capacity to think and “reason”. Meaning we are able to develop new man-made things through immense technology that is ever growing and allowing us to live longer and live a life of comfort. We also “reason” by using our knowledge weighed with our instinct to form what we see as a “rational” decision. However, I think some people’s scales are off-balance and are blind of the motivations and consequences of their actions and act more on instinct rather than previous “knowledge” of what is “right” and “wrong”.

So, with that in mind, I guess I lean more to the biological determinist side of the scale. I think this because I believe people generally act more on instinct than on free will. What I think happens is that people associate actions with free will when, in reality, their deeper cause of those actions is instinct and survival. For instance, I think people have misconceptions of what they think is “right” or “wrong,” “good” or “bad,” or any of those absolute adjectives like “happiness” or “cruelty,” because they associate those adjectives with their own definition of each adjective and how it effects them. Some may then think they are acting out of free will or “goodness” when those actions may just be out of instinct, because, in the long run, those actions positively affect them by making them more suited for survival.

But what is survival? Well, aside from living and being the “fittest,” surviving would also change depending on the pressures of society. Society tends to instill a “purpose” or standard of what life is and its ultimate goal. These pressures from society may then influence decisions made and the course of actions in a person’s lifetime. I therefore think that humans do not have a propensity towards “evil” or “good” because I think they go either way; whatever action allows a person to survive or “succeed” in society may end up being “good” or “bad”. Without the pressures of society, religion, and culture, a person’s instinct would be acted upon, but without the mask of “right” or “wrong;” “Right” being something that is socially accepted to be moral, and “wrong” being the antithesis. I think religion, referring to dogma and ritual, is something that certain people need in order to guide them and give structure to their lives; it attempts to give a reason to human existence and how the world came about and fills the gap of mystery.

But with the lack of understanding that we have for our universe and the unknown, it is hard to determine a reason behind life and human existence in general. We are not able to see the future and do not have the capacity to understand ALL of the past, and, so, the answer to this question will forever remain a mystery.