Fundamental problems of life

1. All events are interconnected by the rules of cause and effect.
That holds for physics and chemistry, but also for daily life. You had a car crash because you came across a hail storm because you wanted to visit an old friend you had thought about because of a specific lightfall in the garden which was caused by sunbeams through rainclouds you just noticed because you went to the window to study the color combination of clothes.

2. We will never know the rules of cause and effect in detail.
Indeed in physics and chemistry we precisely know the rules of cause and effect in many processes. Still we do not know precisely which particular atom will be connected to that other one at a certain moment; we only know the statistics. And even there are many unknown fields. Even in Silicon, the best studied element of our days, there are many effects that are not quite understood. And many a thing will be never be understood, the least even the emotions in our own brains! So in predicting the future, we should be quite modest!

3. Human imperfection is the base of our freedom.
When we knew the rules of cause and effect precisely, there would be no freedom. In order to have a long and happy life, our lanes would be precisely laid from beginning to end. There would be no disappointment and no surprise. Indeed life would be dull. In reality, however, we always have to choose, this way or that one. Going here, going there - saying this, saying that. An endless tree of possibilities lays ahead of us, every day, every week, every year. We always are between risk and luck. That makes our life exciting and it gives us the opportunity to make the best of it. It is our luck that we are quite unaware of the predestination on a higher level.

SO THERE IS FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION AT THE SAME TIME.
Some people will be disappointed by this, because they miss the loving hand of the Creator. But wouldn't He be behind that complicated rules of cause and effect that allow us to live happily on this planet? PK

Time travel

Since olden times people have tried to step out of reality. One possibility there seems to step out of your time. Many of us still know Wells' Time Machine and he has had many followers. But what is time travelling and would it be really impossible?

One day long ago I tried to find the reason of instability in a circuit by comparing by an oscilloscope the times at which the phenomenon appeared at certain places in the circuit. Arguing that cause is always before effect, I decided that the source of the instability must lay at the place where it appeared first. There I made a change and indeed the circuit became stabile.

Today with Nyquist diagrams and so on, we know that instability is a bit more complicated than that, but at that moment I realised that time is only defined by cause and effect.

That is the reason that the impression of time can be so different: when waiting for a train or a plane an hour can be endless, but looking to an absorbing film or talking in good company, time seems to flow away. Indeed time seems to be counted by the number of events.

This makes clear, that time travel is a contradictio in terminis. Time travel therefore is clear nonsense, because it would interchange cause and effect. That may be an item ingeniously elaborated by some writers, but in fact it would produce an impossible world. So indeed: time travel is nothing.

Would there be then no possibility to escape from a sometimes unhappy or dull reality? Yes indeed, it is in your brains. Because reality is as you see it. One person can be quite happy in circumstances where others would be bored stiff. But much can be done by changing your view. Even in the deepest grief there is a sunbeam outside, for you! Only look! PK

What is the true belief?

Many people take the Bible as their guide and they are happy with it. I don't want to destroy one's belief, but yet there are some facts to be thought of for the sake of peace in our world.

To understand the Bible, we need a translator, an interpreter. And now the strange thing is, that there tend to appear as many beliefs as there are interpreters. One even might conclude that there are as many beliefs as there are believers, because we all interprete the interpreters in our own way. Some words give quite different feelings and interpretations for some people than for some other people.

For many people that is quite alarming, because they fear to loose firm ground from under their feet. That might be one of the reasons for repressing other beliefs. This is a general type of human behaviour; not only some religions tend to suppress deviating ideas, but also quasi-religions like communism did.

In fact, I feel that there is no need for alarm in this case, because as long as any one holds to his/her own belief, there is nothing to be afraid. We even might be delighted that the Bible has such a rich content, that it is able to be a guide for people during 2000 years and presumably more, that it provides support and comfort for people from the Stone Age to the Computer Age.

We must not forget, however, that the knowledge we gather from the Bible is based on faith. As soon as we doubt about the truth of the Bible as Gods Word, its value decays. There are things in the Bible, however, that stand for its own. The whole may be a lie or a myth, like some people think, but still there is the good news of God's allmighty love for people and for the world. As soon as we can believe that, we have the strongest source of comfort.

Even when each of us is strongly convinced of hers/his belief, we must admit that there are other beliefs, also based on the Bible or on other holy books. Perhaps this means, that Truth is multishaped, that we little humans cannot see what is behind. There we have to trust that everything will be allright in the end. One important thing is, however, that we can no longer force the rules arising from our particular interpretation upon believers of another belief. Far to often innocent people are punished to dead on authority of rules constructed by us little humans on base of the Bible. Let us please be less pretentious!

And to answer the question: the true belief is YOUR belief! PK

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Oct99