Concerning my own faith

In my long life, I've learned a great deal about the galaxy's different religions. I do not often discuss my faith as even sentient individuals tend to discriminate. Those who share my faith would unfairly support all my words and those who come from another faith would be unfairly critical of my words. If my background is unknown, my words are evaluated in a less-biased appropriately critical manner.

But I do not keep my faith a total secret, so that those who are seeking a path and want to look for wisdom from someone they might respect, they can look to me. Herein I will elaborate on what I believe and why I believe it.

I am a Savior Worshiper. My parents were Savior Worshipers and they tried to raise me in kind, but when I was young I cared little for religion. It wasn't until I left my home planet and rediscovered Savior Worship on another planet that I became an active follower.

I was listening to the foreigners, or rather natives as I was the foreigner, tell a story. I recognized all the elements. A male is born to a female who allegedly had not yet copulated with anyone. The child becomes an adult and gains notoriety for miracles, for wisdom, and mostly for challenging the establishment. Eventually he is killed by a conspiracy between the established religious figures and the established government. But, against all odds, reports come in that the notorious figure is not in fact dead after a public execution.

I thought the natives of that planet were discussing something that happened on my planet and it seemed to me ludicrous that they would know any of the stories of my home. They explained to me that this is a story on every planet. I was enthralled.

Soon enough it became apparent that all religions exist on all planets, more or less. So I did what many fools do: I tried to prove that one or the other was correct through either science or logic.

It took many elapses, but eventually I realized that faiths by definition cannot be proven, not by logic and not by science. This is simply true because we mold our religions around our understanding of the world.

Allow me to illustrate, first with logic and then with science. I will compare and contrast atheism versus monotheism, but the line of reasoning I am about to produce could apply to other faiths as well. I use these two in particular because it is a simple binary: the number of gods is either 0 or 1. Imagine the reasoning of an atheist: the universe exists. What was the cause? Nothing. Causation does not apply to such existential realities.

Now the reasoning of a monotheist: the universe exists because it was created by a god. The god has always existed, therefore no cause of the beginning of the god's existence is necessary.

Both arguments could be considered either absurd or valid. In essence, they both express the limitations of causality as a notion. Neither existence nor non-existence are "default" from a logical standpoint, so this is really an impossible problem to solve with pure logic.

But how about science? Can we scientifically prove or disprove the existence of a god? Science works like this: a researcher produces a hypothesis, tests it, and either rejects the hypothesis or fails to reject they hypothesis. The various hypotheses come together to form theories that help us explain the universe.

So let us test this hypothesis: god exists. What lab equipment will we need? What shall be our experimental design? Can we put a god in a test tube? Shall we pray? Can we measure a god with a spectrometer? Can we find one with a microscope or telescope?

Suppose we use some sort of optical equipment. The monotheists tell us their god is invisible. Suppose we pray that the products of a chemical reaction be colored blue when they are supposed to be red. The monotheists tell us that their god does not work useless miracles. Suppose we simply pray that the god would give us a sign. The monotheists tell us that the god wants people to believe without a sign.

And should we be surprised at this? Religion is an attempt to understand the world in the way that it is. Religious people do not often make claims that are easily falsifiable. And if some of their claims are cleanly dismissed by science, they adjust their belief system to fit reality.

Let us also put atheism to the test. If there is no god, one would expect that the laws of physics are always obeyed. How would this hypothesis be tested? By measuring the movement of all objects at all times, of course. And that is based on the assumption that the instruments of measurement have been somehow miracle-proofed against the miracles they are set to disprove.

There are reports of miracles all the time, of course, and always two explanations. Either the divine occurred, or some misunderstood natural phenomena occurred.

It is not appropriate, therefore, to choose a faith based on pure logic or science. A faith is, by definition, a belief without proof. If there is any "most correct" faith based on objectively determinable realities, it is agnosticism. If you admit to not knowing, you certainly aren't wrong. One might consider that agnosticism as a lack of faith.

So why am I not an agnostic? The lack of "proveability" of any given faith means that we are freed to believe in whichever worldview we appreciate the most, whichever one we most hope to be true.

I have chosen Savior Worship because it posits that love, the best of all virtues, exists in a personified and deified form that created the universe and sent itself in flesh to each of the intelligent species of the galaxy. How beautiful is that?

One might postulate that this produces a testable, yes, falsifiable hypothesis. If the god is all-loving, wouldn't the universe be a less unloving place? We can certainly produce hatred experimentally.

The counter argument to this is almost as ancient as the idea of gods. Part of love is to offer freedom. Part of freedom is being able to choose between good and evil. Some people have chosen evil, which is why evil exists.

This is but a summary of much longer debate, which I will not delve any deeper. But I have been asked recently by individuals who know my faith, how can I be a Savior Worshiper in such dark times? The Biomass is consuming the whole galaxy. How could a loving god allow it?

Death is unimportant. Pain is unimportant. Any Walker of the Oneness will tell you that true suffering is optional and related more to your internal choices than your external experience. What does matter is whether you spent what time you had by imitating the creator by loving other people.