I find it amazing how people can have the strangest opinions, without stopping to check what this says about the universe they live in and the way it functions.

I’ll have to explain this; for instance, in Star Wars, you have physics of the Universe that makes sense – there is Force, the living beings have a certain number of cellular organelles called “midichlorians”, which are something akin to mitochondria or chloroplasts in our universe, and they essentially connect your living tissues to the Force, and if their count is significant enough, you become “Force sensitive”, and if a Force sensitive person receives proper training, they can develop abilities to use the Force for things such as telekinesis, telepathy or whatever. It all makes sense, the way plants being able to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into sugar makes sense. However, X-men don’t make sense. The underlying premise is that you have mutants with special abilities. I have no problem with that if “special abilities” are enhanced hearing, ability to perceive more colours or even the ability to hear radio. That is all possible without changing anything with the universe. However, when you have a mutant who can stop time, use extreme telekinesis or read minds, this is a “stop right there moment”. Here you need a universe with different laws of physics that make this possible, you can’t just have a mutation that introduces midichlorians in a universe without the Force, and expect telekinesis to be possible. Yes, you can develop cellular organelles or tissues that transduce radio waves into electricity and feed it into the brain, giving you a sense that “hears” radio. It’s not all that different from the way eyesight works. However, to be able to read minds or perform strong telekinesis, there must be an underlying physics that makes it possible. If something works, the question you need to ask is what underlying conditions need to be met in order for this to work, and what does this say about the universe we live in.

Let’s return to my initial conundrum. I had people making claims such as “if someone doesn’t have money, it means he can’t be of God”, the assumption being that God is the ruler of this and every other world, and nothing happens without His sanction – basically, God will provide for His own people, and they will never have to worry about money. On the other hand, those same people will make negative claims about very rich people, assuming that money is the thing of the Devil, and all the rich people must have sold their souls in order to become that rich.

So, which is it? They apparently never stopped to think that the first claim contradicts religious teachings; Jesus was born in a barn and Krishna was born in a dungeon, so it’s not like there’s actual evidence for the claim that those of God will be provided for and safe in this world. If anything, evidence for the contrary can be found. However, I’ve seen same people have the expectation that if you have money, you must be spiritually fallen, and if you don’t have money, you can’t be on good terms with God, not stopping to think that you can’t have it both ways. There are three basic options – either God micro-manages the world, Satan micro-manages the world, or nobody micro-manages the world and it runs according to its own independent laws, which makes exceptions from those laws “miracles”. Also, the corollary of God being able to provide for His people is that He is able to control everything in this world, which makes every bad thing that happens in this world His fault, which gives you a God that is either malevolent or indifferent. If Satan is able to control everything in this world, why aren’t things much, much worse for good people? Why do evil people such as Hitler experience frustration and failure in their plans? The third option, where neither God nor Satan have complete control or influence here, but the world functions according to its own independent laws, and either side is able to occasionally “tip the scales” their way according to some complex ruleset seems far more likely. For instance, Satan can tempt you and make your life very difficult, but he can’t outright kill you. God can’t outright solve all your problems, but He can inspire you – but you have to believe it and accept guidance. Also, miracles do exist, but the defining characteristic of a miracle is that it happens exceptionally, and not regularly. If something happens regularly or predictably, it’s called the law of nature. Miracles, where exceptionally good and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God, do happen. However, so do the anti-miracles, where exceptionally bad and unlikely things happen to people who pray to God. The pattern according to which this happens isn’t obvious, but for some reason people act as if it is – of course God’s people should be rich, famous, healthy and live forever, because take the example of Jesus, who was born in a barn, was always poor, had to escape lynching mobs and was eventually betrayed and crucified; oh wait…

Most of this nonsense is caused by poor religious education people received in childhood, which is why I didn’t allow my kids to attend catholic “Sunday school”. This proved to be an excellent call when other children, who did attend, were mocking my kids saying that if they didn’t pray to Jesus they will have bad grades and their mom will die. Apparently, that’s how it works according to the religious teachings those kids received – you pray to Jesus to get good grades and your mommy doesn’t die. What did I say to my kids in response to that? “This is pure nonsense. God is the highest reality and the highest good, and you pray to God by trying to understand what is real, adhering to the highest truth you can know, and always choosing the greatest good you can see in everything you do, and prayer is good if it focuses you in those efforts. However, if you want to get good grades, you better study, because prayer won’t help there. As for your mom dying, let’s put it this way: if God didn’t strike that idiot Sunday school teacher with lightning for teaching children this stupid nonsense, it is safe to assume things don’t really work that way. God is not a vending machine where you insert a prayer-coin and get a wish, God is the greatest of all goals and the function of prayer is to align your life with this goal in order to be with Him in both this life and the one after. That teacher is an idiot and that’s why I didn’t allow you to listen to that nonsense, because it would teach you such idiotic things about God that you would end up being atheists. God is the safety line you hold on to in order not to go crazy in this world which is full of all kinds of evil and ignorance, in order to get to the other side whole, undamaged and hopefully improved by the experience.”

Yes, this is actually a true example of the kind of speeches my kids could hear from me when they were 7. 🙂