General warning. The following is going to involve a lot of novice rambling and religion, science, and spiritually.
I’ve had issues with faith for a long time.
My parents claimed to be Catholic despite never really practicing anything akin to Catholicism. They never expected me to know anything about the faith and seemed to generally consider it and Christianity all the same thing. If it involved Jesus, God, and the Virgin Mary, it was all the same to them.
I grew up believing in a Giant Caucasian Sky Daddy living in a cloud kingdom above Earth just like any good little ‘MURICAN child. That’s what I saw on TV after all. People talked as though that was more or less how things worked, so how was I to know any differently? As I grew older though, I compromised with what seemed to be the more logical belief that a Creator Force existed, but existed beyond the dimensions that humans are currently capable of interacting with. Despite my belief I refused to join any organized religion. No organized religion seemed to echo my sentiments. They seemed to generally be focused on controlling people and making money. No fucking thanks.
The past decade of death and disaster has eroded my ability to believe in any kind of creator spirit. It’s become more and more difficult for me to correlate any kind of spirituality with the the existence I inhabit. Yet, a kernel still remains in the form of believing in prayer/positive thinking/meditation and the like. But mostly in the aspect of it helping to focus someone on their goals.
On the other hands, I’m very close with someone who practices magic, respects gods, and views the universe as being what most would consider god. They believe that the universe generally wants to give you what you want and need, you simply need to be very clear about it and work towards it and the Universe will help you.
Meanwhile I’ve spent the past few years trying to desperately not to have panic attacks at the overwhelming thought that all humans are just soulless meat machines with no purpose other than to consume, breed, and die. There is no higher power. Existence is an accident. Consciousness is a wayward temporary blip of electric insanity that is eventually snuffed out for everyone and everything.
Then there’s THIS that just came to my attention today.
The long and short of it is this: As far as we can tell, “Nothing” doesn’t exist. Even in a vacuum chilled to absolute zero, a quantum foam of particles are still blinking in and out of existence.
Just that concept ignites my brain. What if the most basic stripped down level of existence itself is just a quantum foam of potentiality? Well shit. That immediately makes me think of a few things. First, conceptually “God” is real. All gods are real. They can all be traced back to the fact that everything is everything else. Cosmic quantum potentiality given greater and greater complex shapes. Well damn, that also sounds a lot like the “Existence is a kind of hologram” theory that’s been going around for a while now.
“Particles blinking in and out of existence.”
Wait. Hold up. Isn’t that binary computation? So what if, to an extent, the “existence is a simulation” theory is also correct? Not in the “we’re all a video game or software” way but in a “as above, so below” kind of way? That like different aspects of reality work in similar ways? We can create images and sounds and data by way of binary. Maybe the only way that was ever something we could do was because it’s an essential part of how EVERYTHING functions?
You click a link to send a packet of code to a server somewhere somewhere. You’re requesting that server share data with you in the form of a website. That server sends the data back to you so you can look at the code that comprises that site. Doesn’t that sound similar to praying to a higher power? Or projecting your positive thinking towards the universe? Or casting out what you want/need to the primal quantum foam so it can project the concept onto what we deem the universe? Couldn’t you say that’s how biology works with genetics being code for how organisms are built and maintained? Information is stored, read, transferred, and transcribed?
I’m sitting here, processing these thoughts, and contemplating how this concept instantly reestablishes my faith in something outside myself and my observable existence that I could have faith in. Not in the christian way of “God personally loves me and wants me to be happy”, but in the “there is some common underpinning to all existence and it connects everything and everyone” way. The higher power is cosmic quantum god foam that wants to fill unknowable void with infinite different forms and shapes and complexities or itself. You can fit all your gods inside it. Build all your beliefs on it. Maybe all it wants is for us to be as weird, and intricate, and space filling as possible. Maybe existence on all levels is just things creating other things and giving an infinite, eternal middle finger to entropy and the hypothetical Void.
Yeah, I can incorporate that into my belief system.
