Something from nothing.
The ultimate paradox of creation, in my opinion. How can you get something from nothing? Within the confines of our own socially (and loose I might add) defined levels of comprehension, this is an impossibility. It's a basic reason the faithful possess for believing in a god, and also a fundamental concept atheists associate with for not believing in a god.
If a god doesn't exist then where did everything come from? How did the life forms, the planet, the universe etc. form if there was not a creator that made it? There must be a god.
If life forms, the planet, the universe etc. needed to be created because they could not have formed on their own, then who created the creator? What made god? How could god be the creator of everything when nothing created god.
It's all bullshit when you get right down to it, and I'll tell you why.
Humans are limited. Human perception is limited. Human comprehension is so vastly limited it's appropriately comparable to one grain of sand to every atom in the universe. Every conceptualized and relatively applied understanding we have for anything we believe we understand was never born from the depths of our subconscious, it was given to us a proxy from the adaption of collective human awareness.
There have been very few original innovators throughout our history, but they have existed. The cavemen who developed the additional brain cells needed to want a better life for him or herself and first realized friction creates fire was an innovator. Whatever Mesopotamian mastermind was sitting around one day and saw a clay pot rolling off a staircase, or whatever happened, so they invented wheel- they were an innovator. If you ever take time from your busy life of doing nothing to educate yourself about the greatest minds throughout time, you will find ORIGINAL minds and ideas. Fathers and mothers of evolved human thought patterns. Chances are good the majority of the population doesn't know about any of them. But I bet they know who Brad Pitt is. Or George Bush, or Britney Spears. In fact I'm fairly certain that ALL over the world the vast majority of human awareness will associate the two golden arches symbol to the Mecca of fast food death machines known as McDonald's. Show them a picture of Nikola Tesla and they might ask you if that's a photo of your great great uncle.
Most basic and advanced creations that were the basis for the birth of new and original thought processes were never original to begin with, they were contemplated, defined, redefined, altered and ultimately shared to form "originality" for which the rest of a fickle society accepts and adapts to.
The sad fact about human knowledge rests upon one unfortunate and encompassing condition- People are ignorant. Not lacking the CAPABILITY to exercise the limits of the mind and continually expand their boundaries for comprehension in order to form original thoughts, but simply too lazy to try. Why bother? Thinking is so hard, isn't it? So much easier when you allow the totality of everything around you to do your thinking for you. The limitations of human consciousness are that we attribute original thought in regards to creation, to human born associations.
Heaven is a golden streeted paradise, there are mansions, god sits on a throne, Allah gives you virgins, hell is full of fire and has a lake, etc. These are all HUMAN concepts. Mental visuals designed to form a bond between what you relate to in order to feed the collective ego and subside the collective fear of not being important enough to have an awareness that is eternal. None of it is original, and none of it provides a realistic and intelligent possibility for the potential continuation of consciousness.
Every book that teaches you about a religion, is only that- a book. Written by humans, edited by humans, translated by humans, and interpreted by pompous egotistical humans with personal gain (usually political) as a forerunner of intention. None of these BOOKS were written by a creative force responsible for reality and they shouldn't be taken seriously. But the remarkable weakness and laziness of the mind that is so frightened by the confines of their media fed brain adapt and cling to this insane possibility that there really IS a heaven and a hell and a loving father man sitting on his potty throne with the cherubs hovering nearby playing harps while angels with giant beautiful wings live in ultimate bliss and peace. Most Christians believe this will be their eternal paradise. Only it's a pity they've never actually studied the bible enough to know this visual image they believe as their reality is complete nonsense, adapted through time to fit the needs of every flighty society it was changed for. The bible describes angels as horrific looking creatures. Some appeared to be giant metallic wheels studded with eyeballs, others were so terrifying that just to gaze upon them you would be completely incinerated. Our understanding of angels was created by poets, sculptors, and painters during the Renaissance period. Not the bible, and not "reality" according to their own religion, yet they believe it anyway, because people are intentionally ignorant and they allow themselves to be so. It's a willful choice, but even the most sane and devout of followers have that small voice in the back of their minds, which IS their mind calling out to them, trying to clue them in to what truly is real: That they're wrong. And so, they form a blanket of faith to satiate the fear of being wrong, which afford them the continuation of ignorance. It's safer to be a sheep than lead the flock.
With that understanding in mind, why it has been necessary to contain your concepts of comprehension for an afterlife within the lines of what the world around you is capable of creating an association with, is beyond me.
I can accept that there is no loving sky daddy protecting me from evil, because a simple glance at the totality of human suffering tells me this is not true. I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in the validity of books written by gainful humans and will not accept the definitions of a constrained and fearful society who must apply human concepts into what is not flesh and bone or material construction and has adapted precious little originality into the framework of existential concepts.
I am at peace with the potential that upon death awareness ceases to exist. I am also at peace with the potential that it does not cease to exist because I know, very well, that the potentials of both circumstances do not rely on the demands of ONE possibility flowing from a single source. Whatever lies beyond this realm of our limited understanding, is incomprehensible and indefinable and the limitations of ability for reasoning outside of human associations, make it reprehensible that we attempt to explain that which we have no ability to know.
