You and I in the Grand Scheme of Things

Reviewing a previous post, "God's Awesome Power", reminded me of an internal concept I've had of our place in the Universe. In that post I gave you some very elementary statistics about our Universe, both near and far, yet the numbers are almost incomprehensible.

For instance, our tiny corner of the Universe - the Milky Way galaxy - is 100,000 light years across. At six trillion miles per light year, that equates to 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles in diameter, which is 600 quadrillion miles. It's important to note that this number is tiny in comparison to the Universe - infinitesimally small. Then we can zoom in to our solar system within the galaxy, and then our planet within the solar system, and finally to each of our little plots on the planet. Now, I don't know about you, but those kind of figures really make me feel small - not insignificant, but small.

It makes me realize how unimaginably great God is - truly, ineffably grand. I believe God exists, not in spite of this vastness, but because of it. I don't resent my smallness in the Universe, I am inspired by it. In no greater way do I believe the Universe could exist, except by God.

I don't believe any human has ever spoken to God, as this would be paramount to communication greater then the Universe. I don't believe any human has seen God, as this would be paramount to vision greater then the Universe. I don't believe I can comprehend God, nor can anyone else, but I can certainly recognize His work.

One Deist Φ

Pick a Prophet, Follow a Faith

I have come to the conclusion that the success of any given "revealed" religion is merely a popularity contest. It's whatever is in vogue or fashionable for a given period of time in human history. Problem is, we humans have always taken our beliefs so seriously - so fervently - that we often massacre anyone who doesn't follow the fashion.

No question there has been tremendous sincerity in our various religions. Every sect believes their religion is the only true and righteous way, and they want to make sure you and I are a part of it. Their beliefs are the only way to bring good fortune, live a holy life, and be saved in the afterlife.

Our perception of God has dramatically changed throughout history. No longer do we think Emperors and Pharaohs are God. Few if any people still believe a volcano, the sun, or an animal is God. No longer do we make human sacrifices to the Gods as some cultures did. But I'm certain the people who once believed these things knew they were being Holy and doing the right thing. They were simply living in the culture of their time - these things were in vogue. Would we consider them Holy now? Would we think they were (or are) heaven-bound? Well, eventually someone comes along and says, "Hold on folks. You have it all wrong."

Here's a not so little list I unashamedly borrowed from Wikipedia. It shows many of the religions throughout history and who founded them. (Please don't hold it against me if there are issues with the data. It's purpose is only to demonstrate an idea for this post.)

Prophet or Founder	Religion or Belief	Era
Akhenaten	Atenism	~1300 BCE
Zoroaster	Zoroastrianism	~1200 BCE
Moses	Judaism	~1200 BCE
Numa Pompilius	Codified and organized Roman religion	717-673BCE
Laozi	Taoism	~600 BCE
Siddhārtha Gautama	Buddhism	563-483BCE
Confucius	Confucianism	551-479BCE
Pythagoras	Pythagoreanism	520 BCE
Mahavira	Jainism	~500 BCE
Mozi	Mohism	470-390BCE
Leucippus	Atomism	440 BCE
Plato	Platonic Realism	427-347BCE
Epicurus	Epicureanism	307 BCE
Zeno of Citium	Stoicism	333-264BCE
Patanjali	Raja Yoga	~100 BCE
Jesus of Nazareth	Early Christianity	6BCE-27 CE
Paul of Tarsus	Pauline Christianity	~50 CE
Simon Peter	Petrine Christianity	~50 CE
Judah haNasi	Talmudic Judaism	~100 CE
Nagarjuna	Madhyamaka	150 - 250
Plotinus	Neoplatonism	205 - 270
Marcion of Sinope	Marcionism	110 - 160
Mani	Manichaeism	210 - 276
Arius	Arianism	250 - 336
Nestorius	Nestorianism	386 - 451
Eutyches	Monophysitism	380 - 456
Mazdak	Mazdakism	~500 CE
Bodhidharma	Zen	~500 CE
Muhammad	Islam	570 - 632
Songtsän Gampo	Tibetan Buddhism	~600 CE
Padmasambhava	Nyingma	~700 CE
Adi Shankara	Advaita Vedanta	~800 CE
Kūkai	Shingon	~800 CE
Ad-Darazi	Druze	~1000 CE
Basava	Lingayatism	~1100 CE
Madhvacharya	Dvaita	1238 - 1317
Ramananda	Sant Mat Vaishnavism	~1400 CE
Kabir	Kabir Panth, see Sikhism	1440 - 1518
Srimanta Sankardeva	Mahapuruxiya Dharma	1449 - 1568
Guru Nanak Dev	Sikhism	1469 - 1539
Baba Sri Chand	Udasi	1494 - 1629
Vallabha Acharya	Shuddhadvaita	1479 - 1531
Martin Luther	Lutheranism	1483 - 1546
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu	Achintya Bheda Abheda	1486 - 1534
Henry VIII of England	Anglicanism	1491 - 1547
Conrad Grebel	Swiss Brethren, Anabaptism	1498 - 1526
John Calvin	Calvinism	1509 - 1564
Akbar the Great	Din-i-Ilahi	1542 - 1605
George Fox	Religious Society of Friends	1624 - 1691
Raja Ram Mohan Roy	Brahmo Samaj	1772 - 1833
Ghanshyam Pande	Swaminarayan	1781 - 1830
Nakayama Miki	Tenrikyo	1798 - 1887
Allan Kardec	Spiritism	1804 - 1869
Joseph Smith, Jr.	Latter Day Saints	1805 - 1844
Jamgon Kongtrul	Rime movement	1813 - 1899
Báb	Bábí Faith	1819 - 1850
Bahá'u'lláh	Bahá'í Faith	1817 - 1892
Ellen G. White	Seventh-day Adventist Church	1827 - 1915
Madame Blavatsky	Theosophy	1831 - 1891
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad	Ahmadiyya	1835 - 1908
Swami Vivekananda	Ramakrishna Mission	1863 - 1902
Aleister Crowley	Thelema	1875 - 1947
Gerald Gardner	Wicca	1884 - 1964
Mary Baker Eddy	Christian Science	1821 - 1910
Swami Dayananda Saraswati	Arya Samaj	1824 - 1883
Guido von List	Armanism (Germanic Mysticism)	1848 - 1919
Sri Aurobindo	Integral Yoga	1872 - 1950
Charles Fox Parham	Pentecostalism	1873 - 1929
Ngô Văn Chiêu	Cao Dai	1878 - 1926
Ernest Holmes	Religious Science	1887 - 1960
Wallace Fard Muhammad	Nation of Islam	1891
Paramahansa Yogananda	Self-Realization Fellowship	1893 - 1952
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada	International Society for Krishna Consciousness	1896 - 1977
Zélio Fernandino de Moraes	Umbanda	~1900 CE
L. Ron Hubbard	Church of Scientology	1911 - 1986
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi	Transcendental Meditation	1917 - 2008
Sun Myung Moon	Unification Church	1920
Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar	Ananda Marga	1921 - 1990
Mestre Gabriel	União do Vegetal	1922 - 1971
Nirmala Srivastava	Sahaja Yoga	1923
Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson	Ásatrú	1924 - 1993
Sathya Sai Baba	Sathya Sai Organization	1926
Anton Szandor LaVey	Church of Satan	1930 - 1997
Osho	Osho movement	1931 - 1990
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar	Art of Living Foundation	1956
Vissarion	Church of the Last Testament	1961
Tamara Siuda	Kemetic Orthodoxy	1969

Here's the point: Not a single faith on this list was founded by God. Not a single one. Every religion and sect was formed by - you guessed it - man! Sure, these men may say they are chosen; they may say they are a prophet; they may say God spoke to them; they may even say they are God. Wow, man sure says a lot! Imagine the number of people who have believed these delusions and fantasies throughout history, even to the death.

Well, I'm not God, nor prophet, nor chosen - I'm just a man. Using God's gift of Reason, this I say:Believe in God. Have faith in yourself.

One Deist Φ

God's Awesome Power

One of the best ways to be completely awed by God's work, is to take just a peek at the science of the solar system and universe. I'm not talking String Theory here. (Although my favorite physicist, Michio Kaku, makes that sound easy too.) No, I'm merely referring to basic facts and trivia. Keep in mind that some of these facts are from memory, some are verified, and some are estimates which are hotly debated.

Our solar system now officially (International Astronomical Union) has one sun, eight planets, and three dwarf planets. Pluto was demoted in 2006, now classified as a dwarf planet along with Ceres and Eris. Some of the planets have moons which are larger then the smaller planets.

Jupiter is a gas giant – its composition is primarily gaseous material. It's so large that 10 Earths could fit in the eye of that big storm alone, and its actual mass is about 320 times that of the Earth – that's a lot of gas.

Most of us know that a planet's rotation on axis makes a day, and a complete revolution around the sun makes a year. Well, Venus rotates so slowly on axis that it's day is much longer then it's year.

Our sun is big – really big! On average it is two to three times larger then the average size of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Its actual mass is about 333,000 times that of the Earth. The sun, and hence our solar system, is about half way out from the center of our galaxy, about 26,000 light years. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter, but only about 12,000 light years in thickness (A light year is how far light travels in a year – about 6 trillion miles.) Our solar system rotates around our spiral galaxy, similar to the way our planet rotates around the sun, and completes one revolution approximately every 250 million years.

Let's really crunch some numbers. Did you know that every single star you see with the unaided eye is from our own galaxy? It is estimated that the Milky Way has about 300 billion stars – many of them much smaller then our sun – and this is only the tiniest fraction of stars in the universe.

How many galaxies and stars in the universe? According to the National Maritime Museum in the UK, the universe probably contains more than 100 billion galaxies. And best estimates suggest that there are at least 70 thousand million million million (70 sextillion) stars in the universe.

Now, who wants to tell me that God couldn't communicate directly with each and every one of us – at the same moment – if there were a need to tell us something?

One Deist Φ