Think about it! For the first nine months of your existence you were entirely what your mother ate, and for a while after that too. But even though you've since been weaned, thank goodness, you're still only made of the substances you've repackaged into you!
Look down at your body.
Every square inch of you has existed since the beginning of time. You, or at least what you are made of, are as ancient as the cosmos itself!
I realized this when I was only a youngster and the implications sure weirded me out. I've often wondered if I've shared molecules with some ancient dead person. Everything around here gets reused anyway; I could have eaten some hamburger of a cow who ate the grass over a grave!
It's a circle of life kind of thing.
Right about now you're wondering if I've consumed something fermented, but hold your horses, I really have something worthwhile to ask of you.
Who are you?!?
Are you anything more than what you are made of? If you're like me, you feel profoundly distinct from the earth, sky and water around you. You feel incredibly You and nothing else. Why?
I must explain myself. I'm on this peculiar train of thought because I'm sitting here in a warm sunbeam, with all the vibrance and glory of autumn hollering at me through my window, and I've just read a chapter on Secular Humanism in my worldview class textbook. As I'm trying to immerse my mind in a world without God, I'm mulling through the basic tenets of naturalism. And the implications are unsettling.
If all I am is what I ate, if all I will ever become is the grave, then the entirety of my life is a whoop-de-doo! I'm as pointless and worthless as the ant I squished yesterday.
Forget ethics! Forget human dignity! Forget conventional courtesy! A world without God is absolutely and comprehensively meaningless! Why waste time whining about the economy, the government, the way things are "supposed to be", if there are no ought's and should's in life?! Do you get what I mean?
And as I look out my window, I wonder why I see meaning and beauty in the random chaos if I am supposedly just another part of it! Why, in all the universe, is there only one species that possesses acute consciousness and intelligence and why does he obsessively define "right" from "wrong" if he wasn't supposed to?
Why can't Mother Nature satisfy the mind she allegedly created?
What if a Mind created my mind?
I think I shall never be able live in a world without God. I have a mind that screams against mindlessness, a heart that cries against heartlessness, and a soul that dares defy mortality.
I think I'll go eat lunch.
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