About This Episode

What you believe impacts how you make decisions, how you view others, and many other things.

Changing Your Life One Letter at a Time: What begins with B – Believer best defines individual believers on a quest to live life brightly. It involves all of life. The podcast narrows the large idea of what individuals believe into two divergent concepts. We will look at scientific evidence and psychological responses historically to negative human behavior.

When you can determine what you believe and begin to study the benefits and consequences to those beliefs your future becomes clearer. Laying a strong foundation as a believer settles nagging questions. Will this person be a great marriage partner? Does this career advance my value as an individual? Is it important for me to be involved in current social issues? Clarifying beliefs sets a trajectory which will attract others with similar ideals. Shortened show notes are below. To get the full story listen to the podcast here or your favorite podcast platform.

Additional Reading

The Real Romans Road

Puritans & Adventurers

The argument is life would be more merciful, compassionate, fair, or equal if government did more. But, government cannot do what we individuals must do for ourselves. We see this often in science. Science is always changing based on testable provable facts. Quite a while ago, the majority of the people believe the earth was the center of the universe. Galileo came along and said that the earth was not the center of the universe. The Catholic Church and the scientists of the time called him a heretic.

Galileo simply built a different investigation and discovered that the earth was not the center of anything. Not even the center of our solar system. He was put on house arrest and he kicked out of the church. But, he was right! Seventy five years later Isaac Newton came with better math and physics to prove Galileo was right. The science wasn’t definitive though many felt it was. Galileo had a good argument for his beliefs and of course, the scientists had a good amount of proof for their beliefs. They believe differently. We teach this in science classes because we want future scientists have the freedom to stretch the bounds. To push the limits and prove assumptions.

What is the Problem

We don’t want our scientists in a box based on what we already know. Over and over again we discover what we thought was true, is not. One scientist will say one thing. The world is warming, and humans are to blame. Another scientist will say the amount of change humans actually inflict is minor compared to everything else. The reason we know the science is not decided, is they keep yelling, loudly, a lot. Maybe we are at the point where Galileo is on house arrest. Eventually, math, science, and technology will actually prove one or the other. Who is Galileo? We don’t know.

Looking deeper. If we as humans are that influential in what happens on the earth, we must be to blame. Therefore, are we humans an animal species that has gone rogue? Have we reached the pinnacle of our usefulness? Is it time for us to go the way of the dinosaurs?

Do you believe that primordial protoplasm randomly morphed into some kind of aquatic creature? Eventually, it grew legs, which eventually morphed and changed randomly into man. A slow progression of evolution that led to where we are today, just another organism. An organism with no greater value than a skunk or a cheetah. We may not be able to hold our breath like a whale or run like a panther. Maybe in time we will.

Did random occurrences progress physical organisms? Or are we a unique creation, touched by the very finger of God? Created and placed in this world with the express purpose of taking care of it. Are we more intelligent? Is there something more to humans then a dog, skunk, or whale? Do we just follow blind instincts or something else?

Two Psychologists – Two Beliefs

There were two psychologists who were friends, which were very influential and change how we view humans. As time went on, they ended up with two totally different belief systems. One was Carl Jung and he came to believe that we are both body and soul. His belief that we were part soul came from his investigation into alcoholism. Interesting we refer to alcohol as spirits. Humans can try to fill a spiritual emptiness with it. Unfortunately, the physical human can become addicted. Carl Jung really inspired and encouraged the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous which looked at the addiction to alcohol from a spiritual perspective. Alcoholics Anonymous is a Christian organization. Members admit there is a God (currently Higher Power) in the first three steps. Without addressing spiritual issues, one will never be able to give up the physical need to use alcohol.

The other scientist was Freud who believed that the body was just a mix of chemicals. Believing everything was humanistic mostly from the sexual side. The idea that humans have sexual relations as a very intimate part of the marriage dynamic not dependent on the desire or ability to have children is almost void in Freud’s beliefs. His perspective was more animalistic. Consider one lion and several lionesses. The Lions fight to have dominance of the herd. Finally, there’s only one male for the whole herd. It’s usually always about being in a position of dominance or establishing who would be dominant. Freud is a believer in humans as no different than an animal, a species that was a little further evolve than the other animal species.

The Big Question of a Believer

Just an amalgam of chemicals that by some random act of the cosmos system all these chemicals became a human. That doesn’t fit my belief but I think that’s where belief needs to go when we look at believers. This is the foundation of belief for Living Brightly. Do you believe that we are some random act of evolution or are we a special unique creation of God? That is really, what has to be decided. We have to figure that out pretty early. A lot of people don’t want to deal with the religion of the decision. They want to ignore it and not talk about but we are.

If you take a statistical analysis, the chances are astronomical that everything would fall into place and continue to fall into place. What we know to be the truth about the earth, solar system, and the relationship between the earth and the sun is profound. The rotation of the earth around the sun is so precise, a couple degrees difference we fry half the year and we freeze half the year. There is no life on this planet.

I heard a mathematician explain the idea of randomness. Random events are not isolated the way we think of a random event. We think of it only happening one time and yet in reality a random event is not an isolated event.

How many times have you stumbled up the stairs or seen somebody trip on the stairs? We have all done it. It is not planned, predicted, or expected. We trip. Human’s trip. Every human walking on the face of the earth has tripped on something at least once. That is random. Is everything we see random happenstance or is it meticulously planned and executed?

Randomness

A random number generator will occasionally spit out the same number. Sometimes it will be closer together, other times will be further apart, but eventually the same number will get spit out more than one time. Random means it happens in a random pattern not that it only ever happens once. Now if one of those steps is different than the rest, more of an overhang, a little bit taller a little bit different than your cadence is such that you trip. People trip on that step many times. That is no longer random. The differentness is causing the tripping. If one step is different than many people will be caused to trip on that steps. It is no longer a random thing.

Scientifically Speaking

Astrophysicists, nuclear physicists, mathematicians, astronomers, investigating how this universe functions remark it is so precise and so fine-tuned. There are no repeats and no randomness. In fact, we spend a huge amount of money trying to find another planet, even another solar system that might have a planet, like ours. One that just might be able to sustain life or have this evolutionary process take place. we haven’t found any. Though we have not explored the whole universe, because it is expanding faster than we can get to it, but there’s nothing.

So why do we keep looking? Because there are people who believe we are nothing more than primordial soup. If there’s primordial soup a.k.a. water on the planet somewhere, then at some point maybe there was or will be living creatures.

To go even further, if we came from primordial soup not only are we just animals, we are equal with vegetation. Therefore, do you believe we are uniquely, intentionally, wonderfully created by the very fingertip of God? Who gives a unique and special fingerprint to each one of us? Not random or replicated. Even twins have their own fingerprint. Rather, do you believe we come from primordial soup over a slow long process of evolution? Don’t worry about religion right now decide what you believe. From my perspective, it takes a lot more strength to believe in evolution and randomness. There is just so much more evidence to support precision and accuracy.

What do You Believe

Ultimately, all we have and all we are, is a gift from God. The fact that we are here now, at this time, is really our time in history. First, you need to figure out what you believe. Is it random chance? Say you have a bag with all the parts to a watch in it. How long would you need to shake it up for it to put itself together and run accurately? Or does it take a creator to come along and puts all the pieces exactly where they need to be. Tunes it, polishes it, sets it in motion, and keeps it in motion. What is the difference?

Maybe you believe there is a Creator, a Higher Power, but don’t really know anything about it. That is okay, we all confront that in our life. There are consequences to your belief system. People who believe that this was created by God have a profound understanding there is real purpose for life. This wasn’t just a random occurrence that you showed up here. There is a purpose for each of us. Human life is valuable.

More Than Animals

Why do you feel the urge to help someone? Animals don’t help animals. Say a big storm goes through and knocks down the neighbor bird nest. The cardinals, orioles, and blue jays don’t get together and build a new nest for the robin who lost her nest. Blue jays don’t go out and peck at the raccoon trying to get the robin eggs. Nor do they help out the eggs back into the new nest. Animals don’t do that they are instinct driven. They find food, build shelter, and reproduce. That is it. When you find an animal nest or burrow you can identify what animal lives there. Birds make specific types of nests based on the kind of bird. Cardinals build nests that all look the same. Robins build robin nests, blue jays build blue jay nests, and so on. They find food, build shelter, and reproduce.

We humans dislike sameness. Look at our housing. Even developments have variety just for the sake of variety in types of houses. It is not cheaper. Even the houses that are the same don’t all look exactly the same because of landscaping or paint color. We are made in God’s image, in his likeness. As creators, we create. I create this podcast, artists create great art, businessmen create great business models, and sales men create a sales pitch. We all create many different things. Creating unique landscape to establish our house looks unique to us.

Changing Your Life One Letter at a Time: What begins with B – Believer. We all believe something. What you believe sets a trajectory for your life. Do you belong in a zoo with the other animals? OR are you created to create? There is more on the podcast, give it a listen.

2021 © Elayne Cross