Tom van der Woerdt-blog

Last night, something got me thinking about religion. I will try to output my thoughts here. Just, let me get one thing straight. I am not associated with any religion, nor do I consider myself atheist.

Imagine yourself. Imagine someone of 1993 years ago. Imagine that that person is Jesus Christ, who hasn’t written the bible yet. You are a person coming from another planet. Jesus is from the actual Earth, so you are from 2 different planets. The only difference between these planets is that your planet is far more civilized: You have computers, are able to project images on a screen (projector), can travel via the air at high speed (planes) and can talk with people that are on the other side of the world (telephone).

Now what would happen if you would show all that to Jesus, without telling him what they are? Most likely he would consider you a god. Sure, everyone from your planet knows you aren’t a god, but because the people from Earth have never seen a telephone, a computer, or anything else you brought, they will try to explain things. Obviously you won’t let them see how they work and how they are made, because that would spoil the “fun”.

Ok, I hope you still understand my post. Basically you’re talking with someone (Jesus) that’s 2000 years backwards in time and you are showing him things that won’t be invented for another 2000 years. Because of this he will consider you a god because he cannot explain the things.

Now, of course Jesus will not keep this for himself only. He will talk to others, try to convince them that there is indeed a god. Of course, nobody will believe him. So, he will try alternative ways, such as writing a book. Of course, because he only talked to you for a few minutes (or maybe an hour?) he does not know enough to write a complete book, so he improvises a bit. It takes a long time, but he finishes it and shows it to others. Because all facts in the book, which has been read by many people, are right or cannot be confirmed, people believe the story and go live by the things he made up, because you are a “higher being”.

This “story” works for all religions I know of. Someone from another planet (or the future) comes to Earth, shows something that’s not possible yet, and people believe the person. The same counts for the religions that have multiple gods: multiple persons came to Earth, and they showed something that would, according to the people from that age, be impossible. You then have 10 people believing you, 100, 1000, a million, a billion, etc.

The people from “the other planet” all know their friend(s) aren’t gods. They aren’t immortal either, and everything they do can be scientifically be explained. But the people on Earth don’t know that. Jesus didn’t see anyone get killed, so he might have assumed they were immortal.

Sure, in the next few days I will receive a lot of comments about this story not being possible, that some things can’t be explained, that there isn’t life on other planets, etc. Prove it! Why wouldn’t there be life on other planets? It simply hasn’t been seen yet. Why would the events in the book not be possible? They were either made up because Jesus didn’t have good references or they haven’t been explained yet. Can’t you travel back in time? Quoting Wikipedia: “it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel”. Think about it! Why wouldn’t this story be possible? Comment on this post with your reasons, I will try to explain them.

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Tom