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As Written By: Richard T. Adams II

Dedicated to my beloved mother, Elizabeth Adams, who tragically passed from this Earth as I finished writing much of the contents of this work. Her assistance, although sadly cut short as it was, proved invaluable – truly an incredible treasure, just as she herself was throughout her life.

I love you, Mom, always and forever.

TekARK Book One: Basic Concepts, by Richard T. Adams II. 2240 Beacon Lane, Falls Church, VA 22043

Smashwords Edition, Published April 2017

www.tekark.org Richard.Adams@Gmail.com

© 2017 Richard Adams II. All Rights Reserved. EBook ISBN

## • 0: Introduction

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## • 1: On Human Advancement

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## • 2: The Rate of Progress

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## • 3: Human Civilization As A Maturing Entity

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## • 4: Where's God Today?

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## • 5: Finding Divine Truth In All The Major Religions

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## • 6: The Value of Turning To Our Sacred Works, Even In More Modern Times

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## • 7: Advanced Ideas Being Indistinguishable From Magic

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## • 8: Having Creators Reflected In Their Creations

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## • 9: Science and God: One and the Same

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## • TekARK: The Who, What and Why

# Introduction

# An Overall Summary of TekARK

The central concern of this entire work involves examining our own existence. In still other words, being the timeless plight for all of mankind: Those countless many who might endeavor to look up, only to ask of themselves "Why?"

It's purely human nature to ask ourselves such questions; whether that might mean pondering them over in our heads, making inquiries to others around us, or instead turning nowhere in particular -and so, literally looking to everywhere- by prayerfully directing our inquiry towards that very same Creator of ours for answers and guidance.

Here, however, the thing of it is? For the past several millennia, those existing answers we had (no less, ones I feel quite certain were each provided to our long ago ancestors directly by God: A being that's truly a higher power in every possible way) just "worked" with everything that those forebears knew to be true of life – as those mainstream religions then asserted their proper place in this world, bringing exceptional stability onto the scene over the past several millennia.

So there quite simply was no reason whatsoever, let alone having any genuine need, to shake things up or seek anything differently from what we'd find strictly by turning to the dominant system of belief for our respective cultures and society. It's undeniable that each and every last one of these systems of belief perfectly covered all aspects of life – answering every single question we might've harbored impossibly well, and existing with such an inconceivable degree of stability: Even despite thousands of years worth of progress just now! (This, proving a true testament to their irrefutable divine origins, if ever such a thing existed!)

What these ideas I'd offer all hinge upon, then...? Our ongoing progress has never __**really** __ introduced any radically new variables into the mix in any such ways... that is, but of course, not until now! Before this modern age we're all so blessed to be living in, nothing ever provided sufficient enough means as to "shake things up" in this particular regard. Existentially speaking (being those times where we each look out and ask "Why?"), our civilization entered a state of generalized stability for itself; never advancing however far enough as to gain any seismic shift – acquiring a better understanding or greater level of knowledge that related to such matters that are literally divine in nature.

Even here today, nothing has truly emerged or been discovered that's invalidated those existing answers we had lock, stock, and barrel. With that being said, we've gained many a new insight in times of late that I very much do feel presents us with an immense amount of clarity – only brought in __**addition** __ to (and not instead replacing outright) that picture we already possess for ourselves. Therefore, it's with this precise understanding in mind that finds me here just now, wholeheartedly committed to undertaking this very effort!

Because it's only been with __ our __ generation -and ours __**alone** – where something new has indeed emerged onto the scene: The technology of the computing age, something that's already revolutionized every segment of our own daily, personal lives. So it is in this light, although nothing even approaching a __**Matrix** -esque philosophy, that my firm belief holds our technological advances can very much be applied in such ways as to reexamine and arrive at uniquely new answers to those daunting questions of old: Why... how?!

To begin with, I would offer this nugget: In all of space and time, we know with certainty that not only can matter never be destroyed (only converted to energy), but it can also never be created from out of nothing in any way! This raises something of an issue, obviously, when one considers that all such matter in our universe surely must have been created at some point in time, in some way or another... lest we wouldn't be here today – not at all!

As we've kept advancing along, however, we've chanced upon a most fascinating little thing: A way of doing precisely that! In fact, it's also the only conceivable way of ' **creating** ' such matter, much the same as we ourselves are familiar with and each composed of: Technology, which allows endless worlds upon worlds to exist with the simple touch of a finger. Computing, enabling entire universes many billions of light-years in size to be created, with each one we've made so far today housed inside of only a single room that holds some supercomputer! Oh, by the by? This is hardly some far flung concern in an inconceivable future world of tomorrow, but it's rather already been achieved today – actually, that's incorrect: It's just now some several years in the past! How, you must doubtless wonder, might any of this sheer madness possibly be? By way of so-called simulations, where one can indeed produce literally anything we can possibly dare to dream of!

For you see, something rather interesting in this regard has cropped up of late (even if only as of yet somewhat limited more to what we might consider as the 'fringe'): How ours is really a reality that's simulated in nature. What does that mean, you must doubtlessly be wondering? It's relatively simple, actually – and much the same as you'll likely expect it might be!

Basically, simply try to envision our own technology after another century of advancements – then, a millennia or better onward! It's almost inconceivable to imagine what the combination of progress and, should we ever hit a rut there, ongoing expansions/building more and more over time will entail, is it not? Look today, and see only the sorts of digitally created worlds that are easily achievable on even an average PC; the kinds of physics those mighty microprocessors are capable of recreating – right now, crunching some trillions of calculations every *second*, just as they most certainly do!

Aside from the sheer, raw power of such hardware, however, witness the blazing speeds at which our technological innovations are coming here of late – where once, it could take centuries or better before the world might stand unrecognizably transformed from invention, today we can look back thirty years... ten, or even just five!- in order to see such startling change: Consider the fact that some seven years ago, the mobile revolution hadn't even truly started just yet; we all still utilized desktop PCs, and interacting with digital devices meant using both mouse and keyboard for controls – instead of quite literally using our fingertips, as we now each do today.

Just in _seven_ short years worth of time, and already so very much has changed! Heaven only knows, then, what all else we'll bear witness to during the course of only our own lifetimes.

However much it might run contrary to our gut instinct here, wherein we have this quite distinctive separation between so-called 'real' and the otherwise 'artificial'? It's almost become second nature to us, seeing digital and analog as two completely different things. And yet... they aren't anything of the sort! The lines between the two increasingly blur together as more time passes; where breathtaking advancements are coming so fast that whatever distinctions exist between them are lost as the quality of digital things not only equal their "real world" analogs, but often have begun surpassing the quality possible from such "analog" things!

Furthermore, considering our current views on artificial intelligence, the mere idea that our reality could possibly be simulated in some way, which would mean we too would suddenly be "artificial" in some way...? It's all rather self-humbling -if not downright offensive- just proposing that we could in any way, shape or form be similarly 'artificial'. All the more, it's utterly insane! I mean, I can *see* everything around me – I *know* this world is "real," not made out of some batch of ones and zeroes. I mean, right...?

Except it very much doesn't have to mean that, nor anything of the sort!

Here's the thing: There've been some who have raised such ideas, only to posit that we might be the result of some civilization, not all that different from our own, creating mere copies of themselves on end. Along those lines, you might hear explanations centered around, say, probability: "That for every one 'real world,' there would be an infinite number of simulated ones – with an endless string of simulations creating simulations that then create more simulations!"

This is not necessarily what I would assert, however, but instead finding ours to be from a concept of literal divinity... something that, whether so inconceivably far advanced beyond us, or never having been "like us" in such regards to begin with, regardless is not comparable to humanity as we know it just now. This entity would only go about the business of Creating in such ways that we're just now beginning to conceive of and understand – yet still remains almost impossibly far apart from (and above) us in every way that matters.

As holds true with the old adage, "any technology sufficiently far enough advanced becomes indistinguishable from pure magic," so too might this be tackled from the other end: Any apparent magic is only technology, however much advanced it may well be, in some form or another.

The goal of exploring our own nature by way of a simulation is not to try and bring the divine or Godly "down to our level," as it were, but just the opposite! To instead seek to come that much closer to our literal Maker, solely by the relative elevation of our own position and standing brought by means of our continuing progress in all manner of diverse fields. Assuming that any divinity is as advanced of a being as is both possible and conceivable...? Then it only stands to reason that the more advanced our civilization becomes, the more we also might see revealed and prove able to understand about the nature of our existence/the Divine Entity that created us.

That's precisely what this work is all about: The more advanced we've progressively become, at some point we'd only expect new understandings on the nature of divinity to come as a result! It is my belief we have arrived at just such a point here and now, in regards to this simulated understanding of mine.

So no, while of course we're not all "living in a Matrix" just the same as what we possess or can conceive for ourselves is impossibly far apart from whatever it might mean specifically for that divinity, I would argue that it does now begin to allow us a better, more realistic understanding of such matters. As well, I certainly believe that just such a divine being also wouldn't create something entirely separate from or incomprehensible to themselves and what they know. In other words, we should only hope to find aspects of a Creator as a part of any of their Creations, making the fact that we actually can produce worlds all our own in exactly such ways anything but a coincidence, but instead should hold considerable significance when it comes to the divine.

It is also why the deep divide finding our faith more often than not at odds with our scientific explorations – what with the proverbial case of the "Godless Atheist scientist" versus the devout theologian or organized religion – is a thing of sheer lunacy and unrepentant foolishness: To explore, investigate and discover more about the world that divinity Created is to literally explore and know more about that divinity, itself! In other words, there should be no one alive more committed to investigating our world in such ways than those of the deepest wellsprings of faith; that the biggest driver for advancing human knowledge in our world over the ages should be those largest, most organized of religious bodies.

Instead, it has often been the complete opposite – where the biggest opponents to and obstacles for scientific developments have historically been various Churches. While, fortunately, this trend has (somewhat) abated and started reversing itself in recent times with Christianity and/or the Catholic Church, it also just means that today such theological bodies are simply no longer standing directly as obstacles or impediments to scientific progress. This, rather than picking up the banner themselves and rallying us (and our world) forward ever onward (as they always should have been doing – especially now in our world of today!).

It's also far more frightening still, however, when one looks to recent developments with so-called radical Islam: ISIS and their sorry ilk – all of whom demand an absolute, unequivocal end to any scientific inquiry. As if we needed any more evidence serving as proof that these sorts are little save for heretical blasphemers representing only themselves in this world, and so the worst evils as man might ever prove capable of doing, instead of their representing any aspect of any true divinity.

Once more it makes me feel compelled to assert how, if one holds any faith at all in any higher power (that our world was thusly created by some form of God), then they must also be among the very most committed to scientific investigations and learning about that same Creator, by way of its miraculous Creation! Exploring and understanding more about our world is to explore and understand the divine, both as much and as best we're able – so then, this decidedly absurd disconnect we instead find between science and faith (both historically, just as well as today) is something that has always been utterly irrational to my mind.

All the same, various scientists should easily be those most committed to ideas of faith, coming as they witness and observe the divine in the form of its own fantastical Creation – something that, ultimately, results in all of us, here and now! In my estimation, "priests" and "pastors" should be our world's greatest Einsteins or Hawkings; folks wholly committed to uncovering as much (literal) divine truth as our species ever might manage... committed, wholly outside of any monetary or economic gains to be derived from their endeavor, but strictly to uncover that truth as divine truths!

It is for precisely these same reasons that I myself have been enamored by science since childhood, eagerly consuming as much scientific thought as I ever possibly could! No less, I rather suppose it's that same eagerness that brought me here just now; that various learned knowledge inevitably shaping and molding my outlook and beliefs with such things, resulting in these exact series of beliefs as I'm putting down to the written word right now.

Returning from that brief aside, I have absolutely no doubts that we are the result of something of a simulation... whether the divine Itself is part of the "program", so to speak -interwoven more directly within our Created reality, in still yet inexplicable ways- or our reality is more strictly the product of some omniscient organic-like being (meaning "God") who went about creating in such ways, perhaps several billions of years on from where we presently find ourselves today. In truth, an understanding of the divine in such ways is something that remains "beyond us mere mortals," just as it also has little true bearing on us in this life – were it even possible to "divine" any such answers at all! To know that would be to know all about the literal face of God Itself, something that will remain beyond us, just as it doubtlessly should!

Although also consider for a moment now how all the "known" powers of God would exist with just such an event as this conceivable simulation entails, from a being in control of all aspects of our reality: Absolute Omniscience. Omnipotence. Actual immortality (attained in some way, but a being who'll never know death), or relative immortality (Where many eons for us pass by in only a single fleeting instant from its own -much higher- perspective).

The trick -and a fundamentally unique part to this set of ideas- comes with tying in those existing, somewhat more ancient, religions. I wholeheartedly believe that those "mainstream" faiths were one and all divinely ordained & directed ones; that such a Creator did in reality directly interact with mankind at the time, while also handing down the various sacred works for each respective faith to our long ago ancestors. In other words, as part of those faiths, they each well and truly reflect the very same (one & true) divinity – and so must our traditionally established systems of belief never be ignored or simply set aside by us in favor of something perceived as being "better" in some way; those existing religions merely represent that higher power trying to put humanity "on the right path," as it were.

One might next ask why, if that divinity once interacted with man, it "wouldn't reveal itself today to answer all our many questions... if it really even exists!" Well, to that I can only say: Of course it wouldn't! There's something to be said for being allowed to stand upon our own here, in just such ways – were divinity to reveal itself to our world here today, we would have endless questions – we would expect countless many things of it.

It "did what it needed to do," then guaranteeing mankind our immutable free will; look where we are today, and where we're still yet heading towards, to see the wisdom of such a course of action. Apparent absence does not equal nonexistence -not in any way whatsoever- but instead finds a loving, nurturing being acting quite like any good parent does: Allowing us to stand on our own two feet at some point, after first having put us on the right path.

All the more, if we were to view mankind's civilization as being much like any other dynamic maturing entity -developing and advancing continually over time- we would expect exactly what we in fact find! Divine interactions early on, then allowing that child (humanity) to develop still further by also being allowed to stand on its very own – the proverbial bird leaving the shelter and comforts of its nest, flying high in order to soar the skies above!

This is partially the reason why I do place such great importance on our older, existing faiths: When each of them first came to the fore -the whole world around- would have also been the one and only time you'd expect direct divine interactions on the "mortal plane," far more than any other eras: Not too young to understand or have meaning get lost, but also not too far advanced either.

Well and truly, the point all these many global religions came to be on this Earth was the absolutely perfect moment for having any actual divine contact – for our Maker to bestow its Creation with proper guidance, instructions and knowledge, setting us on the path we needed to be on in order to arrive at the marvelous world we find for ourselves in the here and now.

Imagine how they also not only survive into today, but continue so resoundingly in spite of all that's changed in our world, it's really a most wondrous impossibility for us to behold; to consider those beliefs all have ages dating back many millennia, back in days when, technologically, we understood so very little – barely having worked out basic agriculture, if even that much! Then, thriving well past the electrical age, enduring the discovery of genetics and DNA, or evolution... truly, that they exist all but entirely unchanged and yet continue to utterly dominate across the whole wide world still, here in 2015... it's something of a most miraculous thing, indeed!

So I unquestionably hold that our major existing systems of beliefs (in all their many forms) do in fact come from God, reflecting the true nature of that being – only also intended for that more "childlike" humanity. That being tried to explain things as well as it possibly could at the time, also ensuring that mankind would be headed in the right direction.

As such, we can indeed glean the nature of divinity by studying and becoming versed in existing religious thought or sacred works. We must therefore take great effort to never ignore or discard their various teachings -not at any point in time, no matter how far still into the future that may well mean- for surely each one contains countless divine truths and various insights about the nature of our literal Maker, coming as they did from just such a higher power!

They should, however, be viewed in context: Provided for and meant to guide a nascent humanity in days when our most advanced tools were stones or wood; teachings intended to shepherd us with basic cultural and societal learnings in order to ensure we'd survive into the here and now, thriving and advancing as we still are.

Those long ago times were rife with so-called "magical thinking" – magic was *all* our forebears understood, so anything else besides what we actually find in those sacred works would've gone the same exact way that, say, introducing evolution would have: Unimaginable... and an instant death sentence for any human going around spouting such madness! None would have followed something so bizarre (that they couldn't possibly hope to conceive of) and, what's more, providing such advanced scientific knowledge was wholly unnecessary! What we needed -the only thing- were those most basic of societal and cultural learnings, and it is therefore precisely that which our ancestors received.

So of course we would find exactly what we did thereabouts. And hey, you know what...? It all worked! Look at just where we are today, at what that early "firm guiding hand" provided us with – impossibly enough, we've even survived nearing a century with nuclear weaponry arsenals that should've otherwise annihilated us all in a radioactive apocalypse by war! And we survived precisely because of those teachings provided by that divinity millennia ago, ensuring those qualities of our better natures -of cooperation, peace, tolerance, betterment and family- would rule supreme in our world over the darkness of hatred, conflict, our more "primal" aggressions and passions, or blatant hedonism/widespread egocentrism.

One might further wonder why there wouldn't be only one single faith in this world, representing perhaps the true nature of that divine being; how Christianity, Judaism, Shinto, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and more could possibly come from the same divinity.

I thoroughly believe the purpose of our world is in what we find today – that the world, just as it now exists, is what was intended by divinity. Consider how our world only comes to be by having things play out just as they did: Those various sociocultural dynamics, contributions and interactions being required to get us right to where we now are. Well, things only play out that way by having all our wonderful diversity happening as it has... and still is.

In other words, a singular dominant faith produces a bland, homogenous sort of world. Furthermore, and here's the key point: I believe –absolutely– that the primary goal of our existence is the cultivation of a wide array of intelligent, self-aware sentient individual beings.

Stop and consider for a brief moment, just what an exceptional thing that proves to be! Sentient individual beings – all of whom are different in a myriad of ways... billions and billions of them, even! Variety being the spice of life, and all that jazz – to create positively __ anything __ that develops and matures sentience, and then finding it further differentiated on an individual level that numbers in the billions, each one as distinct as imaginable...? It's truly most staggering!

This, albeit rather regrettably, explains the need for mortality/death: If the desire were strictly in developing consciousness regardless of uniformity, we indeed might have been immortals here on this world. But with the goal instead being cultivating individual intelligences, as we each are, dynamic and varying in all sorts of ways? This really only happens by bringing about change, something brought alongside death – a secondary benefit of which allows the species enjoying such intelligence to develop by way of evolution, "naturally and organically" over inconceivably long periods of time. The alternative would've instead seen a "built, all ready to go" sort of existence, much as might have been if everything we know and are had been created in its fully "finished" state; dropping developed human persons on an Earth in a similar state to our planet at any point over the past few centuries of time.

Such tragedies as death represents also offers something else, however, that's even more important still in the larger scheme of things: A definitive end point where that individual consciousness can be considered "ready and done," having formed itself fully and been allowed to develop gradually over time. This, being the age old "afterlife," I suppose... with our each moving onward and upward, to something of a higher plane of existence – one where we are stripped of our physical form or any pain to exist as purest thought, joined with all other consciousness as have existed throughout the ages.

Additionally, by viewing reality as something of a simulation enables us to more easily view the concept of there being other -higher- planes to existence: The consciousness of the individual can be seen as an entity able to be taken or preserved outside of its original place or state, and then moved (outside of the simulated reality we know of *as* reality, itself) and subsequently "run" elsewhere. Then, when it finally does, functioning just as it was inside of our own reality; as it (we) formerly did inside of our bodies! In such a way, our consciousness might be "plucked out" upon our mortal death and brought to exist on that higher plane, directly beside our divine Creator.

If you understand our consciousness as something conceivably much like any digital file; as an entity able to be "moved about" and exist outside of any physical form? We then could also perceive something where multiple versions (even "saved states", if you will) of that "file" could be plucked out over time. That person would then prove able to be "brought into alignment" with themselves as they were at those many earlier points -'stitching' all of them together from throughout that one single person's own life- in order to ultimately result in a singular, distinct and wholly unique conscious entity emerging when it's at long last said and done (a brief aside, but merging multiple aspects of one thing -as opposed to merely combining together or adding up some distinct multitude- only to still have it result in that same thing...? This is also largely only something found to exist with the recent arrival of digital technologies).

With this particular set of circumstances in mind, should our final years find us suffering from the many consequences of aging (say dementia or Alzheimer's)? Well, whatever those issues are is something that can, in fact, be quite easily overcome thanks to employing such means! In this specific way, we can suddenly be made to exist at our very utmost peaks: With the sharpness and raw intellectual might we have during our more youthful years, yet also possessing the exceptional clarity and wisdom that can only ever come with age + experience, and all with our every last memory just as fresh as the very instant when we first made them!

Consider also the unique notion that consciousness could be "shuffled around" between planes of a simulated existence. With anything else, you obviously can't "transport" their bodies with them realistically in such a way, nor do we prove able to bring quite literally anything else physical or material in nature to traverse such "planes of existence". But sentience exists first and foremost as pure thought, allowing abilities/qualities which are almost singularly unique to those found with a simulated sort of reality: Imagine something like a "program" moved between "computers" – where we might exist *outside* of our bodies (and this whole wide world), something that cannot be said for literally anything else in our universe!

Aside from the consequences with our afterlife, a simulated view does offer us one additional thought to consider here: Traditional understanding awards humanity with the immortal soul, almost a literal spark of the divine living inside each and every last one of us. This, however, is not precisely the case as I myself see it. Instead, it is that very same consciousness -our intelligent, self-aware beings on the personal/individual scale – that are our... metaphysical form, if you will.

While it may not seem like it at first, this is a critical distinction to be realized, as it is my firmest belief that the ability to look up and ask "Why?" is the sole attribute that matters in bequeathing so-called "otherworldly" qualities... so too being the singular aspect that shall survive us, beyond this mortal life. If one might think, question and know of itself, then that's the only thing necessary to have an incorporeal and metaphysical existence beyond this life. It is our dynamic personalities and thoughts which move beyond, rather than some ghostly "spiritual" essence tied in with our physical forms in any conceivable way.

Now admittedly enough, one may very well find the idea of trying to compare our existence through divinity with anything modern or technological (developed only by man) to be a fool's folly, if not bordering on outright blasphemy. Until! -that is, one considers that where we're at right this moment is actually only the end result of billions and billions of years worth of developing (many eons serving as something of an incubation period, I suppose.) Furthermore, specifically, for only our own species/civilization? Some hundreds of thousands of them, alone!

Additionally, computing just 'is what it is' as a concept/development brought with progress – meaning there's really little else left to go beyond it. In other words? There's simply not any concept that appears similarly revolutionary coming for us in the foreseeable future, most certainly not in the same way as the digital revolution proved to be, at any rate. In fact, inventing such a capability is something that quite easily stands alone -perhaps save only for developing language- even throughout all of human history, itself! Sure, we can keep advancing, continuing right along to improve our positioning and exploit our world ever onward (at the very most far fetched, maybe -one day- accomplishing teleportation, wormholes or "faster than light" travel): But the attainment and understanding of basic computing is a fundamental, essential notion that mustn't be underestimated in being without precedence.

Although such a divine being undoubtedly has billions of years on us still, if in fact any comparison there is even at all practical or possible for us to make...? We should still only but expect that in bringing about the all of everything we know to be real and true, that same being would most likely use something at least __**conceivably** __ similar to what we might best understand as a simulated reality.

As I see it? There's really only two alternatives hereabouts: First, believing in literal magic – a *poof*, "Abracadabra – let there now be light!" affair, where with a wave of one's hand, suddenly everything just miraculously came to be. I would posit this is most irrational, and I would again stress the "advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" aspect here. That divinity would only but of course be incomprehensibly far advanced beyond us, but I feel considerable certainty that they would still base their Creation -us and our world- around those things they knew and understood. This means that the more advanced our civilization becomes, the more we might thusly prove able to glean and understand about the divine.

So while it's obviously "to each their own", when pressed with a choice between some inconceivable fantasy and a relatable + understandable reality? Well then, for me there really isn't any choice... at all! Again, it might be largely incomprehensible to us at this point, absolutely, but even so, something indeed most similar to what we know today as a simulated reality...? Without a doubt – in this world, or any other!

Lest one feel such comparisons are lunacy tinged with heresy, as I might only expect/hope at such an early stage of this work? Although I'll be exploring this aspect much more further along in our time together, I happen to believe that certain aspects in those millennia old sacred works/beliefs actually point to such simulated matters as a reality for us.

While there's actually a goodly number I could perhaps draw on for further validation to these simulated views of mine, I feel as though the most far and away useful one of all for us just now (in addition to being the most blatantly obvious, if only to my own mind) comes with the idea of the Christian Trinity.

One God, but with many faces: Stumping many a soul over the eons as something all but inconceivable to us "mere mortals." I view it in relation to a simulated reality thusly: In more basic terms, there'd be the (for lack of a better term) "program" running and overseeing our specific reality, itself. This aspect would be involved in the day-to-day in our world... carrying things along, perhaps nudging us on a personal level at times while always respecting our absolute free will as individuals, also being responsible for the handling of prayers and other such divine requests and outright miracles in our world. (The "Holy Ghost" of the aforementioned Trinity)

Then, there would also have to be some being responsible for creating that Simulation in the first place. Whether it is something we'd understand as an impossibly advanced organic being, instead more of a technologically based entity, or something else entirely...? Who knows! But some intelligent being (here, The Father) would have to set the ball rolling in that regard, just the same as some semblance of it would oversee our reality running day-to-day.

Finally comes the direct interactions with that same being – only coming on our own plane of existence that it Created. This would see that omnipotence essentially assuming an "avatar" temporarily in order to interact with us in our world for a short time, then returning back to whatever "higher plane" from whence it came.

This completes said Trinity, here with "The Son." So you see, I wholeheartedly believe that there are, in point of fact, many aspects inside these decidedly ancient sets of beliefs that, when reevaluated with the benefit of today's knowledge, speak towards such a simulated nature for our existence. Viewing things in this light, it doesn't end up requiring us to set aside, discard or discredit existing beliefs in the slightest, but rather allows us to further them in brand new ways!

Now I know what your first reaction to any of this must be... believe me, do I ever! Because I can only imagine it's the same exact response that I myself had some time ago, back when such ideas first entered into my own personal "sphere of awareness".

However -and only over quite a good long time- it honestly did begin to sound less and less bizarre (if not downright absurd!). The fact of the matter was that try as I might, I simply couldn't shake it: The longer that time passed, the more I discovered or encountered that would seem to support just such a thing potentially being a reality. What's more, as I went through life (and at the risk of sounding like a total loon here) I came to realize that it __**almost** __ seemed as though I were being nudged towards the belief that ours was something of a simulated reality. They were small things -to be sure!- but regardless of that, they continued to stack up gradually over time. I suppose that even those most microscopically small of hydrogen atoms eventually build up in large enough quantities as to yield a massive star.

While I certainly won't bore you with many details, matters in fact began resolving themselves as to my ending up believing in what I do just now (no less, doing what I'm presently finding myself doing). All of this was strictly because of the confluence of any number of inexplicable, downright impossible series of events! Whether it involved my personal areas of interest and knowledge falling as they do in more scientific fields, while just the same always having been deeply focused on my faith and such existentially based religious ideas...? Or an early, extraordinarily unusual degree of exposure to technology that stretches back to the dawn of modern computing – having as I did a computer engineer for a parent which ensured that I would spend many a day and night on the floor of some "data network room" or some such, keeping myself busy fascinated by how everything worked together and that which it all resulted in producing.

Then, ever since early childhood, there was also the matter of my own poor (and, as of today, sadly still failing) health. There was some silver lining to be found in those otherwise pitch black clouds, however, as it at least did allow me with sufficient time enough as to speculate about and think over such lofty existential concerns. Searching all over, much as I once did and still often do, for answers or guidance from those decidedly more mainstream faiths, but not once finding any that __ truly __ ever "worked" or perfectly fit with what I saw reflected in and of the whole wide world all around me? Follow that up with a particular passion/"gift" for writing (almost singularly so), and aided further along by the near total certainty of a drastically reduced lifespan ensured by that health (to the point of increasingly becoming something of a far more imminent concern of which to worry over)...?

Finally, as I kept trying to push away and discount the thought of such simulated notions over the years as nothing save for sheer absurdities, there were any number of freakish, inexplicable statistical impossibilities that always pushed me quite firmly back in this direction, time and time again. Although I suppose any one of them might seem almost laughably minor and inconsequential just now? In spite of it all, I still find myself utterly incapable of explaining a single one of those inconceivable qualities as they possessed – across the board.

Whenever I might have deviated from this here course in any real or permanent sorts of ways, I'd always find myself once again moved back in this most peculiarly particular kind of direction. Mind you, we aren't even just talking about in formulating these beliefs for myself, but in my furthermore committing them here to writing.

In this respect, the most important thing of all for me personally in surmounting such obstacles to my own acceptance? It was the simple fact that it absolutely didn't require buying into some absurd "Matrix As Realest Life" bunch of nonsensical sci-fi tripe, but rather began aligning perfectly with my existing beliefs and faith in God. In still other words, it didn't stand as some heretical substitute to having any religion, but merely a different way of looking __ at __ God and His Creation – also known as us and our entire world.

So then, at its core? I can only most passionately emphasize the irrefutable fact that this work is nothing -absolutely nothing- but what I see as a possible natural evolution to our existing, traditional religious thought - and not, instead, being some revolution to it. It offers me a different way to perceive divinity, in place of acting as some outright replacement either to or for God. Furthermore, despite seemingly being centered around modernistic thoughts and/or assorted "real world" sciences and technologies, it is actually far easier to digest these ideas should one themselves be coming to this from a religious background, as opposed to an atheist or agnostic one.

As I mentioned, the idea that our universe __**could** __ be the result of a simulated reality is not a new one – not by any figurative stretching of the imagination. However, at least as far as I'm aware of myself, the integration I've reached of those purely philosophical theories with theological or religious concepts indeed appears to be without precedent. That being said, there is a considerable deal of literature and academically focused examinations about universes, realities and worlds produced by such technological means. PBS has a great overview that you can find at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/07/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/ Nick Bostrom is one name in particular you might come across elsewhere who's viewed as something of a groundbreaker and visionary in this bizarre field.

Wikipedia is really always an incredible resource, for anything at all – but as for two __ specific __ articles dealing with this here topic I'd recommend for further reading...? __ Simulation Hypothesis, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis, __ along with __ this Simulated Reality article, at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality. Lastly, there was even a TED Talk discussing such ideas -here regarding how physics can "prove" ours is a simulated reality- that might prove preferable for those who'd rather watch and listen over reading any more walls of words, which is viewable at __this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Chfoo9NBEow

In conclusion, I believe that all of this does have considerable bearing on our own present existences and daily lives. First, and perhaps foremost of them all, comes with the nature of prayer and similar such divine intercession. Personally, I feel that we all are intended to live the richest, fullest lives possible – such as to get us to that aforementioned "end point" with a fully realized consciousness marked by our mortal death. I believe that, on this plane of existence, we each get nudged along constantly in various kinds of ways; that our personal requests of God often can and do get answered – only not so much being reactively responded to as some actual __ reward __ for one's own faith as we currently hold to be true. Instead, it is in many ways almost automatic; something realized by our innate connection to Creation, our surroundings, and one another.

Our faith does, however, also have quite real value and power to affect change on this mortal plane: The greater our belief might be, the stronger our connection with that "overseeing entity" that subsequently allows us all the more means to impact events in our lives/world. Furthermore, in coming together collectively -much as with having large groups praying towards the same ends- that individual "spark" we each possess gets magnified exponentially, ensuring that communal efforts and worshipping together in sizeable bodies can yield truly miraculous results.

Now then, with __ all __ of that having been said...? If you found all of this bizarre and patently ridiculous, then... well, there's likely little reason to read any further unless one is themselves a committed masochist. C'est la vie, as they say, and all that jazz! However, if any portions of the preceding proved interesting in some way or another? Then please do read on!

# Chapter 1

# On Human Advancement

At their core, these ideas represent an alternative view of various faith-based concepts; all the while, it's also very much a view that remains all but nonexistent in today's world – no matter where, to whom or for what one might themselves turn. Likewise, they represent beliefs that are nothing I myself see as exceedingly revolutionary, nor anything quite so bizarre as to defy either outright categorization or harmonious coexistence with previous such religious thought.

Rather, I feel all of this to be only a natural evolution of our most fundamental questions or cultural/societal tenets. Somewhat crudely stated? With aspects of religion, science, technology and philosophy, it works to take what came before, along with what currently is, and to blend them both together; allowing our present understandings and level of advancement to inform, transform and, just perhaps, even somehow redefine, things decidedly ancient or apocryphal in nature.

Indeed, perhaps the most important question for us to start off with considering here at the very get-go...? Why is there a complete absence of anything remotely approaching these sorts of ideas today – despite our now going on a century or better since first we might've begun to gradually inch ourselves toward such (quantum) leaps forward?

Or by instead posing it somewhat differently, why is it that our path toward asking the age-old existential "Why?" & "How?" are strictly, universally drawn from things many thousands of years old (no less, with the majority of what we look towards here coming from things that are one and all of that same relative age!), each one of which being in nearly an identical form as what those living beneath ancient Imperial Roman rule themselves would've thought and believed about our world?

As much as we've learned since, as far as we've all come, and as greatly as our world has changed, I wholeheartedly believe that it's inconceivable to think we can't put assorted existential "puzzle pieces" together -those spread across various fields of thought, belief & study- in order to yield additional insight into the divine, along with something of a better understanding about our own existence as such. Except this is certainly something that hasn't happened as of yet!

Now to be sure, different sects and subsets of those most ancient of faiths have gradually emerged over time (meaning from out of slightly more recent days than those of the Roman Empire's heyday), yet these were more political changes about the internal workings and external effects of those faiths, not so much radically altering the core viewpoints of those faiths, themselves. We especially saw this happen around the time the Americas were being colonized, whereupon Protestantism spun out of a schism with the Roman Catholic church as Europe's kingly royalty began to demand ever more power – including, just for starters, not having to kneel before a Pope placed over and above their own royal selves.

Then, Puritan settlers seeking religious freedoms on a far more widespread basis further took that "ball" and ran with it; being of the sort who almost exclusively focused on bringing theological change from/to the perspectives of the average soul, rather than being only but some mad elitist-centric power grab taking place between the thrones of unabashed autocrats.

This example does have another insight to be drawn from it, as well: The dawn of Protestant beliefs rather nicely demonstrates that any such innovation religiously need not necessarily involve "creating" some separate, completely different system of belief for oneself – throwing out the babes along with the bath water, to coin a phrase. Instead, we can (and should) continually turn towards all such sacred works one personally holds to have come to mankind from divinity. Much as those Protestants proved was possible so long ago, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever as to why more contemporary thought and/or newly made discoveries can't be incorporated around those ancient sacred words & Godly teachings, such as to arrive at something distinctly new and different in so doing.

That being said, anything fitting the bill quite like so? A truly new or genuinely different style of religious beliefs – one that openly embraces and incorporates modern scientific discovery/exploration, regardless of whether it's as a part of or, instead, completely separate from existing theological thought?

Once again, regrettably no such thing has come to exist upon this Earth as of yet. Now then, I'm certainly not saying that any aspect of this here work remotely approaches that kind of thing... because it's surely nothing anywhere close!

Instead, this represents only my own personal beliefs (a point that I feel compelled to repeatedly emphasize in these still early goings) – what I found myself literally, unequivocally forced to "come up with" in the absence of something that's anything like the preceding (a religion both celebrating and worshipping a divine Creator, yet, at the same time, is also grounded in modernity and fully accepting of all our natural understandings made through scientific study over the past several centuries).

In other words, a faith which cherishes God, but that also doesn't treat the all of humanity and human civilization like it's some static, utterly unchanging "creature"; anything that doesn't seem like it sees our world and ourselves as individuals to be 100% identical to the worldviews of average individuals some two or three thousands of years ago!

Because today we need only look back two or three centuries to see the unimaginable transformation our whole world has undergone in the intervening time since. Even more specifically, looking at the year 1900 as the event horizon for when there was a most glaring & undeniable "before and after" point. For it was then, right around the time of the Victorian era, both the World Wars, and that magnificent Industrial Revolution, which collectively ushered in the electrical + nuclear ages to our civilization... and things shall never ever again be the same!

Furthermore, however, beyond 1900 itself? These past few most recent decades alone have brought along almost as startling of a revolution to our way of life/daily existence, as took place over the several centuries previous to that point in time. The new millennia: Good 'ol Y2K! Much the same way the 1900's brought a totally different world through electricity and our various new modes of transportation, 2000 saw the dawn of digital days with computing technologies transforming our whole wide world (one now with a "web" being newly tacked on to it, no less!).

Trying to envision just how magnificent of a transformation our world today has undergone is a fantastically daunting task for any to undertake, a world becoming wholly unrecognizable from what one encountered only some century and change previous. The age of electricity, fostering revolutions in transportation that transformed the globe into a much, much smaller, far more interconnected world. What with World Wars gifting nuclear eras of space races with men and women travelling the stars, ultimately rewarding us with that much celebrated digital dawn: Marking the start of our many computing technologies, something that's rapidly racing into the future ever more and more quickly. Of late, every few years now finds a totally transformed new world that's as dissimilar to what was the case only a decade prior as one could *ever* hope to imagine.

From computers the size of small buildings, then ones the sizes of automobiles taking us on to the Moon and back again, before rapidly becoming available in our very own homes; as the desktop made laptops beget tablets and various mobile devices. We've gone from those rudimentary calculating machines (abacus or what have you) to a crudely linked networked world; from radios to teletypes to faxing and ultimately cellular phones, now merging them all together as those same portable phones also serve as our own (quite complex) personal computers; wherein through them, we may have the entire world directly at our fingertips, where so ever we might deign to go! Mobile technologies birth social media, and the world around us would (will) never again be quite the same!

Just right now, here today? We find tablets further simplifying and streamlining our computers; gadgets ensuring they can now go wherever we ourselves do: No longer being tied down to chairs, sitting before immovably bulky desktop PCs.

Although the applications for such computerized technologies at first were limited to only the most basic of things – relatively simple math equations, often each taking many hours of time simply in order to process. As they so advanced, however, the sudden development of digital networks arrives next: The Internet, our World Wide Web itself, enabling an interconnected planet with mobile devices to and fro gifting us so-called "cellular" telephony.

Where today, right now, one can order a pizza without speaking a word, nor by having to interact with a single other person: The new dawn of online shopping and web-based marketplaces, as those Amazons and eBays revolutionized the basic act of human commerce -transforming the all of everything economic and market-based in the process. In so doing, they suddenly allowed us to purchase from the comfort of home near about anything we can possibly imagine, bought from anyone located anywhere, and all without a single piece of metal or paper currency getting exchanged in the bargaining! Rather, they are transactions solely involving the rapid exchange of countless many invisible ones and zeroes, moving at literal light speeds; a Paypal deal, all achieved by way of tapping directly into our bank accounts, credit cards and/or otherwise.

All too soon, even the very last dwindling human element to the now relabeled act of e-commerce will be utterly removed, as yet remains on the delivery end of things: Come the day that automated drones buzz about the space over our heads like insects, as Amazon continues their somewhat forceful push ever onward towards unleashing a fleet of such high tech robotic aircraft to compete with the birds for flight space high above.

In wrapping up this opening section, let's take a quick look only a quarter century into our past – back at the now far distant past world of 1990. Let us indeed go ahead and compare it with what we find today!

It's really something of an incomprehensibly unrecognizable reality for us to behold, isn't it, though? There certainly wasn't any mobile universe "back then," absent any social networking and so forth, or even so much as a basic World Wide Web (which wasn't spun+woven until 1993!) Nor did most anyone possess a home PC at that time – not of any type or kind! Rather, our "personal" computers were all limited to the rarest few technophiles and the occasional forward thinking visionary (and, as a luxury item then hardly a requirement for anyone's typical day-to-day existence, bought by folks who were almost always quite well-to-do, no less! What with the average PC back in those seemingly far removed days running folks anywhere from $4k to $5k... and up!!) instead of being found as a commonality in every locale as they are here today, spread across every corner of the globe whilst costing relative pennies on the dollar to what they once required from out of our pocketbooks.

Video tapes? These still used reels of real magnetic tapes (Those long ago days of "Please be kind and make sure to rewind!") Audio cassettes also did likewise, while movie theatres still used bulky reels of film run on behemoth projectors – that even required a dedicated human projectionist for each and every showing simply to operate and oversee things!

As for computers, themselves...? Massive "floppy" disks (itself most archaic, even spelled still with an antiquated, outdated k, and not the contemporary c found in our "compact discs" and the like) where various RAM memory meant kilobytes, at the very absolute least!

Today, however, finds optical media housing incomprehensible amounts of gargantuan digital binary data -plus USB thumb sticks and flash drives of all kinds. Now, that very same RAM not only comes in at truly blazing speeds with every new iteration of DDR, its increasing capacity still grows exponentially: Kilobytes become megabytes becoming gigabytes (each one representing a growth of some 1,000 times over – a kilobyte being 1024 bytes, thusly making a megabyte 1024 kilobytes, and a gigabyte all of 1024 megabytes, so on and so forth; whereby, in the years still to come, this will keep progressing onward & upward to having RAM containing entire terabytes worth of all those impossible, countless many ones and zeroes!)

Having barely but scratched the surface despite this seemingly endless wall of words, suffice it to say that our world irrefutably stands an entirely different construct in the form it currently exists in today. Once upon a time, these advancements were somewhat gradual and slow paced in nature. Now, however...? The rate of progress is truly breathtaking to behold. Just how breathtakingly fast is it, you may wonder? Well now, that is exactly what we shall explore next!

# Chapter 2

# The Rate of Progress

Ever since the dawn of man we've always found ourselves asking, "Why?"

And it's a very good question to ask, too! I mean, why -exactly\- are we here, to begin with? Just what is it that we're all doing here? How have we come to be?! Simply who we are... at all? All of those are great questions, indeed! Equally so, all of those many different answers that've been applied to them have remained relatively unchanged -by and large- for countless centuries, at the very absolute least! Most of them even stretch back many millennia!

Yet as we just finished exploring, only this past century brought with it change quite unlike anything ever before witnessed, by anyone. Electricity? Transportation, with cars, planes and trains? No less, the dawn of the nuclear age? Then, the past couple of decades alone have rapidly seen such gains become exponential in magnitude- now, only every few years our technologies are totally and completely transforming the all of everything. Think about the previous 20 years: Computers. The Internet. Cellular phones. Genetics and DNA.

Then, over but the last handful of them: Tablets beget mobile devices; the Internet becomes available everywhere, no less coming at broadband speeds! Smart devices beget the Smart Home; where now we can turn simple lights off and on using any mobile device, from anywhere! Our digital devices? Not only do they currently audibly talk to us, but so too understanding us whenever we speak to them! Artificial intelligences surely aren't very far off right now, heralding a truly unprecedented new world quite unlike any before.

If the detailed complexities and intricacies of technologies I laid out earlier might be lost on you...? Well, before we move on to other matters, for now I'd like to quite specifically lay out the rate of progress we have been witnessing _only_ over this past decade, in ways hopefully most anyone can readily grasp. Why? In order that we might better comprehend just how very much the all of existence has changed the perceptions of mankind, such things that might warrant exploring weighty existential matters anew with the benefit of such new and improved general understandings.

Only take a look to see the seismic shift in video gaming of late: Ataris and NESes were only all too recently made memories, yet today...? With those modern PlayStation and XBox consoles? They are so amazing as to defy all description! Fantastically complex worlds employing all too realistic physics; characters and scenery so impeccable in quality as to appear utterly lifelike. Virtual Reality now puts us inside of those very worlds, just like we were actually there ourselves!

We went from black, white and greenish hued pixels bouncing on-screen going ping and pong (all the day long!), to total recreations of late 18th century revolutionary Paris; a world where hundreds of individual computer characters can appear on-screen simultaneously, who go about mundane daily tasks whilst speaking to one another and carrying on random conversations.

Now, at least hardware wise, there's exceedingly little room yet left to go; having finally reached an apex in power, easily noticeable given the console generational difference between PS3 and PS4 was, for the very first time, somewhat minimal in appearance. Before then, every five or six years spelled an exponential improvement in quality: Atari to 8-bit era, to 16-bits, onward to 64, then PS2, leading to the PS3. Each instance was monumental – Atari days were basically user controlled splotches of color on a TV set.

The 8-Bit era introduced considerable variation and actual gameplay elements. 16-bit, those elements started becoming something approaching lifelike. 64-bit – the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 1 – brought 3D gaming to the fore. The penultimate era, reducing the distinction between pre-rendered cut-scenes and those rendered on-the-fly, as graphics while playing start looking just as good as anything one might hope for. Finally, the PS3/360 cements High-Definition and high-capacity storage media. This modern PS4/One era, if it is to be remembered for anything of note the same way as all prior such generational shifts, will undoubtedly be adding virtual reality and networked features.

Now then, you might find yourself thinking that this is all very well and good; that video games are one thing, but 'tis a far cry from digitally recreating any staggeringly complex simulations like those that are part of any real, actualized world. But... think again! Our current supercomputers have already proven more than capable of simulating entire universes on a large scale over billions of years – our recent investigations peering into the darkened silhouettes of dark matter and dark energy, where researchers have presently applied their efforts towards putting their theories to the test in order to ascertain the validity of such ideas in the only way they possibly might hope to.

In the process? We've also been witness to evolution on a universal scale going from the starting gate (Big Bang) all the way up to modernity, as eerily similar galactic structures to what we see and know emerge from their projects focused on the testing of those various darkened matters.

There's an additional curiosity here: Imagining the scale of our world and the numbers involved when talking about microscopic atomic realms is mind blowing... but of course it is! You know what else is equally as mind blowing? Our own contemporary computers! Your modern gaming console, taken as a 'fer example' hereabouts? The PS4's own CPU clocks in at a full 1.8 teraflops worth – which means 1.8 **trillion** operations... per second! For another, how about a modern supercomputer? In China, the current record is over 30 **PETA** flops! That's handling an insane 3,000 QUADRILLION (30,000 **trillion)** calculations... always running each and every single second it operates!

But true enough, when a single living cell might house a trillion different atoms? Even such extreme numbers can quickly begin appearing downright paltry in comparison. Then again, consider only that same PlayStation 4 console: After only some 18 months on the market, Sony had already sold 20 million units globally! If each one handles nearly two trillion calculations _every_ second, then that means – for just one gaming console, over only 18 total months available to mass produce it – offers up some 40 million trillion calculations each second; assuming, that is, we were to magically link them together in unison. That's a downright inconceivable 40,000,000,000,000,000,000 calculations of raw processing speed available with every single tick of the clock!!!

Also consider technological trends: A gigaflop, as you might already guess, is some billion operations a second processed.

You know how much a computer that could handle exactly a billion calculations each second would cost over the years? Also understanding that only just a modern PlayStation console is some 1,800 times as powerful as those mere one billion operations?

In 1961, back in those days when we first sent men to the Moon? Each gigaflop processor would've run $8.3 trillion (as with all our dollar amounts, when adjusted for inflation)! That's nearly ten thousand bucks for every single last calculation per second!!! (And so, a PS4 costing 1,800 times that same $8,300,000,000,000 – an incomprehensible $15 quadrillion dollars worth of 1961 processing power: $14,940,000,000,000,000!! One half century of time added to the mix for brand new innovations almost magically transforms $15 quadrillion down to only a couple hundred bucks!)

How about in 1984, instead? You know, the year of the big Apple Computer Super Bowl ad promoting Different Thinking? Surely, the days of Microsoft and MS-DOS couldn't be anywhere nearly so astronomical... right?

Wrong. 43 million wrongs, to be exact! Every 1984 gigaflop was $43 million bucks. The PS4 would still run someone $77 BILLION only a scant three decades prior. Although computerized simulations might well still seem unbelievable to you, for me, this...? The notion that the same processing power as costs a couple hundred today was nearly $100 billion worth back in the days of the NES era? Now that I call inconceivable!

Fine, fine, you must undoubtedly be thinking – let's try 1997. My goodness gracious, you think: Windows 98 and the AOL world...? Years after even the PS _1_ itself first arrived onto the scene?! Meanwhile, we are still only talking about some 1/1800 of the PS4's processing power, it surely had to have been reasonable at this point. Yet again: Wrong! This time around, only on the order of 42,000 wrongs, to be exact. A gigaflop in 1997 was $42,000 in 2010 dollars! Making for a PS4 still costing nearly $75 million bucks - and only but 18 years previous!!!

What about... oh, 2007? Holy Guacamole, Batfans! Exactly a decade ago, six years before the PS4 would be released; a gigaflop certainly MUST have been reasonable in cost! Well, it was... kind of – $52 per gigaflop in 2007. The PS4 would then have run our 2007 selves only a relatively microscopic $93.6. Oh, sorry, wait a second – that's actually $93,600!!

Today every gigaflop costs us but eight cents each. In only eight short years, we went from $52.00 to $00.08 per gigaflop. Got the picture just yet? If you're doing the math there at home, and with this presently being 2015: The PS4's 1,800 gigaflops processors today runs us each only a relatively obscenely reasonable $144.

So over a decade, it went from $75,000,000 in 1997 to $93,600 in 2007. Then, another eight years later, from $93,600 to $144!!

On the horizon here today, in 2017 as of this writing? The Xbox Project Scorpio: That beast of a machine will possess 6 teraflops of calculating power when it's eventually released – and run an expected $400. Assume the processor's cost itself is comparable to today, and that comes to about $150-200 for 6 Teraflops: $00.03 a gigaflop! We are almost at the point where it literally costs exactly one penny in order to produce a billion different computer calculations per second.

Extrapolate such trends even further out into the future, and begin envisioning just what only the near future might spell for us here. Then, dare to conceive what it means if we master quantum computing at any point! We'll need entirely new scales to merely describe their first initial capabilities: trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions per second will seem downright paltry compared to the realities they'll immediately usher in. Move beyond decades and instead onto centuries of even greater advancements, and the possibilities are genuinely incomprehensible for any of us living today to conceive – seen much the same as George Washington might have viewed our contemporary world.

Yet even today alone do we still manage to discover that we're already operating on scales of trillions and trillions of calculations per second - for each and every single isolated processing machine! Connected together into vast networked arrays, such distributed computing efforts offer us equally staggering realities just right here and now, in only the present day.

To be sure, our modern rate of progress is just as staggering as it is incomprehensible; being those inventions developed solely by we "mere mortal" minds over infinitesimal periods of time. Daring to even begin to imagine just what a truly divine entity could achieve along similar lines, additionally given the benefits of infinite time? As we will soon explore, it's certainly no small wonder such outright impossibilities were labeled as literal magic by and to ancient peoples whose time came thousands of years in our own past world.

# 

# Chapter 3:

# Human Civilization as a Maturing Entity

We're now beginning to get much deeper into things, as this part contains what I feel to be one of the most central ideas to establishing this entire body of work: Perceiving the all of human civilization much the same as any other singular maturing entity. Meaning...? It progressively grows and advances, maturing all the while, in being able to stand as something fundamentally changed from what it once was.

An idea of a linearly + progressively evolving -maturing- human civilization should __**not** __ be seen as some excuse or desperate bid to explain away or dismiss certain aspects of older religious teachings. Rather, it is evidenced in __ every __ single other aspect of Creation itself: Human beings, or, for that matter, all known life. Stars and planets, alike. The whole universe!

For all things in our own humble little slice of reality, there is indeed both a time to be born as well as a time to die. In between those two, absolutely nothing exists in some static state, wholly unchanging all the while. To expect that Creator would imbue human civilization with such an impossible trait found nowhere else seems most irrational, just on its face.

All the more, it __ very __ much does not conform with the known reality resting before us: To say human civilization is the same as it was only a millennia ago is laughably absurd. What were once communities living in isolation -a world completely unawares of the rest of that world- has given way to instantaneous global communication. Thanks to radical transformations, today an average adult is a completely different person than would've been found "back then": Owing to our educations, lifestyles, worries over/access to life's assorted "essentials" (like food or shelter), average lifespans, medicine/health, awareness/understanding (on several levels), technological inventions, daily lives, what our careers are, environment/surroundings, communities, infrastructure, transportation, communication, entertainment... as I said, literally __**everything**! To expect an identical message from a superior being for such radically different times - it just makes absolutely no sense at all.

Furthermore, the notion of humanity as a linearly evolving entity can even be taken a step beyond, becoming especially relevant concerning our direct relationship with that divinity – where it should best be viewed as being much the same as any parent and child. Therefore, in my eyes those divine teachings as were offered to and intended for an earlier, more immature (almost toddler-like) stage of human civilization. Today, we've very much grown and developed, standing as we now do on our own two feet: Just like any normal adult themselves would!

Much as is true with any other parent to their adult child, it's only the case of the failed child or terrible parent where the latter will keep stepping in and taking over their off-spring's day-to-day life well into adulthood. If that parent did it's job, then their child will be able to go off into the world on their own. And what better, more perfect and all-knowing parent could there be than the divinity of God?

The key point to take away from this aspect in regards to prior teachings from God is then one of context: That those earlier faiths were provided to a newly aware ("newborn") humanity only in a form they could understand or comprehend. This explains why some of those teachings may not conform to what we've discovered as we "grew" over the centuries: Not because that divinity doesn't exist, nor those global faiths are invalid or blatantly wrong -let alone that our newer discoveries are just so- but it was first and foremost intended to teach and "parent" a nascent human civilization.

And my goodness, did it ever work magnificently! Look just where we are today – all that we've achieved! Every aspect of that owes itself to the guidance and instruction introduced to our societies from those divine teachings, in all those many different historical global religions. It is singularly this that's responsible for taking an early, far more primitive peoples and putting them on exactly the right path – teaching and emphasizing those same values that are why we're all here right now, precisely where we're at!

Yet in showcasing the resplendent capabilities of that divinity...? Despite those ancient teachings almost being something for humanity much like a civilization's very own "preschool lesson plan," although our societies might be in/nearing "adulthood" (meaning maturity) here today? Those previous learnings from God hold considerable value and importance for each of us to continue turning toward today – this being quite unlike, say, if a 40-year old individual were to try and find important ongoing insights from their Pre-K days!

Now by no means is this to say we can pick and choose __ only __ what we might like from our faith – but of course not! "Hmm... Thou shalt not kill...? Steal? Nah! I think we've advanced 'beyond' there. Grand Theft Auto: Earth, here we come!" Those instructions that formed the basis for our civilization, whose existence is why we're where we are just now – things that are timeless knowledge – are as essential as they are eternal. But in the same way none of us would literally follow 'an eye for an eye'? It's the same as telling a three year old he'd best be good or the Boogeyman'll surely get him – the latter being an example of a message tailored towards a particular aged audience (age 3), but with an irrefutable core to it (be and do good things).

While the answers I've personally arrived at in such a light are going to be starkly different or unusual at times, this mustn't ever be viewed as my dismissing or discarding my own faith. What I do believe, however, is that our divine Creator handed those teachings to humanity as it was millennia ago, for own __ their __ benefit first and foremost – in the only ways those earlier societies might readily accept, let alone prove able to comprehend at that long ago time.

It only stands as absolute proof positive of the inconceivable superiority of that divinity, that those learnings and teachings could still remain fundamentally sound and beneficial to two separate ages an entire world's apart from one another; that we still can and do turn to millennia old sacred concepts, finding them useful for going about even modern life, itself!

While I'll be exploring this later on, it is my firm belief that the major historical religions all have as their source a true divine power – all of them, coming from the very same Creator of us all. For now, however, I felt it essential to explicitly state this fact in the early goings as we begin building up to that idea in this work.

Much as I've already established, we -being all of humanity itself, far and wide; large and incalculable- are much like any singular living organism in countless many ways. I'd now like to take a moment to step back and expand further upon this notion, trying to visualize what it really means to us, before once more moving onward.

Imagine all of our history, entailing all men, women and children who have ever walked this earth, looking up and asking 'Why?' Imagine it – all of them, and us, as one. Human culture, human knowledge, human wisdom, human understanding, human society, and yes, human religion. It is far too easy to take a microscopic view, seeing ourselves as singular – to imagine that we are little different as individuals from Johan the sailor two centuries prior. We were born, we were kids, we learned, we aged, became adults, began careers and families, age further still, then pass from this world. In the end, we all end up the same.

Johan the Sailor's grave site might well be side-by-side with your own: His very casket made out of wood perhaps not that dissimilar from your own, his marker made out of the same granite, the same dimensions, mayhap even the same shape denoting your faith in the form of a cross.

So yes, viewing us as individuals, the more things change...

Except Johan's life plainly is one that was actually lived starkly different from your own. He never had electricity, air conditioning, supermarkets, courtship on strange devices connected by wires and swiping right or left on potential matches, most certainly lacking any motorized "speedship" to cross the seas in days versus months. This is the key – in this context, we as humanity must be viewed macroscopically, as something continually progressing and advancing. Although the individual will always be the individual, little changed, it is humanity at large - the accomplishments and endeavors of us all, the sum of all our knowledge and understanding, and even the unseen, invisible links which connect us all as one – this is the proper way to understand yourself in context. Only by viewing yourself through the lens of others, understanding your place by understanding all of our places, may we thus hope to gain the insight and realizations that so many have sought over the ages.

With that in mind, now attempt to encapsulate the entirety of mankind's history (of human civilization itself) as a continuous, solitary creature. There is no us or them – just as there is no now and no then. Humanity is like a star, comprised of billions and billions of individuals over the course of untold eons. Individuals which can be separated and then viewed by themselves, yet only when they come together and are seen united as one can they truly have genuine meaning or purpose. To prevent coming off as too transcendental, it may be boiled down to this – a hydrogen atom is a magnificent thing. But hydrogen is hydrogen is hydrogen. Throughout time, hydrogen atoms are and always will be atoms of hydrogen.

Now, take 1.618033988749894848 × 10⁴³³ atoms of hydrogen, and you have yourself a star – something which changes over time as a result of changes to the individuals, yet the individuals stay the same (atoms are atoms.) Something that doesn't even remotely resemble what constitutes it, atoms, and so is utterly different and far more complex. Over longer periods still, two atoms of hydrogen unite to become atoms of helium through nuclear fusion, this being the process which alters and ages the star – and, in point of fact, is most remarkably easy to compare with our own means of reproduction/extending our species beyond our own limited lifespans, whereby mere individuals build and build overtime, ultimately radically transforming the entire whole.

Just like the Sun may have a localized outburst that begets a sunspot which unleashes a CME, so too may small subsets at various points in time radically alter the singular creature that is humankind – much like the Roman Empire or Albert Einstein. But the effects of the one cause ripples throughout the entire structure, the so-called Butterfly Effect rarely more aptly utilized than here. Keep in mind this focus and the importance of the individual in relation to mankind collectively (aka. civilization itself), as we will be returning to this perspective again later on.

Finally, prior to moving onward to matters again relating more to the here and now, I feel as though there should first be further rumination on the before – concerning various religious dogmas the world over in the context of the preceding ideas. Let us begin doing so by way of an examination on some of the marked changes unfurling over the past century and change which yielded a radically altered understanding of who and what we are, and precisely where it is that we exist.

Now imagine yourself in such a state as we might have been in so very long ago, when that divine Creator provided us with His teachings, wisdom and guidance. In other words, what does this idea about humanity/civilization having been in an infantile state __**actually** __ mean to us?

Try to picture the world back then, right alongside you yourself – much as you'd be without any of the fancy schooling and knowledge that we presently enjoy. It's hard, if not impossible, to actually try and do so, isn't it just? To shake off the decades of being filled with the gifted knowledge of the entire human race made over many countless millennia – our uncanny ability... our downright obsession!- with self-discovery, exploration and comprehending any real understanding.

Here is the portrait we should be going for just now – there's certainly no electricity to power anything we might make. There are no atoms, elements or molecules. There is no evolution. There is no DNA. There are no neurons. There were no dinosaurs. There were no mass extinctions caused by giant space rocks slamming into the Earth near Mexico. There is no nuclear fusion which fuels the stars themselves.

That giant ball of fire in the sky is precisely that – a giant ball of fire. Oh, and it probably orbits around the Earth, being the center of the universe. But of course, there is no universe. No galaxies filled with countless, even a near infinite, number of other stars. There most certainly was no big bang – the universe, which doesn't exist yet, has always been and always will be! No quarks and strings, or Higgs Bosons to impart mass. No electrons or neutrons, protons or anti-matter. Time is a constant, always the same. Gravity... just isn't. At all. Down is always down, nothing more. There is no such thing as any __**outer space** , and thereby most certainly no weightlessness amidst floating in frozen vacuumous darkness. Newton may have deciphered Earth's effects with his apple, but the most basic concept of not being pulled to the ground when you jump as happens in the void of space is anathema.

Life... has __ always __ been, forever existing – no lifelessness as found around Big Bang days during our universe's birth. Houses, clothing... even words themselves? All are optional, if they should even be an option for us to enjoy – at all!

So imagine again waking up __**back then** __ – you know you are you, and that's just about the extent of it. You can see the world around you. You see others who look similar, and other things that don't. You look at the sky – why is it blue during the day, you might ponder (certainly nothing so grandiose as the composition of our atmosphere reflecting light most in the blue spectrum.) You see that giant ball of fire in the sky – magnificent! But what is it? Who put it there? What does it do? Where does it go at night? Why does it ever have to leave you alone in darkness for half the day? And when it does – the sky turns black?!? How can that be? And those glowing dots, what on earth are they?

Two weeks pass by, and you decide to look at the night sky again. My God! That huge glowing orb!!! What... what could it be? Where was it two weeks ago? Wait, wha... what? Another week passed, and now it isn't even a full ball anymore?!? What wizardly magic - nay, what devilry, is this now?! How can it be but a chunk of pale ghostly light, like a giant took a bite out of it. And then, just as quickly... it vanished again. Whew!

Now back to you – what are you, anyways? What are we? We know we exist, we know we can ask ourselves who and what we are. How is such an impossibility possible? How can we ask why? How did we even come to be at all? Let's see... We know... well... that's about all we know. We know we exist. There are no organs, not to the common man at least. Most certainly no brain. No blood supplying nutrients and oxidizing energy to cells spread throughout, no neurons who store memories in a mishmash of electrical signals and proteins. How are we even formed? By God. It must be magic, there is no other option. How else do you propose to explain the incredible complexity, the outright perfection, of the human body? How can eyes form to see, hands to touch, tongue to taste, and a wondrous nose to smell?

And your ears! Again, more devilry! How can you hear, and what is sound itself? You breathe, but what and why? You sneeze... evilness abounds! Clearly a good blessing is in order, as it must be your soul getting pulled from out of your very body! Indeed, there is the root of it all – the human soul. How else may you come to understand how you walk and talk, think and learn, ask yourself the most basic of __**"Why?"s** ... when all those other living creatures you encounter (animals and whatnot) are utterly devoid of such blessed gifts. What part of you is it that contains __ you? Where is that part which asks why to be found inside of you?

And death! What is such a thing? Why do we stop existing? Where do we go when that body of ours inevitably fails us? For that matter, where do you come from? Where (or even simply __**what** ) were you __ before __ you were, well... you, here on this world?

Now there's actually a legitimate point to be found in presenting all of these meandering questions: Many in today's modern age desire to shoot down and contradict those faith-based ways of old as somehow being detestable or outright wrong in their various archaisms.

While setting forth on a 'you're wrong, I'm right, nanananabooboo!' might be seen as appealing to some, due to it's sheer efficiency and simplicity as much as anything (since, rather clearly, " **you're just right and they're simply wrong** "), this is actually the wrong way to go about things, in and of itself.

We should instead endeavor to understand just how and why such thoughts, beliefs and concepts came to be in the first place. Much like a mathematical equation in elementary school when you were criticized for not showing your work, 'showing the work' behind these religious beliefs allows us better understanding for why they were and what they accomplished in our societies. In so doing, I believe one will quickly come to see them in a similar light as I myself have: Provided to us by a very real divinity and Creator of all things precisely as so many believe they were, yet being intended primarily to put an infantile human civilization on the right path – successfully bringing our species collectively on to the here and now.

By then looking at the same concepts and ideas from a brand new perspective, one aided by our exponentially expanded base of knowledge and greater understanding of all things, we can both appreciate where earlier views came from before perhaps offering up somewhat new ones grounded in our present understanding – with the added caveat of accepting that just as 'they', our forebears, didn't have the whole entire picture back then, so too might we very well be wrong today in relation to those generations who come after us and bring their own further expanded knowledge to tackle such issues along with them.

This is perhaps one of mankind's very greatest of attributes, both collectively ___as well as_ **** individually: Our ability to embrace change by conceding whenever we may be incorrect about something. If we refused such progress, just try to imagine where we'd be right now! Stuck in the exact same state throughout eternity, living naked inside of caves. Mercifully, our Creator gifted us with the total opposite – something that's primarily responsible for the miraculous modernity we enjoy living in here today!

# Chapter 4:

# Where's God Today?

# (Why Divinity Wouldn't Interfere In More Recent Human Development)

#

Next up on our agenda? One might begin to wonder, "Why doesn't God step in and make His wishes known to us directly, just as He once did so long ago?" In my eyes, this is an utter absurdity for anyone to realistically expect – it would completely, irrevocably disrupt our entire existence. It would also be exactly the same as a parent stepping in to "reparent" their 50-year old adult child; no less, with that parent's refusal to step back, let go and allow their offspring to 'sink or swim' doubtlessly being responsible for whatever his or her present predicaments may be; those problems which require such reparenting, even at the half century mark!

What's more, God simply doesn't need to do any such thing! – most __**certainly** __ not when He can influence and direct the very same desired outcomes, only doing so from " **behind the scenes** " as it were.

There appears to be a good many in our world today who seem to expect that, in their mind, God's existence is somehow disproven by the lack of any (relatively recent) direct interactions with us or our forebears. All the more, many a conartist or cultist in such modern times have outright declared that, if they themselves aren't God and/or Jesus Christ reborn, then God at the very least directly communicates to them – and to them alone! Both of these views -that God must either constantly prove His divine existence to us by way of continual direct interactions, or else that God really is somehow speaking to only one out of seven billion worth- are utterly incorrect, in my estimation; most especially not when God -that higher power/force- doesn't __ need __ to do anything of the sort!

No, it is instead my firmest belief that whatever such a divinity wants known or revealed to us and our world, He can do so quite easily without taking measures that would prove so very disruptive (that, if not downright destructive!) to our civilization now, at this critical stage in the proverbial game. Because if something should be in our world, then that higher power will make it just so! How? By working __**through** __ any one of us living today, rather than being revealed directly __ to __ them.

To jump right into one of the very most controversial of topics hereabouts, such as to serve as an example of what I mean...? Just because a message that Creator conveyed to mankind many millennia ago might not include, say, a primer on evolution, it hardly invalidates Darwinism in its entirety – in precisely the same way as that theory of evolution doesn't discredit any of our own existing beliefs!

Perhaps –just __ perhaps- the ongoing discovery and progress made by mankind is that divinity revealing such knowledge to us –through __ us- precisely when we at long last proved __ ready __ for it in such ways! In other words, I'd assert that Charles Darwin can best be seen as that higher power working through us, revealing further knowledge indirectly – exactly as all new revelations in every last field (medical, technological, scientific, theological, governmental, economic, philosophical, and so forth) have been handled ever since last God did appear directly to us in our world. For me, it is irrational (if not the height of self-important arrogance) to expect that divinity should've done all the "hard work" for us by revealing all things to a world still barely at the 'crawling stages' at that time so very long ago.

Why is it so illogical for anyone to presume thusly? Because it didn't even __ matter __ at that stage so many millennia ago! My goodness gracious, we truly must have some perspective there: Those teachings provided to our world at the time... they were what genuinely __**mattered** __ back during those eras. No less, stressing the very sorts of ideals that would ensure, not simply our continued survival, but our ongoing thriving as a civilization? They were well and truly __ all __ that mattered!

For stop and consider it like so: How can something ever be sound and secure if it isn't first built upon a firm and stable foundation, to begin with? Therefore, those societal instructions and guidance were what we needed – so that is __ exactly __ what our long ago ancestors ultimately received by that divine Maker. Furthermore, those divine teachings set us on that perfect path literally guaranteeing that we'd be able to find those future, new understandings out all on our very own initiative.

Try to think about how, at least in this particular regard, divinity has never revealed __ any __ genuine __ scientific or more modernized forms of knowledge to us directly, instead always providing us only with similar such fundamental societal and cultural teachings – across the board; in every last known example of those many different global religions (and, once again, each one of them having been provided by our one, true Maker). In other words, we have never had revolutionary new knowledge able to be exploited by civilization in some way or another revealed to us before its time; nor any such things as would've proven truly inconceivable to where our world's developmental placement was at just then. Let's say, for example, quantum mechanics gifted to ancient Rome; or else freely providing all the many secrets of electrical engineering and power generation to ancient Egypt.

This is in precisely the same sense as how a parent doesn't teach their child the intricacies of mortgages or taxation while we are yet in diapers, but proves to instead be such things as we inevitably come to ourselves –by __ ourselves, well and good standing off on our own- in those more mature years of our respective adulthoods. And why is it we happen to be so well and good as an adult, to begin with? Because that parent raised us so exceptionally well to start things out, giving us exactly what we required... and only at such a time as when we __**actually** __ needed it for ourselves!

We should also take this opportunity to emphasize how the aforementioned concept is itself something critical to realize: For the relationship between God and mankind -however you may come to it or might have it mean to you, personally- always needs to be viewed primarily in the context of a loving parent to their own child, no matter what! Whenever discussing and exploring any such Godly matters, there's simply no better, more perfect comparison to draw on than that one right there.

By the same token, it seems to me that we ought to view those divine teachings in our most ancient sacred works and revelations (being societal and cultural in nature, across the board) exactly the same as whatever lessons learned during a child's early (pre-school) years. Just the same, however, scientific knowledge needs to be seen in an identical light as those concerns we might discover and come to learn about in our 20's and 30's -adulthood- out in the world and standing on our own __ because __ that parent did such an incredibly flawless, downright perfect job raising us... "way back when."

Even so, we still have quite a long ways yet to go, indeed! Should a day ever come where we've all but finished "advancing", perhaps once we've uncovered most all there is to know about our universe (having reached something of an almost utopian plateau, developmentally speaking), then there'll at long last come a brand new stage... one we can't even comprehend just yet; carrying on with our analogy, seemingly something that's most comparable to when we ourselves reach our golden years in retirement, to begin acquiring such real & true wisdom as is fueled by all our long lived experiences.

My reason for mentioning this as it relates to that divine Maker of ours? On that distant future day, perhaps that divinity may just reappear on this mortal plane once more -directly- rather than with us only "coming to" join with that Creator upon our mortal deaths. But that, like so very much else, is as much something out of our hands as it is outside of anything we need -or should- concern ourselves with - at least, that is, for a very long time yet to come!

# 

# Chapter 5:

# Finding Divine Truth In All The Major Religions

The reason responsible as to why, despite having so very many different religions around the globe today, there's actually only but a single God who's directly responsible for giving us those numerous systems of belief? In only but two words: Sparking differentiation.

God provided us with so many faiths, only in order to produce stark differences across our Earthly cultures and societies -throughout every corner of the world- over several centuries & millennia. He did so such that we might become ever more distinct and unique from one another on an individual level, therefore satisfying His desire to Create and cultivate new sentient consciousness (ones ultimately joining with His plane of existence upon our mortal death in this plane).

Yet, while certainly accomplishing those ends, there was also a second reason here for giving us as many faiths as we ultimately received from God: The dynamics between different cultural and ethnic groups of human beings; those outcomes produced by way of their interactions with each other, and the near infinite societal/scientific/technological contributions derived from such interplay (which is also the bulk of what this particular piece will be dealing with, given that the former aspect hardly requires any greater elaboration than the preceding provided).

Now although there have indeed already been "unifying" sects, churches... even whole religions? If only by and large, none of those have existed in such a way as to give truly equal validity to all the major established worldwide systems of belief; never before having been anything presenting the notion that __ all __ such faiths are equally correct and valid, let alone any genuine supposition holding that all of them came to exist in our world from the very same higher power. There's seems a very good reason for that absence: At least in theory, this might seem to be something of an outright impossibility!

It should surely appear the height of absurdity to say that the divinity of Buddhism, Sikhism, Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, Judaism, and countless more are all quite literal as a deity; with each and every last one of them having come from the same God/divine entity/higher power/what have you. To support such a supposition under the backdrop of existing theologies? One would simply have to be either delusional or something of an unrepentant polytheist – and should the latter be the case, well... have we not just annihilated __**all** __ the monotheistic religions from the mix, right off the bat?

So this is where I attempt to bring this entire portion the rest of the way "home", as it were – finally drawing everything in this section together. A critical understanding to keep in mind hereabouts should be the fact that ours is a diverse world filled with many wildly divergent cultures (never mind, on purely an individual level, how vastly differing we each are!) What's more, the relationship those same cultures play with one another, and the countless contributions they each bring to the table that is the all of human civilization, itself...? Remove only but a single one of those from the equation, and we'd be left with a world that most certainly wouldn't so much as merely resemble what it actually is here today!

So of course we might wonder why, given an omnipotent divinity capable of all things under the Sun, there's no singularly dominant faith on this Earth... nor has there ever been such a thing; something that's been enjoyed by all peoples the whole world over, at any one particular moment in time. The explanation behind such a void is actually rather deceptively simple, in point of fact, and something that was wholly intentional on God's own part thereabouts.

Now, just try and envision that hypothetical world: One in possession of only but a singly dominant religion. Would it not be the most blandly homogeneous of places, with universal sameness abounding and individuals nary anything besides fundamental clones of one another? Had we therefore been given but a lone single faith by God, our cultures and societies would be all but identical to each other just now; the all of human civilization nothing save for varying shades of greys (compared to the fantastically diversified rainbow it presently consists of).

While we'll definitely be returning to this notion in yet greater depth later on, to tide us over until then? We should all be aware that the greatest attribute of the US as a nation (something most often credited for the country's nearly unprecedented historical position and contributions globally) has been that most marvelous so-called "melting pot" dynamic.

Meaning, as it relates to this particular topic right now...? Concerning peoples who are themselves one and all the same? Well then, to be sure, that might very well come to redouble whatever assorted strengths are possessed by said group numerous times over – but, so too does it mean a society and/or culture sharing in the __**exact** __ same weaknesses or gaps in differing focus areas, across the board: An extraordinary collective 'Achilles Heel', if ever there were such a thing!

Ahh, but by promoting such inconceivably rich variety as the spice of (a civilizational) life, on the other hand, finds us with a world capable of being made all the greater when whatever weaknesses as are held by some segments of that very civilization can thusly be shored up when select "weak" or reduced qualities in those groups might also be found as outright strengths in still others amongst their varied lot (and subsequently, they being folks whose own assorted flaws, gaps, or otherwise might so too be possessed as the strengths of our initially referenced set).

Furthermore, this dynamic leads to unique contributions provided by certain portions of humanity – like, say, in one society perhaps being best positioned to contribute towards science and technology, while another pursues governmental or societal advancements, a third whose assorted interests best align to develop certain medical fields, while still others provide yet more progress industrially, agriculturally or with civil engineering.

When you put it all together, and only after some thousands of years worth of time interacting & evolving alongside one another, the end result...? 'Tis absolutely nothing less than our most amazingly impossible world of today!

Now then, were ours rather something of a bland world, one where we were all figurative clones of one another -each one of us having precisely the same cultures, interests or pursuits, values, and whatnot else- it goes without question that we'd not be __**anywhere** __ remotely close to where we're at just now. No, not when we'd instead be set back some several centuries still (or better!), in all likelihood not even blessed with enjoying any rudimentary electricity today.

As for a particular example to convey this notion, consider how the field of mathematics are riddled with Greek and Arabic terms; having long ago been advanced significantly by those historical societies. Next, look to the endless number of different so-called 'base' numbers used during ancient times – having ten in use as just such a base of ours today was in fact not something that came as second nature to us (much as we'd now most likely assume to have been the case).

There were instead all kinds of various bases tried out __ besides __ 10, introduced by all sorts of peoples throughout our history – until finally, at long last, settling on ten (an idea first known to have been utilized by the ancient Egyptians), upon realizing it was far and away the best and most logical base to use (and, it probably didn't hurt that it's also precisely as many fingers as we each have to count on!)

It's strictly the result of these many different bases, however, that explains why there are some 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour (base 60, as was used by the Babylonians); the reasoning behind our presently having 360° in a circle. Some even tried base-2 (holding special meaning for us today, given the binary nature of modern computing!), while the Mayans used a base of 20 (who one can only suppose took advantage of counting using an extra ten toes in addition to their fingers!)

As another field of study, Astronomy enjoyed exceptional advancements, not only by many Europeans as one might assume to predominantly be the case, but instead by many Chinese scientists whose time came at the very dawn of recorded history. Should one seek to uncover more data about any given ancient celestial event, then one of the first -no, the __**only** – places to turn are with the detailed records kept by Imperial China (we're talking about 2000 __**BC** , over four __ thousand __ years ago! For example, the first known recorded instance of a solar eclipse – by anyone, located anywhere!- came from the Chinese.)

At any rate, we could go on all day here – but never be fooled into thinking anything except the fact that our very greatest collective strength rests in our incredible differences from one another. As individuals, without a doubt... yet most especially as whole entire societies and cultures! Blandness only breeds uniformity, while variety is the spice of life... and all that jazz. (And if you should still lack clarity on this point? Look to music itself as the perfect means of conveyance – how countless many cultural groups instrumentation, melodies, methods and whatnot else over all of human history contributed to those genres most popular here today.)

In times that can often appear to be increasingly nationalistic, the preceding examples should serve as reminders to us all that literally every last aspect of modern life has elements from the entire world around embedded within. What's more, those contributions by and large __ only __ might've come from those who did in fact make them, requiring whatever unique combination of factors or variables as existed with societies or cultures, ultimately resulting in adding further progress to the big 'ol pot of human civilization, itself. Those distinct qualities as makes our cultures exactly what they are... well, they are what __ they __ are because of the impact religious concerns had historically – first, foremost and without any equal. Nothing else even approaches the magnitude of just how much religion has shaped, guided and molded the creation of distinct groups from out of our long ago forebears.

Suffice it to say that, despite these stark differences often being touted as undesirable or a weakness (in the sense that we "fear what we don't know or can't understand,") as mainly acting to promote prejudice and conflicts throughout history...? It is instead this quality right here (and this alone) that's provided those positively blessed to be living today with all types of incomprehensible rewards and assorted other advantages – no less, it's a quality which all but defies any efforts aimed at consciously being realized or conceived of as such. Instead, they are left to stand only as entirely unappreciated -hidden and unknown- gifts in each of our minds (at least, that is, more often than not) and yet, even so, we must always strive not to take the immense gifts as such widespread uniqueness provides our civilization with for granted.

For however much we tend to celebrate diversity in recent times? That celebration usually extends little past whatever group it is that's being celebrated at the moment. We should instead chiefly celebrate all groups together as one, alongside the interactions between those many varied differences of ours; to celebrate the forever unremarked upon dynamic that only ever happens when those differences might come into contact with one another and collectively work together, almost symbiotically, as a world. For some unknown reason, this particular attribute is largely lost to us - that intangible, almost indescribable thing that results whenever mixing such unique groups (the "ingredients" of contemporary civilization, one might even say) of humans together historically.

Because in reality, even that great melting pot has as its underlying maxim the throwing together of __ every __ group at once, in order for them to all be 'melted' down yielding some brand new, yet largely singular, sort of entity. Therein lurks the obfuscated reality of how we actually should be celebrating the dynamic that __ all __ such differences play, with __ and _on_ one another, yet which tragically manages to get lost in a fog just now... even whenever we do manage to recognize and champion the critical contributions of our widely varied cultures (in isolation).

Sure, although on a purely personal level we most frequently recognize how each member of some team or group-based endeavor not only brings their own unique skills/gifts to a task, we also realize the fruits of those labors wouldn't exist at all were it not for every last person – each one doing precisely what they did, only by being exactly who they each are!

This critical quality in some way apparently gets "lost in translation" when it comes to enormous groups acting on the global level, themselves all being collectively 'grouped together' as one massive entity: Human civilization. The position that civilization of ours enjoys today exists, not because of any number of select individuals contributing to affairs, much less singular groups who achieved this or that, but only through the collective interplay and collaborations of quite literally __**every** __ last culture and society (no less, throughout all of time/human history!) who each brought __ something __ to the table, in some way or another, that proved utterly necessary in yielding our impossibly futuristic world of today.

Perhaps the simplest means of conveying such a notion, one that seems to otherwise fly directly into the face of our preconceptions there (vis-a-vis our cultural distinctiveness instead usually felt to be acting upon the world as a dividing force, first and foremost)...? Accomplished by ever so slightly tweaking an old maxim, thereby turning it around 180° and completely over on its head:

For imagine how, while it might very well take an entire village in order to best raise a child up to adulthood? Such as to raise *all* villages up high and into the advancements of modernity as we know it, it also demands nothing less than a whole world of differences, each collaboratively working together for the greatest good!

All of this is a really long-winded way of arriving at our main point here: The explanation behind why only one God would conceivably put forth so countless many different faiths across the world throughout history, while still holding that they were all the result of only a single being; yielding just how those distinct religions we find on this Earth could all be worshiping only one real and true Higher Power. Seeing as how one would be hard pressed to find a more positive outcome for our world than the immense success we've experienced, despite many a hardship and uphill struggle, it sure would seem as though you couldn't have asked for a better set of circumstances to have promoted such a reality while still retaining the free will of that same world.

We are only where we're at right now because of one thing, and nothing else: Our religion and faith. Only, not any one religion, nor even but a mere handful of them – the fact we have as many as we do, each one being so very different in so very many ways that, while perhaps at first speaking to ancient preexisting cultural characteristics (tailored to the peoples whom those faiths were first offered to), over time they also rapidly began promoting and accentuating ever greater differentiation – all the while, further working to nudge or mold those very same cultural groupings continually in various divinely desired directions: All inevitably being done such as to bring forth we who are indeed so very blessed to be living today, along with giving birth to that most amazingly modernized world of ours!

# Section 2

As a result of all of this, we should strive to see the collective of humanity as but a single entity: Our very civilization itself, something that's best perceived as aging and maturing exactly the same way as does any other dynamic living thing! Each different generation of mankind? Taken as being just like a year in the life of one person!

Yet just as with all things in life, proper perspective and understanding is essential. In moving forward, however, we must also remember to continue looking all around us: Including where we came from before. All the more, it is my firmest belief that the many different sacred works and religious beliefs we possess emerged directly from our true Creator – no less, likely to be the last direct communications our world will receive from that divinity for a long time still to come.

Even so, we ought to _remember_ __ the fact that the so-called "intended audience" for these works was one for whom the Earth still stood at the very center of all Creation itself! All things that existed at the time in all places – everything and everywhere, for everyone – encircled and so orbited this marvelous little pale blue dot we all lived, loved and inevitably died upon. The mere idea of any outer space, some endless dark and frozen vacuous abyss which separates all those (equally unknown) celestial bodies (being other stars, planets, black holes, dark matter or energies, along with whole other galaxies – and so very much more!) from one another... well, it simply wasn't so much as an idea to anyone just yet, nary even a single soul!

For indeed, whilst it very well may seem as though it's something of an incomprehensible notion, today we actually __ definitively __ know that not even the __ universe __ has any distinguishable center to it whatsoever! Despite our currently knowing of a __ not-so-little BANG __ to start the all of literally everything off right, this whole entire reality itself that we are all a part of has no discernible center to it; something around which everything might be said to focus on or gravitate towards – there is no "super-supermassive" universal black hole, in other words, nor is there any universal "heart" or core (say, perhaps a place with an unusual overabundance of galaxies, stars and/or matter/dark energy/dark matter).

It's instead observed to just be the consequential effects of the continual expansion of space itself: From our Big Bang, ever onward up until today. Of matter, separating and cooling just enough until proving able to replace an endless broiling plasmatic stew of elementary particles with their coalescing into atoms of basic hydrogen and helium. Then, eventually, this starts to form stars, galaxies, planets, and even life... all of which ultimately results in that most impossible us!

Aye, when compared with the sort of knowledge reflected in the prior paragraph alone, they were indeed a most nascent people whose eyes gazed the landscape surrounding them and saw impossible magic literally everywhere they so deigned to look: Folks who gazed up at that great big ball of fire in the sky -you know the one- which, well... only must've been a mighty big ball of fire that had always circled the Earth to give forth its illuminating light! (Who, by the by, after having stared at said fireball for so very long as to gain whatever insights and meaning as they ultimately derived from the experience, were now also undoubtedly left quite blind! So would've ended the woeful tale of our inquisitive, tenacious -and now, tragically, finding themselves suddenly sightless- ancestor!)

It was to this childlike humanity that such a divinity would have sought to guide along its way, and so it was primarily intended that they who first received such widely different sacred works, proverbs and parables were also the ones those works were primarily designed to teach. Because, much the same as it goes with any maturing, advancing and continually evolving entity, so too does it hold true for human civilization itself: Just as for any parent to any child, there simply *must* come a point where that wise and benevolent parental figure has to step back and allow their offspring to stand upon their very own two feet.

This is entirely the point of proper and successful parenting in the first place: The better one's efforts to teach are early on, the less corrective efforts at guidance shall prove to be necessary in its maturity. It is only the failed child, and so the failed parent, who finds their gray-haired child still as reliant on them as they were whilst still only but a tot!

Yet the bottom line here is really quite simple: All such talk of "God is Dead!", or even more atheistic rhetoric/leanings still, must appear completely irrational from any such perspective. As I've already discussed previously, the reason why a higher power might've been more hands-on then than they are today is purely due to the fact that humanity was set upon the proper path, and any further such efforts would only be detrimental interference on the part of a deity (who would almost certainly find themselves assuming a decidedly dictatorial role, given God's superior position and placement in comparison to ours – much as we always hold our own parents above us in nearly every conceivable way): Dependent upon our Creator for directing and outright ordering us around, orchestrating the all of human affairs. It should therefore start to become most clear how such a pervasive level of control would only be quite counterproductive and harmful to this mortal realm and our civilization's ongoing development.

Surely, today we would quite literally come to demand yet further answers - no matter when such a divine appearance might have come, or might yet still come, we would essentially never be at a point where all our inquisitiveness was satiated and we were content with our present knowledge; happy merely to exist in God's company, and nothing else.

No, we'd have to know what this is, what that means, why this happened, when that will happen... so on and so forth, on and on, forevermore! In fact, it would likely be little different from if we ever made contact with an impossibly advanced (and wholly benevolent) alien intelligence: We'd largely be focused on the "me, me, me!" aspect there in seeking the benefit of their greatly superior stores of knowledge (unless, that is, we'd end up engaged in an all-out conflict with such E.T.'s over our own survival from a threatening species that seek only a habitat, resources and/or labor... or heaven forbid, *gulp*, us as their food source!)

Regardless of however many of us we might like to think would resist such temptations, one of our greatest of gifts is our tenaciously curious & endeavoring spirit – this, being precisely what's driven mankind to reach this amazing point we're presently at- and therefore any such divine revelatory appearance, now or during more recent centuries past, would've all too surely resulted in little more than throwing a proverbial monkey wrench into the whole entire contraption: Meaning exactly that which the steadily progressing march of human civilization surely is.

# Chapter 6:

# The Value In Turning To Our Sacred Works, Even In More Modern Times

We who find ourselves singularly blessed to be living in so modern of a world can likewise all too easily feel a schism pulling us in two polar opposite directions – one hard annihilate to their left, the other mercilessly to our right – with an almost perverse schizophrenic duality. For this modern world very much also has a landscape that's been long ago mapped by distinctly ancient systems of belief – if not still finding itself defined outright by various matters of faith and religion that were primarily intended for a humanity yet in its infancy.

For our understanding of the divine has remained utterly unchanged over the eons... despite however countless many centuries and millennia might yet pass after the fact; regardless of how much progress might've come in the interim; and no matter just how unrecognizable the all of 'everything __ for __ everything may be right now, compared to how it was way back during their assorted establishments.

But neither is this to put down or dismiss in their entirety (as somehow irrelevant, outdated, or even, as some faithless sorts may claim, entire falsehoods made only by the hands and minds of man) those teachings understood to be the works of that Higher Power – rather it's just the opposite of that!

Realities such as the third amendment of the US Constitution seem inconceivable today, where having soldiers take residence in private homes is unthinkable only but two short centuries later – yet even so, still do we find the deepest of meaning and resonance in that very same Constitution throughout time itself. It is in this same way we should look to our existing sacred works, as well – with the realities that ours is a civilization which evolves and matures – **changing** – over time.

We should indeed very much embrace and worship such timeless scriptures for the sparks of divinity that they can each be found to contain -whether this might mean on a deeply personal, individual level; or else collectively, as societies, cultures and a civilization- yet always doing so with the understanding that they were told to (thusly being intended and presented for) a drastically more primitive mankind, society and world. Even so, we absolutely __ must __ continually celebrate, cherish, and turn to their divine offerings for guidance or wisdom.

This is not only due to the fact that they did indeed spring directly from a quite real divinity, but all the more so when we consider how it is almost singlehandedly those traditional religious beliefs and teachings which enabled us and that modern world of ours to ultimately get to where we're at just now, in our most fantastical modernity.

Yet just as our species had its infancy much the same as does any individual man or woman, we might also further grow and mature – the rebellious youths becoming responsible adults. For example? Place a gun in the hand of a child... and the results will be catastrophic! Offer a tyke algebraic lessons? They will be resoundingly clueless and disbelieving!

When it comes to our species, certain things can only come or be revealed to us at certain times. This shows the glorious majesty of God, in the way it was all in fact designed and offered to our world: Seeing Him both as like a kind, loving parent and teacher! The way that divinity approached things long ago set us down the road we needed to be on, done in precisely the way it was needed to be carried out. When the time was finally right thousands of years ago, He revealed Himself to us and offered us His Word – in various forms, to various different groups of people (cultures) the whole wide world around! Then, when the time also came, He removed Himself and allowed us to walk on our own two feet independently – developing all the while.

For example, look to Christianity and one sees the incredibly positive influence it has had on our world and civilization in such ways. That is __ truly __ part of what set us on the path which resulted in the here and now – all the fantastic technology, science and understanding having been achieved precisely because of all those critical roles our sets of religious beliefs have played over these past several centuries. Even democracy itself! The modern form, birthed by Christians in Christian societies – our own Founding Fathers – primarily through the basic tenets and beliefs found in their faiths cherishing equality, peace and basic freedoms.

So allow me to expand on that in slightly more detail, given it's a most crucial tenet to this entire argument of mine (that humankind had its infancy, back when we were nomadic cave dwellers and the like). Our forebears were indeed wild and primitive, uncivilized to say the very least. Time passes, we mature. Language develops just the same as does various skills and knowledge.

Flash backward two or three millennia ago: Civilization dawns, but we were like a troubled child badly in need of discipline and guidance. As does any child, we required the loving but firm hand of an all-knowing elder in order to set us aright and ensure we would end up as a happy and successfully thriving adult. Enter our divine teachings.

Thanks to this one single endowment, we are where we now are; the guidance it offered us and the traits, qualities and characteristics it instilled on humanity bring about every aspect of our modern world – our government, societal and cultural qualities yielding not only the sciences and knowledge we've acquired for ourselves, but the very political and societal environments -stable, prosperous and rewarding inquisitiveness and advancements- which allowed and enabled such things in the first place, our universal emphasis on education and encouragement of learning and knowledge... even the great importance we place on family in the raising and rearing of our heirs.

Another aspect informing my belief in the literal divinity of most all of our existing, traditional systems of belief comes with the exponential increase in religions that endure for relative eternities, even in our modernity, which each arose from around only one period of time.

Now then, just stop and try to imagine the world without those tenets – envision a place where those very worst qualities of ours ran rampant, like some toddler who's never given any rules or firm foundation; the sort of civilization beset by the madness and chaos unfolding with pure violence, war, death disease, poverty... yes, even sex – especially sex!

It was only through religion, strictly thanks to it, that the notion of "settling down" and betrothal came into widespread practice. Without religious practices enforcing owing up to obligations, promoting the notions and values of family and marriage...? What possible benefit was it __ to __ those wild and crazy B.C. era, hunting and gathering nomadic peasants to settle down, marry and shoulder their obligations? Perhaps amongst royalty and the "elite" society? Sure, marriage probably would've remained a common practice. But would it have still been widespread amongst the teeming masses? Absolutely not.

Just imagine the world of Game of Thrones, those many vagabonds who lived short lives and often spent their days fighting some war or another. Without religion here, today the world would be an unrecognizable place – we'd find cultures where the women still reared the children, without a doubt, but I suspect that, if only by and large, the men simply would've proved likely to do as they so pleased.

Or maybe you'd have had the exact opposite of that: Polygamy. Perhaps we'd find a world where those men most successful owed up to their obligations, recognizing and raising their own offspring. But why would the most successful men *not* have a thousand wives? Indeed, do we not see precisely that happen throughout history with various sorts? Was that not itself exceptionally common millennia ago? Men who take as many women as they can, who, when growing bored of one woman, rather than simply moving on and away, instead take up a new and younger "model" of a spouse?

Now stop and try to imagine *that* type of a world: Where does that leave the other 99% of the men? Perhaps we'd see the polar opposite of China's relatively recent "One Son" policies, where it was instead the sons who were slaughtered as the unwanteds and undesirables; the "first born son", elevated as the heir presumptive and celebrated – every male offspring afterwards simply (and coldly) murdered immediately upon their birth, with societies realizing the realities of their culture and that, for their practices to endure or even merely to work at all -for their society/culture to be stable- there must be only so many males. Incomprehensible and unimaginable to us here today, undoubtedly – but just that could've all too easily come to be had it only managed to take root in earlier times as even the most core, fundamental tenets of our cultures and lives remained quite malleable, during days back when death, loss and violence were not such taboos, and where the loss of a child was in fact only to be expected, what with rampant, seemingly endless disease and death.

So indeed, one can look only to the most central, defining aspects of our civilization, even species, itself and see plain the impact that religion played – a most positive one, at that. So too, this idea I'd propose of humanity as an aging and maturing specimen, wherein certain things can come -are "right"- only at certain points in its developmental history. Now, today? Sex being more open and free is perfectly acceptable... hardly some apocalyptic game changer. Back hundreds and hundreds of years ago, on the other hand? It was very much a different matter.

My point with all of this, then? Those parables, and indeed, much of the more controversial or commonly questioned contents of the Bible (such as a literal eye for an eye, teeth for teeth), exist as they do for a reason: It was all done by our higher power Creator in order to offer the world what it needed, in the way it needed... and precisely when it was so needed. Nothing more than that, and certainly nothing less!

But such divine guidance as was found with traditional religious texts and their associated teachings are also only but signs of the times they sprung out of – representing most clearly the cultures, societies and level of advancement of the people they were primarily intended for. With the Bible alone we receive an incredible glimpse into human civilization and daily life for humanity two millennia before the here and now – lands where electricity of any kind would've meant a death sentence for heretical witchcraft or evil magicks.

Today we can look to these teachings and continue finding literal divine truths, seeing as how they were in fact received from that divine Creator of us all. Even in these more modern times, there are countless lessons and basic understandings to be gleaned from each of them. I would thusly urge us to never entirely abandon or forget what they have to offer each one of us as we form our personal understandings and views about our existence, despite whatever perspective it is that we might be coming from when we do so – whether that means in modernity or the distant future, alike. Much as these sacred works are the very foundation upon which our contemporary societies and world were built, so too will there always be immense value and worth in those earlier forms of divine guidance.

# Chapter 7:

# Advanced Ideas Being Indistinguishable From Magic

In addition to the notion of human civilization as a maturing, advancing entity (the closest thing to an actual child in relation to that divine Creator), another important idea forming the basis of these existential ideas hinges upon the thought that, "any technology sufficiently far advanced enough will appear indistinguishable from magic" in the eyes of those unfamiliar with such innovations and advancements.

It is a simple notion, just the same as it's an exceptionally accurate one. Invent a time machine, take your smartphone back __ only __ four hundred years, and you've got yourself a death sentence for witchery. That's just four centuries removed from the here and now! Go back a thousand, and cure someone's pneumonia with a pill? "Burn the witch! What magic is this, vanishing the affliction of the cursed airs?!"

What meaning does this odd idea of "advanced ideas that are indistinguishable from magic" truly have to us in relation to the divine Creator of us all? How can coming from such a perspective be anything other than unrepentant and heretical blaspheming? In my eyes, I suppose it's all rather straightforward enough.

Let us try to envision living in the world as was found __**only** __ a thousand years ago (relatively speaking, only but a droplet in the proverbial bucket!) – with this, but of course, coming still some millennia after various direct "divine contacts" bestowed us with our many sacred teachings or works which survive into today.

So we're now living in just such an ancient world. Next up in our little imaginative journey, we come down with... Smallpox... the "Black Plague" – or, heck, even the common cold! The specifics really don't matter, I suppose. Suffice it to say that we've quite suddenly taken ill, and haven't the faintest notion why!

Ahh, but you see, those days were times *prior* to any modern biological knowledge or medical miracles. What's more, we hadn't the foggiest inkling about the existence of any virus or bacteria, let alone with cells and immune systems, oh my! In a world with nary a microscope to be found, transmissible infectious diseases of any kind? Heaven forbid!

And that, right there, is the very point of this time traveling adventure: With Heaven __ itself __ to forbid our taking ill! All the while, the source of those illnesses...? They also singularly came from such metaphysical -magical- sources. As a brief aside, but this was also aided by the extreme isolation of communities absent more modern transportation – without an endless number of outside sources constantly introducing new pathogens, outbreaks and incidences of disease were __ completely __ different things: It'd either sweep through the whole community at once only to never get heard from again, or be limited to only one or two folks at a time (whether wholly non-infectious – cancers, for example; or something transmitted by rare non-human/environmental agents). Either way, this surely made for a situation much better resembling a literal, full-on curse: Whether divine punishments doled out for an entire "wicked" community, or instead for the sins of the individual.

Regardless of all that, without the blessing of any modern awareness sickness was seen as an often otherworldly pox – a literal curse for transgressions of sinfulness and impiety, or else evidence of demonic evils unleashed on this Earth as suffering and death of the medical variety.

We could not know any better... and so we did not! Our understanding at the time hadn't a prayer of realizing a viral/bacterial source of sickness; in the absence of such knowledge, that as yet advanced idea was instead ascribed to simple magic... an example of "nature or technology indistinguishable from magic," being made all too real and true.

This, seeming all but identical to anyone time travelling backwards and showing off their smartphone to the locals. From their own hopelessly limited viewpoints...? It'd surely be seen as the most utterly impossible of magic!

So this idea of transforming things that may best be understood at the time as magic (divine or otherwise) into advanced -yet, in point of fact, entirely comprehensible/rational- ideas is fueled neither by arrogance nor simple delusion, but – **just perhaps** – is rather evidence of things far beyond the understandings at a given moment in time. It is thusly exactly like how we might've viewed sickness and modern medicine only a handful of centuries ago; wherein illnesses got put down to things other than their real, __ actual __ cause due to an inability of possibly understanding them for what they __ really __ in fact were.

Therefore, trying to explain the divine from a decidedly rational perspective -a divinity working with (something at least approaching) technology far more than any pure, literal magic in action- is nothing greater than our conceding that such a being is as of yet hopelessly (impossibly!) far beyond us... superior to us in every last way! All the same, it is to hope to better know that Creator by way of gaining a genuinely improved understanding of their own works; taking such present knowledge possessed by our world today and, however crudely, trying to subsequently apply it in these otherworldly -metaphysical- sorts of directions.

While I've gone on about "advanced technologies or ideas being indistinguishable from magic"...? Any such magic, put in "realistic" terms, simply means various processes or concepts that are yet to be properly understood. In that same sense, seeing our reality as having been Created through something besides sheer magic is neither to lessen nor to denigrate the nature of our divine Creator – rather, it is only to apply new understandings and knowledge of ours in various ways relating to the nature of our own existence. As a result, it denotes only how we have continued to come further along over time and kept making incredible new discoveries all the while – nothing more than that, and nothing less.

Therefore, there truly, genuinely is no real magic – only a lack of knowledge or comprehension. A magnet offers levitation and defiance of gravity – surely, as much of a magical skill as anything imaginable! We are quite simply imperfect beings living in an impossible world, who are of the sort always desperate to ascribe meaning or understanding to all things: Known __**or** __ unknown, alike! A consequence of this fantastic inquisitiveness of ours is that, should we come across something that appears to defy our understanding, we must also place it in some form of context or reason – most often resorting to such ideas as outright magic and incomprehension.

Likewise, even in referring to God and Creation, when we say divine magic it should only be taken to mean a process as yet unknown. Creating an entire universe sure seems like something incomprehensible. The point there, however, is what if we might indeed envision a way this __ could __ be accomplished...? (Much as I'll begin to specifically explore all too soon enough.) With modern technologies and computing, could we have possibly stumbled -almost entirely by accident- upon discovering some crude, primitive form by which our Maker made our world – precisely as was done in actuality?

I would offer this disclaimer, however: By considering the nature of our reality and the divine in such new or different ways, it should also be something carried out solely because those more advanced ideas seem to naturally work or fit within our own present understanding – both about the nature of our existence, as well as with those revelations which came to us directly from that divine Creator so very long ago.

In other words, this will ultimately neither try to force such concepts together nor start with the idea of modern technology and desperately work backwards from there; trying to apply any number of more modernized ideas to our most fundamental and ancient of questions. At no point should we ever feel compelled to "update" anything, simply for being able to say that it's thusly been "updated."

So all of that having been said, as we've now understood such magic to in point of fact only be some as yet unknown processes at that particular moment in time (rather than carried out with any actual, literal "magicing")? What I'd emphasize comes with trying to remove the absolute lack of understanding regarding divinity that was born out of a human civilization still in its infancy.

Primarily, what my work concerns itself with in such a regard comes with the literal process of Creating: In my mind, it's wholly irrational to assume that any entity can simply wave a hand, give a speech, and __***** **BOOM!** ***** __ – just like so, universes might be born.

If that were truly the __**only** __ way it might be done, then c'est la vie, I suppose... except it's not – not by __ any __ means! No, today we possess one particular means of genuinely producing worlds, realities and universes through a presently understood process. Therefore, falling back on literal magic given that comprehensible alternative... it would simply make no sense whatsoever.

The ideas I'll be laying out in the near future are then about a desire for such divine matters to undergo a similar transformation as our world has experienced elsewhere: From the magic of unknowing uncertainties, into a much more matured affair of comprehended reasoning – like with all else that we've accomplished in our world of late.

# Chapter 8:

# Having Creators Reflected In Their Creations

Next up comes one of the final pieces of the puzzle as forms the cornerstones for this work: The belief that there's absolutely __**no** __ sentient being (whether that should involve one divine or otherwise) that makes any Creation completely and entirely dissimilar to anything (and everything) it knows for itself. In other words: Every single Created work is a reflection of its Creator – first, foremost and forevermore.

What's the meaning I intend to come from this particular notion? Well, much as I've detailed previously in these pages, our whole reality has no actual, literal magic anywhere to be found in it (as in that of the "Abracadabra" variety). As a result of this most notable aspect to our existence, so too should we neither expect nor hold that divine Creator to be anything based in some literal form of pure magic. Even so, oddly enough that's _exactly_ what our current understanding of the divine is centered around in its entirety – how it's a supreme being existing both in and as sheer magic. I would hold that this quality comes more from that Creator being unimaginably far advanced, however, rather than it literally existing as something so impossibly unlike us as to defy any comprehension, and for precisely the reasons I'll now lay out.

To better convey this notion by way of an analogy, consider: A distinct culture most often produces things identifiably quite similar or related to one another – in a myriad of different ways. As for one example hereabouts? With musical genres and the music that a group of people might create for themselves, usually always following along the same sorts of lines. All the more, there's often even certain inherent aspects of the responsible creator embedded within those creations of theirs; such things that might be picked up upon being given ample enough analysis and deconstruction of whatever work of theirs is at hand.

On that same "note", we especially witness this quality in the sciences themselves and the ongoing technological progress of mankind; whereby one good idea gets "thought up" and implemented, only to find similar such techniques, methodology or processes likewise being applied wheresoever it makes sense to do so.

This relationship between the creations and the creator is all the more glaringly evident whenever it involves something that could be said to come from only a singular individual, being and/or entity. We pretty much never see someone consistently creating __**entirely** __ different, random, and utterly unrecognizable works from one moment to the next, almost haphazardly, that have absolutely nothing in common with one another (save only their source of origination) – essentially like it was all being done completely at random, seemingly only the product of sheer anarchical chaos.

Along similar such trains of thought as all creations reflecting their creators, I would further posit that the sorts of natural learnings we've discovered as forming the underlying basis to our own existence -and, indeed, the countless technologies and inventions derived from exploiting that knowledge in the form of knowhow – themselves harbor some greater meaning that might be gleaned by us; that certain aspects of our world don't exist precisely as they do merely by some form of coincidence. Consequently, those various things that our universe allows to be made possible (in the form of our many inventions or technologies) should, in my estimation, be taken as potential reflections of divine natures "in action."

Although we undoubtedly still have an impossibly long ways ahead of us left to go in every single one of these scientific fields of study, those things we presently do know and have seen realized in today's world ought to very much be taken into consideration with any contemporary existential or theological lines of inquiry – something that's constantly been in mind as I've worked on this and arrived at these ideas.

But even more than having the "Creator reflected in their Creation" aspect, in and of itself...? There's actually still another issue altogether that makes it even more meaningful and worthwhile to turn to our known world for insights into that which is instead completely unknown/unknowable to us: We've been directly informed by that divine Creating entity that we -meaning mankind, our universe... everything, everywhere- were quite specifically "made in His image." So with this that divinity has actually gone so far as telling us how we were made much the same as God Himself is or existed as – in any number of different ways!

The simple fact that all Creations stand as a reflection of their Creator, when combined with knowing that the all of our everything was made directly in that Creators image, at the very least implies that the idea of the sheer magical divinity should be tossed right out the window... and post haste! That is, seeing as how there's absolutely not even the slightest shred of evidence or incontrovertible proof of either our world or ourselves having access to any real magic (In the traditional sense, but of course – meaning anyone or thing on __ this __ here plain of ours possessing literal supernatural abilities. So then, if we don't possess such a thing, we mustn't expect one in whose very exact image we were Made in to be dramatically different there, either.)

Also as a result of the "made in His image" aspect, however, such acquired information should furthermore cause us to pay especially close attention to our own existence for guidance or answers on matters far more divine in nature. If we would better know and understand the divine Creator of All, then we should first commit to better knowing and understanding ourselves and our assorted surroundings.

This means that if something should fundamentally pertain to our own world, then in all likelihood it's also of some significance regarding the divine; things that are somehow, in some way or another, capable of better informing each of us about the nature of God or existence, just the same as hinting at what may very well be awaiting us in the "great beyond." Although I'm certain this line of thought is something of a head scratcher right now, I can only assure you that my reasons for raising these ideas will (hopefully) all begin to make sense soon enough.

Something of a side note here, but I'll end up stressing this time and time again: I am resolute in the fact that exploring and better knowing this universe and all its many wonders allows us to come that much closer to our divine Maker – on top of offering us something of a better understanding about the true nature of that majestic Being. From a purely religious standpoint, I feel it is just as important to give equal time -at the __**very** __ absolute least\- to learning the details about our universe (physics, chemistry, astronomy, and so forth) as we do studying scripture and theological affairs.

I'd thusly assert that it's the very most religious of souls that should be the biggest advocates and pursuers of scientific inquiry in our world of today. This science, it should never be seen as coming from so-called "Godless Atheists" who are obsessively dedicated to contradicting or disproving God's existence in any way whatsoever, but rather the complete opposite – sciences building and strengthening one's personal relationship to God, accomplished by better knowing that divinity's works and numerous different wonders!

So it's for these countless many reasons, alongside still more unmentioned as of yet, that I would stress the extraordinary importance of turning to our own modern world such as to look for further insights into otherwise unknowable sorts of affairs. Given how far along we've come today and just how very much we do indeed know about our universe/world, it seems as though it's hardly premature for us to start trying to draw some potential meaning -however vague or inconsequential it may well seem at first- into that divinity through such efforts; taking aspects of our own realities or existence, and then subsequently trying to use or "translate" those into more metaphysical and divine sorts of matters.

All of which is precisely what this here work of mine endeavors to do just now! This, being exactly the same as I myself have been trying to do throughout my whole entire life thus far – the end result of which, but of course, being what you'll find forthcoming in these somewhat strange sorts of pages. At day's end, those many ideas contained herein represent whatever connections do in fact make sense as such – at least in my own eyes, and to my own mind, that is.

# Chapter 9

# Science and God: One and the Same

Before moving onward (at long, __**long** __ last) to the oddity of what my own personal beliefs consist of (the specifics), I'd like to explore one final topic regarding the seeming schism between modern science and faith (particularly seeing as how this work is something of a " **blending** " between the two.)

Often the most problematic conflict, and therefore the most limiting factor, has been a self-created and self-imposed battle between faith and science. This should be perceived as something of an utter absurdity, one that should be particularly and painfully obvious to us today. Those of a religious mindset should be the most fervent advocates for the pursuit of intellectual endeavors. For truly, if a divine being made us and everything, making the universe and thereby all the components of it that we have exploited so far? Then to explore and understand His creation better is to likewise better understand the one responsible for it all.

To explore the makings of the universe: Physics, astronomy, chemistry...? All of those things are absolutely undeniable. And, no less, in a world Made by such a divinity? To understand them is to thereby understand God, as the Maker and Grand Designer of the whole entire shebang. As we expand our knowledge, to a religious mind, so too do we come all that much closer to the Being that Created it. So although the scientific atheist has all the reason in the world to expand their knowledge and explore the stars, the religious scientist has an even __ greater reason __ to do so! No, it goes far beyond that: They truly must do nothing less! To do anything otherwise is to thusly refuse the gifts of our Maker and God... our very best means of coming that much closer to Him – by expanding our knowledge & understanding of all that He created.

Science drives us not from God, it instead brings us that much closer to Him. Tragically enough, there are many who today cite blasphemy; that the sciences of late have been perceived as colored with faithlessness or tainted by atheism. It seems to me, however, that if God did not want us to know Him so -to merely even be able to- then we quite simply __ wouldn't __ be able to do so!

Indeed, rooted in this is the notion that the simple fact we can do so -that we possess such boundless curiosity and intrinsic inquisitiveness- means that He created us for just such ends in mind. Therefore, to be given those impossible gifts and not pursue them to our fullest almost seems to spurn His blessings. In my mind, if God created all, then science is almost the study of God Himself! So by pursuing science and natural understandings, we are thusly studying God's many works. Mind you, not merely studying His creation, but, from the perspective of belief, also studying real and tangible proof of His very existence!

It seems that the further we delve into our universe, the more glaring the evidence of a divine Creator starts to become. Once atoms and elements, molecules and electrons, all of it seemed straightforward enough. Now, however, with quarks and strings and actual so-called ' **God particles** ', we increasingly discover things that stagger our understanding and all comprehension! Quantum entanglements find fantastically tiny things being instantaneously connected together... even from countless many light years apart! No matter where the two particles are located, no matter how far apart they might be from one another, (even at opposite ends of the universe!) their bond is absolute and instantaneous – aka. the limiting speed of light need not apply.

So it is my resolute belief that the priest and pastor of yesterday, culled from the most pious amongst us, should be the physicists and chemists of today. In our modern world, __ significantly __ advancing philosophical discourse or the teaching of basic divine wisdom from scripture (provided to that civilization in its infancy) draws near an end. Rather than merely discarding those tenets of old as outdated and untrue, however, we should instead always embrace our past – accepting we would have never arrived where we're at just now without adhering to those divine teachings instilling us with such boundless love, tolerance, forgiveness and peace. They enabled us to join together and cooperate instead of competing in conflict – to allow us peace enough to lead to prosperity; creating the foundations for pursuing erudite endeavors of the mind – all to better understand and become closer to Him by understanding and embracing His creation.

For indeed, where would our world be today if not for the indisputable goodness and indispensable blessings that those sacred teachings emphasized? It is no mere coincidence that modern democracy arose from the inherent ideas of equality, freedom, peace and tolerance taught to us through most all forms of ancient systems of belief. All significant scientific and technological breakthroughs of the past three centuries have been made by individuals living in overwhelmingly religious nations and cultures, whether they necessarily possessed faith themselves or not.

Through the instructions as are universally found in those global faiths and their principle sacred works, only then have we seen barbarism and violence diminished. Without that light, still would we live in darkness – metaphorically __ and __ most literally, as today electricity would be nothing more than wild, deluded fantasy. Without the blessings of modern medicine, we'd only have lives that are half what they are just now: As pain and sickness remain prevalent, while diseases that have long since been eradicated would still yet flourish. To me personally, the path to divinity – to God – is the path of science, itself!

And yet many of deep, resolute faith today still fight a battle ultimately only against themselves: Declaring that faith and science are separate and innately opposed to one another; that concepts such as evolution are somehow perversely heretical. It seems to me that this is a truly misguided effort that loses the truth of His ways; seeing us delivered what knowledge our world needed at the time, and primarily in a form those forebears could understand as such.

In my eyes then, there is thusly no battle between faith and science... aside from the one we have created all by ourselves. God is science, for His creation is the universe such fields seek to explore and explain. Only when we have let ideologues shape and lead the way over rationality does any such conflict ensue; rather than embracing science as being of God, this same polarization has caused the most outspoken to become inherently symbolic (almost the embodiment) of each respective side.

In this way has science come to incorrectly be represented by those most unrepentant of atheistic nonbelievers -whose faith lies only in their own grandiose existence and self aggrandizement-, while on the other hand the most fervent of the faithful are equally mistakenly seen as utter Creationists and literalists eschewing all logic and reason.

The truth of the matter, I most certainly believe, is anything but the preceding: Instead, I hold that the overwhelming majority of us find ourselves right squarely in the middle – holding the positive qualities of the divine and of science in equal regard, coming as they all do from a Higher Power responsible for the whole affair.

Yet as we all enjoy the benefits of recent discoveries -the continual advancement of technology enriching all of our lives- the most worrisome issue regarding the faith and science dichotomy is among our youth. Future generations are now enmeshed in modern technology, their lives currently centered around gadgets, devices and display screens. Meanwhile, on the other side seemingly those most vocal of all would still assert that our world is, in point of fact, only but some mere thousands of years old.

Only by drawing up two sides, pitting religion against science, have we allowed the situation to become what it is today. By clinging to beliefs of old as though our civilization never advances or matures in any way, we are guilty of separating God and science when instead we should fervently embrace and espouse that God __**IS** __ science. All is His creation, so learning of the universe is to learn __ of __ God!

To see physics in action is but to see God in action. The only reason there are two sides to this is because we are guilty of drawing them up and creating them.

Men and women who harbor a deep belief and faith in a divine being -in God- should be the very most driven of all to possess an understanding of His Creation. Although we'll next start to see how divergent many of my beliefs forthcoming on these pages actually are, I believe that this particular aspect -the relationship between science and faith- to be a universality, regardless of whatever details one might personally believe about that divinity or His most wondrous Creation.

# TekARK: The Who, What and Why:

Although I myself come from Christian roots, TekARK is absolutely nothing I'd feel even the slightest bit okay with connecting to any existing/traditional sets of beliefs or organized religious faith -past or present- out of my concerns that doing so might mislead or cause offense. Likewise, I'm hardly going to be as delusional (nor so arrogant) as to call anything here some "new this" or "alternative that".

No, at the end of the day all this really represents on my behalf are my efforts aimed at putting down on page what my own personal faith has evolved into becoming so far. These writings will consequently be nothing more than where I eventually found myself upon tackling that greatest, most eternal & ageless of human questions: Quite simply, "Why?"

I truly should hope this might all go without my saying it, but I'll make things blatantly clear right up front... _just in case_ : When I've been using the word 'modern', I expect it's obvious that means a particular emphasis on scientific knowledge and theories (as well as the technological inventions such understandings have allowed). That being said, 'modern' also includes where we've *come* from – whether religiously, or in various other sociocultural areas. In this way, I suppose it'd fit the bill of being existentialism of a "jack of all trades" variety!

Make no mistake, the preceding absolutely does _NOT_ hint at even the tiniest bit of agnosticism on my part (much less any brand of outright atheism). Just as holds true here for me personally, this work treats the existence of a divine Creator as an utter certainty – at _all_ times. Now I'll certainly be offering evidence and explanation for why that is in fact the case, without a doubt! However, nothing on these pages, at least not having come from my hands, shall ever be questioning whether God (some form of self-aware divine entity, that is, who's also directly responsible for the existence of our whole reality) may exist or not.

The bottom line is that during the course of living my life and examining where I found myself in relation to my deeply personal image of God, it led me to arrive at many quite different and very unique sorts of ideas about such weighty existential and metaphysical affairs. As a result, exploring whatever issues are to be found on these pages is carried out in the attempt of better explaining or conveying my own peculiar ideas about things literally divine in nature.

This is due to the fact that, for some reason -in some strange and largely unknowable way- what that meant for me in particular was distinctly different from anything I've encountered in my days on this Earth. From all of this, I have come to the place in my journey on our giant swirling blue ball that finds me here just now. Perhaps there's a reason those beliefs of mine are so unique... that they only will 'work' or make sense to the mind they sprung from. Then again, perhaps not! -which is exactly what fuels my desire to offer these ideas and put them 'out into the world,' as it were.

Right off the bat I feel the need to offer my most wholehearted assurances how, by writing and compiling these beliefs of mine, I am not in any way, shape nor form seeking to cause offense to a single soul, let alone to criticize anyone's existing form of beliefs. Bottom line, if I honestly believed there was the slightest risk of that then I'd certainly not be here doing any parts of this. In going about the journey of our lives, we all have nothing save for those truths as we both see and know them. These are merely such truths as they relate to me; they may not work for you in such a sense (and they probably won't!), but at day's end this is simply the best I might hope to offer – nothing more, nothing less.

The point of this work is thusly not to condemn -much less making any appeal to whatsoever- those who already possess their own personal truths in a strong and resolute fashion. Instead, it is simply my hoping that there's the slimmest possibility of someone in similar shoes as I once found myself -remaining filled with endless questions and uncertainties upon turning to the "usual" places one looks for clarity regarding God- and discovers any portion of this work might in some way prove useful while trying to come to whatever their own answers in life might be.

As for the final part to this introduction, let's get right to the heart of the matter: The who that's behind it all and the why I'm here doing any of this to begin with. Both are indeed important questions, and their answers likewise prove to be deeply interrelated to one another:

The thing of it is that I've been in exceedingly poor health since the age of nine. Now in my early 30's, it has become apparent that, as that health continues deteriorating rapidly of late, I probably don't have all that much time remaining on this Earth. Perhaps owing itself considerably to the life experiences those health issues brought along, I began to explore the eternal questions that all of us must at some point: The "how?", the "why?", and the "what?"

However, what I found for myself in doing so was arriving at some very, very different answers than anything presently in existence. In my estimation, the primary cause behind those differences? The fact that none of these existential "answers" as I've come to were even possible or conceivable until our recent, modern times. Literally, ours is the very first generation where **any** of this would've proved possible; the blessings given by all that new knowledge our world presently possesses for itself. So it's less a matter of being delusional or bizarre as beliefs (if only in my eyes), and much more an issue based on time/ongoing developments and progress.

My ultimate "goal" here? I have no wants or need for money or anything else of the sort, seemingly the motivation of so many wicked types in recent ages for their introducing any such new or different theological ideas – exploiting our faith and matters of the heart simply to achieve whatever their wants in life are. Likewise, I'm also absolutely not here seeking to convert anyone... not to anything!

No, what this instead finds is my fervent desire to make the most of what time I have left on this planet. Really, that's it. By working on these writings, I can therefore feel reassured by the knowledge that, if my time should indeed come due as my health keeps on worsening, I won't also be taking the entirety of this unusual perspective with me when I go; just in the remote chance there is in fact anything of value or note herein; some worthwhile new or different idea of mine that managed to emerge from the strange evolution of my own personal belief system. My sole desire is therefore hoping I might contribute to the world positively in some way before my time comes due, much as all of ours inevitably must.

When this chapter of our lives concludes and we are each moved into the great beyond, all that any of us have remaining are those things that we do work to leave behind in this world. For me personally, this work represents precisely that. Should others find it of any use, then all the better for it! But here, I have absolutely no ulterior motives or delusions of grandeur in mind – only leaving my (long-winded) mark on this world... in existential-based book form!

Believe me, I'm hardly about to sit here and say this right here is anything as mad as some great big 'purpose' for my own life. Having said that, however, I must concede that the exceptional unlikelihood of partaking in a task such as this (publishing radically different existential ideas) is itself expounded all the more by the incredible confluence of bizarre events (no less, each one being all but entirely outside of my own control) that brought me to right here. In this regard, my health is only but a single factor that includes a great many others – part of my own beliefs hold that we all end up doing _exactly_ what we're supposed to be doing and are each intended for on this Earth. In other words, there truly aren't any accidents in life... not in the slightest!

So in just such a light, perhaps this endeavor brings me to something else I'm meant for in life... or perhaps I drop dead the day after finishing up with my writings for this book! Aside from God, none of us can ever possibly know what rests ahead. That's precisely the point, too: Trusting in the acumen of our omniscient Creator to see us through every blinding storm, having our very best interests in mind, always – in one way or another, even if we ourselves can't see what that may be from our inconceivably more diminished perspectives and meager abilities.

Additionally, I presently live in Falls Church, Virginia, just as I have my entire life. Living only five miles from our Nation's Capitol has certainly provided me with many an interesting experience growing up, without a doubt! My major in college, at George Mason University, was political science with a specialty of International Relations/diplomacy, and a focus on SE Asia. That said, and as this endeavor must indicate, politics or work in government was clearly never a calling of mine; having been told constantly growing up that my main gift in life was my ability to write, it is to that aspiration that I presently am seeking out in my life.

Now for the last part of this introductory piece, I'd like to put out the six primary underlying concerns I've been focused on as I wrote this work. They are:

  * Coherence – Does everything make sense or appear rational to other individuals; outside of my own mind?

  * "Covering All The Bases" – Ensuring that no critical aspects go left unmentioned or improperly explored.

  * Organization – Is there a progressive continuity to the topics I'm raising, rather than putting proverbial carts out ahead of the horses?

  * Concise – Out of them all, this is far and away what I'll fail at doing the most vis-a-vis my writing style; my natural predisposition towards long-winded ramblings. The desire here? To try and avoid drolling on sans rhyme or reason.

  * Celebration – Does it all work to positively reflect our divine Maker, and by proxy, the humanity that being so Made?

  * The Culmination – Do these ideas result in some ultimately meaningful ideas unseen before now; does there exist some "grand payoff" to be reached when everything I'll have written is taken together as one?

Now with that sextet so having been established, I shall strive to go about such matters as best I find myself able. It won't always be perfect -oh, do believe me there: Not by a long shot! But at day's end, we can each only give it our very best... and nothing more.

That should conclude my rather lengthy, "How do you do!" intro. My one and only hope throughout all that's yet to come is for someone -anyone- eventually discovering some portion of this effort to be interesting in their eyes, if not just a tiny bit useful. As I mentioned, I'll consistently be giving it my very best, putting as much time and energy into this work as I possibly might in order to see that hope realized.
