By the Book!

 

What can we learn about Creation from the world's spiritual traditions? What can we know about God, the universe, or our final condition? Are we left in the dark with no information, or do the world's traditional scriptures and traditions give us any clues?

The world is full of religions and their texts, as well as other assorted spiritual traditions. Some of these works have creation narratives. Some teach us insight into God. Some even lay out the endgame for the world and what will come after. According to these traditions, God is awesome! He created the heavens and the Earth and all found therein. In the texts, he is understandably very callous to life. He creates and destroys it. Can give a fate worse than death to those on his bad side, hell...

What about the Universe? The heavens above? The vast starry firmament? Inferred from traditions, it is a vision in God's mind's eye, much like one can have in meditation, daydreaming, or even while asleep in dreams. Only God visualizes on a much grander scale. God practices creation visualization, or causes things to exist by visualizing them into being. To quote the bard, we are but the stuff dreams are made of...

In the end, what will be? Do we perish? Do we die and rot away back to the earth we are made of? Do we go to hell to suffer endlessly for not being powerful enough to escape such a fate? Are we gifted with a utopian plane to dwell in bliss with God? Traditionally, God is taken to be good. In the Bible, God confesses to being Holy! So it is a very real possibility that at the end of our planetary existence we may all live happily ever after, redeemed by God's grace and cleansed by his love, while shown the errors of our ways by his vast creative potential. 

Thus, the religious and spiritual traditions paint a vivid picture in our minds. Compared to a public school education, which leaves us an accidental birth in a universe of coincidences that lead to life and this day. We are not even good stewards of our resources, having no ark emergency plan to provide for our neighbors when disaster strikes, including floods, fires, and famine. We are not even preserving all the life forms on our planet, with the destruction of natural habitats causing the loss of species. We could certainly do much better as well as much worse.