A reflection about religion

It was perhaps when the primitive people first saw lightnings making all their way from the sky, crushing the ground and burning down trees, that the pioneer ideas about a superior power came up.

In fact, it seems that the human mind is already prepared to believe in some kind of god or divinity. "A belief in God is deeply embedded in the human brain, which is programmed for religious experiences, according to a study that analyses why religion is a universal human feature that has encompassed all cultures throughout history." (see reference 1)

So, the question we will answer in this post can be put as follows:

"What might be the aims and the causes for the appearance of religion?"

You, my fellow reader, ought to understand that this post is about religion in general, and not about a particular belief. Also, the ideas developed below are merely scientific approaches of the problem and will not question the veracity of any belief.

If there is one thing we can all be sure about is that people seek happiness. Life is nothing, but a journey to achieve happiness. Even those who seem to prefer pain and suffering, they believe that those sacrifices are a means to reach happiness.

If happiness is the objective, what is the way to get there?

Basically, this is "the question", the question for which us humans have been trying to find an absolute answer, since the very beginning of our species. Religions appear not only to justify the unknown, but also as an attempt to answer that question.

The idea that a religion is a set of dogmas and beliefs is just a superficial definition. It is much more than that. It is a life style, a set of values. This is the real dimension of a religion and it is the attempt of answering the question "how to live my life in order to be happy?"

That is probably why nowadays people seem to run from religion: they are lame and afraid that a particular lifestyle suggested by a religion will not lead them to happiness. People don't run from religion because of its beliefs. Believing is easy. Living is not so easy.

There is a famous definition of atheism: the idea that the universe was nothing and a bunch of nothing exploded and created everything. (makes perfect sense, right?) So, the beliefs are not really the problem.

The main aim of a religion is to show a life-path whose end is happiness.

Then which religion to choose?

The answer to that question is inside of each one of us and is one of the gifts provided by freedom.

References

(1) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains--god-spot-1641022.html

Are we an intersection?

One of my IB Maths assignments was called "How many pieces?" and its purpose was to investigate the maximum number of pieces obtained after we applied n cuts to a t-dimensional object. For example, for the simplest case of a 1-dimensional object (a line), each new cut will lead to one new piece. It was one of the most interesting projects I have complete till now and I have come up with some really challenging ideas. One of them can be put as a simple question:

Are we an intersection?

Imagine a 2-dimensional space. Now imagine two straight lines (1-dimensional objects) intersecting each other. They intersect at one point we call point of intersection and which is a 0-dimensional object.Now follow the same line of thought but in a 3-dimensional space. Imagine two planes (2-dimensional objects) intersecting each other. They intersect at a straight line we will call straight line of intersection and which is a 1-dimensional object.We can extrapolate these results and table them.

Space Dimension	Objects Dimension	Intersection Dimension
2	1	0
3	2	1
4	3	2
5	4	3
...	...	...
n+2	n+1	n

Actually, the fourth row is the important one for this post. Our senses can only detect 3 dimensions, no more, no less, which makes us to believe (even though there is the possibility of that not being the truth) that the Universe is made of 3 dimensions.

If we observe the fourth row of the table, we see that the intersection dimension corresponds to exactly 3 dimensions. And now we reach the main point of this post!

Following this reasoning, the conclusion for this post is:

Our Universe might be the intersection between two four-dimensional Universes, in a fifth-dimensional space.

This thought opens the chance of the existence of other Universes similar to ours, resulting from the intersection of two other fourth-dimensional Universes.

The beginning of a journey...

I have grown up a lot in the past two years. The IB course has given me a totally different perspective of the world we live in and the search for knowledge has become one of my primary aims.

With my head bursting with ideas and theories and all kinds of things, plus loads of interesting conversations with many colleagues, a friend, Miguel, and I decided to create this blog, so as to share our discoveries.

Here we will talk about a great variety of subjects, mainly interesting scientific facts and myths, conjectures about transcendent realities and other curious things that happen.

We hope you will find, in this blog, answers to questions and at least spend some time thinking about the topics presented. We would also be delighted to read your opinions and suggestions.

Best regards!