“Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint, […] Take away the complaint, […] and the harm is taken away” [10].
And so, everything depends on our thoughts, on our attitudes towards the people, subjects and phenomena that surround us. It is precisely our thoughts, values and convictions, i.e. our worldview, rather than material conditions, that defines the quality of our life.
Another German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788—1860), was among those who share the sensible beliefs of Gotthold Lessing. He writes:
“There is one misconception at the root of all problems – it is the belief that we are born to be happy.”
But Shopenhauer’s words went unheard; as a rule people only hear what they want to hear.
For this reason the ideas of their countryman Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900) received wide acceptance throughout the world. Among his ideas is the concept of suicide as an escape from difficult situations. He claims, that if happiness does not show its smiling face, we can quietly part with life, ridding ourselves of all stress and suffering in a single stroke:
“My death, praise I unto you, the voluntary death, which cometh unto me because I want it.”
The idea of suicide so attracted Nietzsche that he actually poeticized it:
“…Do I go out like a candle, which is not blown out by the wind, but palls, having spent itself; a burnt-out candle? Or in the end, do I blow myself out, so as not to burn low?”
Could even the great Nietzsche write in ignorance? And why not? Who added him to the list of great philosophers? This is unclear, but what is well known is that Nietzsche spent the last twenty years of his life suffering heavily from physical and psychological ailments. It was in precisely this period that he wrote his great philosophical works. What else can we expect from a man sick in both mind and body but hymns to death’s sweet deliverance? That deliverance, by the way, finally came to the philosopher in a psychiatric ward.
We have already noted the results of our own research regarding “spiritual questions” among our students. Their level of knowledge was nothing to scoff at. Now let’s take a look on the world level; what do people believe in and what do they know of the global questions regarding their existence? Let us begin our review in the Unites States, the country with the greatest number of universities scientific institutions and the greatest amount of financial investment in education. However, as it turns out, all these universities and investments are ineffective at enlightening people about the global questions of their existence. An analytical report from Gallup International paints a striking picture of American ignorance regarding what goes on beyond the boundaries of traditional science. The following results were received by Gallup as the result of phone interviews with 1,002 people over the age of 18 during June of 2005:
59% do not believe in extrasensory abilities;
68% do not believe in ghosts;
69% do not believe in telepathy;
74% do not believe it is possible to look into the future or the past;
79% don’t believe it is possible to contact the souls of the dead;
80% do not believe that souls are reborn into new bodies after death (reincarnation).
Only 1% of Americans simultaneously believe in all the above phenomena, and 27% do not even believe in one of them! And this despite the fact that all these phenomena are confirmed and proven by thousands of experiences and experiments and are written about in hundreds of books! But, as it turns out, people prefer comics, detective novels and trashy novels to such books.
Research into such questions in Western Europe and in Russia yielded similar results.
The Gallup Center’s statements regarding the number of people who believe in God and spiritual life after death are of similar interest. It would seem that these numbers should coincide – all religions speak of the immortal soul – but look for yourself at the results of their polls:
What God is it that people believe in if they deny the existence of life after physical death?
We took an interest in similar research carried out by other organizations and received several other facts. 121,215 people from all over the world took part in internet-surveys regarding the question “Do you Believe in God” on the site www.yesnogod.com. Here is how their votes were divided:
As you can see, the number of believers is significantly less than in the Gallup Center research.
In June of 2006, on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Germany, a German sociological institute conducted a poll in which only 50% of respondents indicated a belief in God. At the same time, according to statistics 65% of Germans officially belong to either the Roman Catholic or one of various Protestant churches. Does it follow that 15% of Germans belong to the church but do not believe in God?
We began to sort through these contradictions by carrying out research among our students, and revealed that all the above mentioned statistics are unreliable; not one of them reflects the real state of affairs. Here’s why.
In responding to the proposed questions with a monosyllabic “yes” or “no,” each person saw in the answer their own understanding of the given question, an understanding which turned out, under detailed questioning, to be either incredibly vague or completely absent. And so, including themselves among believers in God were people who have never read the Bible (such people constituted 60%), who do not observe the majority of their religion’s tenets (82%), who do not go to confession (99%), who know nothing about the life of even one saint (93%) and who even have a very incomplete understanding regarding the life of Jesus Christ (75%). Even the “Lord’s Prayer” could be recited by only 15% of those who responded as “believers.”
Those who did observe religious ceremonies couldn’t explain their content, origins or significance for the development of the soul. “Believers” did not even know the very core of Christian teaching, couldn’t explain what it means “to turn the other cheek,” Christ’s command to “love your enemies,” or the phrase “blessed are the poor in spirit.” There were few who could even list Christ’s commands from the Sermon on the Mount, not to speak of regularly applying them to their lives. But the saddest result of our research was that many people’s very understanding of God turned out to be alarmingly primitive. Most people imagined God as some sort of entity that constantly fixes us in his field of vision and carefully tallies good and bad deeds so that after each person’s death they can be called to account for their actions. Such an image is very similar to that which reined among our ancestors hundreds and thousands of years ago.
Many people counted themselves among Christians simply on the basis that they sometimes attend church. Others did it just to feel “like everyone else,” in case the people around them primarily consisted of such “believers.” A few were sincerely convinced that to consider oneself a Christian and to call oneself a believer on the survey it was enough to simply not kill, not steal and attend church on major holidays.
People who considered themselves atheists also did not shine with knowledge about even one of the questions directed at them. “I don’t believe, and that’s it!”