I walk into a room, the first of a seemingly infinite series of interconnected rooms.
There are three people.
The first says "I believe in god". He defines his god and its nature based upon his understanding of his holy scriptures.
The second person says "I don't believe in your god", and gives his reasons.
The third says "I am not sure whether to believe in your god or not."
I pass through the 3000+ rooms in which the same discussion takes place with the different sects of christianity being represented. Then I pass through the rooms in which all the sects of the worlds religions are having the same discussion.
I do wonder at this point whether the concept of godness isn't the same for all of them, but they don't accept this.
Finally I walk into a room and the first person says "I believe in Goodness" rather than god.
I then walk through all the rooms in which all the abstractions I can and can't think of are discussed.
Is there an end or an exit? No - you are stuck inside your mind until you cease to be. Some though choose to stay in a room - I have not. Some build houses from a choice of the various rooms. Some build hotels, towns, cities, even countries and empires. I, so far, have decided to float outside these rooms.
What happens when you cease to be? - I do not know, but it does not bother me.
Thank you, take a bow!
It's just simpler in everyday life to say "I don't believe in God" rather than "I don't believe in
your God".
This has not been an instant realisation for me, but the result of years worth of study and involvement with Christianity. Just like in a court hearing, there are often not irrefutable facts from which to draw conclusions, but (in my opinion) there IS enough evidence with words being changed through translations, whole books being eliminated, the very nature of the divinity of Jesus being decided upon by a council three hundred-plus years after his death- well, there's enough evidence of the intention of MAN here to give serious pause.
Then there's the evidence of how Christianity has been
applied. Had it not been for one holy war after another, and being among the largest causes for discrimination, hipocrisy and hatred, I might try harder to see the benefit. It seems it only makes people feel better about themselves by feeling badly toward others. It's probably great if you're not a nigger, fag or woman, or a combination of those ungainly categories. Most religions make it very comfortable to be a MAN in the majority race of where it's practised.
Spiker, I fail to understand why you seem so determined to force the issue that not believing in a creator requires a faith. That seems an absurdity. Oh, I understand on a verbal level that you are trying to prove opposites, but words are not numbers, and direct opposites just aren't true verbally. When most people say "God", they are referring to a personification that has been familiarised through a Holy text. Their God has humanesque traits, desires, feelings, opinions and thoughts. That whole concept I find easily dismissable. Now, if you're talking about "the set of all things about the creation of our world about which we do not know as of yet" and you're calling that God, then obviously, I couldn't disagree with that. To abstract it further, if you are opining that there is an individual force that is beholden to natural law which caused the creation of the planet, then I would say I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude. The reason you are frustrated is that no one is dumb enough to take your bait. You can't force people to say something they don't believe, just so you can shoot down their beliefs, and that's what you are trying to do.
You can't prove a negative- you never can. Absence of proof is still not proof of absence, but until there is tangible evidence of a creator, AND an agreement among "believers" about what exactly it is they believe in, I see no reason to identify myself as part of a group-think for personal comfort.
That is how I see religions- all of them. They provide people with a set of directions on how to live life "right". It's scary to take a trip without a map, so I understand the reason why this concept is so popular, but literally thousands of religions have existed before, and I find it extremely audacious of people who, just because THEY are living NOW, think that their beliefs in the supernatural are the really, really REAL truth, but everyone else's were just stories. Nigga, please.
Take fables. They usually contain an element of truth, that is to say a moral truth. The characters aren't important, but the moral of the story is. I feel the same way about the Bible. Jesus lived in a time where some fairly pronounced corruptions had infiltrated the church, and he was mad about it. He was mad enough to speak out, and tell people "We can do better". Hundreds of years later, it became convenient for organised fucktards to flesh out the story, and get their stories straight once and for all, for all of posterity. Was Jesus a Supreme Being? Depends on what you mean. I doubt he had "supernatural powers" any more than did Gandhi, Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Galileo, DaVinci, Einstein, or any of the other great names we know from History.
Evidence is all around me. I know thousands of people, and none of them can turn water into wine without going through a process. However, I know a tiny bit about the Jewish faith (not much), and I understand what apocalyptic writing is, and how allegory was used throught their history to make a point.
When people choose to eliminate the facts of how and why these stories were written, in favor of the current opinion- THAT'S an absurdity, and I simply refuse to participate. If people have so little respect for their own faith that they don't even bother to investigate and find out even the very basics about how their religion came to be, then they certainly deserve no respect from me. I respect someone's
rights to hold whatever opinion they choose, but if they expect me to respect their actual opinions, well all I can say is- I won't care more about
your faith than you do.
