Do You?

Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Allah? Do you believe in Buddha? Do you believe in Wotan? Do you believe in Brahman? Do you believe in Zeus? Do you believe in Raven? Do you believe in Set? Do you believe in Marduk?

Do you believe in an afterlife? Do you believe in Heaven? Do you believe in Purgatory? Do you believe in Hell? Do you believe in the Underworld? Do you believe in reincarnation?

Do you believe Jesus was born of a virgin? Do you believe Jesus turned water into wine? Do you believe Jesus walked on water? Do you believe Jesus came back from the dead? Do you believe people can walk on water? Do you believe people can come back from the dead? Do you believe people can be deceived?

Do you believe the Bible is the word of God? Do you believe the Koran? Do you believe the Upanishads? Do you believe the Tao?

Do you believe God has been around forever? Do you believe the Universe has? Do you believe your soul has? What about your atman?

Do you believe in witches, ghosts, and zombies? Do you believe in ESP, telepathy, and teleportation? Do you believe in past life regression and visions of the future?

Do you believe that the idea of God is substantial to explain the origin of the cosmos? Do you believe God knows everything you do? Do you believe God cares? Do you believe you're important? Do you believe that our galaxy is just one of billions and billions? Do you believe that the Earth is much older (4.4 Billion years older) than humans? Do you believe the Sun revolves around the Earth? Do you believe the Earth is flat? Do you believe dinosaurs and people lived together?

Do you believe Noah saved all the current species of Earth (as well as those that have subsequently gone extinct since) from a flood in his Ark? Do you believe Moses parted the Red Sea? Do you believe that every living thing on Earth (including: e coli, staphylococci, fungi, gray squirrels, red squirrels, angler fish, bass, pike, giraffes, northern pine, red oak, white oak, banana trees, wolf spiders, black widow spiders, coyotes, pugs, pitbulls, bald eagles, tabby cats, etc...) was created by God? Do you believe in Evolution? Do you know what Evolution is? Do you believe God created ever single one of the trillions of planets (and each article of life therein) around the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies in our ever expanding cosmos?

Do you believe in universal good? Do you believe in universal evil? Do you believe in truth? Do you believe in beauty? Do you believe in the Devil? Do you believe God is absolute good? Do you believe God is omniscient? Do you believe God is omnipotent?

Do you believe everything you're told? Do you believe everything the Pope says? Do you believe the Pope is ordained by God? Do you believe George Bush is? Do you believe that someone ordained by God is fallible? Do you believe man is fallible? Do you believe the Pope is a man? Do you believe George Bush is?

Do you believe life is sacred? Do you believe killing is right? Do you believe killing for your God is? Do you believe in the supernatural? Do you believe that God is unknowable? Do you believe the universe is unknowable?

Do you believe religion is good? Do you believe you're good? Do you believe anything? Do you believe in humanity?

Do you feel comfortable with your answers? Do you feel like you have everything explained? Do you feel scared? Do you feel excited? Does God know you feel this way?

In Defense of All Life

I can scarcely muster the energy these days to argue the point of the non-existence of God anymore. It's insulting to me to have to enter into debate about it frankly, but yet the majority of the world still prescribes to it in one form or another. I would be willing to let the whole thing go if it wasn't for that fact. Do not misunderstand, I have a tremendous amount of respect for culture, tradition, mythology, history, ethics, sociology, and ritual, but false belief I have a harder time accepting. It IS FALSE! God is the end of the argument. God is the destructor of science, and the wrecker of thought. Theologists have been there at every turn in the development of human endeavor saying, "We should not venture there, this is the business of God." And then we discovered that the Earth was round and that it rotated round the sun, and that we inhabit just one of billions and billions of universes and we aren't even the center of our own, and that bacteria and viruses, not demons are what ail us, and that you can light a house with electrical current. According to God, according to Theologians, we should not have ventured into any of these areas. WHY!? There has got to be something deeper than just belief that makes everyone throw God at every mystery they happen upon. You'd think after nothing but a history of pushing God aside, we would realize that he's not going to stick anywhere. God is maddeningly unnecessary. I am running out of energy to invest into continually decrying faith in God or religion. Please direct your toughest questions at me whenever they arise. Call me, e-mail me, leave comments here or wherever. I will gladly field all affronts to the natural world.

Death

So what of death? Why bother with it is my outlook. What will it be like? Well, probably exactly like the Battle of 1812, or Life under Constantin the Great, or the Great Schism, or when the first mitochondria crawled inside the walls of another cell, or the emergence of the first atoms, or how about the Big Bang. Do you remember any of these events? But if you are composed of a persistent soul or energy you must! But more than likely, all the history before your birth was an infinite instantaneous nothingness. A void so profound that blackness can't even come close to describing it for blackness connotes SOMETHING. There will be no pain after we die. There will be no joy either. Do not be upset, you wont. You wont even not care. You wont do ANYTHING. Back to the infinitesimal void whence we came. Not personalities, or thoughts, or dreams, or souls, just the sum of our cognitive properties. Does that sound bleak? Oh too bad because we've got a whole fucking life here begging to be addressed. To echo the words of the great Jim Watson "Gee your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose." "But I'm anticipating having a good lunch."

God Proof

At what point does the "God Hypothesis" become such an adamantine solution? God, by very definition, cannot be observed. It IS a matter of faith. If we are arguing the origin of existence, the universe, time, etc. where does God enter in? Is the origin of God beyond historical scrutiny? If there can be no evidence for God's existence, then humans must have created God (as they invariably did). If humans created God then God CANNOT have created humans.

Look at this historic background of any religion, beneath the theology (which is a polite term for mythology) you will find sociological origins. Humans. What became of all the humans before the advent of the Abrahamic Gods? They could not POSSIBLY have worshiped, a Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu God, because those Gods all have origins WITHIN human history.

Under historic scrutiny NO religious belief will hold up. Period. If you bend over backward to reverse engineer an intangible meta-god then you only succeed in creating a different problem. The only way you can arrive at such a conclusion is to reduce the notion of God to a point where he cannot be touched by logic, and this has no religious or historic backing what so ever. Can you be a Christian and believe in a God you have personally created to be unassailable by conventional reason? It is not for me to decide. I am not a Christian.

If magic exists, logic cannot.

If magic, religion, spirituality exists, then everything we know, everything we observe, everything we do would be false. This is true for religious and non-religious people alike. The natural world could not hold together if a SUPER-natural world held power over it. Death would not exist if God could prevent it. Time would be obsolete if it could be reversed. Life would be pointless if it wasn't what we were living for. There IS ONLY the natural. There IS ONLY this. There IS ONLY this one. It is logically IMPOSSIBLE to maintain anything else. Anyone, intelligent or otherwise, harboring any beliefs to any supernatural extent is lying; to themselves and to the natural world which is passing them by every second of every day they spend in the dark.

Fire Breath

I'm tired of being silent. I'm going to make noise in a sea of noise. If what I am good at is spouting fiery philosophical rhetoric, then so be it. No one has to read this, but I, of course, believe everyone SHOULD. If all we have to do is anything, then up until this point I haven't done much. Am I strong enough to overcome weakness? Are you?

Readers are encouraged to call me out on my bullshit and I, in turn will turn their bullshit around on them via more of my own personal brand of bullshit. I truly and honestly do not care. I hate entirely to much in this world to be bothered by restraint. Do your worst and I promise to respond in kind. Let us just dedicate ourselves to the furthering of knowledge and understanding. If we do away with ego, and decency, and sensitivity, we will all gain much perspective.