Musings

 A child was told by his dear mom
That “God made the whole world.
From oceans wide to skies of blue
All things from him unfurled.”
 
The boy remembered his mom’s words
When he grew to a man
Marv’ling at his Lord’s creation –
The work of divine hands
 
When one day at his place of work
A naysayer cried out:
“There is no God, what is – just IS!
CHANCE has molded our route!”
 
At this the man took great offense
And bellowed to the fool
“You’re wrong! My God formed everything,
With just his hands as tools.”
 
“Really now,” the blasphemer said
 a grin smeared ‘cross his face
“I’ll bet you think you’ll go to heav’n,
Your “God” your saving grace?”
 
“That’s right! I will! I’ll meet my God,
from whom all things were made!
And you’ll be damned for doubting him,
Remember what I’ve said!”
 
As he grew old, with death drawn nigh
The righteous man did wait,
Ready to take his final breaths –
To pass the pearly gates
 
His old heart slowed, his limbs grew numb
His weary eyes shut tight.
“I’ll soon join my Lord at his left,
his blessed son at right.
 
Thank you, Lord! I’ve made it here!
In heav’n now I stand!”
He then stretched out his feeble arm
To shake his Master’s hand.
 
The touch he felt was dry and cold,
The man retreated fast.
“Ah, here you are,” the being said,
“We have met at long last.
 
“My name is Probability -
Through me all events pass,
I calculate the ‘if’ of things,
The first down to the last.”
 
“Absurd! You lie! There is no way!”
The man managed to gasp
“My God on High rules ev’rything”
The Truth he could not grasp.
 
Just then another figure came,
‘Twas introduced as such:
“This is my brother – Reasoning
(Beware, he thinks too much).”
 
“Too much thought? Impossible,”
Said Being number two,
“For it is thought which allows us
To come to see what’s true.
 
“You see my child there is no God,”
He spoke towards the man,
“There is only what IS, that IS
Besides, He’d make things bland…
 
“You will concur, the place you left,
A wondrous little rock?
It’s wonders came in slow succession
Each step a building block.
 
“From coming of the universe,
To developing man,
The PROCESS holds intrinsic beauty -
Much more than MAGIC can.”
 
“Infinitely improbable,
for things to be made so!
Only God could form such beauty,
The Voice which told light ‘Go!’”
 
 
“You attribute all that is
To “God” upon a throne,
Is not the fact that what is - IS
More marv’lous on its own?”
 
 
 
 
 

Why am I in the body that I am in? Why is that I can only be conscious with respect to MY body?  Perhaps one would answer: “because that’s the body you’re in.” But why?  From the inside looking out, my consciousness, my human sentience, is disembodied. I seem to have a body because my mind, which is the throne of my consciousness, is told so by my eyes and by the nervous system, which translates these sensations into ideas….Ideas that I perceive and rationalize, justifying my belief that I exist. That my fleshless persona exists.

This isn’t a serious question. I know the answer, and it’s not glamorous.  I am in my body because I am my body.  Beyond my fleshy body, I am not.  All that I know as real, all that I perceive, all that I experience, is what my body tells my mind. Quite frankly, this is another stretch in human thought, because the body includes the mind…. However, the great “I”, that is - my consciousness, is located in a body.  And one body only.  Thus, the question posed as “Why am I in the body that I am in?” is not meant to be answered directly, but only subtly.  The answer is, “there is no ‘I’”. Only a hectic mass of congealed atoms that have spontaneously (if spontaneity constitutes millions of years…) formed a being faintly aware that it IS.

theblisslessnihilist:

Short of Genocide, Anarchy is the quickest, most efficient way of arriving at the inevitable.

-Me

Suffering can be defined as a state of prolonged anguish and privation, or the condition of pain or distress.   Or, namely, the planet Earth.  It can be safely presumed that all human beings encounter one form of suffering or another at some point in their lives.  However, in a world of religious belief and faith, one must eventually ask, “Where is God in all of this?”  As I look around my own neighborhood and city, and see poverty, murder, homelessness, broken families, and illness, I am forced to wonder why and how a God of mercy, love, and compassion could allow such pain.  Frankly, reasons given both in the Bible and in church have yet to even barely convince me that the suffering on Earth is somehow condoned, but, I daresay, not willed by God.  It makes what amounts to nearly, but not quite, zero sense to me.  To further promote what could be considered my “stand”, we’ll begin at the very beginning - if it could even be called that…

From most sources, God is defined as having no beginning and no end, with an infinite or “undefined” lifespan.  My first question, though somewhat trivial, is why would such an infinite and everlasting God endeavor to create such a fleeting world of sinful people? (He knew they would be sinful, so this is a fair statement in the eyes of a person thinking logically.)  He knew that the way in which He would create the world would lead to widespread suffering because He is all knowing, yet He decided to keep this plan and bring it into existence.  What can I take away from this understanding?  Did God want us to suffer? Was it in His infallible plan? Or is His plan not infallible, and are we misconceiving this God?  In any case, I digress.
Some may say, “God doesn’t cause suffering, he only allows it to happen, and it’s the result of our free will.”  Wait, wait, wait! Free will? With an omniscient, omnipotent God?  At this point I am utterly confused, spewing what can only be described as a blithering stream of babble from what I had previously called an eloquent tongue.  The Free Will Paradox is, and always has been, undeniably present.  God created the world, and as a sentient being without the capacity for random decisions and actions (He is, after all, omniscient), He MUST have known, by the very definition of the word omniscience, EVERYTHING that would or would not happen.  Therefore, logically, because He knew what would happen, and acts with this knowledge, He chooses for it to happen.  And, because “what will happen” is, namely, all of creation, one can come to the conclusion that he chooses the outcome and/or events that take place during the existence of his creation, completely annihilating the case for free will.  So, God knows we’re going to suffer and chooses this anyway?  To avoid conflicts of interest and emotions, I will leave this question unanswered.

Some may argue that human beings deserve to suffer and that suffering is our fault.  Well, so be it.  However, if God is the creator of everything, then absolutely everything can be traced back to him.  This includes our wrongdoings.  Due to what could most definitely not be called a coincidence,  each and every case seems to go through a cycle of reasoning, eventually questioning either God’s power and abilities, or His very existence.  I have tried time and again to fit suffering, pain, death, murder, torture of innocent children, and war into a reasonable place in what could be God’s eternal plan, but to no avail.  Maybe I am stepping into a realm of danger, where questioning the existence of God is sinful. Or, am I simply proving a point, denying the validity of the argument of sinfulness in the first place, with a denial of the validity of a Christian God? I suppose this is where most Christians leave “it” to “faith” and the mystery of Godly mysteries?  Once again, to avoid conflicts of interest and emotions, I will choose to omit my personal opinion.

Whether God chooses suffering or not, the fact remains that suffering exists, and people need to be comforted sometimes to make it through.  Personally, I have absolutely no idea how to do this, and my highly questioning, and at times, bitterly cynical view of religious explanations may very well aggravate the issue (and the person).  Because of this, I choose only to sympathize, not to explain or motivate.  “I know how you feel”, “I’ve been there before”, “It’ll get better.”  That’s all I have to share, and the simplest reason is that I don’t why there is suffering in the world, and I believe it’s very fair to say that everyone else struggles with the answer to this problem.  The book of Job undoubtedly offers ONLY questions in my opinion, with the only hint of resolve coming when Job receives his previous possessions ten-fold at the end of the story.  On the other hand, this does very little to efface from my mind the images of the very real and very fresh depictions of torture and murder that take place in the very same book.

To come to a very unsatisfying conclusion, I will say that if there is a God as is mentioned in the Bible, He is responsible for everything that happens.  From the creation of the fallen angel of evil, to the original sin, He is responsible.  A general law of the universe is that all objects are a product of their environments, and no thing comes from nothing.  This brings us finally to a quote that changed my outlook entirely:  “Is God willing to prevent suffering, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh suffering? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call Him God?”

Ever since I was born I have been led, without any input from me, to a medium-sized church on an old corner in downtown Savannah.  Sunday morning and Tuesday and Thursday evenings.  I’ve spent roughly 4,680 hours in that church. That’s 195 days of sitting, listening, participating in what amounts to little more than a ritual.  “But wait!”, says the avid Christian churchgoer, “It’s not just a ritual, it’s a part of your walk with God!”  And now, as a rebellious and bitterly cynical 16 years old I ask: “What walk, with which God?”  I am a skeptic.  An agnostic, borderline nihilist, sacrilegious, skeptic.  I am a living, breathing contrast to the very essence of “moral” society in the country in which we live.  The best part is, I’m pretty sure I’m right.
I suppose the story begins in early summer of 2009.  The Benedictine Military School football team was just beginning summer workouts at the Anderson-Cohen Weightlifting Center, and as a member of the team, so was I.  During this period, I had a lot of free time on my hands between these 3pm practices and being with the team everyday it was only natural that I spend time with them often.  One particular member of our team, whom I will refer to as Don in order to preserve his anonymity, seemed to relate to me on an intellectual level beyond that of any other one of my friends.  Don was, and is, very smart, and his ideologies were extremely thought-provoking.  Because of this, I was drawn to him, and began to spend time speaking with him and discussing life.

“What denomination of Christianity do you belong to?”
“Pentecostal.”
“Ha, wow, so are you like a Fundamentalist or something?”
“Explain…what do you mean by that?”

We talked about religion mostly, bantering back and forth.  My father is a preacher, his father the pastor and founder of the church that I belong to.  Needless to say, I was all but entirely adamant about my beliefs at the time, fiercely rejecting what seemed to be implications of a “Godless” existence.

“Bradley, I hate to break it to you, but there is no God.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do you know there IS?”

Don systematically tore my faith apart, giving reason after reason, case after case for a world without a God.  It was amazing.  After this conversation I scoured the internet, looking not for evidence against a God, but for one.  I wanted to believe.  I wanted for the years of teaching and preaching I had received to be less than utterly pointless, which was exactly what it was beginning to appear like as I began to actually think about the world around me.  You see, I had not begin to really think until presented with an idea that diametrically opposed those ideas that my very existence had been composed of.  My entire life up until that point was built around my religion.  Every step I took, every breath that I would breathe, and every word that I uttered was supposed to be to the glory of a God that I could not prove even existed.  I forced myself away from this lifestyle of blind following, just for a moment, and came back to reality with a sense of enlightenment that I had never felt before.  I felt as though weights were lifted off my shoulders.  Pressures to do or act a certain way in order to please what seemed like an almost cold, merciless God.  I could finally THINK, and this brought about some scary revelations. 

“Dude, welcome to the club.  Can you finally see what I was trying to tell you? It just doesn’t make sense! There is no God.”
“Man, I understand now, but I’m still not sure…I’m questioning everything now.  Thanks a lot, bro…”
“Ha-ha! Don’t mention it.”

This God of the Pentecostal Christian church, when examined outside of the ridiculously cult-like spotlight of what is known as “faith”, seemed to suddenly take on a new light.  My God turned into a killer.  A wishy-washy, hateful guy with Little Man Syndrome, shooting bolts of lightning at people from his perch in the sky.  A kid with a magnifying glass, if you will.  The stark contrast between what is preached as his word in the Bible and the undeniable evidence against his existence that I observed everyday of my life in the real world was shocking.     
As the summer passed, I grew more and more interested in disproving religion of all kinds, as I was almost affirmative that no God existed.  At least not in the sense that human culture as a whole believes.  Every day I made it a point to pray for something in particular.  “Okay, God. Here I am.  Now, If you’re really up there, I want you to write the letter ‘A’ in my physics textbook this morning.  Just a simple ‘A’ on the front cover…Hey, you made man, right? A simple ‘A’ should be a piece of cake.”  Needless to say, no ‘A’.  Or ‘B’.  Or glass of water in my locker.  Jeez, this God of mine is sure a weakling isn’t he?  It was very hard for me to believe that hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years can believe the same thing.  Respective religions during modern times have gone, for the most part, unchecked, unchanged, unquestioned, untested, for over 10 millennia.  The scariest part, and, I daresay, the most ridiculous, is not the idea itself, but the fact that the vast majority of what can be considered an intelligent people do not care to think for themselves enough to reject this flawed ideology. It is indeed, amazing.

“Dude, have I ever told you the story about the caged monkeys?”
“No, but why do I get the feeling you are going to?”
“‘Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs underneath it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After awhile, another monkey makes the attempt with the same result - all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will prevent it. Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace that monkey with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and another attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another one of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. the previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every  time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they are not permitted to climb the stairs or why or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know, that’s the way it’s always been done around here.’  Bradley, that is religion. That is humankind. That‘s what you call, ‘policy’.”
“Wow.”

Atheism is not necessarily a product of skepticism.  As I have previously said, I would love to be proved wrong. I WANT someone to make me believe in God again.  However, I am all but certain that this will not happen.  There is simply nothing out there that can explain why innocent people are forced to die everyday.  Nothing can justify the unanswered prayer of an amputee whose number one wish is to run with his son again.  No one can force me to accept that a God who bases his word on love for his creations, will slay thousands of people with a tsunami that he created.  It won’t happen.  I will simply ask my questions.  I will stand firmly on the idea, nay, the fact, that I am human animal.  A product of my environment, not the cause of it.  I was, as far as I can possibly know, not made specifically for the purpose of fulfilling an ultimate spiritual destiny, put into place by an omniscient and omnipotent creator. 
Don and I speak at least once a week about the fallacy that is modern religion, and each time I believe I come away a little more like him, as far as thinking goes.  This is not to say that his ideas are perfect, but they are certainly reasonable and more logical than much of what I have been taught as a Fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian.  As much as I wish to believe I am the child of a huge, invisible-yet-present God, this is simply not the case. I am but an Earthly organism of the mammalian subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, wandering through this life in search of answers.  Most of which, I will not find.

So yeah, life is a major pain.  But here’s the real bitch of a problem, what the hell do you have to show for it when it’s over?

Average American (rough estimates):

—12/13 years of school to earn a high school diploma.

—Maybe college?

—Working your ass off to feed yourself when you get that “transitional” job right out of school

—Working your ass off to feed yourself and your spouse and kid when you get that “permanent” job after trying for years to work your way up the corporate ladder.  (Though little is known about this “ladder”, it appears to be a bitch to climb, and when you do make it, you’ve worked so hard that you’re a gray-headed prick with a grudge against the world.)

—Working your ass off to put your child through college and simultaneously save for retirement.  (Eventually retiring to only 65% of your salary, falling social security allotment, and the appearance of liver spots.)

Now, after all this, what do you have?

Some positive responses:

—Influenced others’ lives. (How sweet!)

—Shaped the future by providing your child with an education.  (Model citizen!)

Now, for a few ANSWERS:

—After all that working your ass off, it finally falls off.  Oh wait, it doesn’t, it just droops like a son of a bitch when you get so old that the meat holding all together decides to take a few years vacation.

—You are left with an empty house, an old, raspy dog with arthritis medication more expensive than your own, and a permanent, pungent aura of bengay and eucalyptus cough-drops surrounding you.

—If you’re smart, you realize you haven’t actually DONE shit, because when you die, you’re nothing, and those that you have “helped”, will also die.

Consider the last point.  Speed up time a little in your mind.  Start with one man.

-Birth

-Life of good works and benevolence

-Birth of a benefactor

-Death of original man

-Benefactor BENEFITS from original man, follows in footsteps, taking his place

-The cycle repeats.

What has happened? What’s the point? WHO HAS GAINED ANYTHING?  A bunch of guys lived and died, with a lot of tears, pain, work, sex, and religious blithering in between.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not reject the actuality of life, and I live and work and try to be “good” like the rest of you. But what difference does all of it make? More than that, upon this realization of the futility of life, why do we continue to strive for its betterment?

If I knew, maybe I wouldn’t spend time thinking so damned much.