Isn't That Special?

"Issues with God".... well, that was an attention grabber; my issues are with the Bible, but i cannot separate the Christian God, Jehovah, from the Bible, and since that book creates, for me, such a ridiculous picture of the universe i can only reject it and it's God.

I have my own God Almighty that is secure in it's own might that it does not require worship. It just wants to be left alone, and doesn't give a crap about our American football games. Live your life, enjoy it if you can, and let other people enjoy theirs as they wish as long as they are not hurting anyone; that is my God's philosophy.

I speak for myself, of course, and since centuries of thinking by greater minds than my own has not produced a definitive answer to the question of the legitimacy of creation, the flood, the burning bush, or even Jesus.... then why can't i have a say?

"But the Pope....my minister....countless televangelists....even some scientists believe in God."

What makes them so special that we have to believe what they say? What makes their beliefs more believable than mine?

Millions of people have read the Bible and believe, and millions of others have come away from it with doubts. Where does that leave us?

Where we have always been....nowhere.

Grime and Punishment

I don't know about my father's other children from his other wives, but when i came along he'd become devout, and i got at least a couple of good belt whippings, and by "good" i mean bad. That "spare the rod, spoil the child" rubbish he took to heart made his swinging arm all self-righteous.

When the first of our 4 children came along, i had not thought out the best course of action when it came to discipline, i probably thought that my children would be perfect; so when the time came, of course, i had a visceral reaction to my uncontrollable son and took out my belt on a couple of occasions. That made me look back at my childhood and look into modern thinking on discipline and decided that i would never use corporal punishment.

I am now certain that this barbarism sanctioned by the Bible, does no good and is akin to flogging. It only leaves negative effects and i knew that the only chance i had for a normal relationship with my son would be to discipline without humiliation. Once your children know what is expected of them, the rest is maintenance. Strict disciplinarians should not have children, anyway; kids break and lose things, get things dirty, and sticky, and they disobey. It's what they do. God is as strict a disciplinarian as you can get, and look what happened to his children, according to the Bible.

But who wrote these words? That is the question. This "spare the rod, spoil the child" and this story of God's punishment for A&E's sin, who wrote this? Was it our creator, our supposedly loving Father?

     "Dude, listen, i'm busy, got a universe to run, maybe several universi, and you just know they're
going to be spinning in different directions. So, I want you to write the story of man and Earth.... I know, I know, we got off on the wrong foot, a bit of shaky start there, but this book will be the start of the healing; it'll be huge, you'll see. Here are the basic facts.... Write!"

Or was it man's imagination, barbaric, superstitious, often small-minded but imaginative man? The machinations of thinkers concerned with the growing number of cities popping up, "children" that needed guidence, control. Because when a large number of people get together they become a force, and it's own morality, unlike small bands of nomads.

A Shift of Mind

The other night i was awakened by my shaking bed and a low rumbling which i imagined could have traveled from the time of the woolly mammoths; this was my first earthquake.

Actually experiencing this natural occurrence, which was a mild tremor, thankfully, forced me to find a place for it in my imaginary realm in which i am the reluctant king.

So i, as we often must, go back to the begining, back to A&E in the Garden of Eden. There were no earthquakes then; how could such a frightning, destructive, and sometimes deadly occurrence exist in a perfect world? And i think we have established that God gave A&E this perfect world for them to multiply and fill.

Then the unthinkable happened, A&E disobeyed, and it was time to pay. We all know what we had and what was taken away. But wait! God had one more trick up his sleeve in order to make mankind suffer; God rearranges these clumps of rock that we live on so once in a while they shift and destroy what we have built on them, kill living beings, or at the very least, disrupt our sleep. And you wonder where man gets his imagination.

Volcanos? Well, we all need to let off steam, and it's not like they hide from us.

Life Sentence

Sentences organize stories and ideas. Sentences attempt to explain the world we see and attempt to expose the world we don't. I say "attempt" because sentences do not write themselves, people do, and people are sometimes wrong; and it goes without saying that when we try to explain the untangible, it's just shots in the dark.

My mother got pregnant out of wedlock in the mid 50's, left her home town to travel north to live with a family friend and have my older sister. My father was an alcoholic for many years, which caused him to lose his first wife and children; he made his way north looking for work and eventually dried out. They wound up in the same city both trying to put their lives back together. If not for their misfortune, mom and dad would never have met and had me.

You see, that is me using logic to explain a bit of my world, the bit that explains my coming into it.
Is it true, is that the reason i exist? Maybe, but i could be wrong, had my father not been an alcoholic and mom not gotten pregnant out of wedlock does not mean that i would not have been born to them.
But i may decide that that is my story, it satisfies me, it takes me to the next step in my attempt to make sense of my world. Someone may come along later and provide information to prove my explanation incorrect and a reasonable person will accept it and do a rewrite.

People wrote the books in the Bible to explain their world as they saw it.

Death is Taxing

I'm about as imaginative as the next fellow, i guess, so i can imagine people reading me and thinking: make your point already and shut up. So, i want to try that, but if i fail to make my point, in my estimation, i reserve the right to make further attempts.

I think happiness is the absence of something, rather than the abundance of things like money, food, and sex. That thing is ...FEAR! Happiness is the absence of
fear. The fear that you will not have what you need, and the fear of death--maybe, more specifically dieing a horrible death, but really, is there a good death?

Therefore people have devised ways to deal with that fear. One way is to not think about life, because, inevitably, that would lead to thinking about death; death is part of life, the last part. Blasting music in your ears all day long is a common way to not think about life, staring at your Blackberry phone is another. You can wear a robe, maybe shave your head, and meditate on all that is good, peaceful, and glorious about life and not let anything else in your meditations.

Or, you can accept Jesus into your life with all the promises that come with that acceptance, like heaven. You have to follow the rules, though, it's not a free ride, and some organizations actually let you know exactly what percentage of your income you should contribute.

I'm not saying any of these options don't work or are bad for us, and there are many more; another one that comes to mind is the one where you think of yourself as an artist and free spirit, and you only drink green or white tea, and in your spare time you write essays about how religion is more fantasy than reality. There is just nothing like thinking that you are right to distract a person from the reality of life, which is that it will end.

And that's fine with me because i'm one of those people that firmy believe that death is exactly what the name implies: the end. To me it does not imply transition, next stop: death, you will change buses here, connections going up and....down (sinister laugh).

It's just the end of the line.

The Middle Ages

I have something in common with this planet, i am middle aged. How do i know that Earth is middle aged? Because astronomers know that the sun has burned off half of its life, it should burn another 10 billion years or so, but before it burns itself out and collapses, it will expand; in a million years Earth will become noticeably hotter, and eventually it will become intolerably hot.

They know it will happen because it is happening to stars all around us. Some day our solar system will be just cold, lifeless space in the universe. If i think about it long enough, it begins to worry and sadden  me to think of the people that will be around then. Thats how i think mother Earth with all its inhabitants will come to its natural end.

Some people have come to the conclusion that tomorrow is Judgement Day, the rapture, according to calculations from clues found in the bible. If it comes down to that, i'll stand up straight and accept my judgement like a man, i'm sure God is a fair deity; whatever i get, i'm sure i deserve.

As long as we're here, let me just say one thing on my behalf: i never preached to anyone that God does not exist, i never taught my kids not to believe in God, i taught them to make up their own minds when they had all the facts. Ironicly, i think going to church is a really good way to do that. So....let's all keep that in mind....

The Bad

Some of my favorite villains in literature are Hannibal Lector, Lex Luthor, and the Wicked Witch of the West, but my most favorite has to be Satan. If you read Milton's Paradise Lost you get a better sense of the character, and see where i'm coming from.

Look at what Satan did, he saw what God created and he took a crap on it. I would call it childish if it weren't so evil. He ruined the human race before the starter pistol even went off. People were to enjoy eternal life in paradise, people would be perfection incarnate walking around naked in a perfect world. How cool would that be? I feel that humanity was caught in the middle of this thing between God and Satan and people came out smelling like crap; what did God expect to happen when Satan slithered into the Garden, anyway? People could never be a match for a fallen angel, it was unfair and unjust.

But that's literature, it's meant to stir emotion; and it doesn't have to make complete sense like written history.

I do not admire Satan, i'm just saying he's a good villain. He starts out by doing the worst thing that could be done to the human race, which was to take God away from them, and as if that wasn't enough, he comes back later to mess with people (and Jesus) on an individual basis.

Yes, people and God had a father and child relationship before Satan came along and took A&E's innocence, after that the relationship was more an employer-employee; more a warden-prisoner relationship. Life on earth became a nightmare with the threat of eternal damnation looming over people.

What i don't understand is why the animal kingdom received the very same treatment that A&E did, what did animals do to deserve that? Animals have diseases, go blind, suffer the loss of offspring just like people, and for no reason at all, seems to me.

It makes more sense to me that animals suffer just like us because we are just big brained animals. Or animals are just hairy, unambitious people, however you want to look at it.

Age of Atheism

I no longer wear a black letter "A" on my chest to show the guilt and shame of atheism (i had to make the "A" black because scarlet is taken); I actually never thought of myself as an "atheist", but only because of the connotations that the word has for me: a person who scoffs at religion and God.  I think of myself as an unbeliever, and i like to think that i was born that way and that it does not define who i am, just how i look at the world. It is how my mind copes with the realization that i, as all living creatures, have been dropped on this wet rock that is hurling through space at a zillion m.p.s.

How you look at the world is something that occurs in your own mind, and if you wish it to be a private matter that should be an option, but here in Texas
people place great importance on believing. Well meaning christians will not let you get away with "i'm just not very religious," they smell euphemism like a horse smells fear. If you live in Texas or any of the southern states, eventually one has to deal with the issue and i didn't deal with it well for a long time; i walked around with the stigma of a black letter "A" on my chest for the shame of the unbeliever. How dare i not believe in God the Almighty. Obviously i have never been in a foxhole or a falling plane.

Getting over that stigma came along when i started seeing my 50th birthday looming on life's horizon. It's like when you're turning 8, maybe 9, and you admit to your parents that you know about the tooth fairy, giving up the cash in order to fit better into this new age you're growing into.

I'm entering the age when the benefits of playing along no longer interest me. I'm going to die sooner than later at this point; there is no afterlife to look forward to for me, and that's okay it just means that this next age should mean something and there's no time to play pretend anymore. I am what i am; actually, i am what God made me, just like he made a perfect angel named Lucifer who fell in love with himself and tripped over his own overflowing pride. God created me because if i had been born in a country where God is not taught, then i would not have a God to not believe in.

The Perception of Life

Theology works when everyone in the community believes. It's like driving on the right side of the road, it doesn't really matter which side of the road we drive on, left or right, what matters is that we all drive on the designated side for the system to work.

Paper money works because we have all agreed to abide by the monetary system,
otherwise these notes are worthless. It's ironic that these notes have "in God we trust" printed on them, because we are putting blind faith in our government that they, the issuer, will forever be able to back up these notes. I'm not critizicing here, just making comparisons to theology.

I've said before: God is the collective human spirit and all the good that comes from people. And God is like the Sun in that people, from the time we began to reason, starting about 100,000 years ago, have unanimously felt its power, have respected it, and have correctly determined that we would not exist without it. To go from the Sun to God is not a difficult leap.

"Misinterpretation creates misunderstanding, and misunderstanding creates mythology," i saw that written in chalk on a sidewalk in Austin Tx. An example of this would be people, standing on a shore, looking out on the vast ocean going far out there but ending at the horizon, so one person says, "the world must drop off  into a void right there!" And another person, who happened to have a crush on the first guy, says "makes perfect sense to me." Encourages by this, first guy continues to exercises his non-scientific mind and declares, "so let's not go there to investigate, it's dangerous there!"
     "You are like the smartest person, ever!"
     "Gracias, now let's go see what else we can figure out!"

In this world we have things with extrinsic value like cut diamonds, works of art, certain purses, and certain hairstyles. The extrinsic value people have put on the Sun is represented by God. God is the Sun that speaks to us and gives us guidance.