My Views of Religion

I am a man on science. I believe in what I can see, what can be verified in a lab and that there are laws that govern the Universe. I was not taught to accept this as a child, my parents were neutral on this subject, allowing me to decide for myself what to believe. I didn’t really think much about religion until freshman year of high school, when I saw an episode of the Simpsons in one of my classes (where the school starts teaching creationism instead of Darwinism). Even though this was only a mere cartoon that I was watching, the effects on my life have been profound. In the cartoon, the students take a test about creationism, with questions such as “where do people come from?” and “where did dinosaurs come from?” It was appalling to me that the answers to all of these were ‘God’. I know that this is a dramatization of what creationists think (or at least I hope) as a mechanism to evoke laughter from the audience, but this comes from a very real place. This is what creationists think is true, even when there is overwhelming evidence of the contrary. I then came up with a scenario, that two people are holding a blue book, one is a deeply religious person, and the other is a regular person you found on the street. The religious person opens up the bible to gain knowledge about the blue book, while the normal person looks in the blue book itself. The religious person then finds somewhere in the bible that there cannot possibly be any blue books in the world, so he comes to the conclusion that his eyes are wrong, that perhaps it is a red book and he just discovered that he was in fact color blind. He shows this passage to the normal person, but the normal person does not believe him. He says “I hold in my hands what you claim does not exist. You say that your eyes deceive you when you look upon this book, as well as the rest of all living creatures on this earth. If your eyes deceive you here, why do they not deceive you while you are reading your bible? I know that the book I hold is blue; if I ask anyone else they shall agree with me that my book is blue. I trust my own eyes to gain knowledge of the truth, rather than a single line from a book that has been repeatedly translated over the past several thousand years.” Even though there is no such line in the bible, this scenario proved a point for me. It proved that people believe in what they can see, and what they can feel. We are not so keen on only believing what we have been told. This has been demonstrated over the past several thousand years (primarily in the U.S. where we recently have branched into hundreds of denominations) where various religions form, in which its followers are brainwashed to follow their leader into allowing him to have 10 of your children. These people may believe that this person is ‘The One True God’ (or whatever his title may be), but that is only because they have rejected reality and substituted nonsense in its place. But then, when you take away the father of 86 from this equation, you realize that what you have are the dominant religions of the world. In my opinion (with great emphasis on ‘my opinion’ here), this is brainwashing on a global scale; people being told to believe something that they cannot verify is the ultimate truth of the Universe.
I can understand a need for organized religion in the past, as a way to quench the thirst of (at the time) unattainable knowledge. It was once established fact that the Earth was created in 7 days. Now, we have rocks dated to billions of years ago, and that’s just here on earth. By doing a very simply calculation, we can find that the Universe is about 13.7 billion years old, much older than the 6000 years old proposed by the bible. I have seen for myself how the universe follows rules, I have done the experiment where I have to guess exactly where the ball will land after I shoot it off the ramp, and my equations did not fail me. I factored in the initial velocity, the angles of the ramp, and the height, and the friction of the ramp in order to get the answer that I did. There is no God constant in Newton’s laws. It was not God that put the ball on the X; it was the gravitational attraction of the Earth on the ball. But then I ask myself, “Where did all of these equations come from?” I know that Newton discovered these truths, but he did not create them. Nobody here on Earth created these equations that govern all of nature. For now, the only explanation that we have is that some overseeing force created them, perhaps a God. I am fairly certain, however, that one day people will look back at our time and say “Ha! They actually thought that God created the Universe?!” Just like we look back and say “Ha! They actually thought humans were made out of clay?!” I often call myself an Agnostic Deist, as I don’t believe that we can prove if a God does or does not exist. I have been taught by science to not overlook an idea just because it hasn’t been proven, as it hasn’t been disproven yet either. That is the Agnostic part of me talking. The Deist part, however, has a bit more to say regarding the existence of a God. I will pretty much say that even if a God does exist, s/he does not care about us anymore, if s/he is even aware that we exist. (I use the term God loosely here as ‘the creator’, and nothing more). Even if they are aware of our existence, they can either do nothing to aid us, or have decided to remove themselves from the Universe in order to ensure the laws that govern nature always remain the same.

I would have continued here, but then I realized that I was over the limit of my essay as it was. I may or may not continue this at a later time.

Some things that need to be said

I know that not many people follow my blog. Even my closest friends admit that they neglect to read even the most important posts. I expect the following to be a mostly self reflective rant involving topics that may or may not have been already covered. In which case, don't bother reading it unless you have absolutely nothing better to do.

It doesn't take much for me to start feeling down about myself. It only takes a few minutes of not being preoccupied by a conversation or whatnot before I can start self reflecting. Looking back at myself I see nothing worthy of mentioning here, other than the general fact that I have been one dissapointment and failure after another. As a result of this, it has inadvertantly become my life goal to please others. I know that this isn't good for me, but I can't take the rejection, I just can't. After elementary school, my life took a downward spiral that it has yet to even consider recovering from, I have been an outcast since I switched schools. The only people that I could ever make friends with were those that didn't have any either, and there was usually a pretty good reason why they didn't have any. Before I came to college I would say that at least I had one good friend, but only now do I realize that I hardly know a thing about him. I noticed today that numerous times I almost slipped and called some different people by his name, I'm not quite sure what this means, but it may have some minor significance.

I didn't really know who I was until the middle of 11th grade, after I finished the rough draft of my book. It was then that I started growing apart from my friend. In all of my life, I have never "gone out", or even gone for a walk. As soon as school was over at 2:10, I would head directly home, as I knew that both my mom and grandma would call to make sure I actually did make it. If I was 5 minutes late, I was certain that an amber alert would have been issued. My family (when I say my family, I'm referring to my mom, grandma, and grandpa here, as they are the only ones that I consider family. The rest are strangers that I happen to share some DNA with) knew that I wouldn't be able to handle the world if I had to. They were right in being worried. This made going to college a real shock for me, as I expected. Soon after my family left, one of the first things that I did was go for a walk. My walks to and from high school offered great relaxation for me, and I definitely could have used some the first few days of school. Back in MD (I hesitate to say home here, as I am now uncertain of where that really is), all of my frustrations, anxieties, anger, and all negative thoughts in general were channeled through my video games. Whether I'm blowing up cars, shooting nazis, or taking over the world, I had a place where I could go, and not have to ever worry about being rejected. Machines are beautiful because of their unfaultering obedience, even though I may get an occasional error message, I would never get a message that says "Sorry, you can't play playstation right now because I don't like you anymore since you forgot to say thank you last time. Try again later when I'm in a better mood, and until then, **** off ".

This may sound strange but often times if something negative is said to me directly, all I will do is absorb and replay the exact words in my head. Those words will slowly mutate into something much worse and with a terrible tone attached to it. Even if it is only something minor, I replay it in my head so many times that the exaggerated version becomes the truth for me, as that is how I remember it best. Thats probably why I remember so many more arguments in my life than happy times. When people are happy, they live in the now, not worrying about wanting to remember it later. When people are unhappy, they live everywhere but in the now, and those thoughts will stay with them for life.

Alot can be said about me by the type of music that I listen to (I know its a bit of a jump, but I don't care, why are you bothering to read this anyway?!?). It's mostly classical with some songs with words in there (Red Army Choir and Pavarotti). Music has become my new video game since coming to college. Not in the sense that I can take over the world or kill nazis with music, but that it offers a place for me to get lost in, a place where I can go to no matter what. The only thing is, I only dwell in this area when necessary (when overcome by depression), and it is not exactly cured by listening to songs promoting the equality of the motherland, or whatever the crap (this is as far as I go when it comes to cursing for those who for some reason don't already know) they're saying. It is only cured when monday comes and I go to my morning class, engaging in the process of human interaction. It is because of this interaction that I placed so much emphasis on school, and valued my education so highly, but this education did come at a high price. It was not necessarily money that I had to pay (I almost wish it had been instead of the alternative) but the friends and experiences that I would never have. When I was really little, I remember wishing that I was a grown up. My mom would usually respond by saying that she wished she was my age. While she wanted to go back for a different reason than myself, I now see that she was correct in that. I also wish I could go back, tell myself to talk to that girl that I had a crush on, tell myself to go ask one of my aquaintances if I could go to the party they were throwing. But when I start to think about the idea of parallel universes, I realize that in at least one world, I do go and do all that I wish I could have done. And for the 09edwarc in that world, rock on! You have done something I could barely dream of doing.

I try to convince myself that this is all for the better of things, "delayed gratification" I always tell myself. But I don't know that, I know I don't know that. If things do improve I doubt it will be by that much, and thats a pretty big "if" anyway, so I shouldn't bother worrying about it. I've accepted the fact that I will never have children, not unless I donate certain organisms to a needy couple that wouldn't want me to be in the picture anyway. When I say that around someone, they usually respond by saying "I'm sure you will some day". Thats usually when I just stop talking. They don't know that, nobody knows that! If by some miracle I am ever in a position in which reproduction may occur (marriage, fling, prostitution, ect...), I don't want to have to be responsible bringing another innocent being into this overpopulated cesspool they call Earth. To exist, is the ultimate punishment for all beings. It is a struggle to survive for most of us, but we don't even know why we bother to try. I can say with almost complete certainty that all that awaits us after death is darkness, the absence of thought, the ultimate sanctuary (don't worry, I'm not suicidal, thats just my vision of what lies ahead).

I don't know why I try to be happy anymore, it only makes me more depressed when I fail at that too. It was actually my new years resolution to try to be happier this year. That is by far the craziest one yet, even moreso than the year I decided to not use any public bathrooms. Should I give up now, and save myself from the pain later? Or do I keep trying? Hoping that this world, out of the infinitely many out there that I reside on, is one where it finally works out for me.