I guess if I have me a blog about life I should probably eventually talk about my own personal views on religion and the afterlife. So lets get it with now right off the bat, I am an atheist, not really believing in any sort of higher power, and I believe that death is just exactly like what it was before we were born, absolute non-existence. Now I'm not one of those atheist that think we are better for the rest for not being "delusional" and see religious people as being mentally inferior in any way. I'm perfectly respectful to any belief, from Agnosticism to Christianity, from Judaism to Islam, and from Taoism to Buddhism. My opinion of a person's religious views is not based in what they believe in but rather how the express it to others. If you have seriously thought about what your opinions are about such important things and only discuss it during an interesting friendly argument about philosophies than no matter what you think you're good in my book. However if you blindly follow what people tell you to believe with out truly thinking about it and if you truly believe than I feel I might question your full intelligence and or if you constantly bring up your beliefs and harshly argue with anyone who disagrees with your opinions even if they don't want to like extremist Muslims, born again Evangelists, and even some Atheists than you'd be some one I would not want to hang around with.
To me each religion has three main points (if you disagree be free to explain (I hope comments aren't restricted...)), an origin story: how the universe and world came into being, rules about how we should live our life (which no one ever really follows, well not nobody but few do), and what happens to the soul after death.
So this is how I shall split up the rest of this blog!
First: Origin of the Universe.
In most religions the Universe is made by a sentient being. Now since I grew up in a mainly Christian nation (little bit too Christian for my taste...) so the stories of Christianity is what I know best. Since Judaism and Islam is in the same religious family as Christianity I'm decently familiar for them. Unfortunately I don't know to much about other mainly Eastern religions, so most of my examples will be Christian, but I'm not explicitly attacking them just as a heads up. Being an atheist probably more interested than most in science and the Universe I believe in the Big Bang theory that almost the entire scientific community agrees with. Of course many Christians also believe in the big bang (don't quote me but I do believe the pope accepted the big bang theory) and believe that it was God that made the big bang, which is completely reasonable given the evidence but I still don't buy in the fact that this world was made by a conscious force. But according to the heavy Christians the world was made 6000 to 10,000 years ago by God in about six days (some say by days they mean 1000 years or maybe more but not really relevant). In the past century much evidence has made it seem that the Universe is about 13 trillion years old. To combat this I actually met a Christian that believes in the bible completely and says if God can make Adam and Eve already aged than of course he has the power to make the Universe already aged. Making the earth with rocks that have appeared to be decaying for millions of years, already extinct animals in the ground, orbiting around a sun that appears to be a third generation star, and light from stars thousands of light years away all ready on it's way to the earth for humans to have something pretty to look at at night. This is one of the reasons why I dislike arguing against Religions mostly since a God that has complete power over the Universe can do anything he wants for reasons humans can't possibly know, which I find quite convenient. My reasons for thinking that the Universe began billions of years of ago starting at a infinitely dense singularity and rapidly and violently exploded is that when I see evidence all over the Universe that points all to one thing I tend to believe that rather than a being made the Universe one way but made it look like it was formed some other way, call me crazy.
Second: How we should live our lives.
This should go pretty fast since I kind of went over this in a previous blog: http://standinginfrontoftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/definitions-nothing-is-true-everything.html. I do not believe there is a certain way we should live our lives, no special law in the physics of the Universe that says what actions are "good" or "evil", and that there is no super being that judges our every action. In Christianity and the other Judea religions try to follow the ten commandments told to moses by God that every follower of God should follow if they want to enter God's kingdom. Of course there are also the seven deadly sins which if we commit them we will pay with eternal suffering. But in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve commited the sin of eating a fruit damning all of humanity and all humans are born with sin already and as long as you accept Christ, who died for our sins, than God will forgive you and you can go to heaven (in which I say than what's the point of sinning?). So you can see why some people get a little confused. With no set definitions of right and wrong I then ask does it really exist? Of course now I'm an Atheist not an Anarchist and I treasure humanities civilization that we have been working on quite diligently for about a few thousand years now. How I base my actions around people mostly tend to try to make people like me more or help society in some manner. Most actions that we see as "good" tend to make our relationship with others better and help the group of humans we live in work better and have more comfortable lives which is necessary in a small group of weak tribal mammals who's only advantage they have over the rest of nature is there intelligence where numbers is power. Any action seen as good tends to help other people and bringing them together forming tighter connections and bad actions tend are seen as actions that hurt people and pushes other's away. To me the people that decide what helps a society is the government that knows it's own people and their values and not people who lived thousands of years age and who didn't know about current world conditions and modern knowledge. Of course the governments need to change it's laws as society and world conditions change instead of sticking to laws that worked a few years ago.
Third: The after life and journey of the soul.
Probably the most important part of a religion and why many people turn to it, especially in dire circumstances, is the promise of an afterlife. The two largest concepts for an afterlife is the Indian idea of reincarnation where the spirit is put into another body after the original one dies. Depending if that person follows the rules of their religion (part two), than they either go up another level from an insect to a mammal or up the caste system from a slave to a high priest. This is prevalent in Hinduism and some of India's smaller religions. Reincarnation is also in Buddhism but when one reaches the highest mortal level and ascends again their soul joins all the other souls that have been through the same process in the river of life, or something like that (if you are Buddhist or know this better than me feel free to correct me or go into more depth). In the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, they believe that the soul enters paradise in the kingdom of heaven. In Christianity (I'm pretty sure Judaism doesn't and I have know Idea about Islam) they also believe in eternal damnation where you don't accept Christ as your god and live according to the commandments. This is mainly the reason why Christianity spread so quickly during the Roman ages because it was one of the first that if you didn't follow it you'll pay the ultimate price of unimaginable torture for eternity and if you did you live the rest of your life in paradise, so all the Christians were militant on saving the world and other's where like "I guess I should play it on the safe side, I'll keep practicing my old rituals but say I'm doing it for Jesus Christ" (this is really condensed and not the full story but that's not part of this post). I believe, as I said earlier that death for anybody in the world is just like it was before you were born. For you nothing absolutely nothing would exist no Earth, no Universe, no Multiverse (if that exists in the first place), not even you to ponder why nothing else exists or to think "So this is what it's like", there's not even darkness since that doesn't exist. I've always kind of thought this (at least for a while now, I do remember thinking that reincarnation was real but I was like 10 or something), but I thought about it a bit more when I learned about computer programing in college. In a program I tell it how to act and how to behave and in video games I tell it how to react to outside stimuli such as someone touching the keyboard. It may not have much intelligence but aside from not being able to reproduce one could say it's... it's.... alive!!! I even tried to make a little simulation with little letters that got hungry and thirsty and fell in love with other letters to make baby letters. Even though these are extremely simple things many things we consider alive are almost as equal such as germs and other microbes. With no brain they just automatically react to things around them, yet we call them alive. And eventually as time passes on I'm sure we'll make programs with the same cognitive levels as us that can make emotional connections with us and may be programmed for self preservation. But if we turn them off do they die and their robotic spirit go to heaven if they have been deemed honorable? Every time I turn off my lab top do thousands of background programs die and then reborn as my OS boots up? Methinks thats a little preposterous and if so I think catholics have a little more to be angry about than abortions. As I've said in the previous post about definitions the definition of a spirit is just something to make feel better and special than just a rock or Watson, the computer that won a Jeopardy show. Life arose on this planet a billion years ago or so nothing changed in the universe. The atoms that make up you and me are just as dead as a nebula or an asteroid. It's just that in us they form an amazing dance of chemical reactions that can save and process data from the outside world, think about the past and decide actions about the future, and look down at ourselves and figure out how we and the rest of the Universe works. Some people say that being an atheist is most be one of the most depressing beliefs in the world (yeah, I consider it a belief but I won't go as far as religion, but you may call it whatever you want), but I would have to agree with the most famous self proclaimed atheist, Richard Dawkins, in that looking through the world and seeing how amazing the universe is through a scientific perspective, the ballet of stars and galaxies and planets forever spinning and forming sights more spectacular than any artist could create, than looking at nature and marveling the near perfect designs of life that arose of it's own power and than looking at the human civilization, the wonders we have created, the knowledge we have accumulated and the potential that we have is some of the most satisfying things one could see in one's life past the levels that many can feel with their connection with the religion.
P.S.
If you are religious and wish to express why you believe what you do or wish to present me a problem to talk about in another post please do. I would like to talk to other people about things because philosophy is pointless when one doesn't have other points of view to see from and a proving ground to test ones ideas and also I'd like to not seem like I'm just typing into my lab top like a lunatic talking to himself.
To me each religion has three main points (if you disagree be free to explain (I hope comments aren't restricted...)), an origin story: how the universe and world came into being, rules about how we should live our life (which no one ever really follows, well not nobody but few do), and what happens to the soul after death.
So this is how I shall split up the rest of this blog!
First: Origin of the Universe.
In most religions the Universe is made by a sentient being. Now since I grew up in a mainly Christian nation (little bit too Christian for my taste...) so the stories of Christianity is what I know best. Since Judaism and Islam is in the same religious family as Christianity I'm decently familiar for them. Unfortunately I don't know to much about other mainly Eastern religions, so most of my examples will be Christian, but I'm not explicitly attacking them just as a heads up. Being an atheist probably more interested than most in science and the Universe I believe in the Big Bang theory that almost the entire scientific community agrees with. Of course many Christians also believe in the big bang (don't quote me but I do believe the pope accepted the big bang theory) and believe that it was God that made the big bang, which is completely reasonable given the evidence but I still don't buy in the fact that this world was made by a conscious force. But according to the heavy Christians the world was made 6000 to 10,000 years ago by God in about six days (some say by days they mean 1000 years or maybe more but not really relevant). In the past century much evidence has made it seem that the Universe is about 13 trillion years old. To combat this I actually met a Christian that believes in the bible completely and says if God can make Adam and Eve already aged than of course he has the power to make the Universe already aged. Making the earth with rocks that have appeared to be decaying for millions of years, already extinct animals in the ground, orbiting around a sun that appears to be a third generation star, and light from stars thousands of light years away all ready on it's way to the earth for humans to have something pretty to look at at night. This is one of the reasons why I dislike arguing against Religions mostly since a God that has complete power over the Universe can do anything he wants for reasons humans can't possibly know, which I find quite convenient. My reasons for thinking that the Universe began billions of years of ago starting at a infinitely dense singularity and rapidly and violently exploded is that when I see evidence all over the Universe that points all to one thing I tend to believe that rather than a being made the Universe one way but made it look like it was formed some other way, call me crazy.
Second: How we should live our lives.
This should go pretty fast since I kind of went over this in a previous blog: http://standinginfrontoftheuniverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/definitions-nothing-is-true-everything.html. I do not believe there is a certain way we should live our lives, no special law in the physics of the Universe that says what actions are "good" or "evil", and that there is no super being that judges our every action. In Christianity and the other Judea religions try to follow the ten commandments told to moses by God that every follower of God should follow if they want to enter God's kingdom. Of course there are also the seven deadly sins which if we commit them we will pay with eternal suffering. But in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve commited the sin of eating a fruit damning all of humanity and all humans are born with sin already and as long as you accept Christ, who died for our sins, than God will forgive you and you can go to heaven (in which I say than what's the point of sinning?). So you can see why some people get a little confused. With no set definitions of right and wrong I then ask does it really exist? Of course now I'm an Atheist not an Anarchist and I treasure humanities civilization that we have been working on quite diligently for about a few thousand years now. How I base my actions around people mostly tend to try to make people like me more or help society in some manner. Most actions that we see as "good" tend to make our relationship with others better and help the group of humans we live in work better and have more comfortable lives which is necessary in a small group of weak tribal mammals who's only advantage they have over the rest of nature is there intelligence where numbers is power. Any action seen as good tends to help other people and bringing them together forming tighter connections and bad actions tend are seen as actions that hurt people and pushes other's away. To me the people that decide what helps a society is the government that knows it's own people and their values and not people who lived thousands of years age and who didn't know about current world conditions and modern knowledge. Of course the governments need to change it's laws as society and world conditions change instead of sticking to laws that worked a few years ago.
Third: The after life and journey of the soul.
Probably the most important part of a religion and why many people turn to it, especially in dire circumstances, is the promise of an afterlife. The two largest concepts for an afterlife is the Indian idea of reincarnation where the spirit is put into another body after the original one dies. Depending if that person follows the rules of their religion (part two), than they either go up another level from an insect to a mammal or up the caste system from a slave to a high priest. This is prevalent in Hinduism and some of India's smaller religions. Reincarnation is also in Buddhism but when one reaches the highest mortal level and ascends again their soul joins all the other souls that have been through the same process in the river of life, or something like that (if you are Buddhist or know this better than me feel free to correct me or go into more depth). In the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, they believe that the soul enters paradise in the kingdom of heaven. In Christianity (I'm pretty sure Judaism doesn't and I have know Idea about Islam) they also believe in eternal damnation where you don't accept Christ as your god and live according to the commandments. This is mainly the reason why Christianity spread so quickly during the Roman ages because it was one of the first that if you didn't follow it you'll pay the ultimate price of unimaginable torture for eternity and if you did you live the rest of your life in paradise, so all the Christians were militant on saving the world and other's where like "I guess I should play it on the safe side, I'll keep practicing my old rituals but say I'm doing it for Jesus Christ" (this is really condensed and not the full story but that's not part of this post). I believe, as I said earlier that death for anybody in the world is just like it was before you were born. For you nothing absolutely nothing would exist no Earth, no Universe, no Multiverse (if that exists in the first place), not even you to ponder why nothing else exists or to think "So this is what it's like", there's not even darkness since that doesn't exist. I've always kind of thought this (at least for a while now, I do remember thinking that reincarnation was real but I was like 10 or something), but I thought about it a bit more when I learned about computer programing in college. In a program I tell it how to act and how to behave and in video games I tell it how to react to outside stimuli such as someone touching the keyboard. It may not have much intelligence but aside from not being able to reproduce one could say it's... it's.... alive!!! I even tried to make a little simulation with little letters that got hungry and thirsty and fell in love with other letters to make baby letters. Even though these are extremely simple things many things we consider alive are almost as equal such as germs and other microbes. With no brain they just automatically react to things around them, yet we call them alive. And eventually as time passes on I'm sure we'll make programs with the same cognitive levels as us that can make emotional connections with us and may be programmed for self preservation. But if we turn them off do they die and their robotic spirit go to heaven if they have been deemed honorable? Every time I turn off my lab top do thousands of background programs die and then reborn as my OS boots up? Methinks thats a little preposterous and if so I think catholics have a little more to be angry about than abortions. As I've said in the previous post about definitions the definition of a spirit is just something to make feel better and special than just a rock or Watson, the computer that won a Jeopardy show. Life arose on this planet a billion years ago or so nothing changed in the universe. The atoms that make up you and me are just as dead as a nebula or an asteroid. It's just that in us they form an amazing dance of chemical reactions that can save and process data from the outside world, think about the past and decide actions about the future, and look down at ourselves and figure out how we and the rest of the Universe works. Some people say that being an atheist is most be one of the most depressing beliefs in the world (yeah, I consider it a belief but I won't go as far as religion, but you may call it whatever you want), but I would have to agree with the most famous self proclaimed atheist, Richard Dawkins, in that looking through the world and seeing how amazing the universe is through a scientific perspective, the ballet of stars and galaxies and planets forever spinning and forming sights more spectacular than any artist could create, than looking at nature and marveling the near perfect designs of life that arose of it's own power and than looking at the human civilization, the wonders we have created, the knowledge we have accumulated and the potential that we have is some of the most satisfying things one could see in one's life past the levels that many can feel with their connection with the religion.
P.S.
If you are religious and wish to express why you believe what you do or wish to present me a problem to talk about in another post please do. I would like to talk to other people about things because philosophy is pointless when one doesn't have other points of view to see from and a proving ground to test ones ideas and also I'd like to not seem like I'm just typing into my lab top like a lunatic talking to himself.
Just read Allan Kardec and you will learn everything about spirits. I really recommend!
ReplyDeleteNice blog! Following =D
This is intense.
ReplyDeleteI am personally an Atheist, I just can't believe in any higher power.
Thanxs, for both comments. And I'll check Allan Kardec out. Always willing to check stuff out (and maybe post about it when I'm done ;D)
ReplyDeletelook up:
ReplyDeleteFreemasonry
you'll think that its completely unrelated to your blog at first, but research it thoroughly and it'll get you thinking.
One thing I thought was freaky was one time I went to St.Augustine, Florida (oldest western city in North America BTW) and in the this little park where one of the first marketplaces used to be there where a bunch of statues and things like that and most had little plaques that talked about the monument. But there was one obelisk that was like a tall and skinny pyramid that was roped of and had no plaque telling you about it and the only thing on it was the freemason symbol of the compass and I was like (Hmmmm... sumthing's goin' on here...)
ReplyDeletecheck this out too. sorry hehe.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJF9fd0oJic&feature=related