After all this Schiavo/Pope stuff, I got a lot of flak about some of my comments. I think a diary is in order...
There is no God.
For the life of me, I don't know why I should be on the defensive when I make that statement. God is just so taken for granted that I can expect an immediate barrage of comments that never cease to infuriate me. But Why?
Shouldn't it be incumbent on you believers to prove his existence?
I will not even require that you define which god we are talking about. I don't care if it's Buddha, Jesus, God the Father(I am particularly fond of that one), Vishnu, Siva, Uma, The Earth Mother, Zoroaster, Kali, The Holy Spirit, Zeus, Hermes, Krisna....How many thousands of gods are there??? Just pick the one you want, because I'm sure the one YOU pick will be the REAL god. All true believers seem to know without a shadow of a doubt that their god is the real god.
But let's get down to it. God doesn't exist because we make him up. We make him up to fill that void in some of us that can't deal with the idea that there is no afterlife. We make him up because life is hard and it would really suck if after all this strife the poor did not actually inherit the kingdom of god. We make him up because life is unjust and somehow we need to get justice, even if it's in the afterlife.
Think about what we believe about god:
He's very concerned about our beards and hairstyles.
He watches everything we do, and keeps tabs on how many times we masturbate, lie, eat certain kinds of food, curse, etc...
He's very concerned about our sex lives. While we were made in his image, he doesn't really like to have sex with guys, or other non-vanilla kinds of sex.
Cheat on your wife and you're in trouble too.
He doesn't want you to kill people unless your political leaders say it's ok.
You all know I could go on and on and on. If we got into Buddhism, Hinduism or some of the others the Gods, the beliefs become particularly peculiar. Hanuman the Monkey god has some great things to say about how we conduct our lives.
My point is that you have to stand back and look at religion for what it really is. It's an ancient form of tyrannical rule designed to keep the poor in their place by scaring the hell out of them. We tell them it will actually get worse in the next life if we don't behave, and that the torture will last forever.
I know there are big questions. Where did we come from? From the smallest quark to the incredible dance of the galaxies, there is something bigger than us mere earthlings out there. I see worlds in the realm of the very small, and worlds so much bigger than us in the realms of the universe. Our problem starts when we use five thousand year old superstitions to define that BIG something. It makes us kill each other to justify our beliefs. It makes us think we are superior. Who could possibly believe in a monkey god? Of course my god is the one god. But it's Bullshit.
We don't have the answers to these questions. If we all could admit that, the world would be a better place. We would have to take responsibility for living the questions, instead of providing ready made interpretations plucked out of a book written a few thousand years ago. Faith prevents any further discussion on the topic. You can point out a million inconsistencies but the believer just says "you have to have faith."
Living the questions is not so bad. When someone asks me what happens when we die, I say I don't know. When someone asks me where we came from I say I don't know. It doesn't mean I live my life in fear. The mystery is what makes me live and marvel at the beauty of it all. The mystery of it makes me live my life as if it is the only one I may ever have, and appreciate it more fully.
And I can give up the false morality, and stop pretending I know all the answers. And I can stop lying about knowing the truth. Because just because you believe it, that doesn't make it true.