Essay: The Sin of Simony

I had forgotten about this until I read it as yesterday’s word of the day. Basically, it is profiting from ecclesiastical things by selling or buying them. The Catholic Church had problems with it back in the 800-900 CE time, and still does, in my opinion and the opinion of many Lutherans or other protestants. The selling of indulgences comes to mind. It is no stretch for me to see the whole tithing thing as sort of simony-short. I see all religion as a cloak for power, money, control, and greed. The rotten roots of an evil institution.

Even going back to my childhood, I could always see the immorality of preachers, religions (especially protestant ones), and others hawking salvation for cash. I felt I had backing with the story about Jesus going ballistic with the money changers at the Temple. TV charlatans would not want to take that biblical passage too literally.

Today, the mix of money openly solicited by religious entities, the millions (or billions) of dollars showered on TV preachers (you know who I’m talking about) point to the sin of simony and the foolishness of those who donate (looking for tax relief) trying to buy the love of god.

When I was growing up, we had “poor boxes” at the back of the church into which we would put coins, ostensibly used by god to help the poor through the Church, if not funneled directly to the starving children in Africa, still starving some 60 years later.

A few poor folks eventually expedited the distribution process by robbing the poor boxes (maybe with an eye to a future career in TV evangelism), thus resulting in removal of the donation boxes from the sacristy.

I wonder if they have been replaced yet by credit card readers for donations and the payment for lighting a candle for the dearly departed. I can do that at the checkout stand at my local grocery store. I do, but not for the promise of soul salvation. It’s so much easier than putting out cans or boxes of expired, over-salted, veggies for the food bank to be collected by the post office.

Simony is a sin committed by many Christians without a thought for the obvious hypocrisy. But if you’ll send me 10% of your annual net, I will say a prayer for you, thus guaranteeing you eternal salvation with only minimal time for purgatorial purification. I have evidence to prove that god listens more closely to the prayers of atheists then he does of rambling (doomed to hell) preachers and money collectors promising cures or eternal heaven.

Bill

Poetry: How we came to be

Note: Prometheus (forethought) and Epimetheus (afterthought) were spared imprisonment in Tatarus. Zeus gave them the task of creating man. Prometheus shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.

####

Unintelligent Design

Thus Zeus,
before humans roamed Earth,
set Forethought and Afterthought
to task. Animals lived and roamed
without reincarnation or karma
fish swam, birds flew, and each
creature of day or night,
did the natural things, no karma required.

Dinosaurs upset a jealous god—gone!
With Athena, Prometheus made man.
But then monkeys mated with people
and Afterthought declared, “now
we need second chances”—
reincarnation, and karma came to be.

Humans did not know
what they were nor what to do.
so they caused trouble for goddess Gaia,
fought, became reincarnated afterthoughts
in lower and lower life forms to learn,
but each time, the lower form of
human was worse than the last.

Afterthought said to Forethought,
“look now, lower forms we need
for karma, these are slow learners.”
They created Lumbricus terrestris.
Earthworms that eat dirt and crawl
into the ground and are slimy and ugly
and are both male and female,
thus confused and lost bird food.
But to no avail as human nature
continued to confuse the gods.

Nirvana was vast and empty
when Afterthought reminded
Forethought, “Have you noticed,
we create humans, they fuck with monkeys,
die into lower karma never moving up,
and Zeus is pleased, laughing at us?”

Forethought said, “Indeed. We need a cover story.
I have one about a talking snake, two naked
humans too dumb to know it, some other god,
a garden, a tree, and an apple or some variety of fruit.”
Afterthought said,
“Without reincarnation and karma, no one
will ever believe that story. You need
worms, snakes are too hissy.”

It’s All About How We Feel

All life is full of an unbalanced distribution of pain and suffering. Few, if any of us, intentionally seek out such afflictions. Yet misery finds us. Most animals, certainly humans, avoid these troubles. Unfortunately, many find suicide to be the only recourse to end hopeless permanent misery. While virtually all cling to life, the US suicide rate is at its highest point since WWII (lowest among people of Asian and Pacific Islander groups, highest among Alaskan native people).

Pain has its place. Doctors have denied me relief medication so as not to mask symptoms. I’ve sought medical treatment due to the pain I felt, which signaled something was amiss. I’ve sought support to alleviate my emotional distress, and many of life’s lessons came in the form of pain or shock.

Often, people who become chemically addicted had been seeking pleasure, pain relief, or withdrawal mitigation provided by the substance, either medicinal or nonmedical. Much the same can be said of social addictions. People often help us to feel better.

The goal is the pursuit of feeling happy, whatever that happens to be. A problem is the lie of some drugs, especially alcohol, provide in the form of temporary relief followed by dependence. While relief is the intent, loss of control accompanied by legal transgression is often the result.

And then we have the perverse, unwise, and often injurious idiom, no pain, no gain. I much prefer, listen to your body.

But I want to mention how religion, particularly Christianity, looks upon pain and suffering.

I was religiously taught that experiencing pain and suffering was good, perhaps blessed. While my secular world never supported this acceptance theory, my elementary school teachers, who were Catholic nuns, emphasized the suffering, sacrifice, and martyrdom of saints: holiness.

The passion (read suffering) of Jesus is emphasized dramatically as being caused by human sin. Thus, much, but not all, of Christianity is enamored with pain and suffering. I won’t over-do that here. It gets deep. There must be books and books about the art and science of suffering. Some even claim that one’s suffering contributes to the quality of one’s art.

Like most Catholics, I was taught to offer it up. They could have simply said, just deal with it. But on the mystical road to God works in mysterious ways, one must make life’s pain and suffering serve a useful purpose. That’s religion. And let’s not leave out the it’s your fault, and you should feel guilty and repent. Penance. More suffering which ironically may include prayer.

Fortunately, none of the physicians working in pain management tell their patients to do that, although many cautiously allude to it. However, I have not recently checked any Catholic hospitals.

I have had discussions with my medical providers about some of my pain, and we jointly decided I should endure exercise pain and work through it as it is the best alternative to dangerous surgery. Most properly done exercise is beneficial. I agreed, but dang! I wrote a poem about it.

Still, my goals are to feel good or at least free of most pain and suffering, to remain healthy, and to live as long as reasonably possible. I ascribe to the idea that there is a long enough or too long, but we only seem to know that point when we reach or pass it.

Religions want to tell us what and how god is, and how we should feel about life, death, and god. Some seem to want it both ways. The health and wealth folks are into get mine here and now, but most Christians and Muslims seem ready to accept that heavenly gratification will happen after we die. That is when we will be truly happy and pain free—and dead. I mean cold stone dead.

Many have decided that god is all for the good, and whatever it is they chose to believe is what they want to believe because that is what makes them feel good. And that’s my point. We all want to feel good. They see the wealth and well-being of theirs juxtaposed with their own suffering as God’s will or his mysterious ways.

Be it religion or reality, it’s all about how we feel. I feel as though I am championing the obvious, but for some, this is controversial.

Bill

Angry with or Afraid of God

I understand. Anger is a normal, if often unhelpful, human emotion. Likewise, fear can be disrupting and controlling, or it may keep us safe. Yet, despite experiencing such emotions since childhood (still do today), I have never experienced those two, or any others I can think of, like love, regarding what I considered a god.

If someone had called me a god-fearing man, I would object. I was not afraid of god, though many people wished I was. Through various stages of my life and maturing religious beliefs, I cannot recall ever being angry with any spirit, even the devil himself.

I’m certain that being raised in the environment where I was, being up to my ears in the Roman Catholic Church, its traditions and dogma, left me with a concept of the Christian gods (Father, Son, Holy Ghost; all one god) that is different from how others might imagine the same god.

For most of my life, I have been a man who essentially believed in a god to one degree or another, or tried to. Much of my personal religious effort was focused on growing; on believing stronger or more ardently than I did. I said the prayer, Lord help my unbelief, so many times; more often when I realized which way my theism was going or had gone, which was south. The prayer (of course) changed nothing.

One day a friend told me that she was angry with god because her first marriage ended when her husband left her for another woman. Then her second marriage was to a man who eventually died from alcoholic liver disease (he was still alive when she told me this). I remember wondering how she could blame god for the problems in her life which were caused by the men she loved. At the time I pondered my own faith. Would I ever have enough faith (belief) in god to feel such anger toward him? Today, I doubt the sincerity of her anger.

I was able to share neither her emotional experience nor her theological logic. She is now on her third marriage and, as far as I know, god got it right this time, or maybe the third time adage applies.

I have never been angry with Santa Clause for not bringing me what I had requested; nor at the tooth fairy for leaving such paltry sums of cash under my pillow in exchange for baby teeth. I have never been angry with unicorns because of their preference for human females, nor at leprechauns for not sharing their rumored wealth. I may have mumbled the words, oh lord, why me? or what did I ever do to deserve this? But I was never angry with god (or the Catholic Church) for worldly misfortunes befalling me or those I loved. My atheism is defined by my skepticism, not by my anger or temperament.

Since the time when I said (and wrote) I am atheist, I’ve learned that the concept of disbelief is so foreign to many who believe in god, to one degree or another (just as I did), they attempt to rationalize it by thinking that I really do believe in god, but I must be angry with him for some reason. My friend on her third marriage turned to the refuges of church and religion and to god for solace during her difficult times. She has not embraced atheism or rejected her church (former Catholic now Episcopalian) and religion. If anything, she has become more involved in all of that.

For me to be angry with god would require greater faith and stronger belief than I’ve ever had. When I get angry at anyone, I may cut off communication, but I know they still exist (unfortunate in some cases).

I have always rejected most religions as do most Christians. Now I simply reject all religions more fervently than in the past. When I de-converted, I needed to add only a few religions to the list.

While I remain furious at the Catholic Church hierarchy for how they handled and continue to handle all sexual abuse (cover up), so are many practicing Catholics (although far too many play apologists and make insanely poor excuses for the priests and bishops).

If I discover one day that I am wrong and god exists, I may ask, what the fuck were you thinking? Depending on the answer I get, I may then become angry with god. Until then, I see no reason to waste my emotions on the invisible (and nonexistent) man in the sky. Either he is not there, or he doesn’t give a shit. Either way.

You fucked up. You trusted us.

My wife and I were watching television when a commercial came on for Peter Popoff’s Miracle Water, featuring the 73-year-old exposed con man himself. We had a good laugh and still joke about ordering some of that water every time a problem or unpleasant issue comes into our lives. Popoff, Robert Tilton (also 73), and other quacks offer solutions (even to cancer) if we send (seed) money. I decided to research and write about these charlatans for this week’s post on Dispassionate Doubt.

I was going to do my best to shred the phonies (aren’t they all?) and poke fun at the ignoramuses who fall for the legal untaxed scams by sending money, even if they must borrow it. Then something more interesting happened: I looked in my bathroom mirror.

I grew up as, and spent much of my life as, a practicing (or a non-practicing) Roman Catholic. I recall as a child when my religious family scoffed at the goofy frauds back then, be they on television, radio, or another media broad-or-narrowcasting. I laughed too. This has a lot to do with the formation of my anti-religion views, especially when my friends (critics) ask, what harm does it do? If you don’t know, keep reading, and watch John Oliver’s video.

Have you ever been to a catholic bookstore? It’s not all books. Superstition abounds in the Catholic Church, even while the ecclesiastical leadership attempts to dissuade parishioners from believing the nonsense of which they disapprove, while approving boatloads of crap they find reason to believe.

One day someone handed me a bottle of holy water from Lourdes, France. Lourdes is the location of several apparitions of Mary in the mid-1800s, which the church approved as real, even making Bernadette (the child who saw Mary) a saint. I rubbed a drop on a dry spot on the back of my left hand. Within a week the spot had vanished. If I believed it was the water that precipitated the cure, would it be a miracle or superstition?

I began to wonder if, as a man who probably spent (or sent) money for magical trinkets and may have at least accepted some of the superstition as possible, I might be a bit hypocritical by demeaning the TV crooks and the morons who send them money (oops, too late).

I was a major financial donor in my old parish. Money that was subsequently wasted by priests and bishops (that’s who controls parish or diocese funds) for their own personal benefit, not so unlike today’s TV crooks.

With a little help from a search engine, I found this site (click for link) which sells everything to procure the favor of a god, saint, or angel. Notice the list of items on the left. The 14^th item down is a Saint Joseph home selling kit. Jesus’ stepdad was apparently the first real estate agent.

With the cautioned proviso that one does not see this as a superstition because it pisses off the Pope, one may purchase the kit, bury the statue of the saint in the back yard, upside down for some reason, and then pray like hell for top dollar for the house. It is a tradition, not a superstition (play canned laughter).

Reading a piece on the Friendly Atheist blog, I discovered his posting of a link to a 20-minute segment from John Oliver’s show on television evangelists. If you have not seen it, you should. It’s hilarious!

Quotes Attributed to Buddha

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. Or, the mind is everything. What you think, you become, which are apparently fake quotes probably drafted from, whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking and pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness.

I am looking at my statue of a meditating Buddha sitting on a shelf just across the room. Twenty years ago, a Catholic/Christian apologist said that if I had a statue of Buddha at home it was a serious sin. In my manner of reacting to such nonsense, I had mine within the week. I also have a meditation candle, a gift from my daughter. It has been sitting in my room for more than 20 years, usually near or around the statue of Siddhartha, which is also the title of a good novel.

Back in the 90s, I read extensively about eastern philosophy and religions such as Taoism and Buddhism as part of my spiritual growth at the time. Many are surprised to learn that I found the true living and enlightened Buddha, alive and well at a mall in San Antonio.

I approached the short chunky monkey buddha and asked him if it would be okay if I left my family and became a monk. He looked at me and started to laugh. He has been unable to stop. From that experience we now have the famous Laughing Buddha statue, which may not be a Buddha at all, but an alleged Chinese monk from 1,500 years after Siddhartha Gautama Buddha presumably hung out in what is now India.

I am not and never have been Buddhist. You may be interested to know that the singer and poet, Leonard Cohen, was ordained a Buddhist monk in 1996, but he was never of any other religion than observant Jew his entire life. I’ve had friends who claimed to be Gautama followers, but Buddhists savor sobriety and too many of my tribe did not. What I think attracted many of them was much of the background philosophy and supporting New Age woo-woo. The same may have been true of Cohen.

I do not believe in karma, reincarnation or rebirth, Nirvana (other than the band), past life regression, or any other life after death credo. However, wisdom is wisdom and I hang on to what I think fits into my one life reality. I think meditation is probably healthy, greed is bad, humility will always be an elusive benefit, and the application of some eastern idioms could cure the overabundance of assholes and trolls in the neighborhood, if not the world.

Without splitting hairs and taking the we are (or attract) what we think quote at face value, it reminds me of several idioms I like: we are what we do; right here, right now; it is what it is; and if you check, maybe this fourth one, not everything has to have a point. Somethings just are, which I attribute to Judy Blume. But are we what we have thought? I’m not so sure.

This form of consciousness seems to be mixed up with the concept of free will. Are we what we think? Or what we do? Or do we even have any idea who we are? Do we have control over what we think, our thoughts, or our minds? I’ve heard thoughts euphemistically referred to as voices. What of the hours lying in bed worrying or thinking about things we try not to invite into our thoughts—things which are out of our control? Do we channel those thoughts into who we are, or is mind madness in charge of what we think?

The simple question follows, are we what we think? Or, as my Irish-Catholic father would say to me; who in the hell do you think you are? It was a strained relationship.

Indeed, over the years I have thought things to be true and sometime later decided differently. Having an open mind (if that is possible) in the long run, learning and thinking and being willing to say that we were wrong or mistaken has more to do with who we are than the ideas or thoughts themselves.

There is little doubt that our thoughts, convictions, and mind-sets affect how we see the world. Another idiom is: change your mind, change the world.

Much of the turmoil regarding such phrases for followers of Buddha and his teachings involves translation of old scripture. The messiness and confusion with translation from language, time, culture, and overall interpretation can lead to several chapters in a book.

Another problem is the insistence by some people of making shit up and then attributing it to someone famous who may have never said or wrote it. Welcome to the internet age.

I have a framed art piece on my wall. It is an image of Charles Bukowski with the words find what you love and let it kill you. I like Bukowski. I read his poetry, and I even make notes of how he turned a phrase. The problem is that old Hank apparently never said that kill you thingy nor did he write it, even as character dialogue. But still, I like it and I’ll not be tossing the art. The truth is that the association with Bukowski is false, even if I can’t prove he never said it.

Another poetic translation from Buddhist scripture on the mind is a version by Gil Fronsdal, who renders the first two verses as:

All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a corrupted mind,
And suffering follows
As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox.

All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a peaceful mind,
And happiness follows,
Like a never-departing shadow.

From a Buddhist perspective, thoughts constitute part of our actions, but only a part of them. What we are is indeed a combination of actions determined by thoughts and feelings. I think life is all about how we feel, but I hope for intellect before emotion in making wise choices.

Furthermore, we cannot ignore past experiences in figuring out who we are. But the primary determining, limiting, and deciding factor is from genetics: DNA. Perhaps some day we can engineer that in such a way as to control ourselves and our existence better. For now, it is what it is. It may even effect how and what we think or believe.

No. All that I have thought over the years does not determine what I am.

Let’s try one more contemporary quotation from Steven Pinker: Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can ascertain.

Bill

What are you afraid of?

This essay is based upon the post, The How of Atheism?, from the blog ‘TheCommonAtheist.’

Fear is a normal human emotion. Usually, it’s a beneficial one. But it can be a choke point in human progress.

For example, when I first started riding a motorcycle I progressed to high-speed highway driving. With no seat belt, no metal cage surrounding me with air bags, and no safety devices, other than what I was wearing; traveling upwards of 70 miles per hour surrounded by cars with drivers poorly skilled or foolish, with parts of my body passing unprotected only inches from hard, hot pavement, and all of me exposed to natural and unnatural elements; I was scared riding my motorcycle. It is inherently dangerous. Known danger begets fear, but sometimes the same risk elicits pleasure.

Anytime while riding a motorcycle you need to be alert but relaxed and loose enough to respond at any speed. Instructors will tell you to be relaxed because body tension will hamper both physical response and mental judgment. I agree. Being alert and aware was no problem. However, the amount of body tension caused by fear is overwhelming and no amount of relax, relax, calm down was going to alleviate it. Experience over time helps, but the other side of the confidence curve has probably resulted in more serious accidents than bodily tension.

Fear of extinction (Psychology Today’s term for fear of death or dying) is a big deal. It’s normal, they say. If you add to that religion’s threats of permanent torture (Hell), you have raised someone’s anxiety level regarding death significantly. But not for everyone. There have always been atheists in fox holes and some have died there. In the USA, we remember them on Memorial Day.

To many believers merely doubting the existence of god is your ticket to Hell. It doesn’t matter how wonderfully charitable and loving you’ve lived your life. Religion has its dark and irrational side.

In his post, Jim postulates that atheism mitigates that fear better than a religion, especially Christianity or Islam.

I do not fear extinction. I agree in that I fear the pain and suffering of the dying process more than I fear its completion. Leonard Cohen said the same thing in an interview. Cohen also said, I was dead before I was born, and I recall no problems (I’m paraphrasing).

I recall my mother declining my offer to call a priest for last rights when she was dying. Mom was not atheist, but she said that after years of ignoring her religion she was not about to start then, a remarkable thing for a Catholic to say about the last sacrament in the face of death. She also said, “when you’re dead, you’re dead.” I did not request elaboration.

Leaning on parts from Jim’s post a bit more, Atheism is

trusting your own judgment and weighing evidence,
realizing that humans are easily deceived and manipulated by guilt,
accepting the natural goodness and innocence of humanity,
accepting human rationality, reason, and the inevitability of death.
acceptance of the here and now and responsibility derived from reality;
a fundamental rejection of fear-based belief in gods and religious prescriptions of morality associated with fear of retribution.
And it embraces the uniqueness of the individual and it is a personal claim to integrity.

To paraphrase (Jim and Paul), Oh death, where is my fear of thy sting?

Here are a few more quotes that are linked to the source. But they certainly stand alone and are based more on academic research than this old skeptic’s pondering.

So non-believers are not only distrusted; they also stir up morbid thoughts, and perhaps raise discomforting doubts about what happens after we die.

First, that fear motivates religious belief, and second, that religious belief mitigates fear. And…While the fear of actual death—painfully, slowly—is apparent, the existential crisis encountered at the prospect of nothingness appears to cause the most anxiety.

Bill

They Believed in the Hog Apocalypse

In religion, faith is trust in some belief. Believers often think faith is confidence with a perceived degree of warrant. I would have said for a reason.

I think faith is belief without evidence. Maybe I should say, hope without reason. If it’s not, as many believers want to claim, show me the evidence for what you believe.

My question is why do we believe what we do? Regarding religion or belief in a god, the answer is often faith. There are other answers, but as reasons change, beliefs likewise morph and twist. With most people it seems more complex, but eventually the answer appears to be either a choice or faith.

Since choice seems rational and based on some form of evidence (scripture, existence, what else could it be?), faith is usually the last argument standing, if you can call it that. It is not long before logic has been cast into the flames of the argument.

I’ve read several claims that faith is something other than belief without evidence, none of which seemed very good unless you happen to be a person of faith. Belief based on faith (or feelings or what one wants) seems rational to the believer.

I used to hike and trail-run at a wilderness area called Government Canyon, near San Antonio in the Texas Hill Country. I’ve been there often and have seen the evidence of wildlife: a coyote or two, the occasional snake, scat of all kinds, and turned soil caused by hogs. I never saw a hog or heard one. I’ve only witnessed their mess. The biggest danger for me was the mountain bikers, some of whom thought I had rearward looking radar.

I’ve read no accounts of hikers being mauled by hogs, but I’m sure it’s happened, especially in the state of Arkansas. Click here to see some dipshits hunting hogs, and being charged.

Then, I read this account of two hikers at my old stomping grounds. They heard hogs attacking, climbed a tree for safety, and called park rangers or 911 to rescue them. They waited safe and sound up the tree until the officer arrived. As they were talking, the two hikers heard the sound of the charging hogs and told the ranger they were under attack.

When he finally stopped laughing, he invited them down from the tree. The kind ranger explained that what they heard was a car driving over rumble strips on a nearby road. To be fair to the two (who maybe ought not be out alone), there are hogs there. They do get pissed if people bother them (like hunters), and paranoia strikes deep, like in the old Buffalo Springfield tune For What It’s Worth:

It’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the men come and take you away

At least it wasn’t the devil they were worried about. Yet, neither did they have enough evidence for such paranoid faith as to believe in the attack of the feral hogs. They transferred their faith to the police officer who had to hike in and rescue them from their own imaginary fears.

Yet, people believe much more crazy shit with far less evidence or any real likelihood. Then they expect others to believe it too, and they are mortified when one of us says, it’s really not what you think it is.

Bill

If you’re really into the why people (we) believe what we do, Godless in Dixie has a great piece about it. Click here to see it.

When was the last time you prayed?

About a year ago a midwestern friend asked people to pray for rain. I thought, if god exists he should make it rain there. It did! In fact, I think they’re having problems with floods now. Apparently, sometimes folks need to tell him when to stop. I also tend to pray when I’m upset. I’ve invoked deities with things like god damn it (or dad gum it), Jesus Christ (or the family version of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), Oh, God!, good god (or good grief), god help you, god only knows, bless her (or his) heart, and so on.

My last in earnest prayer was reciting part of Mark 9:24, I believe, help my unbelief, which is an alleged quote said by a father during a scene in which Jesus performed an exorcism on the man’s son. That prayer was more than ten years ago as I was dealing with doubts about religion and god.

Roughly five years later I openly embraced my own atheism. My only prayers since might be called sarcastic blasphemy by some. I do not seriously pray. I would not pray if I ever came to believe in some god. I do not say amen after someone else prays, but I do (for now) sit or stand quietly while they pray or say some form of grace or meal blessing. I’m not sure how much longer I will cooperate with the holding of hands since I see that as me participating in the act of prayer.

What about people who believe in gods, especially the Abrahamic one, and never pray? Are they theists, deists, or practical atheists, as the Catholic church claims?

I have always thought that what people do matters most. I have never bought into the once saved, always saved; or what people believe matters more than what they do. In my mind, it fits well into what we do matters more than what we say.

I can’t recall ever being told that it is a sin to not ever pray. Is it wrong to never physically and verbally acknowledge a god, even if you do believe in one or more?

I no longer pray because I am mostly convinced (97.7%, if you need a degree) that no gods exist, and if they did, prayer would still be nonsense. When I prayed it was because it was a big part of the religion I practiced, not because I thought it was working. I prayed for dead people to be in heaven and I prayed for sick and dying people to recover. The sick got well, the dying died anyway.

Of the 80 or 90 percent of people who claim to believe in some sort of deity or woo-woo, how many never pray, never go to church, never practice a religion, and never dance naked around the fire during a full, or new moon?

Bill

What is Reality?

I forget the exact words of my friend’s conversation with me. It must have been after one of her trips to Austin for a Deepak Chopra thingy. At the time she was New Age and I was trying to be a practicing Roman Catholic. She did not criticize my religion, but I am sure she thought it wrong (as did evangelicals, Lutherans, and the anti-organized religion crowd, and me today). Something she said led me to a question.

I asked, What about reality? She said, don’t be negative and depressing. I was surprised by her dim view of what she considered reality. Indeed, she’d had a shitty life for the most part, being married to a hopeless misogynistic alcoholic. But my friend’s negative view of reality and her refusal to consider it still troubles me years after. Hers was not a unique way to see the world.

Many people deliberately shun all forms of reality. And in my opinion, the same goes for human nature and truth. That was not the only time she assumed she knew my thoughts and motives. The discussion of reality stopped.

Some years prior to that, a professional therapist looked at me and said, “We each have our own reality.” I understood her comment as a mental health professional, considering how individual psychological perspective effects behavior. While I may have bought it at the time, I was skeptical then and don’t agree with her now. Schizophrenics and hypochondriacs may think they live in their own reality, but that reality is part of the illness. It is not part of physical reality, except to them. It is not true (voices or illnesses).

What is imagined does not necessarily exist, although the discussion goes on and on. Because hallucination is a real thing does not mean what is imagined physically exists.

Apparently, reality in the sense of the real physical world is not as simple as many of us see it. However, most of us only deal with our immediate surroundings—the reality we live within. The reality we can sense.

Few of us are philosophers or physicists in the professional or technical sense. Most of us claim to have some form of belief in a god/higher power/supreme being, or some form of yaddy yadda woo-woo, whatever. That belief often goes beyond the point of I think god is real to there is a god. It’s okay to believe (own reality) whatever, but belief or faith does not make it real.

Said belief is either fun, gets one laid, or makes one superior to others. Equality is wonderful. But we seem to want to feel superior to others and to have them acknowledge our better-than-you-ness. The accoutrements of beliefs and corresponding religion make for problems which too many believers are in denial of or blind to (but not all).

In order to solidify objections, we want to engage in the demonizing of others. This is done at every level from the presidency (not just this one) and the popes and virtually all religious leadership, down to the most ordinary of people, some not even practitioners of any religion.

Reality is real stuff. Real people, places, and things. It is not an idea, not a may-or-might be, or any possibility. Reality is what is. You can see it, taste it, feel it, smell it, and hear some of it. If you either want to, or for some reason must, believe something else: fine. It’s not real.

Bill