love and justice

Imagine there is a man who is convicted of a crime, something gruesome like murdering a child. He goes to court and has a trial, is convicted and sentenced to death. However, the judge then adds to this punishment a decree that every person fathered by this man must also be executed when they reach the age of 30. The crime is horrendous, but no one would say such a condemnation of the man's offspring is fair. After all, the offspring were in no way involved in the crime. Yet the judge's order stands and the man's offspring are killed. Is that justice?

According to Christians, this is just. What's more, they describe such a judge as loving! According to the bible, Adam and Eve sinned. Because of that sin everyone born to them would inherit imperfection and die. This is the loving conviction handed down by God who later said "Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sin" (Deut. 24:16). How can such a contradiction be reconciled?

Well, to put it bluntly, the contradiction exists because the bible obviously wasn't inspired by God but, rather, is the work of men who wanted to control other people. They made up this scientifically impossible story of the origin of 'sin' to capitalize on the human fear of death and impose their moral code onto others to control them. Then, at some point later, another man decided to add the verse in Deuteronomy cited above because he felt it was a just principle people should follow. Well, the writer of that verse was correct. However, his writing flies in the face of what God supposedly decreed earlier.

While God had the ability to easily punish Adam and Eve alone, he decided everyone from that point on would be punished as well. Some people use the analogy of a pan that is dented. After it is dented everything cooked in that pan will have that same dent. Yes, according to christians, God could make the countless galaxies in the universe and millions of species of life, yet is incapable of imparting discipline to only the deserving parties. God couldnt protect Adam and Eve's children from inheriting the imperfection from their parents, though he was later able to protect Jesus from inheriting Mary's imperfection. Instead of executing the wrongdoer, he wipes out the entire world. In so doing, he has allowed untold suffering for thousands of years, all because two people disobeyed him long ago. What a loving God christians believe in!

in case i left your presence earlier than you planned

my short redheaded friend aaron brought to my attention that i have a reputation for just getting up and leaving when im hanging out with people. just all of a sudden, without notice, and even in the middle of things such as movies. please allow me to explain.

its not because i dont like you. usually. i have two problems that make me this way. one, i am very worried about irritating people and feel like i wear out my welcome very quickly, so i never want to stay. in fact, i usually will bail on plans i may have had to hang out, because i feel like i would be imposing. second, i get bored very easy. no matter how much fun i am having playing video games or watching whatever, i feel like i should be somewhere else. either way, i will never tell you that i feel weird or am bored. i will just go.

The Human Predisposition

At some point, our ancestors decided humans would need to be better than animals. I can imagine the fear they first experienced when they slowly became aware of their own mortality. It is possibly the greatest moment in our planet's history. For the first time in millions and millions of years of life, extinction and new life, one of the resulting products of evolution finally combined the right mix of chemicals with the brain's capacity and created self awareness.

I often wonder what the purpose of self awareness could be. Its hard for the overwhelming majority of humans to even entertain the thought that we may be an accident of chemical circumstance and serve absolutely no purpose in the grand scheme of things. They tend to dismiss any such notion as ridiculous. But when considering the universe as its own entity, something seemingly unaware of the human species existance, something so big and powerful that the entire human population would be the equivilant of a single atom, we can start to maybe get a glimpse at what is going on and what it may mean.

For me to tell another human that everything that has transpired on the planet up to this point is completely irrelevant would cast me into the catagory of insane, mentally disturbed, troubled, or an atheist. Whatever the term, the point is I am written off immediately. But perhaps you can suspend your own doubts for just a moment, to look at things from outside the box (or globe).

There are only two possiblities when you look at the entire universe and everything we are aware of in our stream of existence.

First, we know how absolutely miniscule the Earth is on the universal scale. It is possible that the existance of Earthly life is merely coincidental and has no bearing on anything that is transpiring in the grand scheme of things. This is the bleakest option: A world full of so much knowledge and understanding yet is completely irrelevant and inconsequential.

The second option, the one that wakes me up early every morning with a flurry of mental activity as I try to wrap my head around it, is that we are here by design. Not design by some singular 'god' creature, but by design of perpuation of existance.

Science has shown the universe to be constantly expanding only to collapse, our solar system will eventually collide with another, our sun will burn out (only after completely torching the earth), meteors will collide with our planet, black holes will devour us, etc. We are aware of our Earth's impending destruction.

Were we pushed to our current point, through millions of evolutionary changes, for a purpose? Is the universe aware of its own mortality? Is this too far fetched? What if the universe is on some level aware that it too is facing destruction and set into motion the events that, over billions of years, have led to today's humans?

The entire purpose of life is to create more life, thus ensuring the perpetuation of the species. Evolution has led to all different forms of life that allow one life form to feed off of another life form and thus survive and advance. Is this what happened when evolution created a brain that was chemically right for mixing with another life form, mushrooms? This combination perhaps led to our species self awareness. Was it a mere coincidence, or a scheme millenia in the making? And what would be the purpose of creating such knowledge?

Is the universe trying to create its own savior? Are we the first step of the universe's plan to create a species with the mental power to problem solve our biggest obstacle: the universe's impending doom?

If so, humans are surely not the answer, but merely a stepping stone to that ultimate goal. We are undergoing a very rapid evolution of the mind, the exceleration of which has grown exponentially in the past 100 years. It will continue to grow faster and faster until eventually, humans will no longer exist as we know them, but rather the resulting evolutionary children of humans, a new species with much greater mental capabilities, not limited by the constraints we humans have. Our great disadvantage is being the first of our kind, the first animals who are self aware. It would be foolish to believe we will be the only self aware life forms.

What I find discouraging is human's perception that this twist in evolution's advance has signaled an end to evolution. We, humans, are the pinnacle of all that the universe can muster. There can be no greater life form. Why would evolution work billions of years only to stop now? Why can't humans see this?

If anything, humans are a disasterous misstep on the road to a universal savior, a prototype that has shown important areas for improvement. And evolution will continue its work, slowly carving out whatever it needs, regardless of what we humans may want and most likely without humans interfering with the process.

This is a tragedy. Humans are capable of much more, even capable of surviving this evolutionary cut. If there were a way to point out this daunting challenge our universe now faces and convince our entire population that we are to work toward this solution, we are capable of solving it. We could effectively make the cut and continue our species for eternity. But thats asking alot of a species that is only recently self aware, so recent that we, like babies staring at their own toes and fingers, are still trying to understand what we are and what is good for us.

It's time we look beyond our selfishness. Stop fighting over land and religion, resources and money. Start looking at our plight as a math problem that we can solve. We have too many people on our planet. Disease and starvation are rampant. Our planet's life span in winding down. If we want to survive, we must leave the confines of this planet behind and set off to spread our life throughout the universe, spreading the same seed of evolution into millions of other environments and allow time and environment to shape our future changes. By taking this giant evolutionary breakthrough of self awareness and planting it in every type of 'soil' we can find, surely somewhere that seed will take root and grow bigger and better that it ever could have here on Earth.

Mixing our brains with unknown chemicals from alien environments could very well be the next step toward an evolutionary solution to the universe's impending downfall, thereby ensuring the continued existance not only of our own lifes, and that of our life giver: the universe.

Religion's end is near!

The end of religion is inevitable. It may not come in my life, but it will come (that is if humans aren't wiped off the face of the earth first). As humans learn more about our universe and the laws that govern it, the basis of religious faith and beliefs will continue to crumble and eventually the entire thing will collapse.

It has already started to happen. People are streaming out of religion. People who have long kept quite about the atrocities commited in the name of religion are speaking out. Lawsuit after lawsuit is being won against the organized religions. Almost everyone I talk to says the same thing: 'I'm a spiritual person but I dont believe in organized religion.

The gig is up. People are too smart to fall for the crap that religious leaders have been shoveling down their congregations throats for millennia. The globalization that has taken place in the past century, especially the internet, has allowed unprecedented access to information and knowledge. People, for the first time in history, have the ability to research what they are taught. And they can find other people who feel the same way. As more folks realize they are not alone in their doubts the number of those defecting from their churches is quickly multiplying.

At some point, governments will be forced (by their constituents) to act against organized religion and put an end to the fraud they have been commiting. Their coffers will run dry and they will be forced to close their businesses. Then, and only then, will there be an opportunity for peace.

But peace will not come easily or quickly. Religion is a drug and much like heroin, when an addict quits there are intense withdrawals. There will be a strong feeling of abandonment, some will feel as if their world has been turned upside down and may even lose hope altogether. But these challenges will have to be faced and we will have to help those people realize the freedom and joy that comes from living without fear of a mythical omniscient being in the sky. When someone is able to grasp this new reality they can experience a whole new level of joy.

Of course, there are those who will refuse to let go and will become underground religious people. But this isnt a surprise. Anytime humans are able to overturn a defective and unfair system there are always those who are afraid of anything new or different. When we abolished slavery in the states, many were outraged and went to their graves with hearts filled with resentment, knowing that they were right. When we gave women the right to vote, the same thing happened. When we gave black people civil rights and actually started treating them like humans, many were outraged. Some still are today.

Change is very difficult for people. Especially uneducated people. They are raised to believe a certain way and they can't fathom that what their parents or grandparents told them isn't true. But as time goes on, those people will die off and new generations will be born that will never know religion's evil power. They won't be taught that those who believe differently will be killed by 'god'. Future generations will be able to see humans as just that: humans. Not some sort of experiments being tested by invisible beings to determine their eternal fate, but rather, as creatures living as part of an ecosystem that needs to be balanced. Our descendants will be taught how to be responsible with our resources, not greedily living their lives unconcerned about the damages being done to our only environment thinking its all pointless because 'god' will step in and fix everything.

This is our future. Some will disagree, but its inevitable. It has already begun. Many thought that the Earth was flat, that Rome would never fall, the Titanic was too big to sink, The Soviet Union would last forever, or that evolution was a lie. Time decides the truth. Not humans.

Our belief system is shifting away from teachings based in 'faith', things not demonstrable, and toward that which can and has been proven over and over. Humans are evolving mentally. The smokescreen created by religion and fear is clearing.

“Get out of her, my people, if YOU do not want to share with her in her sins" - Rev 18:4

I was raised surrounded by people afraid to have an opinion that differed from what they were told to believe. That is a RED FLAG and I always knew something was wrong with that. Religions that claim to have all the answers dont let members ask questions.

The religion I was born into taught that they were better than the other religious businesses out there, as most churches do. They were founded on noble principles and in firm opposition to 'false religion'. What I noticed was that they had changed their own beliefs consistently over the 100 years theyve been around. They now look more like their opposition and less like an alternative.

They believed Catholic 'excommunication' to be an evil wrong commited in the name of god, yet went on to adopt that same practice as soon as their founder died. In fact, the man who usurped power after the founder's death made substantial changes to the religions belief system. And no one will talk about that. The church has used their disfellowshipping practice to wield power over their followers and control their every move, constantly beating them with pointless guilt and threatening them with removal from the congregation should they sin.

Obviously, I have a biased view of things. You see, my religion taught me to see the hypocrisy of other religions. What they didnt expect was for me to use that skill to examine my own religion. And my 'hypocrisy detector' screamed in alarm when I took an honest look at what they taught. I was never kicked out, but ran away and disowned it as soon as I saw the hypocrisy of the leaders, the members, and the teachings. Now my 'friends' and even my family shake their heads at the thought that I could leave the 'truth'. They ignore their own doubts and assume its the devil making them think those things. I have heard them many times questioning the leadership and teachings in private or with very close friends, but never more than that, for fear they will be kicked out.

I was told that there was no happiness outside of my religion, that nothing better was out there. But there was. I found true happiness. I live my life now without fear, without guilt. I have finally started to overcome my depression I suffered for my entire life. I have found hope in the reality that there isn't a ghost watching everything I do and listening to my every thought. I have found peace in not praying for god to help me with some 'stressful' situation while he ignored others who were dying from starvation and disease. I have grown wiser and more responsible by no longer waiting for god to fix everything and becoming more proactive in educating others who have doubts but are afraid they are the only ones.

I do not believe that those I grew up with are hopelessly lost. Some people find comfort in being able to put their anxieties on someone else. And I am happy for those people. But as for me, I want to take responsibility for my own life and be productive, not sit around letting someone else make decisions for me, all the while telling me they need my money. And, I don't want those who have decided to keep their heads in the sand telling me I am wrong. I ran out of the burning building. I will not be returning.

How do you think?

Two things. Both related, so kinda one thing. And a very long footnote.

First of all, why must everyone be normal? Why does everyone try to fit in? People take pills to make them more normal, they try to follow the trends and opinions of whatever the majority may be at the time, they will change their habits if someone tells them its not normal. Whats so wrong with being an individual? Why can't people accept that everyone is different and be ok with it?

Secondarily, also similarly, why must you criticize others who are different than yourself? Why do you think everyone should be like you? Religions are obviously the biggest promoters of this ideology, teaching their mindless* followers that others aren't living right and it's their job to change them and make them fit into someone else's idea of acceptable. News outlets are also a big contributor, but everyone does it. People will choose their friends by what music they listen to, what clothes they wear or whatever other things they may have in common. How about you open your world to people different than yourself and see how others view the world. Maybe be friends with someone very different than yourself and see why they are the way they are.
I've done that, and I've made some very good friends. It will open your eyes to alot of things and perhaps, just maybe, change the way you think. And we could all use some of that medicine.

Basically, I want freedom for everyone and anyone. Let people be who they want to be, believe what they want to believe, live how they want to live, as long as they don't hurt others. It's really not that difficult to make that change global. It would end so many problems we have. It starts with you. Be ok with individuality.

*I use this term, perhaps in bitterness, because I feel that someone who has based their reality of perception on what can only be imagined but cannot be proven (while tangible facts disproving what they base their beliefs in is readily available and abundant) is not qualified to tell anyone that they are wrong. I want to make clear that I am perfectly fine with people who want to be religious or spiritual, but the problem is they feel compelled to try and persuade others to conform to what they aren't even comfortable with. And that's why they do it, in my opinion: they ignore or hide their own doubts by convincing others to belief it too. Hey, if other people believe it, it must be true, right?

bad timing

i tend to joke around alot. i wouldnt say its too much, because who decides when something is too much? the one thing i have figured out about life is that whatever your perception of reality may be, someone else will always be offended by it and swear that your perception is wrong.

so i dont try. i dont pretend to be someone im not just so someone will like me.

i have a friend. he has been a very good friend. i probably spend more time with him than anyone else. and what i like about him is that we can joke about anything, no matter what it is, and we both get the humor of joking about something that is taboo. basically, he gets me... or he did.

recently he got some bad news about a friend's kid. i joked about it some but didnt unleash like i usually do when im being a jerk just to be funny. but he didnt think it was appropriate for me to joke about it at all. after he let me know he was really getting pissed, i stopped. i didnt bring it up the rest of the night. we played music and hung out and talked and had fun.

a week later, he still doesnt want to talk to me. i havent apologized because thats not who i am. if i say something to someone that knows my sense of humor and has the same sense of humor and enjoys my sense of humor, why should i offer an apology for something that he knew was meant in jest?

i do feel sorry he is going through an emotional time, and that his friend(s) are going through a very bad time too. but a joke is a joke.

when i was growing up people would make fun of me constantly, and i took it all personally. it made me a very sad person with feelings of bitterness towards others. then one day i realized it was only words and usually meant to pick on me in fun. when i stopped taking things personally i became a much happier person and found that i had a lot more friends.

if it were someone else i was joking about this friend would have been laughing right along and making jokes about it too. it doesnt seem right for someone to be ok with something until they get hurt and then they arent ok with it.

i want to continue to be friends with this person if they can accept that what i said was a joke and nothing more than a joke.

if we have to censor ourselves because someone may be offended, we can no longer speak at all. we have absolute freedom, or we have no freedom. we can't have both. shall we be free, or shall we be slaves?

my timing was bad, the joke in poor taste. but was it enough to hold a grudge for days? is our friendship so unimportant that a joke would cause him to leave it behind?

fortunately for me, i know life is fleeting, we all will die. i want to live and laugh everyday til my last day. call me an asshole, call me a jerk, call me what you will. but no matter what you call me, i'll still be smiling because life is too short to hold a grudge against anyone. it accomplishes nothing and only makes us bitter.

your asshole friend,
alx

girl

oh girl, you make me crazy, you make me helpless, you make me anything you want from me. oh girl, there are times and there are rhymes and there are ways to make me stay. with those pretty glass eyes and an imperfect smile with those long sexy legs and that sexy bank account you make long term relationships seem like a sweet sweet treat. you drive a really nice car and you got the newest toys i think we could go so far if you ditch those other boys. oh girl, you got me wrapped around your finger oh girl you got me fallin so hard. oh girl, theres only one little thing... you think its funny when you fart