Of Faith and Reason

"Are you a religious man?"

The question resonates in its own hollowness.

"What do you mean by religious?"

It's a simple question.

"Are you a religious man?"

As opposed to what, exactly? A secular man?

"What are you asking me?"

For a simple question, this sure is getting fucking complicated. Do I believe in God or A god? Do I read the bible and have faith in a being that started off as a murderous megalomaniacal incomprehensible being, then later saw the light of his own son and decided that perhaps killing His worshippers was not the way to build a following? Do I believe that an invisible entity so complex as to offer man two simple choices - the path to heaven or free will, effectively removing our free will by its own virtue, and choosing to abandon it, or more precisely, the illusion of choice (freedom to choose the path of no choice) - somehow communicated to any number of beings whose most notorious claim to fame in the ranks of Cosmic hierarchy is to make everything out of nothing, or as is more commonly related, making mountains out of molehills, such a simple choice clearly enough that he did not complicate the whole fucking thing?

In other words, do I believe that these books accurately convey the will of a supreme being whose very name we cannot speak (because nobody knows the secret password)? Seriously...is that the question posed before me?

I'm a reasonable man. I don't presume to know anything more than that which I see and may confirm visually on a regular basis. If I can't prove it, I can't propagate it. Reason tells me that to be a religious man is to engage in the most foolish of human follies - the arrogant practice of believing that such a higher power would even communicate with any one of us, and as if such a being would trust any one of us to understand his words without completely missing the point.

Reason dictates that, if I cannot even understand this being's name to the point that no one will even tell me what it is so that I can exercise that most fundamental of this God's laws - i.e., to choose whether or not to speak it, I cannot presume to know anything this being would say. And if I cannot understand it, then I cannot reason that any other human being could understand the being's words, angelic conduits notwithstanding.

There have been psychological experiments performed - we've all played this game at some point in our lives - that show that if words are passed between beings of varying intelligences, you can bet that some of the dumber ones are gonna fuck up the message. I whisper a sentence in your ear, and you whisper it into the next person's ear, and each time the sentence moves from lips to lobes, a single word is changed. This continues through a circle of people so many times that one word - any word - has changed no less than ten times and returns to the originator as a completely different, nonsensical statement.

If I start off with "Love every being as you would love yourself," it's going to come back to me as the ten commandments. I know this because I have participated in that game before, and someone always screws up a perfectly good sentence that ends up like "fourth grade rodents peel equine philosophers merry Todd Lincoln." If God has to go through nine different levels of angels to tell us to behave ourselves while he goes out of town for the weekend, we are going to get the holy fucking bible, King James Edition. It's only reasonable to believe that, somewhere along the line, someone misunderstood the message.

If God speaks to one person, I would assume that it would not be for sharing with the village. One thing about the mind of a supreme being (that we can safely presume) is that it is a reasonable enough entity that wouldn't trust a lesser being with a sacred message. I would presume that such a being would call us all together and tell us all at the same time, kinda like a great Cosmic pep rally without the ditzy cheerleaders.

I'm sure that Jesus was a very pious man. I'm sure that, assuming his existence, he was very intelligent, if not literate. He never wrote anything down. He preached, and other people wrote his message after he died. Compare that choice not to write it down for everyone to the choices of other spiritual leaders. You start off with Jesus Christ and end up with Joseph Smith.

If you ask me to illustrate the folly of religion, I need only point out that Scientology is based on a failed science fiction novel written 60 odd years ago. If that isn't a Cosmic Teapot, I don't know six from seven (a ravenous number, to be sure).

This is not to say that reason rules out a god. In order to disprove something, you must know the counterargument completely. If I want to argue against abortions, I better understand why someone would want to get one and argue vehemently for her right to do so. How am I supposed to understand the mind of God? Reason tells me that I cannot disprove it, although that is not valid proof for his existence, and his existence not being proof that he hath spake unto us.

Just because you talk to your dog doesn't mean your god talks to you.

These writings and religions are not right, that is clear enough. How can they be right if they can't understand? Is it wise to believe a man who claims to understand God? I do not see how, since history and politics tell me that men always change the meaning of words to their convenience, whether through ignorance (translating as closely as possible) or arrogance (editing the words). Whether innocent or intentional, the word of men cannot be trusted when it relates to their interpretations on the instructions from God.

So although I cannot reason out God, I can reason through faith. I can use reason to gauge where my faith should lie. I know myself well enough to understand myself, and if God ever spoke to me, I believe that it would be in a way that only I can understand, thus preventing me from relating it to the masses - provided that my reasoning remained stable. One thing I can assume from such an experience, however hypothetical it may be, is that it would be consistent from person to person. It only stands to reason that he wouldn't be cryptic with one and literal with the next, unless he is a sadistic god. Being superior, he would know our nature, thus would try to avoid creating such conflicts if he were truly benevolent.

If he is a malevolent god, then all bets are off, and faith in him would be nothing short of suicidal.

Given our inherent free will, it would seem that I have only one clear choice. A benevolent god would want to avoid conflict among men, so why should I be any different?

"Are you a religious man?"

See how it echoes?

"Reasonably so."

Humanoids

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.

- Howard Beale, Network 1975

(An e-mail reply gone horribly awry.)

I hadn't heard of her, but I saw the Budd Dwyer video.

Gotta love a good old fashioned public suicide. That's what I don't get about these dumb kids shooting up the schools. Wouldn't it serve their purpose and intentions better to do it in a public place with lots of cameras?

That's how stupid people are these days.

They write half-assed notes in pseudo-literary prose describing how they'll be famous - go off and shoot a bunch of people, kill themselves, and no one ever sees it. All we get is a stupid emo note. Why the hell don't they at least wait for the news crews to show up before killing themselves? Ya know?

Use the first shooting as a teaser to get people to call the police. Shoot a few more to make it a live event that the news has to rush over and cover. Move closer to the doors where the cameras are and plug people as they run out. Then step out with a female hostage - no one cares about male hostages. It helps if she's shorter, so as not to block your face, and it's preferred that she be young, blonde, and attractive (big tits and a tight shirt are a major ratings grabber) so that male newscasters can imagine her when they go home to fuck their wives - it helps in keeping the story fresh and on the front pages when it's all over.

Wait a minute to make sure everyone's focused on your faces, then shoot yourself in the head. Skull and brain fragments flying against sheet glass doors. Young girl shaking and screaming in place, covered in her captor's blood. Bystanders stunned. If a person like this has a real sense of humor, he'd say that he has an accomplice waiting inside. No one would know what to do. The cops couldn't move in because there might be some other maniac inside ready to open fire with a high powered assault rifle loaded with hollow-points. Slow-motion chaos. 2001: A Space Odyssey with bullets in a suburban high school.

But, no. We get the kids who think they're all bad ass and smart, and who don't even bother to think how they're going to draw the most attention, which is really what they want. They're so self-centered, they think that as long as they can see it, then everyone will be able to picture it themselves. They're so stupid that they give the public enough credit to be able to imagine something like that. Natural Born Dumbasses.

The more of these shootings I hear about, the less upset I get over them. They're all the same, and no one learns from them. Society gets what it deserves when people don't learn from their mistakes. Even with this latest mall shooting, the media's splashing this douche bag's face all over the air. They're telling his story, which is all this stupid fuck wanted to begin with. They never stop to think that they are actually perpetuating the problem by giving more of these nutbags reason to do it. "Hey! That guy got famous! So can I!" I had hope after the Virginia Tech shootings because NBC got blasted for showing the guy's tape. I kept wondering to myself why they were doing exactly what the stupid little prick wanted. Of course, as soon as they stopped showing it, people forgot and moved on.

That's how stupid people in this country really are.

As a society, we're so sick that we actually long for someone to mourn. We need villains to deride and victims to cry over, we're so devoid of natural human emotion. We don't allow ourselves, as a culture, to feel realistic emotions about everyday occurrences. Everything has to be wildly extreme. We have to root for the underdog without regard for the quality of their character. We have to destroy the heroes because no one's allowed to sustain their success...it's just not fair to the rest of us who "work hard to get where we are" (the greatest lie a country ever told itself, right after "We're bringing democracy to the world.").

Everyone cheats, everyone wants attention, everyone wants the easy path, and it pisses us off when someone else does it instead of us. We say that we value fair play, but the truth is we want an even playing field only to allow us a better opportunity to take advantage of the naivete of others - their sense of "fair play." How else could a nation turn Barry Bonds into a goat while carrying Mark McGwire on its shoulders? Big Mac did it when it was widely accepted, if not out in the open. We feel sorry for a white wrestler who kills himself and his family after taking too many steroids, we stand in awe of Ken Caminiti's bravery for telling the truth, yet we want to string up the first 'nigger' who follows in their footsteps. Blacks already have an athletic advantage, so it hurts our sense of fair play when they "cheat".

The stupidity of this country astounds me to no end. Everyone is hypocritical, except us. Everyone lies, cheats, steals, murders, rapes, and pillages, except us. Why? Because we are the self-righteous bearer of God's will. Our morality is unquestionable because we refuse to question it, and we bomb the shit out of any country that does. We're worried about Iran and North Korea, Syria, and Vladimir Putin. We don't like it when someone can even the playing field against us, so we turn them into an evil empire of criminals and madmen who's sole purpose is to destroy us, and not to survive against us. Sure, those countries are "dangerous" and can't be trusted. The same can be said for us. We're one of them. We have God on our side, just like they do, yet we've convinced ourselves, as a nation, that we are better. We are moral, we are good, we are right.

THAT'S how fucking stupid Americans are.