First of all I would like to say I totally support people's freedom to believe whatever they want as long as they don't get tax breaks on it and I don't have to pay for any part of it.
I hope this doesn't offend anyone but as an athiest, gay, polygamist my sheer existence is probably offense enough for most people, although, honestly - I think I pull it off with grace, pun intended.
I believe that religion does bring happiness, kindness, joy, compassion and union to many people. It standardizes and codifies the way that humans should act with one another.
It is not the only thing that can bring these emotions. Any group with a common belief system can share these feelings without a spiritual context. People having these emotions in a religious context often believe it is the spiritual aspect that causes it.
The thing about religion is that it also causes so many problems. People fight wars over religions and kill people in the name of jesus and other magicians. I know all you good christians can't believe it, but it is true. Other people kill other people for not believing in Jesus - not only that - they kill them for not believing in him, in prescribed way.
I am not the kind of athiest that screams about it. I am definitely not interested in converting other people to it, but that doesn't seem to stop so any people for trying to get me interested in their spiritual beliefs which offends the hell out of me.
That is why in fact I am an athiest, because I don't care about religion or the absense of it. I would rather describe myself as someone who never considers spiritual aspect of religion or the absense of it very much. If I never had to hear the word spiritual or religion one more time, I would not be athiest. I would be in perfect harmony, lol.
I read the bible, and I am over it - like I am over Alice and Wonderland and The Hardy Boys - learned some valuable lessons but the magic part is pretty hokey to me.
Okay, check this out - I am going to go get a random bible quote from the internet
and see why I don't need the book. Here it isGalatians 5:22-23
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."
Seems reasonable, guess what - I could think of it myself. I pity the people that can't think of this but I know they exist. I guess I can consider myself luckily for having the education to even consider these things. Maybe in previous times, it was necessary to have these ideas given to you.
Then I roll the die again to find:
"Romans 12:13
Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality."
Here we are back in magic land and there lies my problem with the book. Showing hospitality is a fine goal, contributing to the needs of the saints is questionable and sketchy. I mean who defines the needs of the saints.
Okay one more time this is too fun
Thessalonians 5:15
See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.
This one is great but once again, I could totally think of it myself. At least it is a noble goal.
And again.
Samuel 2:2
"There is none holy like the LORD; there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God."
While this is freaky and dangerous. It is the basis of war.
I feel that I have the capibility to understand human interactions without guidance from people in an ancient world or divine intervention. In fact, I think it is a unfortunate that the book mixes these two messages together - the message of treating people kindly and that you need to believe in the power of the mighty magic wizard, his halfling son and their sidekick ghost. It seems like the message could be much more powerful divorced from the book. Why can't human interaction and social etiquette be secular? I mean why not distill the bible down into a smaller book of ways to live your life without the spiritual bullshit.
I have seen so many people fall down the slippery slope of having their life suck because they were a bad person, then turning to church, the people they meet are nice and kind and then - bang they are in magic land and keep asking me to come visit it - when I wasn't having any problems in the first place.
CONCLUSION
I just had a brilliant realization while writing this. aybe I will change the world. I am going to create a new religion based on the Paul Visco interpretation of the bible. See, you think I am joking but what I plan to do is take the magic out of the bible. Same great book, less agic. That way the next time someone tries to tell me the magic book is really about a moral code about how to treat other people, I can say - no that book is full of magic sdtories, what you need is the Visco Bible.
Should I feel bad to stir things up like this?
By journal #100 I'll be inciting riots.
That is fantastic, saves me time. I am really Jealous with a capital "J" of Thomas Jefferson :::link::: . He had so much time to think and so much independent wealth to allow him to do as he pleased.
Thomas Jefferson beat you to it! He took out his scissors and made his own, "magic free" Bible.
I'll do a longer post on my own page later tonight.
I just need to clear one thing up Spirtuality and Realigon are not the same thing. Yes sometimes they can be but a lot of realigous people believe spritual things are evil. Some of those things would include Dreamcatchers, oujia boards, Terrot Cards, or anything along those lines. One can believe that there is no god but that there is this something like a soul or a spirit that makes us more then who we are as a body alone. Two examples from science that could suggest that there is something there is that the Famous Goat who was cloned had problems and died. It could be that the science was bad and that there isn't all the info we need about life yet. Or maybe there is something about being born that you need some kind of life force. The other example is 21 grams. Yeah I know they made an entire movie based on this fact, that I never saw. But supposidly when you die your body weight drops by 21 grams. There could be ways to explain it like that when you body is alive it is making things and you are bringing in air and that the act of you not being alive anymore is what causes that to happen. Or it could be that your soul or lifeforce leaves you and that is the weight. You can also belive in mother nature and that there is a balance to life and earth and have it not mean anything about god. For example the world is over populated and polution is killing the earth and all the animals. So that is why there are all these killer storms as a way to make the earth healthy. You can also believe that is why there is Diesse. That it is a way to kill off people so that the world doesn't become over populated. AIDS is an epicdemic really it is just that it isn't thought of that way because the HIV Virus kills people off slowly in stead of quickly. But that in terms of the virus is a good thing (bad for humans) because you can spread it and spread it and spread it before you know you have it. If you belive what you read and hear with out help it may destroy all of Africa. Yes one could make this realigous and say it happens because they are a godless country (all of them) we will go help them and give them god and medicine and they will follow us. But you can also just think that AIDS is a way to help kill off all the people who are destroying the world. Ok so maybe this should have been a post and not one paragraph but I think my point was kinda made.
thats it. from now on when asked to label my religious convictions, I'll say i'm a Visco! it has a nice ring to it...
I can't leave religion alone though... i'm so interested in the history of it all...
sign me up!
that's kind of what i was trying to say. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you... do not murder... do not cheat... do not steal... all wonderful messages. But virgin births and dead bodies coming back to life and ghosts in heaven dictating my future... sorry... i just can't buy it. No offense. But what can I say... I'm a scientist.