Wednesday, December 31, 2008

What happens when it's early morning and you have internet

So i was doing my rounds on the Internet this morning- i woke up randomly at like 4am so i decided to pick up my laptop and wonder aimlessly around the internet (that means facebook, last.fm, blogspot, myspace, and youtube :P). now while on youtube, i was watching some random videos from youtubers starting with littleradge, then robofillet, then some random ppl and finally to halfscottishguy. I was watching halfscottishguy's video named food for worms (which you will find a link for here) and he brought up the issue of religion. Now i know that religion is a touchy subject and if anyone is just passing by and sees this post almost all of those persons would automatically exit from the screen and move on with life
I can't blame them, the topic has the power to tear families apart
yet still i find it a subject that i don't mind talking about anyway because, if you know me, i am a christian and i do love Jesus.
again! if anyone had stayed long enough to get to the previous line, you probably automatically exited this page and moved on with life- probably cursing me a little while you did it.

now then, for the ones that i didn't lose, i hope you would read my post to the end and maybe leave a response for me- i don't know if anyone will or not but it would be nice to hear from someone.

Ok, so first off i wanted to just point out some of the things that HSG talked about in his video. On the topic of religion being a bad thing i agree fully with him. How is it that being 'religious' or believing in something fully and strongly is a bad thing? I understand the value of science and i understand the value of reason and i understand the value of proof but we are humans- we are people. we are different from what this world consists of. I have a mind, i imagine, i have complex thought. i love, i want, i need, i feel pain, i suffer, i fear. I am. Together we as people make a community- we make ourselves a tribe, a society a civilization! All civilizations at some point or the other make themselves a set of rules because they all come to the conclusion that there is a wrong and a right. You will never find any place ever that feels like anything goes. There hasn't and never will be a place on this earth where there will be a system that accepts there is no wrong or right. so in short, we have a conscious! how do you explain the idea of having a conscious? Science can explain a lot of things but it can't explain everything. I believe that there i a moment in every persons life that cannot be explained. There will be a point in time where you know something happened- if you tell anyone they might be able to explain it away, but you know, you know that there was something more that was going on in that moment. Science won't back it up and there is no proof to it but what you saw, felt, and experienced yourself- and yet it was still real.

If there is no such thing as magic, if there is no such thing as spirituality then why is it that so many people all over the world have had ridiculous supernatural moments? yea, i don't believe most of them either but still, there must be a reason for these encounters that cannot be explained (or maybe the yearning for such encounters?)

Anyway, back to HSG's video- he also mentioned something that i felt compelled to stew over a little. It was the idea of not forcing your beliefs on anyone else. That's the excuse and the warning that is used so often now a days that i think one should rethink the meaning of that phrase. What, really, is considered forcing your beliefs to another person? At what point is it considered force? Is it possible to just have a discussion about religion? is that considered forcing? I mean, if you know me, i'm a very argumentative person- not because i want to be annoying...usually...but because i like to be challenged. I like to push ppl and i liked to be pushed back- idk maybe there's not a lot of ppl like me out there. But i would think that religion would be a touchy yet interesting subject to have a conversation about- if both parties are willing. Ah! so that may be the problem!! sometimes both parties are not willing. But if someone is doing something like, oh i dunno... a blog? or a vlog? or anything like that? How can that be considered forcing your beliefs on others? the viewer has the option of tuning in or not- why must we say "I don't want to force my beliefs on theirs" when your not? all your doing is putting the belief that you feel is true out there for people to see and either take or leave.

Ok, to HSG's question- Do i believe in an afterlife? What do i think happens when we die?
HSG does not believe in anything- that there is nothing after death. Just darkness. I actually can understand how that could be a very releasing thought. It gives you the freedom to think that one should not waste time with foolishness and should live life to the fullest, go out, be! and then when you die, you have peace...
but what if that isn't the case? what if you wake up again to find out that death is not the end and that there is something more? I'm not going to use this to inject my own belief in God but the question still holds. What if you are wrong? We are wired to believe that there is something more that what this life is. Yea, i think in a society where progress and science runs ramped, ppl try to explain away the fact that there is nothing more and no supreme being but the idea still lingers in one's mind. No one says "but there is nothing." and just walks away without giving the idea a second thought.

What also stuck me in the video is the idea many people have now a days about their own personal beliefs. "this is what i believe happens" "this is who I think God is" "This is how I think we go to heaven"- we can't all be right if something happens after death. If we are all right and our afterlife caters to the belief system that we want then we accept the fact that we are all Gods (the Mormons don't look so crazy now do they?) and that we have the power to control how our heaven will be when we know we have no control over anything in the first place. If there is right and wrong, how is it that there can be no heaven AND hell? is the idea of a hell something that is feared? does it make one face up to the idea that some things in their life may have been wrong to do? If there is right or wrong, why believe in just a heaven? it makes no sense, logically speaking, to get rewarded after death just for the heck of it? if there isn't right or wrong, then why would there be a reward for just dying? If one believes in a heaven, there must be a kind of hell.

Of course, one may ask- "well Tabby, what if you're wrong?"
my answer is simply that i don't believe that i am wrong- in fact i'll go on to say that i know that i am not wrong. That i because i fully and totally, with all my mind and my being believe that there is a God and he has a Son named Jesus and he put his words into a book called the Bible. I can try to explain away why and how everything and anything could happen but in the end it wouldn't matter because some things in life can't be explained away. there is a layer of reality that should be recognized in one way or another that doesn't follow the rules of science.

I think people who don't have true faith, i mean a faith that you wake up thinking about and obsessing about, cannot understand what it means for one to know what they believe in is true. That is because that person has put all their trust, more trust than they would put on a life long best friend or themselves, into that faith. When you put all of yourself into something that is above human error there is no longer any 'i believe' there is only 'i know.' Or else, it means that you really are not sure and there fore you do not have all trust in what you are saying-it is prone to error.

That's all i have to say. Again, i do not believe in apologizing for my post because I am stating what i believe on my own sight. Leave a message if you like- i would enjoy reading something like i'm still on break ^_^

Peacing it <3

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Wow this was somewhat of a long winded entry but definitely worth the read. I definitely feel you on a lot of your stances ie (Jesus died for my sins that there is a afterlife and blogs are an avenue to open the discussion with out force.) I think the ... I don't want to say flaws but the things I don't agree with on HSG's stance are if there is nothing after this life it would be pointless it makes me look back at 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 I just cant believe this is all, there just has to be more otherwise there really wouldn't be any reason to live right. Some may argue we have a inner compassion or conscience I believe that too but that's what I call the holy spirit if something like that is in us it has to be from a higher power. Now on Religion being frowned upon, i know some of it is the extremist who are like the worlds gonna end so sell all your belongings and live the sackcloth lifestyle that may push people away. But I think a lot of it is the Social Construct side of "Religion" The traditions constant focus on offerings some Televangelist selling miracle water and prayer cloths.But I feel like I'm rambling but I definitely think convo's on religion can be intriguing and exciting but we must always make sure the point is both parties involved will be educated and edified... ps your blogs pretty dope