A rare post
Point of reference:
After 25 years, I have finally relented to
spousal pressure and I am becoming a
Catholic. First communion is on Saturday
night. My decision has caused raised
eyebrows among those who know me
well, especially those who seem to respect
me on a primarily intellectual level. I find
the skepticism to be most unsettling, so,
as a guide to others who may struggle with
acceptance of your peers for entirely
personal beliefs and the analytical systems
that provide logical bases for the ethereal, I
share the following thoughts:
I think there's something inherently un-
Christian about going to church to commune
with god while suffering from a
hangover.
I think it's a good thing I'm a Christian, so
as to enable me to recognize the irony.
I don't know if there is a god, and it's not
that I don't care, but that I feel that
although it is incapable of being proven by
empirical data, I choose to believe there is.
Let's say I am internally hedging my spiritual
post cardiac functioning bets.
Whether or not there is a god, it shouldn't
change the way that you live your life. You
should do what you feel compelled to do
because you feel compelled to do it, not
because someone gives you an instruction
booklet, but becausse of your inherent moral
compass and sense of right and wrong.
That said, people who profess not to believe
in god pretend that they have an edge, as if
religious people are somehow ridiculous in
their beliefs.
Yeah, because being afraid of ghosts,
believing in UFOs, hoping that there might be
vampires/witches/unicorns in the world,
believing in fate, or pretending that you
might have been endowed with extraordinary
gifts somehow removes you from the point-and-
laugh habitat at the idiot zoo.
If you say you don't have faith, then you
can't possibly trust your partners, your
families, or your friends, because that...
would require faith.
You know that, purely on a statistical level,
your relationship isn't going to last, but you
pretend it is, anyway. You suspend your
disbelief and choose to believe in what brings
you peace, what helps you to sleep.
The fact that you don't sit in a room every
Sunday, celebrating those beliefs with others,
doesn't make you somehow more or less of a
person. It just makes you different.
And people who believe that they are special
because they are "different" have no right
mocking someone else for practicing something
that isn't in accordance with their desperate
hopes that eventual spiritual reckoning will
never bankrupt their karmic bank account and
adversely affect any potential afterlife,
albeit it unlikely in their secure views,that
may be in store for all of us.
If anything, you could say the religious
people have an edge; they're not emotionally
stunted, maladjusted sociopaths.
Faith has its' benefits.
After 25 years, I have finally relented to
spousal pressure and I am becoming a
Catholic. First communion is on Saturday
night. My decision has caused raised
eyebrows among those who know me
well, especially those who seem to respect
me on a primarily intellectual level. I find
the skepticism to be most unsettling, so,
as a guide to others who may struggle with
acceptance of your peers for entirely
personal beliefs and the analytical systems
that provide logical bases for the ethereal, I
share the following thoughts:
I think there's something inherently un-
Christian about going to church to commune
with god while suffering from a
hangover.
I think it's a good thing I'm a Christian, so
as to enable me to recognize the irony.
I don't know if there is a god, and it's not
that I don't care, but that I feel that
although it is incapable of being proven by
empirical data, I choose to believe there is.
Let's say I am internally hedging my spiritual
post cardiac functioning bets.
Whether or not there is a god, it shouldn't
change the way that you live your life. You
should do what you feel compelled to do
because you feel compelled to do it, not
because someone gives you an instruction
booklet, but becausse of your inherent moral
compass and sense of right and wrong.
That said, people who profess not to believe
in god pretend that they have an edge, as if
religious people are somehow ridiculous in
their beliefs.
Yeah, because being afraid of ghosts,
believing in UFOs, hoping that there might be
vampires/witches/unicorns in the world,
believing in fate, or pretending that you
might have been endowed with extraordinary
gifts somehow removes you from the point-and-
laugh habitat at the idiot zoo.
If you say you don't have faith, then you
can't possibly trust your partners, your
families, or your friends, because that...
would require faith.
You know that, purely on a statistical level,
your relationship isn't going to last, but you
pretend it is, anyway. You suspend your
disbelief and choose to believe in what brings
you peace, what helps you to sleep.
The fact that you don't sit in a room every
Sunday, celebrating those beliefs with others,
doesn't make you somehow more or less of a
person. It just makes you different.
And people who believe that they are special
because they are "different" have no right
mocking someone else for practicing something
that isn't in accordance with their desperate
hopes that eventual spiritual reckoning will
never bankrupt their karmic bank account and
adversely affect any potential afterlife,
albeit it unlikely in their secure views,that
may be in store for all of us.
If anything, you could say the religious
people have an edge; they're not emotionally
stunted, maladjusted sociopaths.
Faith has its' benefits.