That's the power.. of RELIGION

 Journal of Clarity – 039 – May 26, 2013

Still no real changes on the relationship front because, as I mentioned before, she’s out of town so nothing can really happen. A few texts have been sent back and forth, but nothing to the numbers of previous relationships or girls of interest, and that’s fine. She’s down there with family and if she wants to talk to me, she can talk to me. If she’s busy, then she won’t. But I’m bored sitting here not editing because I don’t want to start and have another weird power-outage thing happen in the midst of that. So I’m typing random shit instead. Let’s talk about something different for a change: religion!

I probably just lost most of you right then and there because religion is that polarizing topic that everyone tends to get either very quiet about or very vocal about. If I’m around people with strong religious beliefs, I keep my mouth shut mostly because I’ve been told if you don’t have anything nice to say, you probably should shut the fuck up. Likewise, if I’m around people who don’t have strong religious ties to any one group, but has opinions on it, then I’m more than open for discussion because it’s those people who tend to give me real opinions that aren’t just handed down from an old book that is essentially the fundamentals of an archaic belief system.

That’s right, for as good a guy as everyone assumes me to be, I’m likely to be labeled a heathen because I don’t follow any established religion of any sort. I don’t like most of them for one reason or another. If there isn’t dislike towards them, it’s indifference. For example, I can’t stand Christianity. The fundamental teachings of it on how you should live your life are fine, but some people take it too far and assume the Bible is a literal word-for-word translation of how to live your daily fucking life. No, it’s not. Just like “Triple Penetration for Dummies” isn’t an exact word-for-word translation on how to enjoy sex because not everyone beats to the same drum. Need an example? Some people use quotes from the Bible to show how wrong gay relations are with the quote about not men shall not sleep with other men or something along those lines. But if we’re following that line, then what about women who sleep with men other than their husbands? According to the Bible, we’re supposed to stone that woman to death. I don’t want to actually do it, but if the book says it has to happen, then how come no one is living up to THAT standard?

Is it perhaps because SOME people thought that way of dealing with that problem is archaic and cruel and should be done away with? There are other things in that book that are just as outdated and cruel as well, and they were certainly done away with. So why are we in modern times even given the words of that book credibility for how to live your life when we have proof that not everything in that book can possibly apply to modern times? We’re constantly complaining about how people in congress and the senate are too old and out of touch with modern times to legitimately run our government with their old ideals, and those fuckers are only 90 years old at best. And here we are still using quotes from a book that is THOUSANDS of years old as if it has the answer to every fucking problem.

In fact, that’s another point to add. Our constitution we written roughly 240 years ago has been looked at as outdated in terms of language and the times it was written compared to now. There has been talk for some time amongst people (who will unfortunately never get the chance) to revise and rewrite it for modern times because many of the articles written were reactions to the revolution that was taking place at the time. The world has changed a lot and the actions for which are government is responsible for and must do have certainly changed a lot. If a document that is 240 years old needs to be redone to fit a modern era, certainly a book like the Bible could use some reworking for modern times as well, if not be done away with completely.

Moreover, the Bible was actually not originally written in English. It was, in fact, written in Hebrew (at least the old testament was). That was translated into Latin, which was then translated to Roman. After that, I want to say it was actually translated to French or German before English. Now, if you know ANYTHING about how translating from one language to another works, then you’ll know that when something is translated, some parts of the original language tends to get lost in said translation because not all languages have the same words. I took Japanese and you would not believe how many times a word needed to be changed based on interpretation due to idioms or non-literal meanings of words. And the Bible was translated MULTIPLE times before making its way to English, and that was during a time when only the rich and elite were even capable of reading or writing. I guarantee that much of the Bible from the first script of it has been altered in such ways that we’ll never actually have the true meaning of the book, and thus, never really get the true intent of the original author(s).

To me, and this will likely offend some people, the Bible is nothing more than a book like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. It’s a work of fiction. There might be some aspects of the book that are good to teach morals and give basic life lessons. But, in the end, it is still just fiction, and it certainly isn’t something to live by, in my eyes, as instructions for what is legitimately right or wrong. I get more appropriate life lessons from reading Spiderman or Sonic the Hedgehog comics, and at least those are entertaining and colorful.

 But that’s not all. I’m also sick of all the crap that goes on between denominations of the Christian church and how being Catholic isn’t the same as being a Methodist. And Mormons don’t even count as Christians even though they believe in the same basic fucking thing about a guy named Jesus being a martyr for our sins and people really need to cut out that shit! Not to mention the history of the Christian church is riddled with stupidity, hypocrisy, and violence. People worry video games cause violence (many religious people no less) yet I’ve never seen people go to war because one person liked Sonic and the other liked Mario. Arguments, maybe, but never bloodshed. Yet there have been religious wars for AGES! Anyone remember the Crusades? I know I certainly fucking do, and I constantly like to rub it in the face of the Christian church as their black mark in history when they REALLY fucked up. Not that they haven’t fucked up other times, but that one was pretty fucking terrible.

It’s not just Christianity that does me ill, but it is certainly the most prominent and has the most vocal and annoying people amongst it. I have nothing against Judaism. But that’s because Jewish people have had such a rough history that, in my eyes, they’re really allowed to do what they want at this point. They’ve been persecuted and nearly wiped out multiple times, where I feel they deserve a break. Especially since my ancestors in the Meskwaki tribe were nearly wiped out by the French, so I think we have a kind of connection there. I have nothing against the Islamic faith, but I also know very little about it other than it’s prone to the same kind of denomination bullshit Christianity has which is cause for much of the unrest in the Middle East anyway. I mean, Americans are more the cause of it now, but the religious wars thing is where it started.

Buddhism is probably the one “religion” I can say I actually approve of because it doesn’t give you a deity to follow. It doesn’t say how other religions are wrong and you must convert non-believers. It barely even qualifies as a religion. But I like how it is essentially a lifestyle that has the same benefit the original concept of a religious faith is supposed to have. It is a way of living that strives to make you a better person both to yourself and others. There’s no strict rules to it or anything, and there’s really nothing about it you can fight with others about.

Many who actually care will likely stand up at this point and ask, “Aaron, are you a Buddhist?” To that, my answer is no. It is something I’d be interested to try, but I haven’t yet and don’t have any plans to do so in the near future. To which those same people respond with, “Then what do you believe in?” That’s sort of an interesting question. I find most modern day religions don’t really fit some of the big questions I have about the world. For those that say they do, I disagree.

Some of these big questions are: Why do bad things happen to good or innocent people? Why do bad things like disease and natural disaster exist if God is all powerful and could just magically make them not exist? Does this God allow these things to happen as some sick game or experiment or is really not as all powerful as everyone says he is? Most people answers these questions with something along the lines of, “It’s God’s way of testing us.” To which I call bullshit. A test should not have the results of people dying simply to see the reactions of those who survive to see if they are “worthy” or not for some theoretically perfect afterlife. GlaDOS might approve of deadly tests, but she’s also a psycho AI bitch whose opinions should never be taken into consideration. In short, I think monotheistic religions are fundamentally broken in that one God being responsible for all the good and bad things in the world creates either an inconsistent God, a psychotic God, or a childish God. And I don’t want to follow beliefs that think said God is actually worthy of praise.

To me, the most logical thing to explain how the universe works (or at least the things we have yet to understand through the rational logic of science) is the existence of multiple “gods” or multiple beings of higher existence capable of far more than we are. Old stories that explain how drunken brawls between Greek or Norse gods would cause natural disasters on our world makes a much better explanation than one God just testing us. It gives the Gods more human like qualities, which makes more sense because we’re supposedly based off “God,” right? It also makes for more amusing stories to tell aside from the tripe in the Bible.

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be Gods like Zeus, Thor, Poseidon, Odin, Ra, Osiris, or Amaterasu. It could be just beings that are just capable of more stuff than mankind (think Promethus for a moment) where they have advanced technology or something that created us and that might have been it. That way of existence would then explain why all the bad shit on our world happens, because they don’t know how to control or maintain it. Then again, perhaps this is just the world of the Matrix and the reason bad things happen is because our computer generated world has bugs and glitches and those are just the ways the system purges itself of bugs and glitches at the loss of data (us).

In short, there are a variety of ways to explain how the world works and why shit happens. I personally think that modern day monotheistic religions are too archaic in the way they function and don’t answer all the question that need answering. But does that really matter what I think? Does me not believing in what you believe really change anything about the world? It doesn’t. So don’t bother trying to convert me or prove to me that your religion actually works and explains my questions or addresses some of my points. I don’t really care. I like the way I’ve decided to answer the basic questions of the world. They aren’t perfect, but nothing really is.

Well, that was… fun… hopefully next time I have something more interesting to talk about.