A living god?

Sometimes customers get overzealous, but when enough of them say it, you start to believe them...

"I had actually heard about this from a guy who worked at the apple store. By the way, you are God. Thanks a lot."

"Thank you, god!"

"thank you.you are gods"

"Thank God for YOU!" -- Well not directed at me, close enough!

"NICE. You are a computer GOD!!!"

... and on the 9th day the clueless people elected the most stupid leader in history, for the second time.

Thank you religion loving hippies of America.

Why, if there is so much pain and suffering in "god's" world, do people expect "heaven" to be so pleasant?

Is life pointless?

It appears the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) agrees with my point of view, that you should live for the moment as life is kinda pointless.

The 'Institutionalised Man'

Friend: "I feel sorry for you. You should really come speak to my pastor so he can talk some sense into you."
Me: "Sure".

...and that was the end of a conversation on 'God' and religion the other night. Strange that he felt sorry for me because I didn't believe, or in fact I thought differently than the norm, but I guess that's the world we live in today.

I have a feeling, and I would be happy if someone proved me wrong, that humans are shunning thinking that leads to 'abnormal' behaviour in our society. Forget shades of grey, or even colour, human beings are becoming black and white. Whether it be simple things like the style of clothing that we wear or the job that we are going to go later in life, we are making choices that lead us to conform.

A serious example of this is the schooling system in first world countries. It may be subtle, but the entire time you are being 'schooled' you are being made to conform. Lets take exams. A large, perhaps even a majority, of people do not perform as well in exams as they do when given assignments. Why then is so much focus placed on tests? Why are you told to perform in your exams or you will fail? How is a stressful environment with a time limit going to make someone perform at their peak? Easy answer, it's not. Why then have exams? Is it because there is only one way of doing things in life and when the crunch comes you have to do it that way? Of course not, but it seems exams have to be that way.

Sure, exams are easier to mark, but why not remove half the exams and replace it with one complex assessment? Life is generally not based on instantaneous decisions, you usually have time to think and when it is, you have places like the Harvard Business School which can teach you to think on the spot.

Now, that's not to say that we should banish all exams, some people perform well in them, but in the Higher School Certificate in Australia, or the leaving exam, 50% of your final mark is based off exams that run over 3 weeks. The only people an exam like that benefits are the people that can memorise the entire syllabus, it doesn't produce people that can think and create logical answers.

Now getting back to our opening comment, I am Atheist and am happy to admit it. My friend was sorry for me because I didn't believe in 'God' and therefore from what he believed I was going to be eternally banished to 'Hell'. Why did he have these beliefs? Did it have something to do with him attending a Christian school from K-12? Did it have something to do with his parents being Christians? Did it have something to do with him being made to conform to those ideals? Of course it did. He comes from a very 'backwards' household where females are still meant to look after the house and kids and not go to University or get a job.

Frankly the idea of being a Christian sickens me. Over the years the churches associated with Christianity have done the most frightening of things. Everything from the burning of the witches (some reports say it was millions of people over the years, but even one is too many) to the crusades, the belief in not using contraception, that the woman should not have rights over her own body, and the list goes on. Strangely though, if you do not love 'God' and his church then you are in the wrong. You are either with them or against them.

Funny, that black and white stance, was only used lately via George 'Dubya' Bush. It's a great way to make enemies, and you would think that a 'God' that loved all wouldn't be so black and white, but no, he has to be. Love can only be given to those correct few, those non-witches, those people that conform, those black and whites.

Yes, those are only two examples, but there are thousands of them. The Democrats and Republicans are one in the same. Where are the colourful groups? Where are the parties that make us think? There aren't any, because we are brought up to only consider two. Why do we have to attend university to get a job and live happily? We don't, but that's all it seems our parents will tell us. My grandparents were disappointed that I didn't want to get a degree, yet I earn more money per year than most people do leaving university after 3 years of study. Why the disappointment? Is it because they feel my life is not as secure because they have the belief that degrees are needed in this day and age?

This world needs more people that think and don't just accept. Too many people accept that global warming has to happen and don't do anything to stop it, that two political parties is normal and healthy, that life revolves around a single job and that taking money from the government to help people in poverty will not help them. It's all not true, but we conform to the ideas planted in our minds at an early age because we refuse to consider or think about something other than the norm. We are the institutionalised man.

Bizarre body

I was lying in bed a few minutes ago and my left shoulder was aching. Now, that is not strange in itself, other than the fact that my shoulder was not in use, but it was strange because my stomach was not aching. You would think that after not eating anything all day my body would be complaining about something else other than my shoulder. Great self defence mechanism there...

Afraid of the dark

I am not someone who generally gets afraid of things, except of course those inbuilt natural phobias. There are people scared of spiders, people scared of dark places, people scared of African-Americans and people scared of cracks in the ground. Some are well grounded fears while others are simply totally irrational and detrimental to society.

One major fear that many people seem to have is the fear of death. In my opinion, the fear of death is totally nonsensical. As the saying goes, "All good things must come to an end" and it is totally true. Your family pet dies, your favourite rose bush dies and even that spider which you are so scared of will eventually perish and therefore, so must you.

The thing is, if you use life to the fullest, you really shouldn't be scared of death. If you realise at 45 though that, hang on, I have done nothing with myself over the years, then you should worry about death catching up to you too quickly, but you should never fear it. You have time to act, time to change and time to live.

Sure, death may be painful for some, especially if you are battling cancer or a disease, but that is nothing to fear. A dose of pain once in your life is not going to hurt you, it should just make you realise how lucky you were to rarely experience pain during your earlier years.

If there is nothing to fear about death, then why are so many people scared? Simply, it's because it is an unknown. We fear climbing into dark spaces because we don't know what is in there. We fear aliens because we don't know what they are or what they are going to do to us and we fear drugged up people with guns because we don't know what they are thinking. The unknown can be scary.

We try to explain death via religion, and it does a fair job of that, but there are many people that remain sceptical and rightly so. Religion is full of holes, so many in fact that it resembles one of my favourite forms of cheese, just not as tasty, but that is a blog entry for another time.

Now, if religion is used to explain death then why do people keep trying to push their religious beliefs on others? Why does a Christian believe that they need to spread the word of 'God'? Is it simply because they are afraid of other people thinking that there is no life after death because they are scared that it might be true? Personally I think that is the case.

An Atheist does not want to know about religion as they believe that there is no life after death, and they are happy with that. You don't need to convert those people because they are your friends and you fear that they might go to hell, as they simply do not believe in heaven or hell.

You could argue that religion shows you the way in life, but that is just trying to explain the unknown again. We are animals, the same as a dog, a cat or an elephant and we have one job on this planet, to reproduce. We have no extra job in life, no benchmark to fulfil before we can go into heaven, we simply must reproduce to ensure the humans as a species continues to live.

If you subscribe to the viewpoint that 'God' will show you the way, then you are wasting your time. Only you know what you want to do in life, you dreamt about it as a kid. I wanted to fly into space, others wanted to own a tropical island and others yet wanted to save all the kids in the world from poverty.

Remember those dreams, hang onto them and fulfil them, you only get one shot at it. Be afraid of running out of time, but only before you have fulfilled your dreams. Don't waste your time looking for signs or trying to explain the unknown, just do what you want to do and live. 9-5 jobs generally are not the best way of doing that, but if that is what you want to do, by all means, 'God' nor I will stop you. But if you are going to do that, keep one eye focused on your goals and never lose sight of them, because time is your worst enemy and you should be afraid of that.

The last time I had a blog, it was to complain. This time it is to try to explain.

Before I start, I might as well have a little bit about the blogger in question, me.

I am a well off self-employed male in his 20's who is fortunate enough to live in a country of plenty.

I like to concern myself, to the consternation of others, with things that are too complex to explain, but which mentally eat at me.

I am a perfectionist, but a lazy perfectionist. I take criticism way too hard and I tend to brush off compliments, which doesn't appear to be a great attribute.

I like making other people happy, but relying on that for my happiness tends to make me sullen way too often.

I do not know what pain is, it simply has not been thrown into my vocabulary yet, but I can imagine pain.

I make friends easily and lose them just as easily through the complete fault of my own.

That's me.