Ramblings

This is a long, rambling post. Just to forewarn you.

I was thinking a lot tonight about how much God has been naturally occurring in my thoughts the past week or two. Occasionally I think about this blog and this whole experiment and what I need to be doing, but that's more a natural reaction whenever you have tasks that need to be accomplished. I pray each day, of course, but that isn't natural occurrence. I've been more positive and trying to have a good attitude, but that isn't directly related to Him I don't think. Maybe just changing as a person and inherently having new kinds of thoughts is, indirectly, thinking about Him because they're His doing. Maybe the slight changes I've noticed in myself are just a manifestation of God stepping towards me- that any of the new thoughts I have are coming from Him and that that is, in itself, real faith? Does just thinking about God in the linguistic, written, painted and external sensory manifested sense--what you've been shown and told by others--qualify as faith? If no one ever told you anything about religion--handed you a Bible, showed you a website, showed you a painting, talked to you about it-- could it inherently exist inside you? Or is it a social construct that is meant as guide you on the correct path? This gets into a famous discussion about whether or not natural creativity is possible.

Pascal's Wager tells us that we mind as well follow a certain religion, picking whichever one, because the consequences of following or not following are lopsided. But if religion is a means to an end, as is a conduit to get into the afterlife (whether Heaven or Hell), why should it come down to luck? If only one particular religious sect is the correct choice, then statistically you have a long shot at getting into Heaven. Your choice is essentially random, whether or not you really chose, because you have no means to believe that any one is correct and another isn't because it's all based on what your opinions are, which may mean nothing. If only one particular sect is the lucky winner and the rest are going to Hell, that we all pretty much have a shot in Hell at getting out of Hell. Perhaps there is a larger sect umbrella that many other smaller sects fall into, increasing the odds, but then what's the point of further division? Because a priest doesn't believe the correct path is under that umbrella sect? The nature of the fact that any denomination of religion started from the opinion of one person, fundamentally, means that any one person's opinion on faith and what is right is equally as valid as anyone else's. Though they may not differ.

Ultimately if there's no afterlife then everything that we do on Earth does not matter, and everything that happens to us does not matter. If you died tomorrow, the rest of the years of your life that could have been are sabotaged, wasted. Because there's no continuity afterwards. And there's no solace to be taken during a tragedy because when bad things happen to people there wasn't a justifiable reason, it's all random.

For part of my life I believed that there really was no afterlife, and that once you died here that was it. My explanation being something like OK, if you step on an ant and kill it, do you really think it's going to Heaven? Or no because it's just an ant? I felt like most people could accept that the ant is just dead. So then why is it infeasible that it could be the same with a human? It's obviously a terrifying thought- one that would lead to a soul-shaking fear of death, so it was very clear to me then why maybe religions could have been invented at some point. Or that why people generally were much happier after finding God, or empty when they feel like they've lost Him. But I feel like even if I was sure that there was nothing after you died--no brain impulses, no thoughts, what constituted your "mind" gone so it all can't be comprehended--you mind as well fill that black hole void with at least a shred of belief that something happens, that some kind of afterlife system exists. Because without that it could be unbearable. So I never fully rejected the idea of an afterlife, despite my complete lack of faith. An atheist doesn't have to be idea-less, he just hasn't agreed with the other ideas he's heard.