Hatred is Freaking Bad for you.

Hate is a term which, in this culture at least, is considerably overused. On a daily basis, you can hear it used in contexts like “I hate how they put ads before youtube videos now! Stupid youtube, how dare it waste 15 seconds of my time before letting me waste 5 minutes of my time!” or, “[jokingly] I hate you, what did you do that for?” all the way to “OH MY DEAR SWEET JESUS LORD AND SAVIOR, I FREAKING HATE JEWS!!! THEY SHOULD ALL BE SWALLOWED UP BY A HOLE IN THE GROUND AND CONSUMED BY SATAN IN THE FORM OF A TASTY BREAKFAST CEREAL!!!!!” I hope Satan uses milk. But anyway, you get the point. In the first two, the word “hate” is obviously kind of misused. I mean, think what hate means. When you hate something, you despise it with every fiber of your being, you have no positive thoughts for it, you would like nothing more than to see it destroyed. Now come on, do you really hate those people who cut you off in traffic, or that one person who accurately told you that strapless dress you got at the thrift store doesn’t go so well with your hairy armpits and man-boobs? No, you probably don’t, so stop saying that you do!

I mean the real problem here is that the word has now lost all meaning. If you say that you hate your damn cat, when he barely does anything at all, and does even less worthy of hating him for;  if you then say that you hate Hitler, it’s just not going to have any kind of effect. Sure, with Hitler, I suppose, one could have a reasonably good idea of how much you like him, regardless of your reputation with using the word “hate”, but what if you’re talking about hating something less obvious? What if you really hate your next door neighbor, or a social rival? If you keep complaining about hating things, then you have to go to much more trouble to convey your feelings for a person. This isn’t too huge of an issue, but wouldn’t it just be easier to be able to say “hate”, and people would understand the severity of your opinion, rather than having to say things like “utterly despise,” “loathe beyond all measure,” and “hold in the highest of contempt,” just to get a single point across? In fact, in the likely event that you need to use all of these in a single conversation to properly express yourself, you’ll probably end up overshooting it and looking like some deranged, neurotic lunatic with homicidal tendencies, rather than just someone with a strong opinion.

So, in short, you need to stop using the word hate unless you really mean it. I know this won’t happen, and that you’ll all just keep on overusing it to the point that you say it more than teenagers use “like” in a sentence, but I feel like I have to try to persuade you. In fact, sometimes these essays seem utterly futile, in that I am trying to pull the heads of millions of human beings out of their own asses. With one person this is hard enough, but it is pretty much impossible for me to persuade an actually significant amount of people to stop what they’re doing, no matter how much they masochistically enjoy it, and start doing things that are actually progressive. No one man has enough leverage and tact to incite such a huge change in an entire race, no matter how stupid the problem he faces. This is because, no matter how stupid something is, if people have already decided on doing it en masse, there’s just no stopping them easily.

Aha! This is the part where you were thinking to yourself “Oh, looks like this lune has finally stopped talking, that was short. Well, I might as well get back to Minecraft and gay porn.” But you’re not getting off that easy! I have just one more point to make about hatred, which I think I can drag out for at least another few paragraphs! (And now you’re thinking “Oh shit, he’s not done yet, and I’ve already gotten my lotion out.”)

Probably the most important thing about hatred is that it is actually bad for you. Hatred is, perhaps, more harmful to your mind and psyche than any disease or drug could ever be to your body. The thing about it is that it only causes pain to hold on to it. If someone slaps you, you can be angry at them for a while. But think of my definition of hatred above. Whether you call it hatred or not isn’t really important at all, what’s important to your health is whether you do it. And if you do, truly hate something or someone, for something as trivial as slapping you, then… Well, I’m sure that you can all see the problem with doing that.

Another thing to worry about is holding on to hatred. As the Buddha once said, “Holding onto hatred and anger is like holding a hot coal, with the intent of throwing it at someone. In the end, it is only you who gets burned.” This is exactly the case with hatred. Whether you hate someone has no effect on them whatsoever, especially if they don’t seek your approval. But it does have an effect on you. Think, again, of my definition for hatred. Think of all of the negative emotion and intense rage and resentment caused by hatred. That must take a lot of energy to maintain, yes? Hating someone is emotionally draining, when you think about it. It simply takes out of you to put so much energy into hating, as it would if you put as much energy into mourning a loss, or into fearing something. So that’s one consequence of hating, it exhausts you mentally.

The second consequence of hatred on your mind is what it does to it. Hatred can change a person drastically, and even if it doesn’t it can change what is thought of him. Truly hating something, like I said, is very intense and very powerful. As a consequence, it has effects on a person who hates. It can make someone angry, or bitter or spiteful. It can even blind someone from their better judgment, and drive them to do, think, or say things that they wouldn’t ordinarily. If someone holds on to hatred for long enough, this kind of thing becomes permanent. A hateful person, like I described above, is seldom thought fondly of by others, and the odds are that no one is going to really like someone who is generally hateful. Like a lot of traits, hatefulness can be permanent or temporary, but it is never good. It can harm or offend those around you, and change your mind forever.

You may think right now, that being a hateful person isn’t so bad. You may think that having your mind changed to be hateful is just another personality. Let me say one more thing about what hatred does to you. Hatred hurts you. As was said with the coal metaphor, hatred can cause you more anguish than the thing that you hate could ever hope to. You may think that being bitter, or angry, or contemptuous is only harmful to others, and it is very easy to do so, as I’ll go into later. But hatred never feels good to possess. Hatred never gives someone a happy feeling. It leads to bitterness; it leads to anger, to frustration, even to despair. Hatred will never lead someone to feel happy or whole, the will always feel negative while they are hateful of something. (Provided they’re thinking of that something, if they’re just hateful in general then they’re obviously not feeling negative for every second of their lives.)

Possibly the worst part of hatred, though, is how easy it is to hate, sometimes without even realizing. Hatred is never caused by oneself. No one ever finds himself feeling hateful just when he’s thinking of himself, it’s always someone or something else that someone hates. It has to be any object, because unlike happiness and sadness, hatred cannot simply be a spontaneous mood without some kind of subject. And when someone feels hatred, they don’t think about feeling it. They just think of what the hatred is directed at, and how horrible it is. Part of hatred is seeing something as worse than it is. So it’s easy to think that the subject of one’s hatred is entirely to blame, and that you only perceive something as it is, rather than experiencing an emotion which is skewing your perception for it, and causing you to feel the way you do. This is exactly how hatred is allowed to continue, it is because people identify it as entirely someone else’s fault that they possess their hatred, or even they don’t realize that they hate something at all.

From this stage, hatred becomes a parasite. It leeches out your happiness, it takes away from your enjoyment of life, and it leaves you feeling bad (bad is fairly general, but it can cause a whole load of negative emotions.) It even fools you into believing that the source of your problems is someone else. The truth of the matter is, though, that while someone else may or may not be making you feel the way you do, the true source of the problem is you. It is only by letting go of your hatred that you can begin to heal and feel better, even though it seems easier and more reasonable to hang onto it; it will simply do you no good. There are, of course, exceptions to this, like when someone is physically or verbally abusing you; but even then, justified or not, it's simply better for you not to hate them. I suppose it is only the pointless hatred, hatred that you have for something which no longer affects you, that letting go of can make one feel completely better.

There are very, very few instances where it is actually helpful to hate anything. Even in those examples, it is no good to you or anyone if you continue to hate something forever. To the human race, hatred is more of a disease than anything else. What people need to do is this: Firstly, to learn to recognize when they hate something. Like I said, sometimes hatred doesn’t feel like hatred, or an emotion at all. However, if you hate something, it is always possible to realize that you do. It does take some difficult self-evaluation, at times, but it is vital that you learn to identify any hatred you possess. Secondly, we need to get rid of hatred. No matter how hard this is, no matter how justified someone is in hating something, it just needs to stop. HAtred can only cause harm, it can only destroy things; and it has destroyed things, at innumerable times in history. The only thing hating or not hating something really changes, is you, and the latter option is certainly better. You can even have the same opinions about something without hating it, and be far healthier for it. Finally, if you must hate, then sometimes it simply can’t be helped, so try to overcome your hatred, but don’t beat yourself up about it if you can't. And finally, whenever you don't hate something… PLEASE DON’T SAY THAT YOU FREAKING HATE IT!!!

Sincerely,


The Ellipsis

Teenage Ignorance

Warning: The following article is not about agnosticism, or religion in general. It is my philosophy on something, but it doesn't have to do with god.

                As Socrates once said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.” This is a quote that I find to be very true in a broader sense; however it also neatly sums up my attitude towards being a teenager and going through puberty, etc. My view on things shouldn’t be hard to guess, I’m sure that most mature adults would agree with me on this. Teenagers, as a general rule, are idiots. That’s all there is to it: Overall, that particular demographic just isn’t very bright. Though I’m sure there are plenty of very intelligent teens out there, what I mean is that very few teens possess any real wisdom or maturity. As teens, we overreact, we exaggerate, we get emotional, we let our emotions speak for us. We believe every damn thing that our bodies and our instincts tell us to. With teenagers and to most human beings, one's actions (at the time of their happening) seem perfectly reasonable to him, for the most part… And yet, adults and children and even other teens, upon seeing what teenagers do, can often unanimously see that a teen is being unreasonable. But the teens who are doing it don’t think it’s illogical, to them it makes perfect sense… Do you see where I’m going here?

                This is why I stated my beliefs about absolute truth before I wrote this, because they apply to so many other things. To make a point akin to that of the mentioned article, my logic on the matter basically goes like this: Since adults almost unanimously say that teenagers are unreasonable or illogical, this is probably the case in most scenarios. Also, I and most teenagers do not realize that they are as the others say they are, and it genuinely appears to them that they are in the right. Therefore, as a teenager, my perception of the world is very likely skewed from the true reality, as an effect of puberty and/or a developing brain; thus causing me to be susceptible to logical fallacies without even knowing it. So if that’s the case, my every opinion could be false: By this, of course, I mean that they are likely derived more from emotions or prejudice than from sound logic. And the proof is all around me. When I’m angry at someone, I think they’re a bad person; when I have a crush on someone I think they’re a saint; and when I’m sad about something, I think it’s the end of the world. These, of course, aren’t really thoughts; they’re feelings. They’re my intuition, my instinctive assumptions about the world, based entirely off of feelings and emotions, as in: Not fact.

                So after discovering this… Well, first allow me to say how I did figure this out. It’s not a fun story. I may not have mentioned before that I am NOT fond of my childhood, and that is mostly because it largely took place before I came up with the philosophy above, and acted on it. So anyway, I guess I had my true phase of teenage rebelliousness and emotional imbalance when I was in 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade. It was then that I hated my parents, that I would get depressed, that I would always listen to my emotions and think I was right, and most importantly, it was then that I would believe that a simple crush was really love.

                As you can imagine, this mentality is never a healthy one. I’ve heard people say, (mostly theists I would guess, but not all spiritual) that if you listen to your heart, then you’ll know when you’re in love. I guess I wouldn’t know if this was true, but I’m certain that it’s not the right idea to give people, because the heart’s voice sounds a lot like that of the genitals, and vice versa. Maybe my story would convince them of just how harmful this mindset can be, because I used to buy into it, and it sure came back to bite me in the ass.

                I'd had crushes before in my life, I suppose. They weren’t that serious, really just me having a certain preference towards a girl, but it was never a very strong emotion… It was never enough to make me actually flirt with them. It wasn’t until 6^th grade that I actually “fell for” a girl. Truth be told, I barely knew her at the time, and if I had before liking her, I doubt I’d have been glad for the fact. I’m friends with her to this day, (god I hope she doesn’t know about this story) so don’t go thinking I hate her or anything… But also, trust me when I say that she was insanely annoying, at least at the time, and definitely not my type. The problem was that I got a crush on her before I knew this.

                If any of my previous “fancies” had the same personality, then those crushes would have probably gone away in no time, but I guess that was before hormones had really kicked in. It was quite sudden, that I was overtaken by puberty, which is likely what caused such a drastic hold to be taken on my emotions… I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened inside my head, but I can tell you this: What it lead to was not pretty. I felt completely and madly in love with this girl. Though I was aware of her flaws, even on a conscious level, they didn’t bother me at all. It’s not like they were minor ones, either, they were like bloodstains on a white bed sheets… And I don’t mean like pinprick bloodstains, I mean the kind you leave after a bullet wound to the jugular. Again, though, I was crazy for her in the same was that hyenas are crazy for meat. I lost control.

                So there’s your setting: I’m in 6^th grade, have what is by far the most severe crush of my life, have no experience with them, and I seem to have lost my sense of better judgement. What happens? Why, the very worst, of course. My emotions for her got so out of hand that I honestly thought I loved her. I was thinking in terms of how many months before it would be okay to ask her out, when before I had decided that I wouldn’t date anyone before I was at least 14. And not only was I obvious with my feelings, I let them define me. I planned on marrying her, for fuck’s sake! I was so convinced of my feelings for her being so true and permanent, and that they would never go away, and that I had found true love, blah blah blah, etc, etc, etc. Again, when I would think of all her flaws and go, “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t this the kind of shit that should be annoying the living fuck out of me right now?” The reply was, “Well, yes it is, but you see, she must be an exception.” Notice the lack of explanation for why she should be exempt from the rule, I just knew that it didn’t bother me that she was annoying, and went straight ahead to assuming that it was because she was so great, not that I was so screwed up.

                Now a few months into this awful affair, the whole damn thing came crashing down on me like a ton of aborted fetuses on a pro-life convention. It was practically overnight that I realized the fact that I didn’t like the girl after all, and what happened after that is something which I can only speculate the cause of. Basically, as well as deciding I didn’t like her, I quickly developed an intense hatred for the girl I had thought I was in love with just days before. I don’t know if it was me directing my anger (for my feelings being wrong) at her, or if it was like my mind was somehow over-compensating by hating her too much after liking her too much… Whatever the reason, the point is that I decided that I hated her overnight. To this day, I feel guilty for doing what I did, and reacting so poorly to my emotions… I think that after I got over her, I was really mean to that girl… Not only was it unjust of me to take out my emotional frustration on her, but it was also cruel because I think she liked me at the time, and I thought so back then, too! Maybe she started liking me during or after my crush on her, but either way, I feel like I lead her on by doing what I did, and the guilt (like that of being the immature child I was) will probably haunt me for a very long time.   

                But move on from the issue of how much of an ass I was, and allow me to pull out the real meaning of this story. That whole affair is what taught me what puberty could do. It showed me how much it could skew my perspective on life, and how shamelessly my subconscious would lie to me, to get me to like a girl (Well, among other things.) Ever since that crush of mine, I have had the same opinion that I do now about puberty. It really opened my eyes to the truth of puberty. I don’t know if everyone else is just less open-minded, or if they weren’t lucky enough to have such a grand example right in front of their eyes. And as a side note, that’s really what it was; it was like a huge example laid out before me, that demonstrated the true nature of my mind, and all of its lies. Anyway, though, to put a long story short, this brief little anecdote is how I learned that puberty screws with my perception, and ruins my better judgment.

                Anyway, after I discovered this, I naturally made some drastic changes to my views and to my life. Hell, it’s not like I was just going to let something that had clearly fucked with my entire head do it again! I immediately took the knowledge and experience I had gained, and made it into a new philosophy… Which I still carry with me today, to some degree. For the entirety of my 7^th grade and 8^th grade year, I had a crush on a single girl, and I hated just about every moment. But I’m glad and, dare I say it, proud that I hated it, because that signifies to me that I knew what was going on. It means that I didn’t forget that crushes were temporary, that I knew my feelings weren’t real, and that I didn’t really love the person. It also means that, knowing all of this, I didn’t cave in to my instincts, because it was tempting to cave in, and believe what I felt; and yet I still chose to remember what I had learned, and stick to logic. So for almost two years, I just held out, hoping my crush would abate, because I knew that my feelings were insincere, and harmful to me, more than anything else. The result was that, with all this lack of hope, when I found out that she  was secretly dating my best friend, I didn’t cry about it. I was shocked, yes, but I was also happy because it caused me to finally get over the girl (I don’t know how, maybe my subconscious has some common sense, and knows when to cut its losses). I was miserable when I liked her, being so conflicted with myself, not being able to stop wanting her or to get what I wanted. It was a true triumph when I came out of the most difficult crush of my life knowing that I had won round two with my hormones.

                As a sort of epilogue to that story, I did kind of beat myself up for not knowing about the thing that she and my freaking best friend had going, and I was frankly unsure what to think of it. If you knew either of them, you’d find it hard to believe too. I was also forced to re-evaluate my ability to judge people, and my ability to believe see the truth, rather than what I wanted to see. There were a million conflicts inside my head at the time, but at least I’m glad that none of them were “Wow, I guess I really didn’t love her after all.” I was wrong about her, but I wasn’t wrong about me. Also, reader, I am happy to inform you that I was right to not think the world of her, because she actually turned out to be quite a shallow person after all.

                Oh, but I digress. By now I’ve said the point a million times, that as a teenager, one simply can’t trust his feelings. This applies to crushes and to any emotion at all. Like for instance, other popular ones are hatred of parents or authority, depression or nihilism, and the idea that everything you do in middle school is going to count for the rest of your life. I still battle with my emotions, and try to apply logic wherever I can. In a sea of emotional turmoil, the only thing that I can ever be sure of is that logic will never point me in the wrong direction, or deceive me, or be unable to support me. So let me end this essay with a message for any teens out there, here’s three pieces of advice: Anything you think you know because of your emotions, be prepared for it to be proven wrong. Please know yourself, and know yourself well. This is something that I truly had to master, and that everyone should, because you need to know when you're thinking with your logic or you're emotions, you need to know when you are being biased by something, and the list really goes on into eternity; so understand yourself as well as you possibly can, because to help yourself you first have to know yourself. And finally, if you must argue with someone, please prove them wrong, don’t just say they’re wrong. Back your damn argument with facts and reasoning, not on what you feel! (see next article, which is to be called: How to Argue with Me)

Sincerely,

The Ellipsis

What is Agnosticism?

Agnosticism, I suppose, has a few definitions, depending on your source. Just like any other belief system, or school of thought, you would probably be hard pressed to get all agnostics to agree on one specific set of beliefs, so let me just sum things up as best I can. Though I'm sure most people who read this blog know what agnosticism is, I feel that I should post this just in case.

The basic premise of agnosticism is that we agnostics admit that we don't know about the universe. We don't know if there's a god or not, we don't know if a higher power exists, we can't be sure if events are all random, predetermined, or structured, and we don't know if we even can know these things. I don't know if all agnostics would say this, but I am firmly of the belief that no on in the entire human race does really know (at this moment) the answer to any of what I just mentioned. Sure, any theist or atheist will say that they can be sure that there is or isn't a god, but I find that hard to believe. As of yet, no conclusive proof exists to confirm or refute the existence of a god, or anything of the sort.

So the reason I, at least, turned to agnosticism was because I found it the most rational thing to do. I find that atheists even possess a small amount of faith, just like theists, in that they stick to their belief (or disbelief) despite the fact that they can't be certain about it. I do, however, hold them much more highly than theists, and in no kind of contempt for their beliefs, because they are at least far more likely to be correct than theists are. Well, that is, they are as far as we know.

Another thing about agnostics is the notion of defining what a god is. Again, for all I know I'm only speaking for very few agnostics here, but this is what I think about things. Since science and common reasoning can easily disprove the validity of all of earth's religions, or at the very least they can fail to support them, we cannot assume that any of them are true. Fir this reason, we can't assume that their ideas of a god are true. This being the case, if there is a god of any kind, who's to say what he would be like? Would he really be omnipotent, omniscient, or even benevolent? This we cannot know. Another question is what exactly would we define a god as? Would he have to rule over us? Would he have to be one of those omni-somethings listed above? Would he have to have created the world or anything? I find this the most troubling question of all, because it also leads me to wonder if it would be watching us, controlling us, or affecting us at all if there were a god out there. In such a large, large universe, with human knowledge understanding only the tiniest fraction of it, who's to say that we would have any idea of what god would look like? It seems ridiculous to me.

The last thing I'll cover in this article is the difference between empirical and positive agnosticism. Basically, an empirical agnostic believes only that humans simply aren't able to tell if there's a god yet, while a positive agnostic will tell you that humans never can become able to tell if there's a god. I myself am an empirical agnostic, and I think that the validity of this claim could depend heavily on how "god" is defined, so I won't go into the topic too deeply, for the moment. Empirical agnosticism, by the way, you may hear called "weak" agnosticism, a term that I don't agree with. The while idea of agnosticism is that we don't know if there's a god, so doesn't it seem more strongly adherent to this principle to not know whether we can know, rather than to firmly say that we can't? I find that so-called "weak" agnostics are far more firmly held to their beliefs and to rationality than any other belief system. Empirical agnostics simply acknowledge that until proof exists for something, we cannot be certain of it, and therefore will not assert that it is true. Though they are often called "fence sitters", I am of the belief that there is no shame in adhering to logic strictly and exclusively, and making no leaps of faith.

If you want to know more about agnosticism, you could learn all about spiritual agnostics, and agnostic theists, and all sorts of other fancy terms, but these are at least the basics. As a quick recap, agnosticism is only the belief that the existence of god is uncertain due to lack of evidence. As for my particular beliefs on agnosticism, I would go as far as to define it as a strict adherence to the belief of only what can be proven conclusively by science or philosophy, and nothing else. In this way, empirical agnosticism isn't incompatible with atheism or theism, as empirical agnostics would acknowledge either belief to be true, were there sufficient proof to support it. Thank you for taking the time to read this post, as it is a topic I find especially interesting, and I hope that I have been able to help everyone who read this to better understand agnosticism.

Sincerely,

The Ellipsis

The Illusion of Faith

                Faith, though it is a religious concept that I can at least understand fully, is perhaps the most devious invention in the theistic arsenal. The basic premise of faith is that one should believe what they are told about god, despite there being no affirmative evidence, and mountains of doubt. On its own, this is an entirely stupid notion, and if it remained this way then every intelligent being on this planet, so about half of all human beings and a few dolphins, would be non-religious. But this is where it gets devious. Building off the idea I said earlier, what is then added is the notion that faith is a good thing, a virtue. (and the very word “faith” sounds better than “gullibility.”) So now the premise becomes: "Believe what I say about god, because god says that it’s a good thing." This quickly turns into a case of circular reasoning, as you can surely see. The two different points prop each other up. If you look closely at what the argument is saying, it comes down to “You should believe in my point because according to my point, you should believe in it.” It’s like if I were to tell you that you’re standing on top of an invisible unicorn. You have no reason to believe you are, except that I tell you, but what if I told you that if you don’t believe in it, the unicorn will rear and knock you on your ass? It’s still not very believable, but this at least makes it easier to see that in order for my second point to be true, my first must also be.

                So what is it that makes faith such a convincing trap?  I mean, billions of human beings dive head first into this logical fallacy, even I was stuck in the loop for a little while. The answer to this is a rather malicious one, as well as a multi-faceted one. The first aspect that makes faith believable is psychology, which also breaks down into a few separate points. First off, when someone tells you that you’re standing on an invisible unicorn, you immediately question whether this is true, and are inclined to doubt that it can be proven. But when the same person starts telling you all about what this unicorn can do (like, apparently, phase changing to meld in with the floor you’re standing on!) then you begin to doubt yourself. Psychologically this is simply because the person talking to you did something that defies the principles of logic. Basically, he made points based off of another point he made, without proving the first point! One has to prove something before going off of it to be rightly able to assume it is true, but theists skip straight to the second point. So you, having been first told that there’s a freaking unicorn beneath you, are then you are told that he’ll rear if you don’t behave. The reason that it becomes more tempting to believe after the second point is made is that on a subconscious level, one kind of assumes that the first point has been proven if someone is already making points based on it. Our minds naturally bend towards logic, but the problem is that we assume that it’s there when it isn’t, and as soon as we do this we allow ourselves to believe things that have no logical backing. The second way in which faith is psychologically forced on us is simpler, it’s the bandwagon effect. 90% of the earth’s population believes that there is a god of some sort, and usually 100% of the people one grows up with believe the same things about god. Again, we subconsciously use logic, and seeing that so many other people believe something tends to yield the conclusion that it must be true. It’s sort of akin to the way that if a friend tells you the answer to a math problem, you’ll often assume that it’s right rather than do the math, if it’s long and complicated.  So when we are told by an overwhelming amount of people that something, anything really, is true, then we are inclined to have more doubt in our own ability to deduce fact than in that of the majority. And so, at any point in life, a belief in god can be programmed into our minds without us even thinking about it once.
         Sure, there are plenty of people who are logical thinkers, who are unafraid to disagree with the majority, but who still believe in god. This would naturally make one assume that they came up with a logical explanation for the matter of god’s existence, however even they have prejudices towards the majority. Since they have likely been raised on the idea that god exists, then it is, like with all of us, programmed into their brains. They may have different ideas of god due to their independence, perhaps of a god that makes more logical sense than the traditional gods. But still, their versions of this god are still subject to the prejudiced idea that there is a god in the first place. This is the most basic level on which these prejudices are drilled into our heads, which is likely the reason a critical minded person may skip over it when logically evaluating the topic of god. I’m not saying that this basic prejudice is never shattered by logical thought, that’s how atheists and agnostics come about, but my point is that these different levels of prejudice that have been psychologically burned into our heads, are how people can be perfectly logical and still believe in god. It’s simply a matter of where it occurs to them to apply logic, and where they are or aren’t willing to change their beliefs.

     So, a long story short, faith is a bull shit word. It is a vice, disguised as a virtue; it's idiocy disguised as intuition. It is the single most popular way in which religion maintains control over it's victims, a true psychological angler fish, if you will. By playing off faith as such a wonderful thing, and when we live in a society where the very word faith is generally looked on as somehow sacred, people are discouraged from denying it. Before a person even has doubts about their religion, they are told again and again that having doubts makes them a bad Christian, (I can only assume it applies to other religions as well) and so discouraged are they from having doubts, they are too terrified to leave their faith! Mind you, it's nice to believe in god, I wish that such a myth were true myself. (to some extent) But the thing is that it isn't true, the Christian god doesn't exist, and simple introspection and innate wisdom can tell anyone this. Faith, to describe it in one sentence, is religion's ill-contrived, deceptive lie that is used as a defense mechanism from its followers' common sense. This, my friends, is what we are up against.

Sincerely,

The Ellipsis

Free Will

                Free will is a topic that is rather diverse in possible meanings. With just the mention of the name, I could really be referring to any number of examples. Free will, for example, is a constitutional right endowed upon people of most countries. Free will is our ability to determine our own actions or thoughts, anatomically and physiologically speaking. Free will is our ability to do so psychologically speaking, as well. But the free will that I’m referring to in this short essay is refers to man’s ability to choose whether or not to accept the will of god.

                Now this is a little bit ridiculous, because if there is a god, then we don’t really know his take on free will. More specifically, I am talking about Christianity’s position on god and free will, and why it makes no sense. I suppose, then, that this is really just another venue that I’m taking to disprove the notion of the Christian god, basically. Nonetheless, it’ll be a good way for me to vent, and maybe somebody somewhere will get their kicks from hearing this.

                I’ve gotten into a debate with someone over freewill and Christianity, which I was forced by my own principles to leave. Basically, after rallying back and forth for a while, it became clear that my adversary was simply reusing points that were already disproved, by failing to address my attacks on his points and using them anyway, etc, etc. It was pointless. But here is how it went:

                I find the most troubling logical fallacy with the Christian god to be the way he deals with sinners. Supposedly he punishes them in order to get them to have better faith in him, to obey him, or even to make those who already believe in him do so even more. Sure, that’s all very well, except for the punishment part. So the Christian god is supposedly omniscient. (knows literally everything) omnipotent, (can do literally anything) and omni-benevolent. (a made up term meaning that he loves all life, and always chooses the action that causes the most good) But if that’s the case, then his methods for dealing with people are unnecessarily mundane.

                From what I can tell, he supposedly harms people to either teach them a lesson, test their faith, or to increase their faith. All of these make sense to do, but no god with all of those omni-somethings  above would really need to destroy cities, kill families, burn people alive, or anything of the sort. Let’s just start with testing people: If he’s truly omniscient, then he knows what is in their hearts, and doesn’t need a freaking stool sample to see that they’ve taken their daily dose of mindless obedience pills. As for teaching people to have deeper faith in him, like Job, then here are two problems, using Job as an example. First, if god really knows everything, then he should be able to come up with a better way to deepen Job’s faith, that doesn’t involve the slaughter of thousands of innocent people and animals. This leads me to my second point, that an omni-benevolent god wouldn’t act in such a way as did the Christian one. How on Earth is it morally justifiable to murder hundreds of innocent women, children, and servants, likely leaving much suffering among those not killed, simply to make one man who is already a very devout person to be a little bit more devout? How the hell is that a worthy trade off? By today’s moral standards, a cure for cancer wouldn’t be worth that high of a body count, much less a single lesson learned by one man. As you can see, this story along with numerous other examples simply don’t line up with the description of “god” that is given in the same book that they’re in.

                My last point on the topic of god pointlessly causing suffering, however, is my true coup de grace on the topic. God, apparently, will often punish people for being evil, in order to purify them. So in other words, the desired end result is to make them a model citizen, who invites his neighbors to dinner on weekends, and helps old ladies cross the road. And again, we’re looking at a supposedly omnipotent god, meaning he can do anything inside or outside the boundaries of human imagination, without the slightest of effort. It seems to me that, with these two givens, the logical conclusion would be for this god to simply make the delinquents in question into the kind of person he’d have them be. Being omniscient as well, he is able to see what the outcome of every possible way to change them would be, and being omni-benevolent he would then pick the one that’s most beneficial to everybody. This seems to make sense, from a pragmatic point of view, which is why it arouses so much concern to see that in biblical examples and speculated modern day examples, god does no such thing. Instead, he will cause pain, suffering, loss, or anything unpleasant upon a person to make him into a more godly one. This is the point where I call BS, and say that if there is a god, he cannot be the Christian one because of the contradiction involved in their theory.

                But the argument against this assertion is that god refrains from simply rewiring our brains without us noticing, because this would strip us of our freewill. Sure, the argument is correct in and of itself, but as an argument it doesn’t refute my point. How is it that while turning someone into a better person in such a way that will be beneficial for him and others, is against free will, while torturing that person into submission until he eventually caves and submits to god’s will is somehow an example of free will? It seems to me that either way, the person is doomed to submit to god’s will, the only difference being how much pain and blood are involved in the process. To refute this, a christian would say that the person can technically choose to refuse god still… But how is that free will? I mean, if I strap you to a chair in my basement and whip you until you agree to leave me your will, but I say that you don’t have to give me your money if you want to remain in my basement, being whipped forever; then that is NOT free will! That is, admittedly, giving you a choice, but I have taken away your right to self-determination, and therefore no matter what I allow you to say or think, you are still not truly free. This is the same manner in which the theoretical Christian god strips our free will, so since he is already doing so, there is no justification for him choosing to do so when more humanitarian options exist.

                While we’re on the topic of how god deals with bad people, here’s another question: God is present at all times, and knowing of all things, so he is capable of seeing what a person will be like after they are born… Generations and generations before they are born. So why doesn’t he stop certain people from being born--- Not all sinners, because I know Christians are fond of the idea that everyone is born a despicable person for being human--- just the people who he knows that he would have to admonish if he were to allow them to live. And there are a million ways that he could do this, from an abortion, all the way to him making a tiny tweak in the replication of DNA during meiosis in one of the parents. It seems that if a god knows everything, and wants to cause the most good possible, then he would be completely capable and inclined to do this. I mention this to a Christian again, though, and again the free will card is played.

                I have a similar contention with this issue. At any particular time, there are trillions of sperm in the world, all of which are potential human beings. Since god knows everything, then he must know of all of these cells and their potential future selves. Same thing goes for eggs, etc, you get the point. So since god must have some kind of involvement in which ones get passed through (because really, since you theists are always saying how god planned everything out, he did plan this) why doesn’t he choose the ones that would grow to be model Christians, for his own damn sake? I mean, how is this in defiance with freewill? In what way is every unborn child entitled to become a human being, there are practically infinite hypothetical children, and only a tiny, infinitesimal percent are allowed to survive. So that means that already, very many of these people, both good and bad, are prevented from ever living at all. All I’m saying, Christians, is that if your god really does try to do the most good in the world, then why does he allow Hitlers and Stalins to be born? Riddle me that one.

                And now, my final and what I find to be my most disturbing point on free will. The argument I got in return for my point about god just turning people’s evil minds into good ones actually came with a quote, from C. S. Lewis. It went “We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them.” Before I continue, I wasn’t saying that god should obliterate all evil, but I’m just saying that if he’s going to punish someone anyway, to the effect of making them not be as evil, why not just do so without the part that involves killing his family, burning down his apartment complex, or getting his blood all over a perfectly good rug.

                My main point, however, is that both C.S. Lewis and most Christians simply assume that god wouldn’t do this, because it would occur to them if he was controlling their thoughts… Right… Here is my question to any theists who think this about free will. What if your free will is already gone? What if you “decide” to sit down on your couch after a hard day’s work at your mediocre job, turn on CSI for an hour, and make yourself a sandwich, thinking it’s your choice, but really god has decided you would do this? What if he causes every single one of your thoughts, whether it’s debating with yourself over which cereal to buy, or it’s the thought that you have free will? What if every single one of your thoughts and actions isn’t your own, and similarly he is controlling your thoughts in a way to prevent you from thinking that he is? Sure, the god you know wouldn’t do this, but what if god is only making you think that he is that way, what if he is forcing your brain to think that it is rational to believe that he wouldn’t do such a thing, that he is a moral god, and that I am lying to you right now? The thing is, if this were the case, then neither you, nor I, nor anyone would know it. Not, of course, unless he would have it that way…

Sincerely,
The Ellipsis

Absolute Truth

Absolute Truth:

                I don’t buy into the idea of absolute truth, just as I don’t really buy into religion, or into anything that wears a big fat sign on its head saying “I am right because I said so, prove me wrong!” The notion itself bugs me, because it is basically the root of all false assumptions, and such an overall bullshit concept. I believe in what you may call “provisional truth”, to a certain point, for things like “I am hitting keys on my computer right now.” But that’s not what I’m talking about. Absolute truth is basically the belief that, in reality, a particular statement is absolute, undeniable fact. Here’s why I don’t believe that this can be said about anything:

                Picture the world as you know it, alright? This is going to get very existential very quickly, so try to do so objectively. You see green leaves, you see blue skies, you hear birds singing, you feel yourself breathing air, etc. Something like that, yes? Now picture the cosmos, in all their infiniteness, and try to imagine other beings out there, beings that may take forms that we are completely unfamiliar with. Maybe they don’t have anything resembling DNA, maybe they aren’t made of cells, maybe they aren’t made of organic material. The point is that there are a whole ton of possibilities when you open up your mind, right? Sure, most things on this planet were made a certain way, but that doesn’t mean that there’s only one way, does it? And that doesn’t mean that any other ways there might be are even similar to ours, or resembling ours, does it? Since we don’t know about these other hypothetical life forms, we can’t really predict how they would work in any aspect, there being so many possibilities, many of which the human imagination probably can’t really fathom on its own.

                So, in an infinite universe, or at least such a huge one, there are almost bound to be other forms of life, and they may very well work differently… As in, their senses may work differently… So if we have sight, hearing, scent, taste, and touch, they could have none of these, and maybe an entirely different set, hypothetically. So if we don’t have any of these other senses with which to observe the universe, how can we really say that we know anything about anything? Sure, a song may be beautiful to our hearing, but perhaps by observing it a different way, maybe by feeling the vibrations, or by means too complicated for me to speculate, the song is completely unintelligible, and even atrocious. Hell, even between two human beings, there isn’t a single song that everyone can agree is “good”, or “bad”. This yields my first point, one that I’m sure you all have already heard, that one cannot really connote anything with being positive or negative, as these things are all subject entirely to perspective and opinion, hence the term: Relative truth.

                Here’s where my argument gets existential. Though the previous one could possibly be disproved by a competent physician or perhaps a sociologist if you look at the latter part, (I really don’t know if it could) here’s my real point. Again, try to picture the world as you know it, stop there, read what I just said again, and repeat as necessary. The key words are: as you know it. Now, let’s look at this objectively. So the theory here is that what we observe is absolute truth, and that what we “know” we can be positive of. Well, we can’t very well prove this, directly, since that would require for humans to know everything about the universe and then some. This is already enough to cast reasonable doubt on the notion that we have of reality, but for the sake of the argument, let’s try to prove it another way. Let’s assume the opposite.

                So, if what we see, hear, feel, etc. ­isn’t true, then there could be any number of explanations for this. All that we are given is that things appear to us in the way that they do. So, if, in reality, we actually don’t  have, say, 5 fingers, or we really don’t control our own thoughts, or something like that, then what could possibly be the cause? Really, it could hypothetically be a lot of things. Like, from my own perspective, what if I’m the only one with a consciousness? What if the world as I know it, and all my knowledge of it is simply a reflection of my subconscious, (I’m relaying this to you secondhand) or what if my consciousness is simply part of a higher being’s consciousness, which consists of millions like mine--- as if I’m a brain cell in a very advanced brain? What if, like in The Matrix, the world I see is some kind of simulation, which my consciousness is immersed in for some reason, and the real world outside of the simulation isn’t even similar to reality? The answer to all of these is that I wouldn’t know it. If any of these theories were correct, then I wouldn’t know that I wasn’t experiencing the real world, and I would have no way to prove it. Therefore, given what we know about the universe, any of these is possible. I don’t know how any of these would work, but if I’m experiencing any kind of false reality, then I suppose that the true reality (assuming there even is one) would be at a higher level than mine. Perhaps the laws of physics known to man, or even those of reasoning itself would not apply, and our limited understanding would not allow us to comprehend how the universe truly works.

                Now, I know that I sound like a conspiracy theorist right now, but don’t misconstrue my meaning here: I don’t really believe, necessarily, that what I observe isn’t reality, I simply recognize that as a possibility. So as long as this is possible, then we cannot know anything for certain, really, can we? No one can claim anything to be fact, unless it is opinionated. For instance: “I think that the sky is blue.” This is most likely a true statement, but even then there is some room for speculation regarding exactly how the human brain and subconscious works. I don’t really know enough on the topic to say, but can we really be sure that we think something? Again, if we aren’t in the true reality, then the definition of “think”, or even “I” could be up in the air, but again, I don’t know about this notion. The way I see it, the greatest leap of faith one could ever make is to roll out of bed in the morning and say “I’m alive.” In fact, this is such a huge assumption that it’s possible that those who say it belong in a mental ward.

                Despite my disbelief in any kind of absolute truth, I do believe in what I believe is called: Provisional truth. Provisional truth is basically science, it is “Based off of what I can observe and prove; this must be true.” Sure, it might not be that evolution is how we came about as a species, but that’s the most likely explanation, as far as we can prove, at the given moment. I think that this is the most logical way to proceed with our existence, because whether or not it’s actually real, it gets us the most benefit as far as we know. That’s all there is to it, we have to go off of what we know, in order to make sense of what we can observe. One still can’t be positive that the world is what it seems to be, but if we were to go off of only what we can know based on absolute truth, then we would go nowhere, because we don’t truly know what absolute truth is. (And if we assume that we know absolute truth, like god, without being able to prove it, we could really go astray!)It may be possible that, if we learn enough from our provisional observations, we can find absolute truth. Until then, though, we must simply go off of our senses alone, going off of what we have already established as a man would when wandering through an unfamiliar and pitch-black room and hoping to one day find a light switch.

Note: Neither provisional truth nor the idea of it not being reality support the existence of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc. gods. Provisional proof disproves their existence, and if our reality isn’t the true one, then that lines up with none of Earth’s religious dogmas support that, either. However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t (or is) a kind of god who simply isn’t like the Christian, Muslim, etc. gods. Since there is pretty much no feasible way for the religions to be true, but there could possibly be a god, I am agnostic.

Sincerely,
The Ellipsis