There is no God?

I’d like to know why the Culture has made me feel bad for believing in God?

Maybe it’s because we’ve had so many assholes talking at us about God, when in reality they were using God to make themselves gods on earth. -see most televangelists circa 1980 to 2000

And then there’s organizations like the Catholic Church who purposely hid evidence that people in their organization were breaking the law and God’s laws by molesting children. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Catholic hater, but I think that many times throughout history, the Catholic Church has been more concerned with the organization, comprised of its priests and bishops, than with the spiritual well-being of it’s members. And don’t even get me started on infallibility…

There’s also the Church of Atheism, headed by its twin popes of Dawkins and Hitchens. Those guys can be as dogmatic as the popes of the Catholic Church.

All I know is that when I see the sunrise or when a particularly beautiful day seems to elevate everything I see and hear and touch and taste and feel emotionally, I know that there is a God. When I see thousands die in natural disasters and there are women crying in the streets over their dead children, I know that there is a God. I know that there is something greater and more beautiful and terrible than I can imagine. And this is the failing of most religion; God may love us, but he has a difficult and sometimes horrible job to do. That job is supporting the universe, and to do that, people have to die as well as be born. People have to be allowed to be evil to each other so that we can be greater than we are and learn what is good.

You see, I don’t think God looks after each one of us like a little child, at least physically. God is as the mountains and the oceans are. He does not make it possible for your country to win wars or for you to win the lottery or for your favorite sports team to win the championship.

God gives life and takes it away. He produces beauty, but allows horror. God is life, and in between the terrible parts, God is love.

I’ve Found Something

You may have remembered this post I wrote about my son’s upcoming Baptism.

I have done much soul searching since then. I have looked into my past and tried to see what has made my Catholic faith such a burden and so cumbersome. My problems with the Catholic faith have stemmed from several things, the first being something I will call the stigma of Christ. It is the cringing I feel when I see someone proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Savior. But what about that truly bothers me? Part of it is the history of some people who have had very poor and misguided behavior and ideas about what and who Jesus is.

I know Jesus does not “hate fags.”

I know Jesus doesn’t “want my money.”

I know Jesus doesn’t want you to kill anyone. Period.

I know Jesus wants us to accept God’s love.

I know Jesus wants us to love each other.

I know Jesus wants us to forgive each other.

And I’m starting to wonder just what it is I have a problem with in my faith?

I know the answer to that.

I don’t have a problem with Christ. I have a problem with the people who say they speak for Christ and God. And taking my cues from Christ and Buddha, I must seek until I find and I must be compassionate and I must forgive people. I must forgive all of those misguided and spiritually bankrupt people who speak in God’s name when, if I can stop for a second and listen to the world and God in my innermost being, I know what the truth is.

And here is another secret that Christ and Buddha knew: To know God, you must be aware. you must be willing to shine a light on all parts of your self, from the good thoughts and the bad, the prejudices and pride-filled parts too.

My problem is with people, not God and Christ. And I’m feeling so much better about a lot of things, but there a still a few I’m not so happy or comfortable with. I’m still a bit apprehensive about aspects of my faith. But the important thing is that I seem to have found my faith.

Now I have something to believe in. Now I know what my life’s purpose is. I am here to love and forgive and be my best. And that is all you have to do praise God, because God doesn’t actually want you to praise Him. He wants you to love. God wants us to love and forgive people, nature, politicians, priests, criminals, cops, governments, each other, and ourselves.

Whenever people love and forgive each other, that’s where you’ll find God. And that’s what I found that was missing.

The Invisibles

by Grant Morrison

Freedom

I am lost. But come to think of it, this place I am in and what I am writing about may as well be about the television show (and how I hate TV, except for LOST).

I am in a place that I have no bearing and I am afraid to start in one direction or the other because of one simple thing: Truth.

Everywhere I turn are control structures, lines of thought and dogma that cloud the issue and alter reality. These ideas and religions offer you truth, but deliver slavery.

Run from anything or anyone that tells you, ” You must…”

Some magickal writings tell us to create our own framework, while others preach no dogma, which is dogma in itself.

Maybe I’m not after truth, but freedom. Freedom from other ideas and books and religions and television and media and fashion and…the World. Death comes to mind, but this defeats the purpose of the exercise.

Silence is another word. Complete and total silence. Being cut off from anything that can render its message to me in any way, shape or form. Tabula rasa is not good enough. I’m talking womb. I’m talking rebirth. I want to wipe my hard drive and build my own operating system from the ground up.

Everything thought and action will be me and I will set myself free.

Time Divided By…Infinity

I’ve got a thing for fractals, which are, “…generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole…”

When I was in high school and college, I would sit in my room late at night and ponder the nature of the universe. What was here before everything? How can you get something from nothing? Can you keep dividing something into a smaller part, like time?

I think time, and maybe everything else, is a fractal, which come to think of it jibes with holograms. Maybe every single thing is a fractal hologram, or pieces of a hologram and we are all part of the One fractal hologram’s subdivisions…

And suddenly Phillip K. Dick’s VALIS is making more sense to me.

Basic Material Needs and Violence

Why does mass violence and war erupt in 3rd world countries?

We don’t resort to violence in the west because we have much more to lose than just our lives. We are attached to so much; our families, our homes, our cars, our shopping sprees, our nice restaurants, our way of life.

When your way of life consists of constant discomfort, perpetual hunger, threats of life-ending disease, and rape and threats of death, you are willing to lose a lot more in order to gain another day of life and security and fleeting comfort or respite from hunger.

And in a strange kind of way and through some twisted logic, I feel these people may be more alive than most of us will ever be.

I’m just a virtual construct in a virtually constructed world.

“So from a scientific perspective, neither objective reality nor virtual reality is proven. And what is happening is that modern physics with things like time dilation and space contraction, teleportation, multi-existence and so on, seem actually more supportive of a virtual reality universe than an objective reality one.”

Maybe we’re all just virtual constructs of our souls, playing a game where we cannot break the speed of light or defy gravity, but have anomalies like UFOs and angels and anything else that goes against the programming rules of the “universe.”

Hell, at one time, my theory of LOST was that they were all trapped in virtual reality simulation.