Being your own judge

As an atheist, I don't believe in a deity. I don't believe in a final judgement in the afterlife that will determine whether I'll suffer in inferno or live eternally in paradise. As such, my morality comes from my own ideals and thinking of whatever repercussions will happen due to my actions.

Personally, I make my own moral code as consistent as possible. What I hate the most is being branded as a hypocrite, not by others, but by myself. Before I subject myself to the judgment of others, I judge myself. I am my own police, my own judge, my own jury, and my own executioner. Who else can better bear witness to your actions other than yourself?

But even this kind of morality is hard to apply. I criticize myself rather harshly, berating myself for being inconsistent, hating hypocrisy.

For those who subscribe to religion, all they have to do to be forgiven is pray to their deity and poof! The sin goes away just like magic. Wash, rinse, and repeat. No need to be held accountable. You'll be rewarded in heaven as long as you repent, may it be on your deathbed or on the gallows.

There is always room for hypocrisy. Get yourself in a moral predicament? No worries! Just find a passage in the scripture that's contradictory to what you used to believe and stick with that. Anti-gay? The Bible has passages that can be interpreted to be against homosexuality. Pro-gay? Pick passages about indiscriminate love for all. Anti-abortion? Sanctity of life! Pro-abortion? Numbers 5:27.

For someone like me who doesn't believe in this codified hypocrisy, I seek out my own mentally codified set of rules, constantly amending any errors and inconsistencies. Any guilt I feel will be embedded deep into my mind, unwashed and unforgiven. I'm a cripple refusing to lean on the crutch of scripture.

I am incapable of fully forgiving myself. I am a flawed human being and I don't need a deity to tell me that.

Christian Music

I think Christian worship music only sells because of the attachment people have to the religion itself, not because it holds any actual merit as musical work made with skill and talent.

I never liked worship music even back then when I was still a believer.

Just saying.

Paintings

One fine sunny day, a mall held an art exhibit.. It was situated in a part of the mall where people are bound to see it even if they're just passing by. The art pieces, being colorful as they are, caught the attention of some people, myself included. I looked up at the paintings and took good long gazes at each piece that I found interesting, looking at the coloring styles, brush strokes, and attention to detail. I even went as far as to think of probable symbolic meanings or messages those works might have conveyed.

It would've been nice if everyone else did the same but that's not the case at all. I was the only one who did what a person is expected to do at an exhibit. The others posed in front or beside the works of art and took pictures, which I assume they'll post in their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, just so they can mindlessly post something along the lines of "Look! There is a painting beside me! I'm an art buff". Somehow, I think social media thrives on this form of pretense.

I can't help but feel insulted. As food is made to be eaten and music is made to be listened to, art is made to be enjoyed by the eyes, to be looked at and be beheld in wonder and awe. Those pricks probably think that what they're doing is some shortcut to art appreciation... but no such shortcut exists.

I wonder what the artists would feel if they knew that their art is being misused as a conduit for human stupidity, being what degrades culture instead of enriching it. Their artworks are defiled by the mere gazes of those mongrels and the flashes of their phones.

I think I was born in the wrong universe.

Spices

I don't dislike the dubstep but I used to be a fan of the original dubstep genre before the it became a very popular. With the advent of Skrillex and the divergence of what dubstep purists call "brostep", I wondered and asked myself "What is in dubstep / brostep that people like?" Though it isn't wrong to say that a lot of people don't like the genre because of its noise aspect. But I was inclined to think that this very aspect is what attracted its fans.

Before listening to dubstep, I've heard some extreme noise subgenre samples like Merzbow. For someone new to it, I found it harsh to my ears but eventually, I took a liking to it (though, I don't listen to it very often like I would if I truly enjoyed it).

So what about this noise? A few people like brostep and even fewer can appreciate the pure essence of "noise". Obviously, it's a matter of preference but I see it somewhat differently. People can only tolerate "noise" in small amounts and can't take it once the level has been raised. The noise aspect in brostep spices up the music but brostep fans who dislike the noise genre can't tolerate its pure form. They still need the electronica aspect of the music in order to listen to the "bass drops" they like.

Usually, the final step in cooking is to adjust for seasoning to see if it is to your taste. A dash of salt and some spices would be enough for that final step. Different people like varying degrees of seasoning. But when asked to ingest the spices in their pure form, they choke and spit the spices out. Their taste buds are too weak to ingest it. They still need the rest of the "normal" ingredients to eat the spices they like.

This "spicy" way of thinking can be applied to many aspects in life. One being the lifetime favorite: religion.

When turning into an agnostic, people begin to question their faiths and seek whatever is beyond. In my perspective, those who stay agnostic theist simply took a half-hearted step into agnosticism instead of taking one step further into atheism. Similar to the noise and the spice, these people are too weak and too afraid to embrace the fact. Afraid, they stubbornly stand in the middle of the road or they find convert back into theism, albeit a different religion/sect. No offense to those who prefer to remain agnostic theist - this is just what I think you're doing.

I like my life with salt and a few dashes of pepper, sometimes with habanero hot sauce.

Altar Decorations

I went to a Catholic wedding recently. Weddings are happy events, celebrating the continuity of life and intertwining of the couple's happiness. I see it as a happy moment for the couple and their family and friends.

Everything was decorated nicely. Each flower and fern has been placed aesthetically. The columns were draped with cloths. The seats have been wrapped in ribbons. A red carpet was on the center aisle on the marble floor. The altar - white and gold. Smiles were painted on people's faces. Everything looks fitting for a joyous celebration...

... except for that statue of a corpse of a bloody dude hanging by his hands and feet on nails attached to a barbaric torture device...

Tolerance vs Adherence

Several years ago when I was still a faithful christian, I sought to look at all religions open-mindedly, thinking that they all deserve their own special place in the world. I did some textbook readings about some of the major religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, and looked at some of the common aspects. I respected others' beliefs.

I was young and rather innocent. I wasn't able to fathom why the Abrahamic faiths had to diverge from one another. Moreover, seeing as the Christian faith itself is split into several denominations, I failed to understand the reason why. Still, with my innocence, I regarded the religions as equal. I would've probably tried joining other faiths if I had the time, resources, or the opportunity. I merely settled with Catholicism out of convenience.

As a Catholic, I went to Church and prayed regularly. But sometimes, I was being bugged by the assumption I made that the three Abrahamic religions supposedly worship the same deity yet have conflicting beliefs. Christians believe in the prophets of the Old Testament and Muslims acknowledge that Jesus is a prophet himself (disregarding the "son of god" business).

It turns out that these differences in beliefs have caused several conflicts among religions, each wanting a bigger slice of cake than the others. Conflicts ensued to the point of death and destruction. Tolerance was out of the question.

Viewing the religions as individual humans, we can see that it is but a mere conflict of greedy egotistical narcissists who won't back down from a royal rumble until the other opponents are dead. Greed for the limelight. For sole supremacy. For not just the largest slice of cake, but the whole cake itself.

I say this to my naive younger self: "You can indeed respect and tolerate other religions. But a religion demands belief and adherence, not respect or tolerance. What are you hoping of achieving from mere tolerance?"

Those with a deep-seated belief are, ironically, beyond redemption..

Higher Dimensional Being

I'll go a bit deistic for this post.

Imagine a flat 2D universe on, say, a piece of paper. A resident of that universe, say, a stickman, would only be able to move in two dimensions only with movements such as up, down, left, and right. In his universe there is no forward or backward. It can't visualize the thought of an extra dimension the same way we can't visualize four. Forwards or backwards is impossible for two dimensions but we in three dimensions can do that pretty easily. Our daily lives involve moving in three dimensions.

Let's say you look at this piece of paper the stickman calls his universe. Anywhere he looks and anywhere he goes, you can see the stickman. No matter what the stickman does, it cannot escape you. To him, you could be considered omnipresent. Even if the stickman encloses itself in a square house, four "walls" would mean nothing to you.

It cannot fathom the simplest of things you are able to do. The ideas of "forward" and "backward" are, to it, very stunning and revolutionary. You would probably shrug it off like nothing but to it, you are everything. All it can see of you are your fingerprints.

We cannot turn our backs on a 4-dimensional being. Think about higher dimensions. No matter where we face, it can see us.

We cannot even notice the beings in our own dimension. What are worms and ants thinking about? DO they even realize that humans exist? Would they fathom the concepts of "capitalism", "mersenne primes", "neutrinos", or "skyscrapers"? No, they don't. Even if we give them the information, they wouldn't be able to understand it.

How the fuck can anyone even think that a being from a higher dimension would give a fuck about abortion, homosexuality, or pre-marital sex?