A Piece of Paper

Life starts out as a blank piece of paper.

The Christian, having an idea, thought that it is best to be plane tickets for a vacation in Heaven. So he did. The Christian then gave the tickets and rode the plane. He was happy.

The Atheist, however, thought that it is best to be a land title for a large plot of land that he can do anything in. So he did. The Atheist never gave his land title to anyone. In his land, he found happiness in planting, farming, and enjoying the warm breeze and gazing at the stars.

Plane tickets or Land titles? Apparently, most atheists give more value to life than most christians. Ironic, isn't it?

The Christian Blind-spot

The totality of Epicurus' famous atheist quote led me to think that there are three possibilities of god's existence. First, a god doesn't exist at all (which is what I personally believe in). Second, god can be malevolent or simply doesn't care, the latter being the deist belief. Third, god is weak. Whatever the condition, believers, especially Christians, got their beliefs wrong, in one way or another.

If a god really does exist, his qualities aren't what Christians expect him to be, which is really sad and disappointing (for them). Defining every aspect as "divine", "absolute", "almighty", and whatnot just doesn't fit into a non-divine finite world.

Of the Seven deadly sins recognized by the Catholic church, he has committed all seven.

1. Pride - Claiming himself to be the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-whatever.
2. Greed - He wants everything for himself. Period.
3. Lust - In the old testament, he enforces incest and rape. Hell, he impregnated the "virgin" Mary.
4. Envy - He's a jealous god. Even believers acknowledge that.
5. Gluttony - Aside from the fact that offerings (material or spiritual) are mandatory, he wants people to "symbolically" eat his son.
6. Wrath - "The Wrath of god" has already been a cliche saying, hasn't it?
7. Sloth - Enforcing that one should do nothing once a week. I like it.

Christians are turning a blind eye at the truth of things. The clergy of olden times, even now, omit some passages of the Bible and only preach those that sound good. Both blinded by faith and blinded from the truth... it can only mean that faith leads to the opposite of the truth.

Close the storybook and open your eyes.

"Keep moving forward", they say

People are different. The masses merely dictate what definitions are and instill these onto their children and punish them if they resist. "Keep moving forward", they say.

What if someone from all that mass of humans turns the other way and starts walking? Certainly, the opposite direction isn't "forward" for the mass moving in the "normal direction" but for that person, he is definitely moving forward.

Success is a very subjective term, especially for people who have different concepts and standards. One man's trash can be another man's treasure. If you offer another person your path, you may be casting pearls before swine or something like that.

Defiance isn't totally a bad thing. In fact, defiance plays a very important role in the nature of humans, which is to seek knowledge. If you consider defiance evil, then I guess you should blindly follow orders like a puppet.

Perfection is Constant Free-fall

"Practice makes perfect. Since nobody is perfect, why should we practice?" - This is a popular philosophical quote made from conjoining two opposite quotes. Quite a nice juxtaposition, isn't it?

I don't have a real answer to that, though, but I do have another statement. "We are already perfect." Surely, someone would say that we aren't living in a perfect world. A perfect world would look better than this one.

Living comes with the irony that we strive to attain this so-called perfection despite not being able to actually reach it. Some people simply fall into despair upon realizing this. The sky isn't the limit anymore for humans. If it isn't, what is? There is no limit. There is no "perfection".

Imagine, if we actually attain the perfection we seek, what would become of us? If we obtain the answer to everything, if we attain immortality, if we attain absolute happiness, what would happen? Nothing would happen next. There would be no more room for life and no meaning to existence.

We are already living in perfection. This is the perfect world. People strive for the future and fail to live in the present. Every step further towards the future, what we stand on today is the present, no matter what happens. All the benefits we have encountered will always be balanced out by misfortune and vice versa. No matter how far a human makes progress, there will always be room for more. The human being might not be perfect by itself but human life is already perfect, no matter how it is lived.

Perfection is flawed. Conversely, flaws are perfection. Perfection is mediocrity. Mediocrity is perfection. It is our flaws in existence that make us perfect, in a way many people fail to realize. It is like gravity pulling you both ways - constant free-fall. You feel like falling into one side but you're never actually falling.

Going to "hellven"

If there is at least one area in the universe where this god isn't present, that would mean that he isn't omnipresent. Since the believers state that their god isn't in hell, that debunks everything because, if this god is indeed omnipresent, he should be present in hell as well.

This is indeed a paradox similar to "the rock that god can't carry". Hell is defined as the absence of this god. The believers made a flaw in their concept of omnipresence by just defining this "Hell".

Say this god is also present in hell. Since this god graces everyone in his presence, hell would be meaningless. There would be no punishment since his presence would nullify whatever punishment there is. Sinners are free to sin. This god's in hell with all of us anyway.

If this god "loves" everyone, why did he create hell in the first place? Why is there even a concept of hell, a concept of punishment, a concept of sin? If he loves everyone and wants to free everyone he loves from the clutches of sin, he would have done so even before he created mankind.

He wouldn't have created that tree of wisdom.

One might say that since he loves us, he has given us the gift of free will, the burden of decision. Despite the choices we make, we should all experience "heaven" in the end. Then again, having to send other people to hell while keeping a few in heaven is a form of discrimination. Is discrimination a form of love? No one with a right mind would think so.

In one way or another, the concept of hell will be pointless. Hell is merely a fictitious "place" that adults use to scare their children with, passed down from generation to generation.

What is a soul? Really...

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body" - C.S. Lewis

Let's assume that the above statement is pure fact. When we die, we, as souls, supposedly leave our bodies. Let's also assume this as fact. Our bodies possess five basic senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. There are other senses but let's just stick with these five that we are most familiar with.

Since we discard our bodies upon death (or upon astral projection or something like that), it is only logical that we also lose input from our five senses. Moreover, we also lose our ability to think, since our brains are part of our body. So if we leave our bodies, what would we feel? Or better yet, what would we sense? Or even better yet, what would we be thinking?

We only gain an interface in the material world as long as we are connected to our bodies. If we lose our bodies, it would be like a computer without any peripherals. No monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, RAM cards, processors, etc. So basically, we're just left with just the motherboard. How on earth can you operate a computer like that?

This concept conflicts with the idea of reincarnation wherein memories are passed on with the soul from one body to another. Memories are stored in the brain, and the brain dies and decays with the rest of the body.

I think that the bare soul alone is conscious somehow. It is a mere consciousness that can't see or feel or even think. It just exists and is conscious; it's some sort of strange energy.

Some stories (including the bible) and especially some emo sayings state that a soul can be inflicted with pain and suffering. If that is the case, how exactly? I guess it would be a pain in the... uhh... consciousness?

Eternal Life = Overrated

Long ago, humans don't actually fear death itself; they fear being forgotten. The civilizations of old believed that they can put a stopper on death. Ancient Egyptians, ancient Chinese, Native Americans, Hindu mythology, and even Christianity had all been urged to live for but one cause: eternal life or life after death.

Uncertainty has always been a problem, especially for the ancient people who had made up stuff to stop people from panicking. The people, knowing nothing else to believe in, took everything as truth: hook, line, and sinker. They believed in salvation after death. Regardless of the conditions, they all aim for this.

Thinking about it, what would be in store for humans if ever they achieve immortality? Nothing really. They'd just live longer. After that? You'd be so sick of life that you would beg for death.

Imagine playing a game that you know you can't lose. It would be fun at first but after exhausting all possible areas, it would be repetitive, not just once or twice, but a million times over. Moreover, you would have a serious case of procrastination due to the assurance that you would be able to do it before you die - because you can't die.

Surely, you can do the things you couldn't have done if you're capable of dying: do extensive research, master several martial arts, rule the world. But once you're immortal, nothing will drive you to do these things. Your basic survival instincts would've already shattered. You wouldn't need to eat, sleep, work... You wouldn't feel the need to do pretty much anything, even for loved ones.

Let's face it. Immortality is but a mere fantasy. Everything is transient. We all live because we all will have to die someday. If we are to aim for something as we live, isn't it always better to live for the sake of living?

To live is to die. If you won't die, you're pretty much like an inanimate object.