Honestly, I would disagree with that method of thinking. While sure at one point God could have been considered benevolent, after all he did create the Program. Creating and guiding sentient life on this planet should be a good thing, right?

Any Program takes time to create. To edit, de-bug, etc. Its his job to make sure the program runs correctly . What happens when his job is complete? the programmer moves on and pursues a different program. in reference to that completed program,  is he any longer to be considered benevolent? If he is pursuing another task, and does not pay attention to his previous endeavor, he would be negligent to that program.

I do believe that God was once benevolent. Guiding Humanity through its infancy and giving us a belief system by his initial interaction was good, however as his interaction with humanity waned, God has become negligent.

Prayer is something that I abhor.  Why pray if there is nobody to listen? It’s like talking into a dead phone. The only thing that I have found that prayer did for me when I was younger was give me a nice little warm and fuzzy feeling, that the problem would be taken care of.  My brother once told me, “If I feel like I need to pray, it’s time for me to take more action.” It’s true. While prayer once gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling, taking care of it myself feels so much better.

D Manchild

Coming back home has been quite nice. Around familiar surroundings, people, and family is always something never to be taken for granted.  I never realized this while a teenager, or even while in the military. Home was a place to spend ten days at a time, then take back off, leaving everyone again. It’s no surprise to me that nobody really cared if and when I came back on leave, since most of the time I was busy getting in touch with old friends and banging chicks instead of getting to know my family…. again.

Having been back “home” for a year now, I have gotten to get to know my family better, and basically reacquainted with them. Having lived with my father for several months, then in our own place, and now with my mother, I’ve gotten to spend quite a bit of time hanging out with my little brother, my sisters,  my parents and step parents but not my older brother.  I would see him at family gatherings, occasionally one on one, but never for long, and no real conversation could be made, at least until recently.

Honestly, it’s a little creepy how close we are in opinion on many, many different things.  Religion, Politics, and even TV shows, while we have slight differences in views, its just odd for me to actually share something like that with my brother.

Let me get this out there right now. I am astounded at my brothers insights to just about everything. He has a way with speaking that makes complete sense. When we talk I’m just about always  inwardly saying “Wow”. I’m in awe of his thought processes and reasoning.

I want to be like him. He’s one of the few people in my life that I look up to.

Thank you Sambo, for some just mind-blowing conversations, and I look forward to future ones.

D Manchild

P.S.

Oh, and he’s so modest too.

Ever notice that religion is often attributed to certain geographical regions? The Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) ‘Southern’ Baptists, Quakers, Muslims, Buddhists, and Catholicism, all have a place that each thinks about when that name is spoken. Yes, there are pockets of each in any area to a certain extent, but the main group is attributed to a certain area.

Group mentality is used in these areas to promote the religion of choice. While yes, we have the individual freedom to choose what we believe, the children of these religious groups are brought up within it’s circles, often not knowing other options exist, or that other options are ‘wrong’ and ‘heathen’. Views of other belief systems are full of prejudice and fear. Trying to shake a belief system ingrained since childhood is a difficult thing. So the system repeats itself generation upon generation, growing as population grows.

My opinion of religion is that it was originally created to instill morals and a certain code of conduct by it’s followers.  The ‘fear’ of a deity disapproving of one’s actions and can send you to a place of unspeakable pain and suffering is quite a motivator for those that don’t know anything else.

Each religion deems itself as the ‘one path to <insert Deity name here>’ That only those that follow the same religious beliefs are going to go to a blissful afterlife, all others will be damned to pain and suffering for eternity. It’s rather confusing then, trying to pick a religion that suits your view of the world, or if you’re seeking asylum from a painful afterlife, trying to appease the ‘correct’ god.

Is it possible that God has created all religion? To create a belief that there is something out there that is greater than anything we could possibly imagine? He would know that different strokes are for different folks. That one belief system wouldn’t be proper for the entirety of humanity. To have different belief systems that would reflect the world around them, or even be based upon the world around them. The areas of rain forest in Brasil wouldn’t quite have the same structure as some belief founded in the Middle East about conserving water, nor would a belief in the Middle East be quite so understanding of a holy river named the Amazon.

The biggest problem I have with religion is man. Man has always used any leverage to gain more power and prestige. Exploiting others and stepping on innocent people to gain their own ends. Could it also be true that even if God did speak to certain individuals, those individuals might have ‘incorrectly’ translated those words to ensure that they would be more in control, or that they could direct the actions of their followers more accurately? Sure, the spirit of the direction given by god could lead in the same general direction but the letter of the law could have totally different meaning. How else could teachers of the supposed word of god be raking in millions of dollars while the ones supplying the money they live off of have to budget every penny?

Organized religion is a double edged sword. Yes, discussion helps refine our beliefs about who God is and who we are. Organized religion assists us in socializing with other like-minded individuals who share the same or similar beliefs, but organized religion also has the power to narrow one’s view, and become so extremely intolerant of outside influences.

That is enough on this topic for now,

D Manchild

In the beginning, God had some coffee cake. And it was good.

The Program: Universe was created by him.  Galaxies, solar systems, stars, black holes, everything in the cosmos was created by Him. It’s as easy as a few mouse clicks and some typing. Laws of physics, every single thing we know, gravity, light speed, fission, all of this was programmed. The system had a foundation on which to work. Much like a regular computer program must have everything laid out for it to function properly, Universe had to have it’s foundation laid.

Creation on Earth:

There are several dozen theories on how life on earth came to be. Big Bang coupled with the theory of Evolution is one, Creationism, to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Each may inevitably be correct, since we cannot see it for ourselves, nor find any evidence to support any claim, we are stuck at a loss.

Big Bang theory suggests that everything in the Universe is moving steadily away from one central point in the universe, thereby suggesting that everything had one common point of origin, and as a result of a super-powerful explosion, everything dispersed and reformed into the galaxies we see today.  If they were spontaneously created, they would be drifting around the universe with no uniform vector of one point of origin.

Creationism dictates that everything was systematically placed by God in a concentrated effort to create life on earth. From the sun, to Earth’s rotation around it, and the rings of Saturn. Everything meticulously placed in perfect harmony and balance.

One system is exclusive of the other according to Theologists and Scientists alike. One cannot support the other. Why not? could it be that God in His method of working enabled both at the same time? could it be that God engineered Evolution as a stepping stone to more works in the future? Animals of all shapes and sizes could be Him just creating for the sake of creating, i mean hell look at the platypus.  ask any artist or writer, sometimes starting small can create entire works, if you build upon it.

There are those that say Humans are related to several animals due to similar bone structure. Dolphins, bats, birds, whales and humans all have similar forearm structure, including the ‘hands’.  AH! this must be some evolutionary by-product saying we have the same ancestor, right? I’d say that Fords, Chevrolets, Dodges and Toyotas all have similar frame-structure, they must all have been made at a single factory before, right? No, they are similar because the frame works. Just because it’s in a different make doesn’t mean it’s going to be useless in that role, so why do a ‘custom’ job on every species? Find what works, then copy it.

Conclusion:

I believe in a version of Creationism. There are too many things across this globe alone to dictate otherwise, the similarities and complete mysteries of animal and plant life on this planet. Evolution is a trial and error way to evolve, and takes place over hundreds of thousands of years, and can lead to the premature extinction of entire species. However, should such trial and error methods be directed, as by an omnipotent being, then this course could enable said power to create even more wondrous things, using the building blocks He has previously made. it would also speed things up as far as evolution is concerned.

Do we know how the earth was made? No, we don’t. The closest thing we have to an eye-witness account was the book of Genesis written by Moses thousands of years after it happened, and may be allegorical.  (some have claimed it is the story of Gilgamesh retold), so realistically nobody really knows what the hell happened back then.

The following is rather hard to explain. Religion always is, and is always interpenetrated in many different ways. It is why we have hundreds of different denominations of Christianity while the core book is the same. I will do my best to be precise and eloquent, but often I will undoubtedly be crude and vulgar.

Imagine this: Imagine a computer programmer. We’ll call him Bob. Bob sits down for a period of time and writes a program. It works, it’s functional, he plays around with it. Creates subroutines and other such nonsense to make sure the program remains functional. He then goes to get a cup of coffee.

Now, lets play pretend. Lets pretend that Bob is God.  The Almighty Bob writes a program. Lets call this Universe. Within the program Universe, He writes the subroutine for gravity, for physics, for every ‘law’ we have come to discover, along with a few that we can’t even comprehend yet.  As this program develops, he decides to see what else he can accomplish with this, and well, creates life on earth.

Now please keep in mind, we do not know Bob’s reason for creating life. It could have been any number of reasons. From just curiosity to creating His version of The Sims, to he just needed a cool screen saver. Who knows. I sure as hell don’t, and I’m not going to try to make a conjecture.  He created us, though, that’s all we know.

He meddled in the affairs of humans for probably 15 of His minutes, then went AFK

This is pretty much a rundown of the beliefs that I hold. Eventually I’ll hit everything above with more detail, but it’s a reasonable synopsis.  No, I don’t think God’s name is Bob, it’s just a handy little moniker.

Until next time,

D Manchild