Posts tagged religion

astrobax:

itstjtime:

I’m actually kind of boring myself with this, so I’ll just get to the point.  I believe in God.  I don’t believe in any certain religion’s God, I’m not even fully sure that there aren’t multiple Gods, but, for me, the world “God” stands for whatever being created the plants and the stars.  And though I believe in God, I also am a firm believer in free-will over destiny and easily side with evolution over creationism.  I hate to be one of “those people,” but, honestly, you can’t disprove God and, when you get to the end of the spectrum of what/whom created what/whom, there is an emptiness that needs to be filled by something and, for me, God is it.

If I may offer my perspective… You can’t disprove my claims that I had sex with Jessica Alba last night on the roof of The White House. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The burden of proof is on the believer, not the skeptic.

If you’re going to reverse-engineer the universe to come to the conclusion that god created everything, then what created god? If you need to come to a point where something must have always existed, why not save yourself a step and just decide that the universe must have always existed? The scientific position on the origin of the universe is “We don’t exactly know yet.” The religious position is “God did it.” That also used to be the religious position on things like the origin of man, the rising and the setting of the sun, sneezing, and a whole plethora of other things we now understand through science. How right did they turn out to be on those things? Why would they be right about the origin of the universe?

After a lengthy discussion with Baxter following this initial post and his reblog of this post, I feel as if I need to clarify a bit how I view what I call God.  As stated above, my view of God does not follow what any specific religion would refer to as God (as far as I know).  God, to me, is just a name I’ve affixed to the parts of this world that cannot be explained scientifically.  I don’t know the end-all, be-all truth of what created the world beyond what we’ve discovered through scientific research, but my problem with most organized religions is that they think they do have a definite answer.  They say that God did it and they blindly follow.  I don’t know what did it: it could be an all powerful being, it could be that it just is, but since there is no answer, mine is God: in this way, “God” is simply a name for everything that can’t be explained, not the explanation itself.

I’ve had this Tumblr for a while now, but have been so busy with school/writing for mine and Joshua Richey’s (mooshoo.tumblr.com) movie blog (moviesonfilm.tumblr.com) that I haven’t been able to post anything on this one yet.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve found plenty of stuff on the ‘net that makes me laugh and that I’ve wanted to share, but I wanted my first Tumblr post on my very own blog to be something personal.  After a little deliberation, I’ve decided to talk about the two things you aren’t supposed to talk about in most social situations: politics and religion.  I guarantee that some of my best friends don’t fully know my opinion on one or both of these topics, so I decided I’d bunk taboos and possibly alienate some potential fans right out of the gate.  Onward, friends.

On the subject of politics, I’ve never really had too much of a definitive opinion.  For example, in the past election I voted Barack Obama (democrat) for president, but voted Mitch McConnell (republican) for Kentucky senator.  If one were to ask for justification or reasoning behind my picks for two guys on two different sides of our government, the only real reason I can find to give them is this: Mitch McConnell has been a senator since before I was born; thus, I know the man’s name and haven’t heard enough bad things about him to justify not picking him.  As for Obama, we had just come out of 8 years with a republican (George W. Bush) in the White House and, regardless of who ran as the democratic nominee, I was voting for them.  In hindsight, without having a lot of knowledge of the beliefs and views of the people running for elected office, I just should have not voted, but this was the first election in which I had actually registered to vote and could “have my voice be heard.”  At that time, for first time in my then 23 years of life, I could say that I voted.  I got to see what all the fuss was about and got a first-hand view of “democracy in action” and now I can not feel bad for never doing it again (unless, of course, I actually do some research next time, which seems highly unlikely).  That’s not to say that if there is something specific happening (the earthquake in Haiti) I won’t have an opinion on it (send financial and military aid where needed, but don’t go overboard and forget about the problems still prevalent here on the home-front), it’s just that, in general, I don’t care enough to waste my time and energy on something that I can’t affect that much anyway.

Religion, for me, is tricky (as religion is wont to be).  I grew up with a mother who was a rare-to-non-practicing Catholic and a father who was raised Baptist, but is pretty much just apathetic about religion in general.  My Gram (Dad’s mom) was the true guiding religious force in my life for the longest time.  She, of course, was and is a practicing Baptist who takes her faith very seriously.  My sister and I would wake up every Sunday morning and travel with her to church from around the time of 8am till noon (consisting of Sunday school and mass).  At one point, after seeing all of these people getting crackers and juice at around the time my stomach started rumbling every Sunday, I decided I wanted some.  When I inquired about it, my Gram told me that the only way I could partake in said refreshments was to get baptized.  So, for the next two weeks, I decided to take all the necessary steps and finally got baptized.  I did so and, at some point, finally got my crackers and juice, which totally weren’t worth it.

A few years or less later, my sister and I decided we had better things to do on Sundays (like sleep in or watch TV) and stopped going to church all together.  Though I wasn’t practicing the religion as thoroughly as those in the church deemed appropriate, I still for a while considered myself a Baptist.  The more I read of religion outside of the bible (and the more I read the bible itself) the more I realized how crazy those that took the book at face value were.  This is around the time that more and more of my friends started shunning religion entirely.

I’m actually kind of boring myself with this, so I’ll just get to the point.  I believe in God.  I don’t believe in any certain religion’s God, I’m not even fully sure that there aren’t multiple Gods, but, for me, the world “God” stands for whatever being created the plants and the stars.  And though I believe in God, I also am a firm believer in free-will over destiny and easily side with evolution over creationism.  I hate to be one of “those people,” but, honestly, you can’t disprove God and, when you get to the end of the spectrum of what/whom created what/whom, there is an emptiness that needs to be filled by something and, for me, God is it.

So that’s it.  And now to break up the monotony and seriousness of this post, here’s a picture of a cute puppy.  Goodnight.

“I love when T.J. posts my picture.” - Puppy