Tag: peace

Religion, and other ramblings

I had a long, and lengthy, discussion with a friend of mine on the topic of religion and beliefs. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a pagan. Then, when belief failed me, I turned to atheism. Now, I am not so sure what to call myself. I cannot say there is nothing out there, but I cannot definitively say something is out there either. I simply do not know.

What I can say with certainty is there is much to this world that we still do not understand.

I believe gods were created out of necessity. People needed something to put their faith in to believe that everything would be okay. This could be anything from the weather patterns, food, fertility, even death. Every culture, every people that has walked this earth, has held some form of  belief. By the time Christianity was conceived, tens of thousands of cultures had been long dead, and with them their gods died as well.

We must then choose to belief that there is something, or there is nothing. Furthermore, we must then decide who is right, and who is wrong. But what if the truth was no one was completely right, and no one is completely wrong?

I am of the belief that true faith comes from acknowledging the fact that we simply do not know. We can strive to find answers, but ultimately, we just do not know. We want to be right so badly that we sometimes miss the fact that answers can lie in unsuspecting places. Religion does not explain everything, and science does not explain everything. If you were to put the two together, however, you get more answers, and the divide between people is thinned. If you acknowledge that answers can lie within multiple religions rather than just one, more answers are presented.

I do not believe in absolutes. Nothing is absolutely bad, and nothing is absolutely good. Nothing is absolutely correct, or absolutely wrong. Bad can have good intentions, and with bad comes lessons. Good can have bad intentions, and good can also have its own set of lessons. While we argue incessantly over who is right and who is wrong, we are missing the biggest picture of them all; we are all human beings sharing an earth together, and our bickering is leading to our own demise.

Religion, and even a lack thereof, has led to countless centuries of bloodshed. Our earth is covered in gallons of blood from fallen warriors willing to die for what they believed to be correct, and its the age old chess match. There is no winner when there is death. The biggest armies does not mean one is more correct than another. A religion with a massive following is no better than a smaller following. The number of followers does not dictate the level of faith a group of people may possess. The only thing numbers provide is a larger army from which wars can begin, and how history will remember the fallen.

Going back to a point I made earlier within this post, I believe gods were created from faith, and that faith came from necessity. As people moved from land to land, they took their gods with them. The people changed, evolved, and the gods were forced to do the same. That is why we see so many who call themselves by the same name, yet believe so differently. This is why we see so many beliefs that are similar to other religious beliefs from countries we’ve never visited.  What I see now, however, is stagnation. The world, like it or not, is constantly evolving. New gods are being created out of necessity, new beliefs are forming from necessity, yet people cling so dearly to the old ways they have always known. This is not the way the universe is supposed to work. This is not to say, of course, that we should completely abandon the “old ways”, but we should not stay stuck in them. If we remained stuck, you would not be sitting at your computer, or holding your phone, reading these words while constructing your responses. We must learn from the old ways, and bring the old into the new. We must take the lessons we’ve been given, but continue to move forward. We will be ancient history one day. Our future generations will look back on this generation in disgust, as we look back on certain aspects of our ancestors, and wonder “How could people sit by and allow this to happen?” Stagnation.

There must be a balance, a harmony. The longer we continue to allow ourselves to be divided, the more we see the world being destroyed. Soon, there will be no one to argue with of right and wrong, because there will be no one left to have an opinion.

I do not believe faith comes from a book written by men. In fact, I believe religious texts are one of the poisons of our society. A book that teaches people how to live can easily be rewritten, or mistranslated, to sway the public opinion. We have seen the evidence of this, in fact, with the changes made to the bible over time. Faith comes from within, belief comes from within, and we create our gods out of necessity. Each person serves a purpose, and therefore we must also accept that “bad” people also serve a purpose. With the recent popularity in Ted Bundy, I’ll use him as an example. Ted Bundy did terrible things, but from those terrible things, we got a unique insight into the way the mind of a serial killer functions. We have a better understanding of just how terrible the human mind can be, and we saw warning signs. We bettered our understanding of the evolution of a serial killer, While we focus on the acts done by the man, we also looked at the victims. Each death gives us more answers about the human body, the human vessel. Each day we continue to move forward and learn, and that is the way we are supposed to be. We are supposed to move forward and learn more so that we may have stronger beliefs in the capability of mankind.

From all the negative things that have happened, good has come out of them. Every experience shapes who we are as people. While some events have a bigger impact than others, we cannot point fingers and continue to hate one group or the other. Instead, we take the information, good and bad, and we learn from it. The situations thrown upon us are up to us to decide how we are going to react to them. Bad can be changed to good.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit rambling, and perhaps I’m even not making sense now. I honestly cannot tell. I can only hope these words make sense to someone out there. I wish these words could help the progression by helping people realize the importance of accepting change, of accepting progression, of accepting we do not know everything, and accepting that absolutes simply don’t exist. No one is right, no one is wrong, no one is bad, no one is good all the time. It is simply impossible. Change, evolution of ourselves, however, is very possible, if we’d simply allow it to happen.

To My Fallen Brothers and Sisters….

I’m going to be completely poem and honest with all of you that read this post: I don’t watch the news. I don’t like reading about it, I don’t like watching it, I don’t like talking about it, and I hate writing about it. The media of today is so biased, trying to watch the news just ends with a bunch of pseudo-professionals trying to tell me what I should and shouldn’t think. The news makes me angry. The world makes me sad. Even employing all of my best avoidance tactics, nothing could prevent the announcement of the shooting in Orlando.

At the time of writing this, 50 have been confirmed dead, 53 injured, with the death toll expected to rise. Victims are still being identified, and families are beginning to grieve.

A lot of the information pouring in doesn’t make sense. What does make sense is innocent people died. Because they were in a gay club. And a bipolar Muslim did it.

Where do I even begin?

I’m seeing everyone shouting and pointing fingers. Blaming each other. Supporting the shooter. Calling for the death of all Muslims. And all I have left to say is…Are you fucking kidding me? Accusing anyone with a mental illness of being capable of this sortof thing. All I can say is…Are you fucking kidding me?

Let’s break this down a bit. First, we’ll go after the anti-gay community. If you are against gay people on the sole reasoning that a book told you to hate them, and yet you can also say “you reap what you so” supporting the deaths, let me ask you a few questions. My first question being the obvious of did you skip the part in the bible where it says God is love? Love thy neighbor? Did you miss where Jesus welcomed all? Did you miss the commandments that said “Thou shalt not kill”? If you’re just following the rules of your precious book, maybe you should stop being a sheep and actually read the fucking thing. You don’t have to agree with the lifestyle, but it doesn’t harm you. Stop being hateful.

Second, can you tell me for a fact that every person attending that club was gay? Straight people go to gay clubs all the time. It’s fun, and friendly. How many fellow Christians were killed that you just condemned with your assumptions? What if it had been your son, or daughter, killed? This hatred disgusts me.

You don’t have to like homosexuals, or agree with them, but how can you honestly justify the murder of an innocent person as being right? How can you look at a television, and instead of being moved to tears by the names of the dead flashing across the screen, you think “Fucking fags deserved it”. How can you stomach your own hypocritical existence?

To the true loving, and caring Christians out there who will, inevitably, get lumped into the same category as this bigoted nonsense, allow me to say you have not been forgotten. We hear you, and your support, or donations, or prayers, are heard and appreciated. Don’t let the harsh world around you take you away from doing good things.

Of course, I’m not here just to call out the hypocritical “Christians”, I’m here to call out the hypocritical homosexuals as well. You preach about love and acceptance, and yet some of you are screaming for the death of Muslims? You’re going to condemn an entire group of people because of the actions of one man, yet expect people to be more forgiving when there are cases of male on male, or female on female, rape? No, you don’t get it both ways. To be accepted, you must be accepting. You don’t have to agree with anyone to be civil. Our community has been hit by a terrible tragedy. Now is the time to pull together and show the world what true love is all about.

To the peaceful, loving Muslims who are tired of seeing people doing terrible acts in the name of your God, believe it or not, you haven’t been forgotten either. Not everyone in the world believes that all Muslims are terrorists, and I know you grow weary of this shit, too. I cannot say I understand, or agree, with your religion, but my lack of understanding is no cause for hatred towards those who want no part in this.

And finally, to those throwing the word “bipolar” around like it’s a dirty word. First of all, a mental illness is not an adjective to be used to describe a situation. And just because someone is professionally diagnosed with a mental disorder, it doesn’t mean they are capable of going out and killing people. It does happen, and that is a fact I cannot argue, and there are a lot of people who ARE capable of it. But a person who is being treated properly, or at least taught how to cope, knows how to deal with their disorders. Perhaps instead of relying on expensive medications, we should start shifting our focus to behavioral therapy? Especially in cases where someone can’t afford their medicine, but really need to be on it? Maybe instead of teaching people more hatred, or fear, we teach awareness. We teach acceptance.

Those of us who do know how to cope with our illnesses know we can’t get a gun, and the general consensus is we don’t want one. Not because we are against guns, but because we don’t trust ourselves to not use it to commit suicide, or worse.

I’m sick of it. I’m sick of all the hatred brewing around. I’m sick of accusations, of people jumping to conclusions. I’m sick of finger pointing and harsh words.

Bad people exist in every walk of life, be it gay, straight, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian. Stop labeling people and lumping them into groups. We are human beings, not labeled merchandise able to fit into categories. We are complex creatures capable of free- thinking and other amazing feats. We have thumbs!

Look at this without the labels: 50 individuals killed, 53 injured, by a lone gunman in a night club.

Look at this as the tragedy that it is, and let’s stand by each other. Let’s put differences aside, and try love for a change. Let’s try to understand each other, and help each other, whether we agree or not.

To the families and friends of the fallen, my heart is heavy with sadness for your loss. I wish I could reach out to you and offer you my love, my support, but I cannot. Just know that one small town girl keeps you in her thoughts. To those with injured, you have my well wishes and thoughts that your loved ones are able to pull through.

Let love shine from all walks of life.