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mmoa_writes at 04:20pm on 13/03/2007
mmoa_writes at 04:20pm on 13/03/2007*Rabbling is a ranting essay in drabble form. My writing skills are truly depleting.
*Life has no Purpose, but is indeed something quite spectacular. Purpose implies usefulness. When one looks at the Universe, all talk of purpose (should) disappear and we are simply struck with the enormity of existence. How is life useful to the Universe? It is not. Does Life have a Purpose? Perhaps I should not even be saying 'no', rather, that that is the wrong question.
I was thinking the other day about how believing in God supposedly offers one purpose in life; why does it frustrate me to hear theism and Purpose rolled into one? I realised that that was because on the scale of which we are talking about it is indeed the wrong question. God/Universe has no need of us. We are just here because we are. That, I think, is something even better than being 'put' on Earth for some cold, machinistic Purpose. It makes more sense why the Judeo-Christian God was first referred to as YHWH, literally 'I AM'. Nothing about a father figure, or love, or hate and judgement, or justice, just the overwhelming fact of existence. That is mystery enough. Anything else is mere trivia.
*Interesting question I was asked on the afterlife. What would happen if your expected afterlife was not true? If mine weren't true, I'd be a little narked (I deserve a rest after this life, thanks very much), but so long as the actual afterlife does not involve reincarnation (please, no) and is more akin to the Ancient Egyptian, (now where did I put my book of the Dead?) then I'm good.
*Morality. I find it annoying to hear that somehow, morality without God is better. I just think it's morality, personally: I've yet to hear a truly moral theist admit to doing good because their God wants them to - you don't have to be an agnostic/atheist to realise that that would be a bit iffy.
In modern, secularised societies, societal breakdown has not taken place because with our new amazing non-theistic mindset, we are doing good merely for the sake of it. We are doing good for a much deeper reason, something within our very genes, I suspect. We are doing good just because. It's something quite close to instinct (false instinct? After millenia of cultural conditioning? That's anohter rabble!).
Mind you, doing something for the sake of one's genes is no more truly moral than doing something because the old man told you so. But then, that's what Philosophy is for...
*A petty frustration, due to misinofrmation and cliches, I suppose: God in the OT isn't actually that different from God in the NT, and my hackles rise at anyone who says so. He just doesn't appear that much in the NT - you've got Jesus - but when he does, even then he is as ambiguous as ever, the only real difference is that you are asked to understand that this ambiguity is actually love, as opposed to... whatever it was before. So no, God does not suddenly become nice and caring any more than he was in the OT (and personally, if I'm an oppressed little person, I think I'd prefer a God of justice to one of infinite forgiveness, but that's me being selfish), but the understanding that we are asked to have or at least develop is different.
*Life has no Purpose, but is indeed something quite spectacular. Purpose implies usefulness. When one looks at the Universe, all talk of purpose (should) disappear and we are simply struck with the enormity of existence. How is life useful to the Universe? It is not. Does Life have a Purpose? Perhaps I should not even be saying 'no', rather, that that is the wrong question.
I was thinking the other day about how believing in God supposedly offers one purpose in life; why does it frustrate me to hear theism and Purpose rolled into one? I realised that that was because on the scale of which we are talking about it is indeed the wrong question. God/Universe has no need of us. We are just here because we are. That, I think, is something even better than being 'put' on Earth for some cold, machinistic Purpose. It makes more sense why the Judeo-Christian God was first referred to as YHWH, literally 'I AM'. Nothing about a father figure, or love, or hate and judgement, or justice, just the overwhelming fact of existence. That is mystery enough. Anything else is mere trivia.
*Interesting question I was asked on the afterlife. What would happen if your expected afterlife was not true? If mine weren't true, I'd be a little narked (I deserve a rest after this life, thanks very much), but so long as the actual afterlife does not involve reincarnation (please, no) and is more akin to the Ancient Egyptian, (now where did I put my book of the Dead?) then I'm good.
*Morality. I find it annoying to hear that somehow, morality without God is better. I just think it's morality, personally: I've yet to hear a truly moral theist admit to doing good because their God wants them to - you don't have to be an agnostic/atheist to realise that that would be a bit iffy.
In modern, secularised societies, societal breakdown has not taken place because with our new amazing non-theistic mindset, we are doing good merely for the sake of it. We are doing good for a much deeper reason, something within our very genes, I suspect. We are doing good just because. It's something quite close to instinct (false instinct? After millenia of cultural conditioning? That's anohter rabble!).
Mind you, doing something for the sake of one's genes is no more truly moral than doing something because the old man told you so. But then, that's what Philosophy is for...
*A petty frustration, due to misinofrmation and cliches, I suppose: God in the OT isn't actually that different from God in the NT, and my hackles rise at anyone who says so. He just doesn't appear that much in the NT - you've got Jesus - but when he does, even then he is as ambiguous as ever, the only real difference is that you are asked to understand that this ambiguity is actually love, as opposed to... whatever it was before. So no, God does not suddenly become nice and caring any more than he was in the OT (and personally, if I'm an oppressed little person, I think I'd prefer a God of justice to one of infinite forgiveness, but that's me being selfish), but the understanding that we are asked to have or at least develop is different.
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Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, aussi. I kept on getting halfway and then something would always crop up.