Despair in the Search sometimes
Jack/atheist
philosophical, a dialogue with some gravitas using the written word
and not video clips.
Nonetheless, wherever you go, there you are and here I am. The
Search goes on and on with seemingly no answer. A large part of the
population of the world, through superstition, fear, ignorance,
custom, culture, education and on and on believes in a Supreme Being
(s) they worship or not as their circumstance warrants. The one force
they have in common is the need to believe someone, somewhere, is in
charge. Remember "God's plan", "the Grand Design", "it's Gods will",
etc., etc.God gets blamed and thanked an awful lot for a guy who
hasn't shown his face for 2000 years.A lot of people died in his name
and are dying now.
If you believe that a man turned water into wine, that he healed
the sick, that he raised the dead, that he walked on water, that he
rose from the dead I envy you. My education was kindergarten through
12th grade nuns and priests. For a big change I went to a Jesuit
college for 4 years, graduated and promptly quit being a Catholic
except in name only for marriage, kids etc.
Without organized religion beginning thousands of years ago
civilization would have been delayed a long long time.
Jesuits were a huge influence on an impressionable 20 year old in
1967. They taught me how to think. Critically. One of the first things
I thought was if a kind loving God is our creator why do we refer to
ourselves with pride as being 'god fearing'? In 1956, at 12, I read a
book of my Dad's about the holocaust and I began to wonder where was
God for his chosen people? Years would pass and the question nagged
me and nagged me. Did I tell you I was an altar boy? From 7 to 17.
When I felt open enough with a priest and ask his opinion I'd get the
party line and naive as I was I would accept the tale'du jour.
Growing older I began to realize there is something I choose to call
Karma. Something in which I do believe. But that's a tale for another
time.
Man knows why it rains and why it doesn't. We know when the sun rises
and sets to the minute.
An explanation for why the wind blows is as close as your public
library. We've been to the moon and beyond. With the Hubble and other
sophisticated telescopes and instruments we can see the beginnings of
our universe. The Big Bang propels us still but there are still those
unfortunates who believe the moon landing was done in Hollywood, the
war in the Middle East is to bring democracy and freedom to those poor
people and Halliburton is a charitable organization. Dick Cheney or
Dr. Death, the international geopolitical psychopathic murderer as I
like to think of him, Rummy tried to fight the current war(s) the way
the last war was fought.
In any case to get back to the Search for the Meaning of Life it's as
futile as the "pursuit of happiness". To boil it down it's not the
meaning of life, it's the search. Happiness is a fantasy, unable to be
defined but ah...the pursuit is the point.
Once a fantasy is achieved or acquired or whatever it cease to be a
fantasy and becomes reality. Usually mildly dissapointed humans being
what they are will come up with a new fantasy, a new pursuit, a new
search.
Life is not about the destination but about the journey.(anon)
Jack M.
stormthecastle
I created this forum years ago and nobody every posts to it. Is that
indicative of anything?
I continue on with my search in other places though: My Search for the
meaning of life blog:
http://tsftmol.blogspot.com
and other places. Be glad to have you stop by.