LiveJournal 2002-03-20b

2002-03-20 08:46:20

Short and long.

Well, I finally reached the present day in my Penny Arcade archive reading. The comics, anyway. Woot. Looking at the names of the strips from very early in the archives, it seems strange; start a games comic about a week before Ocarina of Time comes out, and have no mention of it at all. But the PC:console ratio was much higher then. Also, for philosophy we were put in pairs, supposed to interview about our religious-ish beliefs basically around a few set questions, and write a short paper on it. My partner and I never seemed to intersect, though, so we basically decided to share the info in text form. I've just typed and sent out mine, so I figured I may as well post it here too for anyone interested. Areas of academic and personal interest, i.e., "What do you enjoy doing with your time?" Computer science major, with a math minor. Like to play video games, mess about on the computer, watch cartoons. Nerd stuff. What do you mean or understand by the word "God"? Do you think that your meaning is shared by most other people in your society? Eternal, all knowing, all powerful being. I would guess that in general, when most people think "God" they think of something like that, though with added specifics. What are your beliefs regarding: God's existence, God's nature (what is God like?), miracles (how would you define them?), the afterlife, the "meaning of life"? I don't really believe in a god. The evidence does not convince me. An argument I frequently see is that everything in existence is so intricate, it couldn't have just happened on its own. But if I accept that argument, I'd have to wonder where God came from; surely something so powerful and all had to come from something even more so. But then that contradicts that it's the ultimate power. Assuming the Christian God I hear about most, I'm not sure I like all of what God does. Create people and things, toy with them, not help when it couldn't at all be a problem for him, and then reward people or put them in torment for eternity based on how well they followed his rules. If a person did something like that, he'd go to jail. Miracles... I'd basically define them as unexplainable events. Strange things happen in the world, and we don't understand near all of what there is to know. I'm not counting hallucinated miracles or anything of that sort. Afterlife... really not sure. It unfortunately seems that when we die we just die... however, there are enough unexplainable events dealing with things like ghosts that I can't say for sure. For my own sake I'd hope there's something more, and that it's pretty groovy. Meaning of life? I don't believe there is an absolute one. I just say enjoy life, have a good time. I also follow good old E.T.'s advice. "Be good." Why do you have the beliefs that you do (as expressed in the last answers)? Are your reasons ofr belief such that another person, when hearing your reasons, would come to believe as you do? Well, if other people see something in my reasoning and agree, groovy. But it's perfectly understandable if they don't; everything really comes down to faith, even atheism. As to why I have these views: I was originally brought up very slightly religiously, with my father's side being Jehovah's Witnesses. But soon enough I realized there were beliefs and rules that I just didn't like. Or the idea of being part of a pre-made belief structure, which is largely what religion is. It seemed to me that if there was a really good religion everyone would be doing it, but looking throughout the world nearly everyone with a faith is just what they were programmed to be when very young, so nothing seemed really more valid than anything else. These thoughts made me a bit cynical towards the idea of religion in general. From then it's just been learning general knowledge and adding it in to my beliefs when necessary. I've come to think of a few major possibilities. A) There's no god(s). So basically as I think now. B) There's a god(s), and it/they/whatever will punish me for not worshipping them. That's just not nice, even for a parent. That's not the kind of being(s) I'd want to worship, and doing so out of fear would be against my principles. C) There's a god(s), and it/they/whatever understand why I think the way I think and are cool about it. In that case, groovy. Current Mood: mellow <a>Original</a>