I want to believe in something greater than myself, please help...
Humanity as a collective seems disappointing. As far as I can tell, the greatest achievements of humanity are the stasis of written text and the error-correction of science. They seem to be fundamentally inclined to accumulate inaccuracy at a greater pace and to a greater peak than correctness. Adding more humans always seems to be a losing proposition, in intellectual matters at least. Not that one should abandon collaboration, it is just unworthy of any inherent respect and thus should always be subject to critical analysis rather than being accorded any faith or deemed more worthy than any random other entity such as an individual, community, cow, rock, the concept of backwards...
Still, that whole writing/logic/mathematics/science thing and all its marvellous technology is nice, but nobody seems willing to apply that stuff to social conduct, meaning of life(it is "to be yourself"(honestly(not that you have any choice) participate in evolution) which is a terrible lesson in general, short sighted, and extremely depressing. I prefer "to seek a purpose that is actually worth something" which can be extrapolated to "seek inspiration"(maintain diversity) "keep at it"(don't let your civilisation die), and "continue the mission"(make sure that somewhere, somehow, some part of your community is actually thinking about this stuff)), mental development, philosophy, or anything else remotely useful long-term unless they are trying to control it for nefarious ends...
Benevolence is incompatible with faith. Faith is inherently trusting something without reliable confirmation. Benevolence is reliant upon an assessment of the situation. Trusting something means cooperating with it without personally verifying the virtue of its desired task. Faith is, essentially, granting your ability to impose consequence upon the world without also granting your ability to determine what those consequences actually are nor what value they might have. If the subject of your faith further fails to subject itself to intensive analysis to determine precisely what its capabilities and objectives are... It is akin to signing up with an organisation without knowing if it is Doctors Without Borders or The Hitler Youth... All power-transference organisations are inherently immoral because power transfers far more readily than morality does, religion just earns special mention because the authority by which it demands obedience is so irrefutable and the ability to discern and alter the specifics of its morality, along with a complete absence of ability to apply your own morality, result oin a completely one-way conduit of evil.
Well, I suppose if anyone knows of any spirits or fae that I could form a personalised pact with...
Wind is more like a friend than a god and none of the other elements seem worth talking to. But hey, if you can hook me up with an element of existence that can actually talk back then that would be ace! I really like the idea of local spirits or elemental pantheons but I just don't see much in the way of the sort of evidence you would expect if Poseidon was lurking in the S-bend and Thor was powering the toaster...
Then there is the issue of plausibility. If something wants to be worshipped then it really ought to make an effort. As far as I can tell, too many religions are incompatible. Religions just seem to get too partisan over silly thinks like human sacrifice, cannibalism, child mutilation, rules versus intent... You really can't just choose them all, so you have to pick one. You obviously need to pick the correct one so that means looking at which is best supported, and that means looking at distribution. As far as I can tell, the most widely distributed religion seems to be "a bunch of talking animal-things being terrible to one another, and Bob was there!". Sadly, I just don't really feel it when I think about coyote stealing platypus' nose and spider tricking them into accepting a rock as a replacement...
Creator-gods are a complete no-sale. They are utterly irrelevant. One of the very very few objectively true things is that the scenario that accounts for all of everything is exclusive. There is only the one version of all that exists, a universe if you will. This universe could be anything, the complete absence of anything is still a single scenario(there would be nobody to care about it, but then nobody would care about that...), as is a scenario containing a multitude of worlds described by a single set of dimensions(regardless of whether there is any way for one to leave their own dimensions to enter a different set of dimensions or if instead the sets dimensions are completely inconsequential to one another and others may as well not exist from any given perspective...), or a whole of existence that is a meat pie, or even a world composed entirely of abstractions... The point is that there are no external forces as any such forces would exist thus be a part of it and thus not external. So nothing acted upon it to alter its nature, and everything within is subject to its nature, so even if something is defined as having designed it, that something only exists because it happened to be a component of the universe that we happened to end up with and if we had happened to end up with a different universe then things would be different... So, basically, we have the universe that we do because we obviously don't have a different one, so it turns out that "just because" is actually the irrefutable, absolute, and objective answer to life, the universe, and everything. Not as eloquent as 42 I grant, but still somehow entertaining to me.
Given that the true identity of the creator of the universe is "whatever will be, will be" and that it is directly and personally involved in every component of not just your own existence but that of all of your progenitors whether mortal, divine, or otherwise it obviously cuts in both above and below any creator gods by being both more involved in your own creation and also responsible itself for creating any creator gods. It is also noteworthy for forging the whole of existence by pure force of whim, being completely devoid of any form of will, intent, purpose, nor anything similar. Now, granted, Que Sera Sera The Random Number God may have picked up a severe case of sadism since it mindlessly brought forth existence, but it is obvious that the chain of events that lead to the idea that I might worship something was originally brought about by forces that lacked the mental faculties necessary to care about worship.
Although, I can only recall the one time that I properly asked for a specific result on a die, and I got that result at a 5% likelihood, so R.N.G. gets points for both definitely being the creator of everything and also having answered my prayers. I would like a larger sample size, but large sample-sizes produce conformity which feels like sacrilege...
and please take note that according to the definitions I am using, "God exists outside of the universe" is identical in meaning to "god does not exist"... Really, that whole line of thought produces some fascinating tangents, but ultimately collapses into various exciting forms of nonsense.
And lets just not use the term "God" as it really doesn't have a definition aside from "something that is worshipped" which can accurately describe Hitler, Stalin, science fictionology, your favourite Twilight ship, and any of the thousand or so "Jesuses" there are out there at the moment, amongst others... "Worship" itself is pretty poorly defined, so it is a bit of a case of blind-leading-a-suggestively-shaped-pumpkin-that-seemed-human-at-the-time. It is easier to discuss more specific things like creators, lords, patrons, or similar...
So, basically, I went looking for spirituality and everything I found beached itself and died. On that note, I have developed the ability to toggle an all-encompassing sense of support that makes limbs feel weightless, motion feel effortless, purpose feels certain and true... It certainly seems consistent with being able to control the holy spirit, so I guess I must be god, or perhaps god is just going along with it to mess with my ability to believe that it is an external phenomenon... I really do feel that I have explored spirituality enough, using both rational and passionate approaches, that it really wouldn't be fair for there to be a "true" spirituality out there and for me to still not be able to identify it with any certainty. But hey, more perspectives lead to greater inspiration! So if anyone knows a religion that I could possible respect, that would be great! Please be advised that I will not embrace a religious text without comparing it to all others as that would risk missing out on something better, and I am not going to read ALL religious texts for reasons that really ought to be obvious, so religious texts are pretty much useless(The real reason is a mixture of laziness, a lack of palatability in the text, and a wise distrust of poetry...)...
Poll
71 (27.7%)
Author
Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 686728 times)