Why God Hates Me: Volume 1
God hates me.
It's a strange thing to say. Isn't God an omnipotent onmipresent being of divine origin who is filled with unconditional love? No, but I am getting ahead of myself.
First it must understood that I am not an atheist nor an agnostic. I truly beleive there is a divine presence, which may not hate me, but sure likes to screw with me:
I was in the seventh grade when I was testing out my blossoming powers of reason and deduction when I decided that there was no God or gods for that matter. Yet, I was forced to attend Catholic Mass each Sunday. It was there that I issued my challenge to the Almighty. I have always battled my weight, at times I had it under more control than others. I was 12 years old, 5'10'' and 175lbs. In a silent prayer I told the divine presence that I would believe in him if he made me lose 10 lbs. Monday morning I awoke to the worst sore throat of my life. I could not eat or talk for neerly a week. The next Sunday I was cured and exactly 10 lbs. lighter. Coincidence? Probably, but I like to to think that I am a man of my word, so I beleive God exists.
Is the arrogance of a 12 year old boy enough of an offense to draw the wrath of an unseen deity whose omnipotence by definition forces him to know and accept that a human being is intrinsically flawed? Logic insists that I answer, "No," but there is no logic to believing that this mystical force exists anyway, and evidence (proving that God hates me) exists to the contrary. This blog within a blog will present this evidence in the most objective manner possible.
It's a strange thing to say. Isn't God an omnipotent onmipresent being of divine origin who is filled with unconditional love? No, but I am getting ahead of myself.
First it must understood that I am not an atheist nor an agnostic. I truly beleive there is a divine presence, which may not hate me, but sure likes to screw with me:
I was in the seventh grade when I was testing out my blossoming powers of reason and deduction when I decided that there was no God or gods for that matter. Yet, I was forced to attend Catholic Mass each Sunday. It was there that I issued my challenge to the Almighty. I have always battled my weight, at times I had it under more control than others. I was 12 years old, 5'10'' and 175lbs. In a silent prayer I told the divine presence that I would believe in him if he made me lose 10 lbs. Monday morning I awoke to the worst sore throat of my life. I could not eat or talk for neerly a week. The next Sunday I was cured and exactly 10 lbs. lighter. Coincidence? Probably, but I like to to think that I am a man of my word, so I beleive God exists.
Is the arrogance of a 12 year old boy enough of an offense to draw the wrath of an unseen deity whose omnipotence by definition forces him to know and accept that a human being is intrinsically flawed? Logic insists that I answer, "No," but there is no logic to believing that this mystical force exists anyway, and evidence (proving that God hates me) exists to the contrary. This blog within a blog will present this evidence in the most objective manner possible.
posted by Matt lives in Northern New York at 09:32
7 Comments:
"We live in hope." -Lois Lane
"The devil has the broadest perspectives for God; therefore he keeps so far away from God - the devil being the most ancient friend of wisdom." -Nietzsche
Sorry, but I'm going to continue.
Nietzsche also wrote that "The abdomen is the reason why man does not easily take himself for a god."
My point being that the devil befriends wisdom and realizes that he can't compare himself to God, nor can he compete. And being in his presence requires both.
The above comment posted by Mersault will be the only one that I leave because I would like to make a point.
The reason I responded to the quote from Jean-Paul Sarte with an absurd quote from a comic book is because I regard Sarte's quote to be equally absurd.
This quote is a meaningless phrase filled with the exact double talk used by people with a decent modicum of intelligence to end an argument by presenting information not to prove a point, but rather to confuse their audience. The confusion gives way to acquiesence, thus ending all debate.
The human brain groups input into two categories--Knowledge and Emotion. The former is information gathered through direct observation with at least one of the five senses. With this basic information we can draw conclusions about our world. We can begin to reason, rationalize, and recognize. The former tells us what is real. The latter also processes sensory input, it also tells us what is real, but rather it does not tell us what we think but what we feel.
Belief in something or someone is not linked to knowledge it is linked to emotion. To beleive is to beleive. To feel is to feel. If we are to agree with Sarte's meaningless quote we are negating the entire spectrum of human emotion. Because Sarte's logic is to feel is to know to feel therefore we do not feel.
Yet, we do feel and those emotions are as real as the burn we receive when we touch a hot stove. To feel and to rationalize is to be human. An animal simply feels and directs its life based on instincts and emotions. A computer processes raw data. We are neither and we are both.
To subscribe to that nonsense is to deny your humanity. I've tried to supress my emotion. I've tried to be cold and unwelcoming. Many out there might say that I've succeeded, and many would disagree. It is only those who know me that would disagree.
Now to my perception of existentialism in its absolute form. It's bullshit. The whole philosophy is bullshit. Any philosophy taken to the extreme becomes bullshit, which means that if you subscribe to this supposed way of life in an absolute form you are no better than the Evangelical Christians you dispise with so much venom. You are part of the same wretched circle. Where they seek to condemn your soul you condemn their intelligence, and intelligence to an existentialist is equally as important as a soul to a Christian. HERETIC! INFIDEL! IDIOT! It is all the same worthless bullshit.
How can I say this? Existentialism is born out of the scientific method. Human logic and reason could not perceive a God nor a Universe we were told exists. Or, reality when compared to stories of a Deity who loves man unconditionally creates such a dissonance that it is unexplainable.
This dissonance is the womb of existentialism. For the original exisitentialists the world they knew crumbled. They felt alone. Alienated. They felt ashamed that science and reason failed to protect them from their horrible vision of the universe. They declared that God is dead and morality is weakness. They are meaningless points from a group of men who are scared of life. Fear of their own inability to truly grasp the world around them motivated the Existentialists just as it motivated man when he first comprehended his own mortality and invented/turned to God.
The brightest men and women among us cannot comprehend the Universe. Every point is the center. Everything expands outward from the center. The edges are expanding at the speed of light. Yet, the edges are the center. Stephen Hawking, possibly the most intelligent man alive and the world's authority on the universe, just wrote a book stating that his previous works are wrong. In an effort to explain the universes constant expansion physicist propose there is a force known as Dark Energy. Yet, this energy has NEVER been observed nor can it be measured.
You're pressing your face up against the televison screen with the sound off desperately trying to see the big picture, but all you can see are the three colors. Your conclusion? There is no big picture. The smartest among us use 13% of their brain while the average use only 10%. That small difference is nearly an immeasurable gulf of comprehension, and the smartest cannot perceive the big picture that much better than any of the masses.
Who am I to condemn another for trying to add meaning to his life by the means he sees most fit.
Who are you to condemn me.
I will take your challenge, but I will say this:
My diatribe was written rather late and after an extremely bad day, so I was not at eloquent as I would have liked to be--for that I apologize. I'm just waking up after a bad nights sleep so again not my "A" game--again I apologize.
I did not condemn you, rather I condemned extremism in any form, and I denied any humans can ever possibly conceive the universe in its entirety.
Existentialism does not have a dogmatic
theology, but it still can be perverted. The idea that your life is your responsibility is not new. All faiths, all philosophies, with the exception of Calvinist predeterminists, accept that idea. In theory Christianity accepts everyone. Christians are directed by Christ to love their neighbor as themselves, but that has rarely been the case. Christianity is perverted. I'm sure we can all agree that blowing up subways, buildings, busses and trains is a perverted view of Islam. Likewise, following Sarte's quote to it illogical conclusion is a perversion. Following it exactly leads to nonsense.
My anger here lies in something that is not cerebral, so it is not a matter of philosophy or theology, it is the feeling i have in the back part of my brain that reminds me how animal I am. It's that repeating question: "Are you of my tribe?" It is linked to those harh words, heretic, infidel, idiot, and Republican (a low blow by the way). That repeating question in our monkey brain is what perverts the best ideas. So, when I am asking "Who are you to condemn me?" I'm asking a world that has routinely condemned me. I'm not asking you Ray. You have never condemned me. You are part of my tribe.
Furthermore, you can insert I,we, me, my or any other first person pronoun in my amalgamation of all exitentialists. They were my thoughts and my feelings. When I wrote "they declared that God was dead..." that was my declaration. As much as I want to beleive that it is true I cannot. I thought you would see that comparison. If you read it again, and in that light, I think it starts to make more sense.
And, I'll admit I wanted to piss you off because lately you are being absurd. Yes, I do know life is absurd. This whole blog is about fucking absurdity. The fact that I worte a blog about why God hates me is fucking absurd.
I have all your comments. I'll put them back on later tonight.
Doug,
Yes it does. It's a drive to be better. To learn more. To excell at every juncture. Yet, the whole thing is futile. The more you learn the more you realize that you know nothing, and you lose hope. You hate yourself for not measuring up. And the universe enjoys watching you flap around on the carpet like a gold fish out of its tank. Then it flushes you down the toilet.
No, I agree with most of it, but this week has taken to much out of me to argue with the points I disagree with. Coffee summit. World Domination. Sunday.
I seriously will place the comments back up. Since I can't sleep I'll do it now.
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