This post is really a reply to an unfeasibly large comment (ref is to Viz, for UK readers) but it grew unfeasibly large itself, so I thought it would have to grow up to be a post

“Rafael” is sadly neither a Mutant Ninja Turtle nor a Renaissance painter. Even more sadly, it’s not one of the supreme beings from the obscure CU_T pantheon to which Black Sun Journal often refers.

He/she is some sort of Christian who posts incomprehensible and unreadable comments. This blog got two from him/her today. I can only assume the words get copied and pasted from some central store, which is by definition a waste of hard disk space. The comments don’t relate to the posts, at least as far as I can see.

(To be honest, I just assume that s/he is mentally ill, but I decided to try to treat the comment seriously, because I feel guilty about dismissing someone just because they aren’t clever or rational. OK, I couldn’t stop some sarcasm seeping in but nobody’s perfect right.)

Rafael

I am impressed that your comments achieve the length of shortish novellas.

All the same, I have to say that ” the monkeys with typewriters” idea clearly has some way to go before it produces the complete works of Shakespeare. Props for trying, anyway..

I have decided to treat you as a human being, on a temporary basis, and actually address some of your points. I am even going to get sickeningly preachy. This annoys the hell out of most people but I guess religious folk must be used to it.

1. THE PURPOSE OF MAN’S EXISTENCE
Who we are? Why are we in this world? Where are we going?

This is a silly question. Your answer is even sillier.

2. GOD’S PLAN God has a plan.

Why do I think this? Can I count the ways? Here’s a few, anyway…

I think it is tragic that people can’t find meaning in life without having to take it secondhand from an old book and/or from an imaginary friend, in whose galactic program they are a minor sub-routine.

It is depressing to see how little value our species attaches to the astonishing facts of the existence of the cosmos or biology or consciousness.

It is baffling that religious people have such a hopelessly degraded view of their own supreme being that they see it as a firm but (un) fair big Sky Daddy.

Even more baffling is that the big Middle-Eastern SkyDaddy – who can supposedly do ANYTHING in the miracles line, somehow chose to communicate with humans only through words that got written down centuries ago. This seems particularly mean to his human subjects, given that literacy wasn’t exactly universal then.

This Supreme Being is even so bizarrely twisted as to set up a whole planet just to play silly games with its human inhabitants. Like creating imaginary fossil records because he knew that, in a few thousand years, his human serfs would come up with scientific theories about them. This, apparently because he was setting humans up for a test to check that they would believe the magic book over the evidence of their rationality… And so on. (I am not saying that you believe this, given that I haven’t read more than the start of your comment, but it’s a common fundy YEC “explanation” for the inconvenient evidence.)

If you can’t see how amazing the real world is and need to follow someone’s words, I am going to quote the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. ” [My emphasis]

I know this is anthropomorphising “life” but it’s poetry, not a holy book, so YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE IT. It’s a metaphor. It just expresses a feeling that life is its own purpose. (This feeling is generally enough soul-food for those of us who don’t fear/worship BigSkyDaddy.)

If there was a creator entity, it would be so infinitely beyond human comprehension that we could never even begin to imagine it, let alone follow the workings of its “mind” and assume it has some “purpose.” Purpose is a human construct. What “purpose” could an infinite, ubiquitous, all-knowing Being have? It’s everywhere, remember. There’s nothing it can’t do. There being only one of these, it wouldn’t even have its own kind to relate to. Why would it even need any means of communication then? Htf could it even be conscious in any meaningful sense. Our human consciousness develops through interaction. We’d clearly have the advantage over it, there.

If there was a big entity that could control the movement of galaxies and order the behaviour of electrons inside the atom, wtf would we imagine for one minute it was also mad enough to create conscious beings just to get them to say how great it was?

We are nowhere near even knowing what is in the Universe or within ourselves e.g. what is a dimension? what is space? what is matter? what is energy? what is consciousness? where is our consciousness? The only way we can approach these ideas is through the amazing human capacity to think.

Why would we throw away ways of thinking (rationality, science, skepticism) that actually work to develop our understanding the workings of the universe, (i.e. purpose, as conceived in human terms – the only purpose we can conceive of) to go for big skydaddy myths? Especially, when the use of our minds can bring us some of the greatest pleasures in life?

And why would anyone base their morality and belief system on someone’s interpretation of a few old books? I love fairy stories and myths, myself. However, I find it usually helps to be able to distinguish between stories and reality. The average pre-school child can do this quite easily.

If your god existed, it would be truly malevolent, so it’s lucky that it doesn’t, really. It’s still a pity that most of the planet believes in some variant of the evil sky daddy and bases the actions that would be hardest to justify in human moral terms on it.

Like a proper doorstep god-botherer, I am going to suggest that your life is empty and that you can only fill the spiritual void by appreciating your real existence. 🙂

If you would like me to leave you with one of these handy leaflets….