randomwisdom.com

I wrote this as a reply to a LiveJournal post a friend made, but it was too long so it wouldn't let me post it.

Myself, I've started to break away from Christianity for several reasons. First off, I can't stand most churches. I don't like having other people presuming to tell me what to think or how to think. A vast majority of churches attempt to do just that, using fear of the unknown and direct or indirect threats (if you don't join us, you will burn in a fiery pit for all eternity). They exploit the human need to be part of a group. And while the agenda they're pushing is based on good stuff, it's been perverted and twisted over the past two thousand years and used to control people, push political agendas, and even direct them to do some really terrible things to other human beings. Now one might say that churches are faulty but the Bible is perfect, the infallible Word Of God as is often said. The Bible is an interesting set of writings; it's full of stories about human experience, parables about life and its meaning, and it does has some insights into humanity, like any book that's good enough for people to pass down for a long time. But it's overflowing with contradictions and myths, stories told and retold through generations of different people before being written down, jaded by the perceptions of hundreds of unknown writers, and translated through two or three languages (hint: Jesus didn't speak Greek or Latin or English.) And it's not even complete; some council of guys way back in the fourth century decided to cull some of the accounts, deciding what was and was not part of the "real Bible", so to speak. A good start, maybe, if you were to sift through and remove some of the other blatant bullshit and the stuff that's outright counterfactual, but nobody seems to be able to even agree on what to keep and what to discard. Keeping of slaves? Stoning of adulterers? Shunning women on their period? Genocide? Sure, we'll keep the passages that condone those acts, but oh dear we have to remove the letters of people who thought that maybe Jesus wasn't divine, but was in fact just an extraordinary human being. In short, it's far from a perfect book. Sure, there's wisdom there, if you analyze and think, and ostensibly many churches encourage that. Just be careful, because if that analysis leads you to unorthodox conclusions and you decide to tell others about it, you'll be ostracized from the group, excommunicated, and/or go to hell. So really, you can think about it, as long as you think the same way they do. (Much like the fabled quote by Henry Ford about the Model A: "You can have any color as long as it's black".) Can you reconcile yourself with a group like this? I certainly can't.

My response to organized Christianity's idea of God is a sort of inverse Pascal's wager. Pascal reasoned that he should believe in God, because if said deity existed then that belief would get him into heaven, and if said deity didn't exist then it wouldn't matter anyway. From my point of view, I don't profess a belief in God partially because I wouldn't want to spend the rest of eternity with someone who sends people to fiery pits for not believing in his existence (despite said people not being given a single shred of direct evidence). Think about that: a God who sends people to hell for using the logic and reasoning capacity they were born with. The idea is absurd. If God exists, and he does indeed send people to hell, I'd hope he'd do so based on more important criteria, like whether I spent my life hurting other people or helping other people. Maybe faith in a higher power helps some people treat others well, and if so then good for them. I don't think a huge church helps. Either way, when I abandon the church and think for myself, it grants me the freedom and responsibility to make my own choices rather than depending on other people to tell me what to do.

Why do I care? Organized religion short-circuits that part of your brain that tells you to reason and cogitate before you do, say, or think something, and replaces it with an automated standard response given by a religious leader or group of leaders. For example, try to have an intelligent discussion with someone about stem-cell research these days, or evolution. With most people, it's like the rational part of their brain just shuts off and they spit back some line about the sanctity of life or how God created everything, whether it's relevant or not. Some of them will distort facts or simply ignore them, often without consciously realizing it. When I point this out, they see it as a personal attack. That's why organized religion is so dangerous: it trains people to abandon reason.

So where does that leave us? I haven't yet found a church that doesn't try to tell me how to think, the Bible isn't perfect, and I have personal issues with the existence of God that I won't bring up here. Therefore, I find it simpler to start from scratch and work from there. By scratch I mean I start with observable facts and logic, re-analyze my own personal experiences and observations with a critical eye (after all, my own observations are colored by my own perspective), and only accept what reasonably fits. That's the only way I got that monkey off my back. It doesn't help the emptiness though, that's another story. I find that doing nice things for other people helps, and meeting new people and exploring the world helps a little bit too.

From my perspective, after I peeled back all the BS and twisted logic I'd been fed all through grade school and high school, I wasn't left with much. So I had to ask myself, even if the church is wrong, even if we live in this enormous scary universe and there's no Big Guy in the Sky helping us out, is it still worth anything? Does it still mean anything? It's a scary question, and not one that anyone could fully communicate the answer to in a short time, even if they knew it. And I'm still thinking about it.

Yes, there was an earthquake last Monday in Tottori-ken. Yes, I felt it in Miyagi. Yes, it woke me up from a nap (Monday was a holiday). And yes, a nuclear power plant far over the mountains somewhere in Tottori leaked.

As usual, the nuclear plant leak issue is being blown way out of proportion. Even with the new numbers, there wasn't really all that much radioactive material leaked. Granted, ANY leak in a minor quake like this is unacceptable, but it wouldn't have been a big deal if they had come out and said there was a problem in the first place. Unfortunately, Japanese plant managers are stupid and seem to have this problem with lying and stonewalling in an arena that really demands public transparency. Since according to the Japanese way of doing things they're probably going to be fired anyway, it would be better for the public perception of the power company and of nuclear power in general if they could tell the whole truth up front. Every time this happens the news media jump on it and say "Japanese nuclear power SCANDAL" and you know, they're right. A plant leaking a bit after a moderate quake isn't scandalous, but lying is.

Well Mom, we finally made those chocolate chip cookies. I whipped up a batch of real American cookies with the help of the cooking class. We only had two cookie sheets and I had to make do with a couple of those combination convection/microwave ovens, and I had to translate all the measurements into metric (and some of them from volume into mass, like butter). I had to estimate a teaspoon for vanilla and salt, since we didn't have anything that small. But things turned out pretty well, I think. I whipped up one mess of the batter, and then the rest of the class spooned it out onto cooking paper cut to fit the two small cookie sheets we had. A few of them ignored my advice to space the cookies out, and I chuckled when theirs came out stuck together, but it's a learning experience, right? All told, we made about 50 or 60 cookies I think, and all of them managed to mysteriously vanish before any could make it to the principal or vice-principal. I think that it's safe to say they were pretty popular. I'll post some photos in a couple days, as soon as I get them from the other teacher.

I spent most of last weekend with my girlfriend and her family. Early Saturday morning we went to see the third Pirates movie together. The action scenes were great, but the plot was haphazard and the characters' motives were inscrutable. At most points I felt I wasn't really following the story, but was rather just along for the ride, so to speak. I think this article pretty much sums it up. After the three hours of rather confusing entertainment, we grabbed a pasta lunch and wandered around the mall for a bit before driving back to my town. The plan was to head back and spend the night at her parents' house, so I wanted to get back in time to buy some local gifts. We made it back before the shops closed, and I was able to get a bottle of sake for the dad and some sweets for everyone else, but we still didn't make it back to her place until after 8. And once we got there, almost everyone was already asleep, because we had to get an early start to go pick cherries in Yamagata the next morning.

The sun rose at 5am, and I rose with it. After a quick breakfast of fruit and a bit of coffee, we were out the door by 6:30. Her family had rented a van, and I didn't know it but the whole extended family was coming along: I think the other members were her mom's brother, his wife and daughter, and grandma, but it was only explained once and I still wasn't fully awake. The roads were clear, and we got there early enough to buy the ultimate prize: an hour among the cherry trees. While they don't let you take everything out, they bring out ladders and you can eat whatever you pick, until you get sick of them. Yesterday was the last day they opened it up to the public before closing for regular harvesting, and there were maybe 15 of us in the fields. Some trees were sweeter than others, and the black cherry tree they had gotten from an American cherry seed had fruits that were almost sour. The biggest ones were yellow and red, and reminded me of the Rainier cherries from a previous trip through Washington, but they were juicy without much flavor. Bizarrely, I climbed the ladders without any fear or a second thought. Afterwards we went to an old soba restaurant for lunch before hopping back on the expressway.

Most of us were sleepy from getting up so early, but the guys in front seemed to have the attitude that since we had this van and didn't have to return it until later, we might as well use it. So we went to Matsushima and wandered around a bit. Not exactly a short drive, but it was nice to wander around and see the sights again. At first I had been reluctant to spend the whole weekend out and about, with little time for myself. But actually I had a lot of fun.