Ramblings.

It's been a handful of weeks since I decided to step out of the religious life.

I've decided my stance on a handful of issues.

Or at least I'm leaning towards certain ideas.

My perception of this world begins with myself. I have a seat of emotions, this is called the heart. An extremely jaded cynical atheist will tell you that this is just hormones in your brain.

I can see that approach making sense with anger or fear. I can see that coming into play with love in a physical sense. It's all survival of the fittest, I want to live, and I want to procreate.

But, I don' t think that's the whole story. There's one thing that I don't see in an animal that I can see in myself and people around me, the ability to create. Art, music, poetry, dance, you can say this is just a peacock showing it's feathers, and there are those that develop a skill just to be confident and get laid, but I believe that there is selfless expression that comes from the heart, and it doesn't have a natural source that we can tie to survival and instinct.

So what do we call this? Is this the soul? I don't know yet. Stephanie makes a valid argument about the idea of right and wrong, she says that guilt exists, therefore we know what right and wrong are. I don't know if that's true.

I feel like it's a nurture vs. nature type deal. I look at the moral values of other people my age, Some are extremely conservative while others don't give a fuck about anything or anybody but themselves. Then I look at their parents and it makes you want to accept the anecdotal evidence.

I would love to believe that I have a soul, and that I am inherently a good person, but I don't see that as true. It seems to me that fear and a desire to not take responsibility for my actions used to and normally would motivate me to take care of myself before taking care of others. I've learned through my experiences in life that when I take care of others I take care of myself, but not everyone realizes that, there are those that live and die motivated by fear their whole life.

So I have a heart, but i'm not sure if good and evil are even existent. For these to exist there would have to be a set standard in everyone's life of what good and bad are, and it's very obvious that there is no standard set. Maybe "don't hurt other people," but even then we have things like aboortion, and senses of justice where a man in texas shoots two men for trespassing into someone's house.

So how do you define good or evil if we can't decide amongst ourselves? So lets play the Karma card, or the God card. wel lI'm not too sure about that either. Karma would have to be based upon the idea that you do good, good things happen, you do bad, bad things happen. What goes around comes around. That's not always the case. I mean maybe you can get more satisfaction out of your life if you live at peace, but horrible things happen to good people daily, for no reason.

And God? I think the fact that energy and matter exist in general points towards the idea that there is some greater force that exists in this world that we don't know about, but where did anybdy get the idea that there is a clear concept of good and evil in this world and that God is its prime representative? If good exists, by definition evil must exist. And if God is the source of good, by definition he is the source of evil.

Good and evil are subjective at best. And God is not some great all powerful benevolent being. And if he is then our perception of good and evil are skewed and nothing makes sese anyways. I don't think God takes nearly as much interest into our lives as we pretend he does.

So that means, life, in essence, is meaningless. We assign value to things that are meaningless just like we kill over green paper that is money, but if we were all here without memories of the past in a big open field buck naked, we would not believe the same truths to be true as we do now.

So what about this destiny thing, if we have been set into a track to live a certain life, like we're acting out a play, like one big ugly painting, then what does that mean to us? Even if destiny exists, we can't pretend to know what we are destined for, so there's no use worrying about it, and there's no way to really know if it's there. And even if destiny did exist, by extension of life being meaningless, destiny is meaningless.

As you can see my thoughts here get a little disorganized because I'm stil lthinknig this out, but the part that scares me once I get here is, if life is meaningless, what's the point in living. Right now I keep myself going with the idea that there's so much I want to see, there's so much world to witness, so much life. But once I've seen it, or experienced things I'm curious about, why live? I don't know iff I disagree with suicide as muc has I used to. I think someone should think long and hard before they kill themselves. But I don't know if it's wrong to opt out. If there was no reason to be here in the first place, why go through the trouble of sticking around?

I mean, I guess if you had something to live for.