Roseyland

“Tell me are you a Christian child?”… “Ma’am, I am tonight”. This is by far my favorite line in a song. In case you don’t recognize it, the line is from “Walking in Memphis” by Marc Cohn. Religion and/or spirituality is one of my favorite topics. I think about it a lot, but I rarely discuss it in real life. Religion seems to be one of those touchy subjects, and I’m not fond of awkward situations. I have a feeling I will be blogging about religion a lot though, so I figured it would be a good idea to get some of my basic beliefs and disbeliefs out of the way. I’m going to do this question and answer style, because well… It’s my blog.

Do you believe in God? Yes and no. It would be more correct to say that I believe in the concept of God. I don’t really believe that there is a human like entity out there looking over us and deciding what should happen to who, but I do believe that there is a deeper purpose and meaning to life. I believe that there will always be a level of reality that is unknown to us, and somewhere in that unknown is my concept of god.

Are you an atheist? It depends. When most people think of an atheist, they are really thinking of a naturalist. A naturalist is someone who believes that the physical universe is all there is. I am definitely not a naturalist. Naturalists view life as a side effect of the physical universe. The problem with naturalism is that our universe is incredibly finely tuned for the existence of life. To me, the only logical explanation is that life is somehow fundamental to the nature of the universe. In fact, it is entirely possible that the physical universe is a side effect of life. Technically atheists are just people who do not believe in theistic gods or deities, but that does not mean they are naturalist. While I do not believe in the conventional view of god, I also wouldn’t call myself an atheist.

Are you a Christian? Personally I consider myself Christian, but I do not feel that any religion is completely right, or that any religion is wrong. I think of religion as being like software and “God” as being like hardware. The hardware in a computer is incredibly powerful, but it’s all a bunch of 1’s and 0’s. Interacting directly with hardware is pretty much impossible. We need software to turn the 1’s and 0’s into something more familiar that we can relate to. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that the software is the computer, but in reality the software is just one face of something much deeper and more complex. Religion is the “software” that allows us to have a relationship with “God”. Religion itself is not God however, and it does not reveal what the true nature of God is. Different religions are just different “software” interfacing with the same hardware or “God”.

Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior? Ewww… I hate this question most of all. It makes me feel all weird inside. I have two problems with this question. First, it feels very evangelical, and I’m not at all evangelical. Second, it is too literal. I’m fine with the concept of giving your life to something greater than yourself, which is what I think this question is getting at, but the question itself is too specific. I feel like answering it pigeonholes you as a certain type of person, and I don’t like that. It makes me feel weird.

Do you believe in reincarnation? Why do bad things happen? What happens when we die? Why does anything exist at all? Is this all just one big simulation? Do you follow the force? What is consciousness? Yeah, umm… let’s deal with these questions in a future blog post.

The image in this post is “Religion” by Exolucere and is licensed under Creative Commons.