I'm a Slacker

So when I said I'll be seeing you soon I really meant I'll be seeing you in a month and a half... oh well... onward! This thing I'm about to post is just something I've been working on for the past few days, and I'm going to post little bits of it at a time. I have trouble organizing my thoughts, and the only reliable method I have found that works for me is to just ask myself questions, and then answer them... so I thought I'd write my answers down.... mostly for myself... but I felt like sharing...

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Q: What do you believe?

A: I believe a better question is “What do you disbelieve?” For me, the answer to this revised question is anything supernatural, be it gods, ghosts, spirits, karma, demons, devils, goblins, an afterlife, reincarnation, holiness, the power of prayer, prophets, or prophecies. To answer the original question, I would say I believe that everything we see around us has been formed by natural processes over billions and billions of years, and that in no situation is it necessary to bring a divine being into the picture to explain anything. I believe in the power and importance of knowledge, reason, skepticism, collaboration, and experimentation.

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Q: From where do you get morality?

A: Well, unlike most religious people, I don’t get my morality from any one place. Ask any scientist, historian, or college professor, and he or she will tell you how moronic it is to get all your answers to any question(s) from a single source. I must admit, however, that religion played a large role in the development of my own morality when I was a child. I was taught the Ten Commandments, and the “Golden Rule” (based on Leviticus 19). But that’s about it (of course there was more, but most of it just overlaps these two concepts). I later realized that commandments 1-4 and commandment 10 were all essentially useless, except in a purely Christian (AKA “wrong”) context. I also found the “Golden Rule” is mentioned in some form or another in most religious texts. Plus, all of these lessons (and many other important ones) can be learned through non-religious fables, or anecdotes. It seems as though any person, religious or otherwise, can base their morals off of their own religious texts, or any other decent story, yet most of the time the big morals are the same across the board. So why can’t a free thinking society exist in which God is absent, and everyone used the Golden Rule as their main moral guideline, with Commandments 5-9 to support that guideline? I know that seems ridiculous, but I think it would be optimal, and am confident it could be possible in the future.

Also, It has been shown that hominids (bonobos, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and humans) regularly practice seemingly selfless altruism, good deeds, and community services in order to form social bonds, and power or dominance within the group (for instance, in Susan Savage-Rumbaugh’s speech on bonobos from www.TED.com, as well as Jane Goodall’s speech from the same service). This leads me to believe that many of our morals simply come to us: naturally, through trial-and-error, from parental guidance, and/or as matters of necessity.

My question is why is God necessary? It is sad to think that the only reason people behave these days is in order to appease a rather childish god, or to keep themselves from the fiery, make-believe, depths of hell. God is gone from my life, yet I treat everyone around me better than I ever have; I’m more honest than I’ve ever been (both with myself and with others); last, but certainly not least, I’m happier and more confident in myself than I have ever been (this one has little to do with morality, but it’s my favorite part, and thus worth mentioning).