Ultimatum - Will to Power and Atheism

Before I start I would like to make clear a few things.

I am an atheist, you should know that by know.

I KNOW that I'm an atheist not because I chose to be one, but because I had no other choice, which makes me my case as hard to argue as a religious person's one.

I have limited scientific knowledge, and I'm very bad at math on paper. But I always look for scientific and mathematical analogies that help me better understand the nature of the universe.

I am not a completely closed-minded atheist. If God one day popped up and said, "here I am", I would question first, then, if satisfied, embrace God. In this sense, I am very VERY SLIGHTLY agnostic (there is almost certainly no God).

This is only because atheists have a tendency to put ego before truth, just as theists do, and so a lot of truth gets lost in between. This does not make atheists are as bad as theists(as some would put it). It simply means we are as human as theists.(something I wish to talk about later in this post).

This also means that as far as I'm concerned, no man can convince me of the existence of a God.

I have a passion for expressing explanations by writing them down, and on rare occasion, actually talking them out. However, every thing I write on this blog, I question. Some of my posts, I admit have very major flaws. The only reason I keep them on is to remind me that I make mistakes. And just like evolution, my blog has no ultimate goal. It is simply the progress of how I interpret everything. It can get better or worse. That which is better, I keep, that which is worse, I discard. For what purpose, I can only speculate.

If any christians aren't happy with what I have to say, then forgive me. (doesn't your religion deal forgiveness in spades?). As for offended Muslims and Jews, i urge you to remember who your true enemies are.

Now, let's start this post off. (I am aware this post contains a billion references to "will to power", which cannot be tested objectively. Will to power, being more of an analogy than a theory does not require objective explanation, because it is not truth)



Will to power is very easily understood. It is, to me, a leading candidate in the reason of existence. Nietzsche describes will to power very well. He states :

My idea is that every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (its will to power) and to thrust back all that resists its extension. But it continually encounters similar efforts on the part of other bodies and ends by coming to an arrangement ("union") with those of them that are sufficiently related to it: thus they then conspire together for power. And the process goes on.

We can infer that no individual form of matter or energy can master the universe by itself, but must try by all means to do so. Do not mistake will to power for human ego, will to power is more like a rule that applies to things that exist, for if it does not exist, it has insufficient will to exist, ergo, no will to power. Though I admit the will to power hypothesis tends to bring up more questions than it answers(like, "why exist?, whose game are we playing"), it does explain on a less than objective level many aspects of chemical, biological and social behavior.

Trust me, there probably is a more mathematical or physical explanation for will to power or an alternative that is more objective but probably less understandable. Therefore, will to power must be used as the platform for the arguments below.

I have already disproved logically the Abrahamian God in past posts, now for the attributes that are common to other Gods. (some of these are derived from Richard Dawkin's, The God Delusion, which in my opinion completely destroys any potential theory of the existence of God but fails to show a proper solution to the God problem, it also disregards the purpose of God to less fortunate people)

Anyway, most of the time, God is said to be the ultimate being. Meaning a being more powerful than God cannot be imagined. But this is what Douglas Gasking says(from The God Delusion):

"
1 The creation of the world is the most marvelous achievement imaginable.

2 The merit of an achievement is the product of (a) its intrinsic quality, and (b) the ability of its creator.

3 The greater the disability (or handicap) of the creator, the more impressive the achievement.

4 The most formidable handicap for the creator would be non-existence

5 Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the product of an existent creator we can conceive a greater being- namely, one who created everything while not existing.

6 An existing God therefore would not be a being greater than which a greater cannot be conceived because an even more formidable and incredible creator would be a God which did not exist.

Ergo:

7 God does not exist. "

I will not dwell on the existence of God further(unless required later).

Emotions can be described using will to power. If each individual has a will to power, then obviously, there must be tools to manipulate this power. This perhaps is the reason of consciousness and emotion. I am a firm believer that emotions are tools.

We do not all ways smile when we are happy. Sometimes, a smile can invoke happiness.
Think about it. If you're in a group of friends, and you don't understand the punchline of a joke, you are still likely to laugh. If a stranger smiles at you, you are likely to smile back. If a person is screaming in pain, you're likely to 'feel' that pain too. If a person is crying, you also feel sadness. This all depends on a few things.
1)in all of the situations above, there must be a balanced will to power; that is, in the case of the stranger smiling, both you and the stranger must be of equal social status, emotional condition, etc.
2)both parties must be sane, that is, the empathic level of both parties must be high enough to qualify a person as sane.

We can derive from the explanation above that emotion is a tool of an individual to manipulate his will to power, his (or her, sorry for the use of "his") will to exist. A slave or lesser being will allow himself to be bullied because his will to power is low. However, it is not non-existent. Therefore, the slave or lesser being will willingly allow himself to be discriminated or abused in order to survive a little longer(presumably to increase his will to power later on).

There are obvious methods of ensuring the exponential growth of will to power of an individual. I have explained this using the short term and long term greed theory. To summarize; an individual(or collective depending on the case) needs to understand the consequence of his actions in the long run even if the short term feedback seems to indicate he is in power. Shouting at workers, for instance, may increase productivity in the short run, but in the long run, the workers will have too little will to power to conform and will realize that unless they challenge authority, they will have no chance of working on their own terms. If the workers revolt too early, they will have no way to justify or reason with their employer.





On the open mindedness of Atheism

It is said that there is no "open mindedness", only opposing views, and that we either choose a side and then close our minds.

This section is dedicated to justifying atheism. The primary attribute of a religion is in it being a collective thought. Religion is then more akin to a social tool than a truth finding tool.
As I have mentioned, personal truths are not learned, they are experienced and thought to be true by the individual. This same subjectivity can be used to understand why religion is said to be a form of truth. It is easy to believe in a group, because humans, being social, tend to find emotional comfort in groups.

Groups of people have obviously, a higher degree of will to power than individuals. This is partly because they are a collective of common interest. Perhaps this may seem imply the whole Atheism vs Theism a battle for power, but I think that there is a lot more to this(I will elaborate more on the battle for power between the two views in a later post).

Will to power represents every common want of the human race. Every one, or at least almost everyone wants justice, a sense of identity, recognition, respect, to be wanted. Justice is a way of returning a balance or power between two parties.That is why a trial is said to be unfair(unbalanced) when a criminal is set free or an innocent man is executed. Without going on and on with examples of the application of will to power, I will just say this: Religion offers to people more power than any individual belief.

This means that indeed, religious groups have more power than individual believers. That is why there are laws in place that allow freedom of speech, and if not, we have the internet. Like I said before, these laws return the balance of power, so that atheists, and individuals with opposing views are allowed to speak up.

So is there a reason for a person to leave the power that he finds in religion? Well, yes. People do it every day. Some convert, some drop out, some have their faith renewed. All of them do what they do, because the alternative either grants them more power.

For example, if you leave Hinduism for Christianity, there is an immediate sense of dominance over polytheists, who are constantly put down by monotheistic religions. If you follow the way of the Buddhist and give up on nihilistic atheism, you are simply living with principles that make you feel enlightened. Nothing is wrong with any decision, it just gives people more power, or at least the illusion of superiority over other people. Whether this is acknowledged by the individual or not, does not matter.

This brings up the question :
If all belief is simply a tool of will to power, then those belief itself have anything to do with truth?

I acknowledge that atheism too gives me the illusion of superiority. That much I can say is the downside of atheism. Agnosticism however is simply saying : "Nothing is true, so everything is permitted, so no one should influence or change my belief that nothing is true."

What agnostic people fail to understand is that, if the above statements are to be taken into account, then agnosticism is just as much a way of manipulating will to power as atheism or any other belief.

I would argue that on some levels I am agnostic. It feels as if it's a battle that I don't want to lose(otherwise I lose my power), so being agnostic gives me that safety of not being able to lose.

However, upon further examination, I have found that agnosticism is appalling. It is the most cowardly approach to dealing with curiosity.

"I am too afraid to lose, so I'll not take part."

Sure, I agree the whole Atheism Vs Theism debate has gotten barbaric and stupid at times(for both sides). But of the most agnostics I know are more atheistic than theistic. They are simply atheists who don't want to lose.

Their argument really does sound fair when you look at the atheists we have. They're all so aggressive in dealing with the issue of God that it almost sounds as preachy and stupid as religion.

This is where I can start to justify Atheism as a more open minded way of looking at things.

1)Atheism itself, even though it sounds like believing, but without God (as opposed to theism's Belief in God) is actually just a belief that life and the universe is real(we believe it is, even though we cannot say that every living thing experiences life the same way objectively) and that we don't use God to explain every damned thing.

If an atheist believes in that fairiest invented the universe, then he's a fairyist(or something). If he believes that chance created the universe, then he's a chancist(ok, maybe not, but you are getting the idea already). To clarify, Atheism is NOT a belief system of unquestionable facts of life. Most, almost all atheists rely on scientific proof to justify their arguments. It is not a criteria that we have to meet to be atheists, because I have known of Buddhists who are atheists and Hindus who are atheists.

However the term 'atheist' has already put people into a group of their own, making it seem as if there are facts that we never question, etc. But this is too much of a sweeping statement. In reality, atheists often are as divided in their points of view as Hindus and Buddhists are. The main point of atheism being the general rejection of God for explanation of everything. It's not like a rule we made that we do not believe in god because Darwin was right, or because chance could work, or because real men don't believe in Gods. (For example, my reasons for being an atheists conflict with Richard Dawkins' because I rely more on the philosophical, chemical physical, mathematical aspect rather than the scientific biological aspect, that is natural selection. Not to say I don't believe in Natural Selection, but I would much prefer to work from the top down, not the other way around)

It's not like that AT ALL. Atheists generally believe that God is not real for very individual, personal reasons. There is no recruitment center, there is no center at all. We only seem to group or organize ourselves because it gives us more power to oppose religious views that, you have to agree, have a frightening amount of power.

That, was just my first point.


Be sure to read up next month's part 2, which will include all other reasons for the justification of atheism as a more objective truth finding system, how faith exists in all levels and must be ultimately broken down, and balance in the economic system of man to ensure controlled and balanced progress.

The truth about truth

According to my father, the human mind learns things by recognizing a pattern. Instead of explaining something that I don't understand clearly, I'm going to use (or misuse) some of what he told me about to explain where God comes from, or more accurately, where the need for God comes from.

Superstition exists on nearly every level. Even de facto atheists commit some mild form of superstitious practice every now and then. Think about it. The average person has had at least one lucky charm. A lucky pencil, or pair of underpants, for example.

We recognize or want to recognize a pattern where when a certain outcome is obtained whenever a seemingly useless item is being wielded (in this case, lucky pencil may have to do with the lucky pencil being more physically suited for a task than a regular one, so it is disqualified). I think it's the way our brain learns. By learning patterns through repetition.

This means that the human brain doesn't actually learn the true nature of things when learning through 'experience patterns'. Which changes the entire meaning of truth. Is there a metaphysical world? A layer so beyond imagination that most people either fail to even acknowledge the possibility of its existence or use a God with physical-bound characteristics to imagine it.

To me, it's all psychological. The whole idea of a meta physical world was conceptualized by a human mind. The metaphysical world was not something shown by empirical or objective studies. The metaphysical world, like God, is a human idea that has made itself immune to empirical/objective study.

It's just as unfair to propose that there is a tiny particle, so tiny that it cannot be physically detected, that floats around and dictates every action and reaction through supernatural means.

Let's put aside the small problem of language and communication in science and math and try out a thought experiment in which the variables are the existence of humans, the metaphysical world, and the physical world.

If there weren't any humans, we can safely presume the physical world would still exist. But the metaphysical world, without humans to explain and discuss it would probably just die, just as all ideas, just as God dies when humans die.

From this one-sided argument, I can conclude that truth IS a little overrated. People don't look for truth - for truth must mean the actual nature of things- they look for personal truths, which aren't actually true. Even my personal truth is not the truth. Sigh, this brings me back to that annoying, overused saying, "nothing is true, everything is permitted."

That doesn't mean I'm going to stop though. Only totally agnostic people (people who believe true truth can NEVER be obtained) give up, I hope I never fall into that group of people.

God's funeral

God doesn't matter. Simple as that. Nietzsche said it decades ago for white people, the superior people, that God is dead. God is dead for everyone strong enough to realize that spirituality should be a supplement for the physical world, and NOT the other way around.

What use is there for worship? If God existed in the perfect form it's described in, then God is not some child who loves being worshiped and praised and highly regarded. Do you actually think God created a GIGANTIC universe, made just a speck of a planet with potential worshipers, then threw in natural disasters, other religions, and greed to confuse them, so that he could see if they still liked him after leaving them in the mess he made?

It's illogical for God to want worshipers for any reason. But then again, EMOTION is contagious, logic isn't. It's EMOTIONALLY comfortable to believe in God(and God can only be believed in when it's emotionally comfortable), but throw a little logic in, and the whole equation tumbles down.

This isn't about scientists being right all the time. They aren't. Religious people love nitpicking on every little mistake scientists have made. It's almost as if religious people are bad losers. Science isn't about killing God. It's about finding something close to truth, and the truth we're talking about isn't a personal truth, or an emotional truth. It's an objective or at least empirical one. Sure, language and numbers tend to dim down the 'truth' value of things, we're talking about a physical world in which animals(us humans) are actually trying to understand the world.

Speaking of animals, let's get this post over with.

Today I realized that man is an animal dying to emulate perfection. No sane person hasn't a perfect world in their minds( imaginary worlds where personal truths are universal truths). In mine, German tanks from the second world war are Kings and Queens, silly, I know. The problem comes when man attempts to separate himself from responsibility.

It's like this;
If you're going to do something, you'd better be ready to accept both the positive and negative outcomes.

For example,
If Shell Petrol decides to sanction the massacre of Nigerian tribe leaders, they'd better be ready to face the music as well as control the oilfields of the Niger Delta.

I'm not just talking business ethics and things like that.

In my experience, nice people are everywhere, but so few of them know why it's nice to be nice and why they do what they do. Bad people are everywhere, but so few of them know why it's bad to be bad and why doing what they do is regarded as bad.

It's because the basic need of an animal is short term gain. Long term gain is left to genes, the non-conscious entities, that decide through trial and error, NOT opinion, what's good and what's bad.

Back to a point I was trying to make. Man is an animal trying to be Godlike. To be all knowing, always happy, and always in power. But without separating the man from the animal, no long term gain can be had.

From this argument, I can prematurely conclude that man needs God as a sort of model of perfection. It just so happens that man also needs a reason to exist, and for the universe to exist BECAUSE of the evolutionary mistake of allowing our short term gain system to have control over our long term gain systems(it was a mistake because we won't allow evolution to take away this control). God fulfills the need of man for an ideal role model, a creator(and therefore giver of purpose), an emotional pillar of strength.

Why God is dead to the ubermen(or at least people who strive to be uber) is because they recognize emotion as a social tool, realize the unimportance of being important. In short, the uselessness of God to them.

I wonder if Christ said BRB before he died

I've been trying all month to post something non-God related, but it's been really hard. My last attempt left me hanging with two paragraphs(which I still think have a point) of the theory of the illusion of choosing and deserving. I'll publish that when I'm not too busy.

Today, I stumbled upon something new while surfing the godless internet:

“If God (however you want to believe in God, I don’t care what it is, you make the definition of what that word means), if God told you (and you make any sort of way that is, whether that’s in revelation or however way you know or by scripture), if whatever your God is communicated to you that you were to kill your child, would you do it?

And if your answer is “No,” then in my mind you’re an atheist.

If the answer is “Yes,” you’re dangerous and I stay away from you."

Even though there are so many flaws when it comes to the meaning of words in that quote, the fundamental idea makes a little sense. People rely on God for so many reasons. Reasons and excuses are made-up half the time. For example, someone may ask me, "why did you become an atheist?"

I could answer:
"A near fatal car crash turned my world upside down, literally, the car somersaulted and was upside down at one point."

OR

"I was intrigued by the possibilities of the random and apparent mindless nature of particles"

OR

"One day I looked up at the sky(it was a Friday, I remember) and realized it CAN'T be that simple"

I could probably come up with another reason if I thought long and hard, but just off the top off my head, those three reasons seem to make the most sense. Yet none of them are a true answer to the question. I may believe that one or all three of those answers are true because they make sense. The same way a person who believes in God or doesn't believe in God may try to explain why he or she does or doesn't believe in God. They'd probably give very logical answers.

The same goes, I think for anything to do with criticizing art. There may be a dozen reviews that praise a movie or an album, but only a handful can capture the true spirit of it.

Where was I going with this...

Oh yeah, a person who 'believes in God' actively believes that God is the creator of all things...(that's how all Godefinitions start off, but they trail off soon after) must believe that God knows everything and whatever God does,(He usually puts the task to some 'chosen' one, to avoid full responsibility I presume) He's doing it for the greater good.

So if you don't kill your baby when God tells you to, you don't believe in God, making you apathetic, atheistic, or agnostic because in your fear, you've drop all emotional comfortableness in the belief in God and embraced logic. Logic is not contagious, but emotion is.

Haha, got you now you God-loving son's(and daughters) o' guns! Well Gabs, discussion time, this post was written completely alcohol free, so there's bound to be a lot more holes than usual.

What matters(everything except energy!)

Allow me to first point out one of Immanuel Kant's mistakes.

Kant makes the same mistake everyone before and after him made. His assumption of moral values being universal. Morals and virtues and ethics should always be regarded as very subjective matters when explaining them objectively. That is, if life began not at the instant of the creation of the universe, but much later on, then anything that mattered once life began to form cannot be relevant to the laws of the universe.

Now, the next and more important problem of Kant's metaphysical world. Nietzsche, my most favored dead thinker, is always best at helping me explain things in the physical, touchable world. But I think I'll go ahead and try to describe something more original(which probably sounds like something I've said before.):

If we can establish a rule, let's say, the rule of the physical world being the ONLY world that has any influence on a person(in whichever way), then would anything metaphysical matter? A reminder, metaphysical actually translates to beyond/after physical. Which means it cannot be matter or energy, meaning it cannot have any influence on the physical world. From what I can tell(which is a pure guessing game in my mind), Kant focuses on God being beyond explanation because we can only objectively explain that which is physical, or present in the physical world. But think about metaphysics for a second, and objective explanations. If a human being cannot be objective in explaining something, meaning something is beyond explanation, then that something MUST be beyond influence. And the moment something is beyond influence(that is, something beyond being influence by OR influencing) of the physical world (that is, the physical world which can always be objectively explained), then it is useless.


How useless?

It is like explaining light to a man who has been blind his whole life, and trying to let him know the importance of light. Therefore,(imagine the entire human race here is that blind man) even IF light does exist, and has an effect as important as described, light cannot matter to the blind man if he cannot be influenced or influence light.

In that same way, if God cannot be explained, it cannot matter.

However, like I've said before, some people like to bend the laws of physics to meet their explanations. To them the 'big bang' was just God flicking the on switch. Which cannot be possible, BUT, because this explanation works for them, God MUST matter.

Now, an atheist is, by definition, a person who does not believe in the existence of God. And since, to most atheists(me, specifically), the physical realm is the only possible realm that can exist(which can be proven by objective study, not subjective imagination), God cannot exist. Since existence in the physical realm requires God to be composed of matter and energy, God is bound by the rules of physics and therefore miracles cannot happen.

2 other explanations of God just came up this week.

1) the reintroduction of intelligent design.
2) the universe being a sort of 'matrix' for the mind.

Intelligent design is very flawed. One of the main ideas behind it is : If something can be THIS complex, then surely it must have a creator. But that would mean the creator would be the most complex thing ever. What created the creator if something complex NEEDED to be created?

The matrix illusion, where the universe is sort of a playing field for us humans is very hard to get around, but basically it's just like metaphysics. Saying that there has to be something beyond the physical world doesn't make it true until it can be proven. I'm not waiting. Objective study has shown no such outer world exists. Don't believe Deepak Chopra.

I know, I probably have half my facts wrong. But this is good progress.

The end of the end. For now.

Disclaimer:
The first argument is rubbish, I know. That was from a bleak moment of my blogging life. But because there was a little something in there that had to be published sooner or later I just decided to add it to this really really long finale post.


Talking about God makes me sick. It never gets anywhere and in the end, no point gets across, instead, after the argument, people who believe in the existence of God believe even stronger, not because their faith is renewed, but because the opposition presented their case so barbarically. The atheists in the argument feel a lot smarter for the same reason.

Instead, I think I'll talk about a question I just can't seem to present well. I've tried at least three time to post something about this question, usually it just branches off into some other topic or gets left as a draft.

The question is, why do we strive for perfection.

You know how that little bit of dirt you just can't seem to get off your new pair of shoes just gets to you? Even though it's tiny and you're the only one who seems to notice it. Even if you make no effort to try and clean it up, WHY does it affect your mind?

That's just one case. In any the bureaucratic systems that we struggle to maintain and keep flawless always fall apart. The thing is, these systems should work perfectly(like law), but the problem is, we aren't perfect. If there was a civilization of robots and machines, then it would all work exactly as planned, but these systems that require perfection simply break down when we use it.

I think a little branching out is required here.

It is in our nature to think that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, because that only makes sense and has been proven. But what has also been proven is that no matter what the action OR reaction is, there is no right and wrong. If I push a ball across a surface, it'll move, but there is no good way to push a ball, just as there is no evil way to push one. What there IS, is efficient ways. Ways that have different outcomes, with the most beneficial outcomes usually regarded as 'good' and the least as 'evil'.

When we expand this into a more social setting, for instance, when selling something, there are many ways to sell. Overcharging for something is considered cheating, an evil. But you may argue that I have proved that the most efficient way of doing business should be the 'good' way. And charging a customer more than the actual price is a faster way of making money, and therefore more efficient. But that is not true, the flaw lies in the long term. The customer, obviously will not return if you cheat him. therefore, the most efficient way of doing things is by balancing between too much and too little.

As you can see, I really cannot discuss my initial question without revisiting old ground. So I'll have to skip thay and stop right here. Writer's block.


***********************************1 month later***********************************
I realized the previous argument was a bit boring, so I gave up on it entirely. New argument time!



Often, too often, in fact, we judge by what we see on the surface. If a song is not pleasing to hear, it is immediately said to be a lousy song; the opposite applies.

But what if the 'lousy song' actually took a different sort of approach. One that only a musician could tell was a leap. Does the song switch from being 'lousy'to being 'good'? When the general public listen to that piece of music, they don't catch that smooth phrasing, familiar vocal melody, or safe lyric that they would normally expect. When a musician listens to that same piece of music, they see the true ingenuity that ought to shine through. But that doesn't change the fact that it isn't pleasing to listen to.

Now, what if we bring down that argument to a different place.

If a man murders his friend, to the general public, the man deserves a hanging. But to the detective, the man had an almost valid reason to commit the crime. But that doesn't change the fact that a murder has been commited.

So, should the unspecialized public keep it's nose in it's own business, or should we continue on this road of conflicting views? Should the quality of art be determined by the critic or the commoner? Is there ever going to be a way of either making everyone see through the eyes of the specialist(depending on what is being judged) or making opinion not matter?

Certainly, the first option seems to be the fair one. And that's where the final part of this post begins.


************************1 mug of coffee later******************************





The world most definately isn't fair. The fact that there is no choice makes it that way. The system we live in now gives the illusion of being fair. Even at its best, it is a mere illusion.

This system's purpose is to glorify the lucky. And this part of the post is aimed at proving that purpose.


The most important factors that make a person:

name, gender, beauty, wealth, family, character, belief. To name a few.

How many of you picked out your own name?
How many chose how they looked, how rich their parents were, how patient their family members were, how fast they got angry, which way they prayed when they prayed to God.

Not to say none. Plastic surgery, meditation, conversion. Three of the very few options that allow a man to chose.

It's still EVERYTHING to do with luck. Luck is now the new problem. And I'm not talking about superstitios luck. I'm talking about what happens when random events line up so perfectly with little or no conscious direction from any man.

So, a law abiding man isn't law abiding because he's good, but because he's lucky.
And an unlawful man isn't unlawful because he's evil, but because he's unlucky.

Our system rewards and glorifies people who have simply been born and bred exactly right without them choosing most of their choices, and punishes those who weren't given that privalege.

But what of the few 'good' people who had no reason to commit an act of evil?
And what of the few 'evil' people who strived for perfection even though the odds were stacked against them?

Even in those cases, the presense of luck makes it impossible to determine if reward or punishment should be more extreme.

The cure to this whole problem is simple. The elimination of luck. It has begun. But if God comes in the way of us meddling with genetics, then there is little hope of progress. It is time for the system to change and for the powerful and weak to share equal oppurtunity, and be judged fairly. Luck should not be the deciding factor when it comes to determining who is on top of the human food chain.



P.S. This is sort of a final post. There is nothing left to say or write about that's worth anyone's time. However, if there's an awesome comment to help me find a flaw in my argument, then I may just end up continuing anyway.

What is 'I'?

I wonder what it'll be like to die. It's so weird to think I'll end up in heaven or hell. Even being born again as something or someone else seems a little off to me. I cannot imagine me anywhere else than in my brain, controlling these limbs, writing these words, living with these people. All these memories should be mine. Stored in the brain that I occupy. I can't tell you what people believe the soul is, because the soul doesn't fit into my version of the universe. It's too vague. There's always a little vagary when it comes to words, but the word soul is in a realm of it's own. No pun intended.

Let me try explain my version of what most people would call the soul. In my world, the soul isn't constant, and isn't written. Chance has more influence over the development of the soul than God's grace (yes, there is a God in my universe, but he does not share power, because he is imaginary).

When I say the soul isn't constant, I mean there isn't a soul that can be stripped of it's roots in the mind. And since the mind is always taking in information and rethinking old events, it's always changing. And so is the soul.

The makings of a soul in my universe involves, firstly, the behavioral traits that it inherits from it's parents. This is totally random. There is little control in the natural world when it comes to the right set of genes. So the soul begins it's life out of a random collision. Much like how the universe began, right?

WRONG.

I actually don't know. Moving on.

Other than the random genes involved, there's also the random sequence of events that turn into memories. I don't have to explain how memories help shape people do I? I do. Ok. No matter how calm you're born, people change. The event's are always left to chance. What I mean can be explained this way:

No one chooses how they look, what sort of family they're born into, etc. Contrary to what most optimists think, 90 percent of the time, there is often no choice at all.

Choosing what you want to eat for lunch, for example, may seem like a choice. But that all depends on how much money you have, which depends on your upbringing, etc. It's not as simple as it sounds, but it's not very complicated either.

Consider this; if you clone a person, the clone never ends up being exactly the same as the person. Saying that you can't clone a soul is ridiculous though. The clone may still grow and develop a personality of its own.


There is little choice for us to make. And the 'soul' grows, just as it influences our choices.
We all make choices, but in the end, our choices make us. See? We make judgments based on past experience, etc, but after the choice is in itself a new experience.

I'm scared. I don't like using the word 'soul'. In the next post I think I'll talk more about my 'earning it' rule.