The Desire to Believe

All arguments for and against the existence of god aside, it is interesting that some people want to believe in the existence of a god, and that others want to believe that god does not exist.  It is obvious why people would want a god to exist: heaven, love, everlasting life, cool shit, the fact that there's a god out there is a pretty awesome idea.  How epic would it be to encounter a Galactus type character?  Very epic!  The desire/want to believe that god exists makes sense to me.  It is akin to wanting something cool to exist: I wish unicorns existed!  How much fun would it be to ride those motherfuckers around the sky?  I guess if they did exist though, we wouldn't be so impressed by them.  Look at whales and sharks and the universe!  They are insane!  They actually exist, yet we are hardly impressed by them!  How sad that we are so apathetic about all of creation; it's all so monotonous to us, despite how incredible and relentlessly unbelievable and staggering it all is.  Why would anyone want god to not exist?  I am only referring to people that--despite arguments for or against the existence of god--hate the idea of god existing.  Perhaps they do not want hell to exist, and so they don't want to believe in god; there are ideas of god that don't entail an everlasting hell, though, and yet these people would rather god did not exist.  I don't understand this aversion to the belief in god.  It seems like a more beautiful thing to at least want to believe in a good god; it is a more good thing for everyone; for although some people that don't believe in god claim love and goodness are objective things that come through evolution, those things are nonetheless relative and arbitrary--ultimately meaningless.  God provides a solid, real, non-arbitrary foundation for such things: goodness, love, etc.  To want to believe that god does not exist is FUCKING absurd, if you ask me.  It makes much more sense to at least want to believe that god exists.  Who wouldn't want to believe in the best possible reality, where there is a heaven, perfect justice, goodness, and meaning?  Apparently, there are some people that wouldn't want to.  I remember a fellow student once said, "If there is a god, I'd rather go to hell than to heaven."  Why people would rather believe in a meaningless universe and a meaningless life is a question psychologists can probably answer.  I do understand people not wanting to believe that god exists, because of different arguments, though; I can see them being agnostic on the issue.  It seems to me that atheism is dead, though.

I hear/read statements such as this one often: "We don't need god to answer or explain how the universe and life began to exist."  I don't know how anyone can know that for certain (just because you arrived at cool answers about the nature of the universe and life does not mean you arrived at those answers sans god).  In any case, people take such statements and really run with them!  People take that statement, and with it take it to mean that god does not exist, or that we don't need to believe in god, or that there are no good reasons to believe in god, or that we don't need to further argue the case for or against god.  That statement is not an argument for atheism.  I don't need my mother to explain how milk got into the refrigerator.  There are many ways in which the milk could have gotten there.  Sometimes it is not about what answer is needed.  Sometimes it's about which answer is the best answer or which answer is the most logical or which answer has the most evidence to support it.  You can just as well say, "We don't need the sciences to answer or explain how the universe and life began to exist."  Those kinds of statements don't really get us anywhere.

A Quick/Short Word on Abortion: VP Debate 2012

I just wanted to say some things about things that were said at the 2012 Vice Presidential debate.

I paraphrase.

Paul Ryan said that he believes life begins at conception.  He said he does not just believe this because of his Catholic beliefs; he also believes this because of what the sciences have shown and because of morality.  So, he said that if Mitt Romney was elected they would make abortion illegal, except in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the mother's life.

If one believes that life begins at conception (that, once a sperm gets into an egg, the union is a human, as much a human as a full, grown ass human), then Ryan's beliefs make sense.  You think something is wrong, so you act against it.  You believe something is a human, and you believe it is wrong to kill innocent humans, so you make it illegal to kill (abort) humans.  That makes sense.

Joe Biden said that he also believes life begins at conception.  He said he believes this, because he accepts the Catholic church's position/beliefs about this.  After saying this, he said that he does not believe in telling women what they can and cannot do with/to their bodies (it's between them and their doctors, he said).  He said he doesn't believe in forcing his religious beliefs on others.  He completely changed the subject.  He hid behind his religion; in essence, he made abortion a religious issue, so that he wouldn't have to defend it, and so Obama and he wouldn't have to hold people accountable for their actions.  If abortion is a religious issue, then Biden doesn't have to push it on anyone.  How can someone say that they believe that life (being human) starts at conception (for whatever reason: religious or scientific), and then say it's ok for people to kill (abort) those humans?  Is Biden ok with people killing each other?  Maybe he doesn't want to push his religious beliefs that say killing innocent people is wrong on others.  Maybe he thinks murder is a religious issue too.

Also, if life begins at conception (according to both candidates), then the issue is not one of what women can and cannot do to/with their bodies.  The issue is about what people can and cannot do about a human that is growing in a women or wherever; no one agrees that mothers should have the choice to kill a life.  People say 'pro choice,' as if it is solely about a woman doing something to her body--it is not the case that she is only affecting her body, though.  I don't think women should be forced to have babies, if they don't want to, but I don't think lives should be terminated.  Freeze them maybe?  Or maybe pick the lesser of two evils: force women and men to have the babies they 'accidentally' created; do this, at the cost of taking some freedoms away--life vs some freedom.

In my opinion the issue is a scientific and philosophical one.  If one cannot draw a non-arbitrary line where life begins, then life begins at conception.  This is the case, so life begins at conception.  That means that when sperm enters an egg it becomes fully human and should be entitled to all the rights that all humans should have.

Ryan made abortion a scientific and moral issue.  I commend him for that, and I agree with him.

Whether you are for or against abortion, at least be consistent and have good reasons for believing what you believe.

By the way, you don't have to be a woman to talk about abortion.  I didn't ask to be born, or to be a man (boy?), or to be so handsome.  All people should be free to think philosophically and critically about all issues: this promotes critical and new ways of thinking about things.  Obviously, it affects women in more and different ways, but abortion can affect everyone: woman and man.

Everything can be made into a religious issue, and many things can be considered non-religious issues.  If you believe such things as stealing, raping, physically hurting others, deceiving, killing, lying, cheating, being rich, being skinny and hot are moral issues that governments can address outside of religion--leaving religion out of it--then abortion isn't a religious issue at all.  It is a scientific and moral issue that should be dealt with by a just and moral government that is for and by the people and that protects ALL of its people.

If you're reading this, you weren't aborted... just sayin'.  You might wish you had been aborted, but ya... you weren't.  Weird, huh?  Not weird because I think you should have been aborted, existing is just so strange in general... sometimes--to me at least.

Look at these un-aborted humans--so handsome!