atheism

Short Attention Span Theatre, House Hunting, and Feminine Mystique?

Leave a comment

house

I love old Victorian architecture, but not being “handy” – this would be a bad idea, at least for me.

 

Steve-o is finally bound and determined to buy a house.  It’s probably a good idea, since Mom is getting even nuttier than normal.  I know it’s getting bad for him when she leaves her TV on the EWTN (the 24/7 all-Catholic, all the time,) channel full blast all the time.  I know she’s trying to work the Catholic brownie point system- and the older she gets the more paranoid she gets about it- but Steve-o’s not Catholic.  If she’s looking for a conversion candidate so she can earn points for redeeming a heathen, I can think of much easier prey.

touching

If Mom only knew.  ALL guys do it.

All of his religious instruction took place in a Lutheran church (where “self abuse” and/or contraception are not generally considered sins), and even so, he’s not a particularly religious kind of guy.  Wigging him out on the more bizarre points of Catholicism, which you will get a real education on if you watch EWTN for very long, is NOT going to result in him converting to Catholicism and joining the priesthood.

catholic youth

Major Logo FAIL.  In So Many Ways…

I am surprised he’s not having nightmares similar to the ones I had as a child over some of the more bizarre teachings.  He likes women and the horizontal mambo way too much for that noise.  He is at a point in his life where he is really questioning the existence of God and there is nothing apart from the power of the Holy Spirit Himself that will be able to bring him to faith.  Even then, sincerely it would take an Act of God to get him to even consider going back to church- any Christian church.  Right now spiritually he is rather injured and cynical.  He’s at that difficult point of finding it hard to believe in God because he is thinking, “How can a good God let me down- and let me hurt so bad?”  He’s still getting over being rejected by his daughter’s mother, and even though he would never admit how much that crushed him, that was a really deep wound.

I know this because I have been there too, as far as being rejected and feeling as if God abandoned me.  I went through that doubt and angst for about seven years at one time. Steve-o is too authentic and too intellectual to “get it” about faith easily, or without perusing the evidence.  He’s going to have to be one of those seekers and knockers and askers (more like screamers at times…) like I was.  For him faith will be like it is for me- only by the hard way.  An unexamined faith, and a faith without doubts, is not faith at all.

atheism

Faith is vexing, but unbelief is illogical.

I don’t mean to bash Catholics, and frankly, I can go along with most of what the RCC (Roman Catholic Church) teaches.  I have the same problems with Catholicism that Martin Luther had- the primacy of the pope, the celibacy of priests,  the purchase of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins, and the whole concept of a brownie point system where forgiveness is earned in any way by what people do.  I’ve actually read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and according to their rules, if you don’t believe and go along with everything the Church teaches, then by definition, you can’t claim to be Catholic.   I have real intellectual problems with just accepting what some person (not God) or even some “esteemed group of people” says without being accorded any sort of space for analysis or debate.   That makes me Protestant by definition.  Just sayin’.

divine feminine

No, this is NOT me.

I’m still struggling with the concept of the feminine image of God and the importance of beauty in God’s view that we have been going over in our study.  Maybe that whole concept sort of pisses me off in a way, because I’ve never seen myself as beautiful, and I’ve never really been regarded as much more than a Fetcher of Beer, or someone to whine at about food, or someone to clean up when there’s dog shit on the floor.   From my earliest memory I’ve been defined by what I can or can’t do, (and by how epic my failures are) but I’ve never felt as if anyone saw me as having any sort of native, intrinsic value.

I know that I talk the talk and I get it, at least intellectually, that salvation is a gift of grace- nothing that I can earn or deserve- but deep in my heart of hearts I am still that pathetic, geeky little girl who the other kids threw mud and bugs at.  I’m still the awkward kid who doesn’t belong, still the girl the guys approached to get her phone number- so they could call her sisters.  I was never anyone’s first choice, and was doing good to be a consolation prize.

I’m still sticking with the study even though it’s tearing open some really old wounds.  Heart is a LOT harder to reach than Mind.

short attention span

That’s what continuous multitasking will do for you.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t enjoy multitasking.  I don’t like being interrupted at all.  When I’m doing what I want to be doing I don’t get distracted…until someone else bugs me and nags me about doing something else or doing something in addition to what I’m doing.

Sometimes I just need to tell the rest of the world to bite me sideways.

biteitsideways

 

Cosmic Crap Shoot, Happenstance Cathedrals, Everywhere and Nowhere

2 Comments

If Asthma cigs are so great, why deny the kiddies?  Or do they just have to suffer from the paroxysms like the brats they are?

The more that I study the evolution of science, I am amazed regarding how much we don’t know, and how much of what we thought we knew that has been proven wrong.  Personally I would like to see if any of those three-pack-a-day Camel smokers from 1950-whatever are still alive, or if they all ended up dying from emphysema like Aunt Sam.  Aunt Sam (short for Samantha, no, she was not a former dude, even though her voice was so trashed and raspy she sounded like one) died back in the late ’70’s- thankfully she didn’t take anyone out with her.  She went out presumably the way she wanted to go: gagging on an unfiltered Pall Mall as she lifted up her oxygen mask to take another hit.

Sure, Sam, you keep on smoking these mo-fos and you’ll live forever!

Then again, not so much.  Aunt Sam was only 59 when she died.  She looked about 318.

Medical science has evolved quite a bit in the last century, but it’s too bad that a good deal of that crucial knowledge came too late for some people.   Jerry’s Dad still believes that kerosene is a hemorrhoid cure, and he’s also under the assumption that women have prostates.  I can only hope that he doesn’t think you have to buy boxes of Tampax to go swimming and horseback riding.

I could only safely wear white after the hysterectomy- nice try guys!

A good number of astronomers, physicists and other scientists who have achieved notoriety or academic acclaim (because they could understand the math that I just am not wired to get) are atheist or agnostic in their belief systems.  Even Carl Sagan, who had so much insight on astronomy, was a self-described agnostic.   Cosmology (not to be confused with cosmetology or cosplay) is the science of the origin and the evolution of the universe.  I would have to attribute the origin of the universe to something other than random chance.  Maybe it’s just me, but whenever “random chance” is involved in my life it’s never a good thing, and is almost always indistinguishable from Murphy’s Law.

Perhaps to maintain my mental stability I have to trust that there is a higher power or a supreme being, because I could never get the math, but even I get enough math to understand that the odds of coming up with the universe, life, and Steve Perry in spandex are pretty much so astronomically high as to be statistically impossible.   I find it hard to believe that a cosmic crap shoot is all there is, even if the placement and timing of the universe and life could be proven to be random.  Tell me, Who is throwing the dice?  Perhaps it is my own human limitation to assume that if something is created, that it necessarily had to have a creator behind it in some way.

I don’t necessarily take the Garden allegory literally, (and I don’t believe the Genesis account was meant to be taken at face value,) but it would have been cool to wander about naked in a garden all day with wild animals.  Just sayin’.

I don’t necessarily take the Flood story at face value either.

Blaise Pascal (and I’ve outlived him by four years so far) was a mathematician and also somewhat of a theologian.  He put forth the notion (Pascal’s Wager) that even if you can’t prove that God exists that the odds that He does are strong enough that it’s worth your while to live as though He does.

The only problem with living like there is a God is that it’s impossible to do so aside from His grace.

This being said, I am definitely not the greatest example of piety and selflessness out there.  Mother Teresa, I ain’t.

I tend to connect more with things spiritual in happenstance cathedrals- places that seem unlikely and that are often temporary.  If it’s quiet, if it’s secluded, and if there’s a sort of chaotic beauty, those are the kinds of places where I feel closest to God.

I loved places like this abandoned railroad bridge.  It was destroyed in the early 1990’s for its scrap iron.

I’d have to say there is some kind of solace in the chaos of entropy, and in the patterns to be found in the disorder, as strange as that sounds.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one of those convergence points that seems like everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  There are simply some places where time isn’t what it is everywhere else, and I find those places to be amazingly spiritual and amazingly renewing.  I don’t have an explanation for them just as I have no way to effectively convey how I know God not only exists but is present in and through everything.  That’s just about how metaphysical I can get, and then I simply have to say I don’t know.