moral evaluation
as with every spurt of creativity in my life, my most recent “i want to do this” moment came the morning of the day I had two killer exams. i was thinking about how no one belief system is ever completely right, or completely wrong. This all ultimately falls under the guise of opinion, and I guess that’s what I am about to give you… some opinion.
Getting back to my story… I was thinking about writing a short essay/whatever about belief systems. In particular, the good, bad, and ugly of atheism, monotheism, and polytheism. I figure I’m bound to anger every church-going christian in the world with this, so yea, you, you can stop reading now if you like.
The short short answer — it is my opinion that monotheism is for the birds. This is not to say that it isn’t right for someone else, just not for me. I have a serious problem with believing in “ONE” all powerful, all knowing being. This seems to be baseless in reality. If I pick on christianity and the bible a little, it’s just a book. It’s a book that tells a story, and provides a set of morals and beliefs. It clearly is a good story, as I cannot argue with how many copies worldwide it’s sold (still #1 I imagine). I think this is a false sense of security. Most people who follow in god’s footsteps aim to emulate god him/her/itself, and I cannot argue that this is a bad thing. Definitely nothing wrong with trying to be perfect and all knowing and a moral person (granted, moral according to a book). But this is unrealistic. No one is perfect, and no one is completely moral (you might think someone is, but who is to say that someone elses view of what is moral is the same?), and therefore emulating someone who is all of these things seems to be a little bit out in left field. Hence, polytheism.
I am fascinated by cultures, societies, and religions that embrace a group of entities as gods, godesses, etc. Once again, all stories, and you can debate the validity on your own time. But the single greatest attraction to this way of thinking for me is that no one of the gods are ever perfect, or are ever perfectly moral. They had their strengths, as well as their weaknesses. Just because I could pick up a violin and make some awful sounds, doesn’t mean that I am automatically a virtuoso (and thankfully for most, I do not have a violin in my posession!).
I also have no problem with atheists. Why base a belief system on a story when you can base it on what you see, and what you believe as a person?
In the end, I feel that I might fall into all three categories, in that I think there is “something” out there, but don’t know what it is, but that it definitely IS NOT in control of my life. I don’t look to god for the answers (this is single-handedly my biggest problem with christianity, specifically catholicism), partly because I would rather find out on my own, but more importantly I don’t enjoy talking to someone that just isn’t there. I also will never believe that anything is perfect. If we held the position that the Ford Model T was perfect, and that was it, would we be better off?
Atleast our cars would look way cooler…
I’m not really welcoming any harsh critics, and definitely will ignore anyone who wishes to point out flaws in my facts and statistics, as I will now admit that this is just a blog, and an opinion, and that I am planning on writing a much more in-depth article on all of this. I definitely left out a whole slew of religions and belief systems (Islam, Norse, etc etc etc…), and that was purely based on my lack of knowledge to this point in those areas… but I am getting there.
~d~