The struggle between reality and creativity

Lately I've been thinking about how my beliefs and thoughts are quite rational, logical and real. Quite often my beliefs correlate with either/or:

A) Doubt/Having no Clarity

B) Reality

I consider myself to be a creative person. I like writing, coming up with ideas, I love comedy and art. I would never consider myself to be realistic. Recently I noticed that I actually am realistic.

I'd say this time last yearish I wasn't realistic. By the end of August last year, I decided I didn't want a job, I didn't want to ever have to work or do anything. I soon justified that with wanting to go into politics or being a teacher, because those are actual jobs I'd want, but I just didn't want to do the pointless work towards them (school, elections, studying, etc).

I understand that to get to where you want to, you have to follow society. I can't be a complete non-conformist, nevertheless, I still think I am.

I have figured out that although life itself has no meaning, that society has given life meaning, in very VERY stupid ways. But yet, I adhere to some of these stupid ways because I like them. I keep being a non-conformist and a nihilist by only adhering to the things I like... which I like because I like them, not because society told me to like them.

Back to my point. I am an atheist because I like reality. I don't believe in myths, I like history, myths in history are interesting, I just think all of the theism in these myths are bologna. I consider most religious texts to be stories, fictional, possibly myths, containing bits of truth written from that point in time. Yet, I do not know there is a god, and so I believe that.

I guess it is not necessarily a struggle between reality and creativity. It's just that since creativity is generally associated with being more flexible and go with the flowy, while I am not that. I am realistic about many things.

I think they are sort of two different things. Creativity is fine as long as it is art or ideas. As soon as you put creativity into things like math and history, you run into trouble. You need reality to balance out the creativity. Reality and creativity need to collaborate. Sure, draw a picture of a dog with a horse head, but don't write a non-fiction book about it. Go ahead, write a history book, but don't get creative, history is done, history is known. That is called historical fiction.

I don't know. I just think being realistic can be also very depressing, which is why people like to be creative. I want to run for city counsellor at a young age, and it is highly unlikely that I will get the position. Many people will say "Don't think that way, because then you won't achieve anything!". I am being realistic. There is a chance, certainly there is. Anything is possible. Literally anything can happen. It is just unlikely. I don't think anything is impossible or certain. That's why I am a skeptic.

Skepticism is also associated with being more depressive and negative. But you know what? That is the reality. Question things. You must question things or else change doesn't happen. Some strong societal influences need to stop being positive and ignorant and need to get skeptical and question all good things and look for the good in bad things. That's the only time when being positive is okay. Looking for the upside in every bad thing, and the bad in the right.

This is why I am an (agnostic) atheist. I question everything. Well, not everything, just within realistic proportions. But I questioned the existence of god, rather than adhering to society's generalized belief there is a god, and I arrived at the answer that god probably doesn't exist, although since I am skeptic, I believe anything is possible, so I have to stick that little agnostic before atheist, even though I really want to be a complete atheist, I couldn't be a skeptic and an atheist, that just doesn't make sense.


Nice run-on sentence up there, eh?

I just realized how all of my beliefs sort of connect.
I am an agnostic atheist because I am a skeptic and I am a nihilist because I am a skeptic and non-conformist and I am a non-conformist because I am a skeptic and nihilist. Sort of. There are lots of reasons, it's just my beliefs instead of being scattered and unjustified are sorting themselves out without me even realizing it until now.

Weird.

I guess my point, since I have digressed so much in this single blog post, is reality and creativity should work together and support each other. Reality is important and creativity is important, and although they should "work together" they shouldn't be combined in the wrong context because that brings us to lies and things like the idea of god, which for this reason, society believes exists even though it doesn't.

Views on Atheism + Reflection on "The Trouble With Atheism" documentary

A continuing post on my views on atheism and theism.

I watched a documentary called The Trouble With Atheism (watch here), which essentially criticizes atheism. I was reluctant to watch it when I first came across it, because of my strong views on atheism. I decided to suck it up and watch it anyways.

I like documentaries because you can easily follow a storyline, with a distinct voice. You follow a person's real perspective. It is so hard to be a un-biased watcher of any documentary because of the power of the voice, and how convincing it can get. But this is also why I hate documentaries.

This documentary, in my mind, was horrible. It didn't come up with too many arguments actually against atheism. First, it talks about how atheists criticize other religions for being hateful, when atheists are hateful themselves.

Let me point out for the first time; atheism doesn't mean "I hate religion" it means "I don't believe in god" therefore the voice of the documentary, Liddle's, argument is invalid.

It goes on to look at scientific reasons as to why we are here, and then Liddle will say "What happened before the big bang theory?" and what happened before all of these scientific things.

The end truth is; we don't know. It is like Schrodinger's cat, you don't know whether the cat is dead or not until you open the box. You don't know if god is real or not... but there is no box to open, you just can't tell. This is why agnosticism is more supported in this documentary than theism. We don't know how earth was created. We just don't.

At least twice in the documentary, Liddle asks/tells atheists that they are being "rather arrogant" about their views. Some atheists call the belief in religion "stupid". I agree, but that is not my point here. My point here is why the hell is Liddle calling atheists arrogant when he himself is being arrogant, even if simply by asking the atheists why they are arrogant?

What?

The one scientist responded something like (paraphrasing) "I don't care if I am being arrogant, because I am right". Way to go.

The funny thing about the atheism vs theism debate is it doesn't matter what side has more solid evidence than the other because in the end, even if atheism has 1,000,000 pieces of evidence that supports there is no god, and theism has 500,000, that evidence doesn't actually make it more real... we still don't know for 100% CERTAIN. The amount of evidence either side has, doesn't matter.

I am an agnostic atheist, and I think that god doesn't exist. Logic makes more sense to me than a human creator.

Actually, the documentary did put one thing in my head, into words. It went something like: "Religion hasn't been passed on because it is logical or because people believe in it, but because it gives a sense of comfort and structure to society". 

I've been trying to say that the reason why religion has survived this long is because of a psychological way of making someone feel better about them self or more "moral". The word "comfort" is what I was looking for! Aha! Thank-you documentary.


My final points always seem to come to two things, every time.
1. Our fear of chaos
2. Us not wanting to be wrong

1. Towards the end of the documentary, it made the point I hate the most: that atheists are not always moral beings. It was said that by taking god out of the equation, that a magical utopia won't just happen, because of human nature. We still do bad, even without god, and even with god, within our belief system in society. Maybe some theists just believe in god in fear of chaos, and want these religious moral values instilled in society, still just so we don't have chaos everywhere. To many people, without a god, we don't have morals. Without an afterlife, we have nothing to act good for. I am not a moral person, well I am, but not always. I just think that we should act upon our natural instincts. Sure, I don't want to be killed, but technically within nature, killing is natural. I don't fear chaos. Maybe this is why I don't fear labelling myself as an atheist.

2. People naturally hate being wrong. We may bring up a point, argue it with another, halfway believe we are wrong, and continue arguing it anyways because we don't want to lose our pride. We don't want to lose our pride.  Losing our pride and losing an argument means we are wrong. So if a person believes for decades in their life that god exists, and suddenly believe god doesn't exist, that would mean admitting they are wrong. It is a much easier choice to make to keep on believing in god. This is one of the reasons why I value Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote from Self-Reliance so much "Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though in contradict every thing you said today".

Have you watched the documentary? What did you think?

Theism

Personally, I identify myself as an agnostic atheist. I was raised an Anglican Christian, but somewhere around 3-5 years ago, I started questioning religion and the belief in a god/gods.

This blog post might be a lot for some people to grasp. Even I am having a hard time coming up with the words I'm looking for, so bear with me.

In philosophy class over the summer, we talked about whether there is a god, and what that god is like, so if the god was omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful), omnipresent (being able to be anywhere at any time), etc. We talked about the image of a god (what he looks like), etc.

In history we talked a bit about the history of christianity, and this actually is what pushed me to being an atheist, because of how ignorant (I think that ignorant is a poor word choice, but I can't think of any other) all sorts of religions, including christianity, were throughout history.

I dislike the role of the churches, priests, the study of the bible, and pretty much anything surrounding religion.

But if I completely disconnect the idea of a god from any religion, it seems more believable.

I think that there is a possibility there is a god. As you can see throughout history, there have been all sorts of religions and beliefs, christianity, judaism, islamic, even greek polytheism... so many that it would take me forever to list. All together, though, there is an idea in there, of a god.

Sociologically and psychologically speaking, I think it is a viable point to state that people in today's day, use god as sort of a "get out" from their realities and a source of hope to look towards. I think people think god is very omnipresent when they say "God will show me the way" "God will present the opportunities to me", etc. I don't believe god is omnipresent.

But as I said, it is a common belief throughout history that there is some powerful creator or creators of the world.

I think if there is a powerful creator of the world, like a god, he/she isn't human-like. I just find it weird for a human to create other humans... well I guess that's what happens naturally, but I meant the creation of humans in "magical" ways, not reproduction. The greeks believed the gods to be actual humans living on mount olympus. Very human like. Others have worshipped human-like figures, that aren't totally human.

I guess I believe in some form of scientific theory as to why creation happened. But still I don't think I'll ever be convinced

But still, is there a god, nevertheless if earth was created "scientifically" (poor word choice again), and god is not omnipresent, is there some moral code given by someone all-knowing or all-powerful we have to look to?

I don't think there is a moral code, I don't think that god or any powerful figure has some form of "how to live" book, tablet or etch-a-sketch out there. I definitely do not think that if there is a god, that they are "all-powerful". I don't believe in people having power over one-another. People typically see god as a "good guy", but personally, I don't think that ANYTHING even a god should have power or control over any other thing. I don't care if you are Obama and a piece of grass, nothing has control over any other thing. I don't think that a "good guy" god could be all-powerful.

So that leaves all-knowing. Is there an all-knowing god? If god exists, is he all-knowing? This is honestly the most possible thing I would be willing to believe. Maybe a god, maybe a human, but I think it could be possible for a person/god to know everything, supernaturally. I think this is the most legitimate characteristic for a god to have, if there is a god.

But still, I don't want to believe in a god/gods, no matter the religion. I don't think there is a powerful figure that rules over all.

So this is why I am agnostic. I don't know if a god exists or not. I kind of hope that a god doesn't exist. I don't pray. But sometimes I think, maybe a god could exist. One time a person I absolutely hate said "I think there are a lot of things in this world we don't know about" which is totally true, new things are discovered all of the time. Maybe a god exists. Maybe he/she is powerful. But at this point, I am not totally convinced.

This same person I hate was talking about how religions have made a lot of mistakes, historically, and I think this is why I always want to jump to the atheistic argument. I hate how the people of a religion have been cruel throughout the ages, I know there are plenty of nice people, and helpful people, but just looking back a few hundred years ago, the missionaries from the UK coming over to Canada, and trying to convert the natives/citizens of "Canada" to christianity/catholicism. They were all skeptical, but when churches are built by people, and they don't want a war, and they want to trade with christians, they are going to convert.

I think a lot of theists in this century are very nice, quite often they are charitable, giving, nice,  following the morals of their religion. I know that there are some immoral or amoral theists out there, that purposely spread hate against others, as well. So I really can't generalize a stereotype of all theists, especially since it depends on the religion.

I compare Canada to Greek and Roman times, a lot. To those who don't know too much about history, Canadian society is actually very similar to both Greek and Roman times. In Greece, they believed in polytheism, as stated. Zeus was the main god, the son of Rhea and Cronos, the children of "Chaos" and the "Skies" who were the actual originals. But the first group of children, including Rhea and Cronos were the titans. When they were liberated by Zeus et. al, they became the gods. The Greeks worshipped these gods with temples, events (the olympics were created to honour Zeus), and then as time went on, they slowly stopped worshipping these gods, because they realized how unscientific, unrealistic it was. They believed they were just myths. They stopped worshipping them, and just as an example, the olympics were stopped. Eventually, what most people know about greece, is the times of philosophers, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the times of democracy. A lot of rational thought came out hundreds and hundreds of years after they stopped.

Approximately 400 years after the death of Socrates, Jesus was born, to our knowledge, at 3AD. Now, I

I guess to finalize my point, I am still remaining an agnostic atheist. To me, this means that I am basically an atheist, with just a little bit in my mind that "Just maybe a god exists". I have just been thinking about theism a lot lately. I think theism is a really interesting idea, and I think it would be fun to believe in, but I just don't see much credibility to it, as I talked about, previously.

I don't think a god gives hope or opportunity. I think that you give yourself hope, and that if you are a theist, you mistake it as sort of a supernatural/god given gift. I wrote about this in philosophy, the idea that people who believe in god get these ideas in their heads of something good that seems hopeful or unrealistic, and that they think it is from god. The idea of god in their heads, although unreal in my belief, gives them hope. I don't think this is a bad thing. This idea in this paragraph I am trying to work on better. I want to really clarify it as a well-known philosophical/psychological theory, because I have never heard of any other person talk about this before.

I think this is because people are afraid of offending people and criticizing religious dogma.

This brings me to my final point, to connect this all back to my life. In my essay in law, we had to write about assisted suicide. I established myself as "For" assisted suicide, and for one of the points you have to show an opposing viewpoint and then rebut it. I chose to put in the religious perspective. I got 100% on the essay but my teacher wrote "I allowed the religious C.A. but try to remain steadfast in legal dogma" in the comments on my essay. My philosophy teacher also had reminded us of this.

But I really hate this. I hate how people are afraid of offending others. It is just such a natural thing to do. I think that offending people is mean, but it can also be a wakeup call. I don't consider myself blunt, I just know that I have the right to state what I want to state. This can be difficult in school. Although, I did get 100% on my law essay, so even though the topic probably made my teacher uncomfortable, it was relevant, so luckily he was unbiased and gave me the grade.

The difference between theism and religion

Theism is the belief in a god/gods.

Religion is a collection of beliefs, understandings, and thoughts about the universe, and usually has a belief in god or gods.

You cannot prove theism, yet. There is no solid proof that a god or gods exist.

But religion, can be proved. Religion has existed. There have been thousands of religions, meaning groups that practice their collective beliefs.

Just because religion is true, doesn't make theism true. But, that is not what I am talking about in this blog post.

I do not generally like religion. I dislike the modern church. I believe scriptures, bibles, etc., to be fictional stories created a long time ago. Religion has been deeply flawed, historically.  When catholics from Europe came over to Canada during the great migration, and even before then when the UK (Britain) was trying to populate Canada with Catholics, to convince the people the be Catholic. Tjhey were hesitant to leave their native beliefs, but they eventually switched. Why? I believe the main reason to be that the natives and the europeans wanted to trade, and the europeans wouldn't trade with them unless they joined their religion. They send missionaries, built churches, and people slowly converted, so they could trade their furs with the european's silver goods, like needles and knives.

My point here is that the religion just came over and took over. This was one of the more peaceful missions.

Many missions ended in violence, because other areas of the world weren't as tolerant to new religions coming and telling them what to believe, and the new religions coming were insistent on them converting.

All of the blood shed, and immoral behaviour provided throughout history, by assorted religions, leads me to dislike religion.

I'm not hating on a specific religion. All religions are historically flawed.

I would say now, these churches aren't violent, like they used to be. There still are some violent churches, practices and religions. But arguably, less.

I still refuse to commit to a religion.

Now, theism. You do not have to be religious to believe in a god or gods. Religions tend to give out a guideline about what their god is like, omnipresent, omniscient, etc., which makes it easy for the theist to believe, if something seems more realistic.

Believing is weird to me. Like you believe a certain religion's interpretation of who god is, what he is like, what he looks like, etc.

I was just trying to imagine if I believed in god, what he would be like.

This is how religions have split throughout time, I guess. Thinking about what god is actually like, or more specifically, Jesus.

But theism itself, is not really a religion. It is a belief. One can be a theist, and not be religious.

I suppose one could be atheist and have a religion too. For example, lets say an atheist begins attending an anglican church. Sure, the anglican churches' belief is in god, but perhaps this person just enjoys going to church, reading the scriptures, educating them self about the moral aspects of the religion, and not the theistic. This person would then be religious, but atheistic.

But I am not a theist. I am an agnostic atheist. Essentially I am really just an atheistic skeptic. I am almost resolutely atheist. But there is always that little bit of doubt in there, because as I said previously, there is technically no proof there is, or isn't a god. So that's why it's "agnostic atheist".

My point here is just that religion and theism are two different things. Quite often they go hand-in-hand. But not always. I just felt this needed to be distinguished. I've never read anything before about a distinguishment, and I just kind of realized it a few weeks ago, that the two are completely different things.

Just as a final point, I really don't know much about religions, individually. I find them interesting. But generally, when I research and look at religion, I look at it with sociological, historical philosophical and psychological eyes, not really religious eyes, therefore I don't really know much about the actual rituals by religions, I just know more about their philosophies, past histories, effects on society and the individual. Even that I know very slim on.