On Vacation

The last couple weeks I have essentially felt, on vacation, from belief if you will. It's not that I have missed them or look forward to being shackled by the snares of guilt and religion, but it is inevitable that at some point I will indeed wallow back to the Throne of my maker who does not see me as the highly evolved species that I am.

You see at the current moment, I've been enjoying a rather lavish trip, through Sam Harris' End of Faith (Haunted House) to Chris Hitchens God is not Great (Celebrity Roast?) it almost feels like danger, like I am in a sense biting into the forbidden fruit.

While both stances, I agree with, Harris- End of Faith and Hitchens- God is Not Great., the only book that seem to encourage me through about 20 hours of audiobooks was Sam Harris Letter's to a Christian Nation. It was shorter and got to the point. Plus it was the book that got the strip started in general.

These authors have a common theme that seems to get misunderstood, it's not that they necessarily hate religion or hate religious people, but the institution the mixture of religion and religious people can be a scary combination. This is hard to disagree with giving multiple genecide citings, (although atheism isn't entirely without fault), but all in all Religion has this numbing effect on a person. It's a tool that people can use to wipe their guilt slate clean and also focus their abilities into doing either good or atrocious things.

I would argue that mammals in general are prone to violence, but when manipulated by a specific dogma can be lethal in an unmistakeable way (KONY, India-Muslims vs. Hindus, Nazis...) So there's the institutional problem posed. Religions typically have violent pasts. They also are full of imagination that reasonable adults should not even both with.

My Biggest Gripe with Religion is with the afterlife: several religions have one and also Hell is  just a scare/manipulative tactic used by leaders to gain a larger following and hence more money.

It must be known before I conclude my introductory blog that I was a Christian and a very strong one at that. from ages 1-25, my family and then my wife and I faithfully attended our churches. Sometimes once a week sometimes twice, sometimes 3 or 4, but the big truth was after all these years after sifting through a lot of the spiritual hype, it wasn't about me and God. It was about a community. Before Tithing, before worship, before praying in tounges, before fasting, before prophecy, before hearing the word, it was all about gathering with each other and enjoying each other's company.