Mine, anyway
There have been an estimated 8-12,000 gods in human history (the last 300,000 years). Everything from Allah to Zeus. In 10,000 religions. In my own, personal, syncretic religion, we are each our own God of our own world. Everybody’s world is unique and different. So all of us have our own religion, morality, god, and maybe even heaven, to my way of seeing things. This is mine.
Some say, “it’s all good”. So let’s start with the vampire, a demon. Demons are evil entities and hellions. Anyway, in defense of the bloodthirsty- Are they psycho criminal monsters? Or
do they have their own logic, and even values and virtue (in addition to their vice and villainy)? Some vampires bite for truth. What you taste like, if you’ll submit or fight back, if you’ll survive.
If it’s erotic. If she’s into it. What the experience is like. Good or bad. The taste, but also the see, hear, smell, touch. The full sensory tactile event, feeling, memory. To a vampire, you’re food. They subsist on blood. Some really enjoy it. There is ecstasy in the bite. They might consider you a delight to bite, honey. A refreshing beverage, like red wine, or sangria, or fruit punch, or V8, or cranberry juice, or strawberry smoothie, or even a Coke from a red can, maybe. If people are vessels, then we’re like cans, right? Containers. And maybe not all predators are the bad guys, if it’s a snake eating its tail, or the lion of Judah swatting a mosquito, or something. For the sake of argument.
So what is God? God is good. God is the personification of good. No more, no less. That’s all He/She has ever been. Everything else is embellishment. Like, say, the "source of all goodness". God the Father. God the Creator. What is good? The absence of dissatisfaction and the positive presence of pleasure. Then again, anything God says is good, to some of us. It’s circular. Good is an opinion. Most people agree on it, but it’s still an opinion. And your God is a choice. Gödel, Godot, Godiva? All good. Allah as the name of God seems to linguistically imply it’s ALL holy. Maybe it is. Or should be. Lived and Santa are anagrams of Devil and Satan, but life and gifts are certainly fun and good, in my book. Evelyn isn’t evil and Wick isn’t wicked. Anyway, God is a word. A word for a concept. A lot of concepts, really. I like to make the word as rich as possible, denoting and connoting multitudes, a vast array of concepts and ideas. God is not merely conceptual. God is also a role, identity, and status. The good book says God is One, Love, a Man of War, and Good. The bible says Only God is good, if you buy that bull. I do. I like bibs and beef and pretty much all religious paradigms. Life is good, beautiful. Everything is scripture, including the driver’s manual, or the newspaper, or the encyclopedia, or all the fiction! God is everywhere, and created everything, and is in everyone. Everything you read, watch, listen to, think, say, do, dream, write, create… is sacred, holy. All your work, all your play, your rest and your effort, your movement and your stillness, meditation and action, are entirely blessed and sanctified. You only live once. Enjoy life, live and learn. Reality is all the God there ever is, I’ve heard said. Everybody is the God of their own skull-sized kingdom. Mean or kind. They can instill their values in their children. They can become politicians or Supreme Court justices. No matter how much we differ, we all usually think of ourselves as good. So God is a game. Whether the space between your ears, or the infinite space of the Universe, God/Reality/You-niverse can be Love! Make it so!
What is good? The good life! Morality, ethics, virtue, holiness. Happiness, pleasure, contentment. Meaning and purpose and making the world a better place. Progress, improvement, change, development, growth. Reducing suffering, increasing bliss. Things like truth and beauty. Justice, fairness, compassion, mercy, forgiveness, love, kindness, grace. Devotion and delight. Preventing and defeating evil. Humor and laughter and play and fun. Hard work and setting an example and values like charity and gratitude and respect. Leisure and good weather and yoga. Goodness is met need. People need food and drink, shelter and clothing and bedding/blankets, healthcare and education and jobs, and meaning and love. I would add things like internet and libraries and Nature. My list of virtues includes: friendly joyful funny helpful sane caring wise sexy and intelligent/curious. My idea of saintliness includes good listeners with clear heads and clean hearts who actively hear the troubles, confessions, griefs, concerns, gripes, needs, wants, dreams, desires, aspirations, hopes, passions, and excitements of those around them. People of dignity and integrity, builders of community and lovers of wisdom and teachers of children and workers of all kinds, toiling to make a better society, a better world, for themselves and their children and everyone else.
So religion is a way of inculcating values in children, celebrating rituals that sanctify life events like births, deaths, weddings, and the like, and allowing important things to happen like forgiveness, renewal, and community gathering. Families dress up on Sunday mornings, and participate together in ancient traditions that instruct and edify and entertain and correct. Priests shed light on the Bible, the Church, Morals, and Doctrine (Jesus, Sacraments, etc.). Society holds these things in esteem, and Christianity is a big part of American culture, whether you follow it, disagree with any of it, or even are Atheist or Agnostic. Religion is a word game, and hypnosis, and madness, and -to me- really, really interesting (and therefore fun). I like all religions, and MY religion is all of them (including atheism / none of them) - that is to say, the bits I agree with, and the parts I think are false but still useful or helpful or important. Some parts of some religions I don’t like, though.
Heaven is my favorite part. In a nutshell? Alive and in love, eternally. It’s the way of envisioning the ideal perfect utopia, that lasts forever, and never ends, as the reward for a life well lived, the incentive to make the world a better place, and even a possible Reality in the future, with technological advances that could enable immortality, occupying virtual worlds, and facilitating individual reflection on hopes and dreams and fantasies, and what you might do in an Alternate Reality that could give you Anything You Want (!). Plus, it takes the sting from death, with the possibility of hope, especially if you are happy, OR have lived a miserable life that fairness dictates should be remedied with a satisfying life, if there is any justice in the world. Should the depraved be happy while the virtuous suffer? Also, heaven doesn’t have to be an afterlife. Earth can be Heaven, in the “heavens”, where humans are adapted to live, and where life is good/beautiful, and the Good Life includes things like good food, sex, music, books, Nature, endorphins, and places like jazz clubs or cinemas or libraries. To me, Heaven is biochemical. Like dopamine. Involving the pleasure and reward center of the brain (Not being raptured into some foggy cloud in the sky as a ghost or spirit or soul or immaterial essence!!) The possibilities for diversion and variety are endless, and the Real World holds the promise of multiple delights. Oxytocin is the love chemical. Heroin might be the chemical I love (I’ve never tried it). In any case, I imagine there’s heroin in Heaven. Both of them. Heaven is where you frolic and cavort in blissful felicity with the gods, deities, angels, saints, and heavenly host, on 7th heaven, with the paladins behind Paradise's palisade, as an immortal in love, with every need met, every desire fulfilled, and every opportunity for joy available. Heaven is also just being happy (on earth). Put simply, though, Heaven is NOT being in Hell. Be grateful you are not being tortured.
What is Hell? Hell is suffering. Hell is also conceived as the place of eternal torment for the damned, in an afterlife of burning in a lake of fire, as a punishment for evil, wickedness, sin, and cruelty. God’s depravity, to prevent brutality. Or the threat of it, anyway. Would God really do such a thing? The universe is a very big place, and one might suppose the possibilities endless. Savagery exists. It’s a very large stick (the largest). The carrot of Heaven should suffice, but between the two of them, you’ll probably fall into line. Incentives and inducements like this, heaven or hell, as divine judgment: rapture or accursement, bliss or misery, rewards or punishment, for good and evil, virtue and corruption, make society a better place, and are therefore both Good. The terror, horror, fear, anxiety, stress, worry, torment, and hell associated with the prospect of Hell IS a major problem. But putting the fear of God into people might not always be a bad thing. In prison, or in the pulpit, the FOG is a valuable thing. God may be virtual, and sin therefore imaginary, but Virtue is real, the Law concrete, and guilt absolutely necessary for the prevention of further criminality. God bless hell. Turpitude, iniquity, and transgression? The insidious, dangerous, and vicious? Damn it all to hell - May you never hear the screams of the damned, as the suffering, pain, discontent, dissatisfaction, misery, depression, nausea, and discomfort of guilt, torture, torment, trauma, abuse, rape… and the unceasing agony, distress, and affliction, for all eternity, of being weak, sick, unwell, and ill, in prison, in a lake of fire, with no escape, no relief, no remit. Ouch!, Ugh! Are there 7 heavens and 9 circles of hell? Does that mean there are like 17 realms of Reality? Who are the Hellions?: Well, there are lots of names for demons: Satan, Mephistopheles, Antichrist, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Devil, Cthulhu, Sauron. So the main categories are, Devil, Devils, Demons, Monsters, Sinners, criminals, the evil and wicked, unrepentant and unforgiven tormentors and torturers, the cruel and brutal and savage and ruthless, rotten and mean rapists and murderers, vampires of vicious vice, the cruel and corrupt, the Depraved. Separated from God (Love). In a world of hurt. Pray for the depraved! Bless for bliss! Unfortunate peoples decimated, subjugated, and exterminated (By guns, germs, and steel). The forces of fate are hardly orchestrated by an impartial, loving God!!
Absolute depravity of nameless evil, like Cthulhu, Green Octopus-Dragon, beyond monstrous, reaping ruin, death, destruction, and torture to all, without discrimination, unjust and unfair and unmerited, and at a vast, cosmic scale, a merciless ruthless unstoppable juggernaut machine of growing torment, despair, hell, and pain - deserves the WORST punishment possible. If nothing and no one escapes, this fate worse than death, this black hole of soul-destroying misery, this fate beyond imagining, then justice requires like for like, a hellish karma for The Evil One. For example, having parents that beat and torment you, and sell you for drugs, leaving you to the mercy of villains who then anally rape, torture, murder, cook, and eat you. This is evil, and this requires divine payback. Those involved in the meat industry may seriously qualify. Anyone who pushes the button on a nuclear device, I would add, too. There IS in fact great evil in the world. Hannah Arendt called its ubiquity (or coined the expression, anyway) The Banality of Evil. Hell is/can mean 6 things: 1. Eternal torment, 2. Death, 3. Prison, 4. Suffering, (and also, 5. that place in Norway) (or, 6. Hel (one L), the place/world of the dead in Norse mythology, which later became the goddess of death). So hell is a rich term, and evil is everywhere, and all of us are going there (in the sense of death).
What if neither Heaven nor Hell exist? Heaven and hell, in the conventional meanings, are for spirits, are spiritual. People say “I am not religious, I’m spiritual.” I guess I’m neither. I am a materialist, and I believe everything is physical. Spirits are to bodies as radio waves are to radio receivers. It’s all physics. Everything is chemical. Pleasure and pain exist, and that is heaven and hell for me, in a nutshell. I seriously doubt we have ghosts in a shell, or that we have souls that migrate to distant planets in an Avatar (movie) -type scenario. The Holy Spirit is an idea. I am my body. My name denotes my body. My soul and spirit and psyche are functions of my DNA in an environment over time, my upbringing. That is who I am. I mold myself, define myself, make and create my identity and body, and I have agency over my actions and behavior. Dreams come from mind, which is more collective than many think (I think). Morpheus is the God of dreams. The bible speaks of dreams from God. In that sleep of death, what dreams may come. We are like ants, in a collective. Maybe all animals are. Atomism is delusional. We exist in relation, as part of community (-ies). You are never alone. That is spiritual. Like the spirit of radio. Your head is a cosmic receiver. We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave! Psychic entanglement, right? Voices, visions, dreams, telepathy, connection. It COULD all be real, but I suspect the majority is imaginary. Ideation gets crazy, but you should enjoy your own head, your own mind. Otherwise, maybe you need medication(s) or something. Heaven is love-bliss, and Hell is torment and torture. From oxytocin to electrocution, from heroin to flamethrowers, from agony to ecstasy, from rapture to capture, neurons are a blessing and a curse! From utmost bliss to peak puke. Eternally, as souls, ghosts, spirits? Give me a break. Ghosts don’t have neurons. No one lives forever. Oblivion and nullibiety are the universal fate. Impermanence is a law of Nature. Is this a nightmare and a bad dream? If so, then you’re going to hell. If life is good, and you accept death (how could you otherwise?), then you are in Heaven (and maybe you hold a shred of hope for a blissful afterlife, as well). That’s how I see it. Hypnotize yourself into happiness, and make your life fun. Otherwise, you’re a hellion (on earth). The heavenly host is all around you.
What is MY idea of Heaven? 2 things. A good life (with a good death), and an afterlife that (probably) hasn’t been engineered, yet.
What is the Good Life? Also known as well-being, life-satisfaction / good mood, positive psychology, and hedonics, the science of happiness (or joy bliss cheer contentment satisfaction ecstasy rapture fun play laughter games pleasure delight amusement fulfillment) has come a long way, baby. Quality of life? Heaven is: Alive, in love, eternally. Not just alive, but alive without aging, of course. And not on a breathing machine, either, lol - A heavenly body is strong, fit, healthy, well, and sane. Some insanity might be called for, and do a body good, I would think though, actually. No we’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy, sang Seal. The most popular class at Yale ever taught is the course on the science of Happiness. Ideally, these secrets should be taught to only the Virtuous, and ideally, Everyone should be Virtuous! Virtues like service love goodness kindness mercy compassion forgiveness truth peace happiness justice… The ingredients in the recipe for the stew of Happiness include: Spirituality, relationships, leisure, resilience, exercise, sleep, meditation, music, diversion, entertainment, and drugs and diet/nutrition. Things like a good job, money, awesome stuff, true love, a perfect body, and good grades factor much less than commonly thought. Knowing your character trait strengths and using them often is a big part. These traits include curiosity, honesty, love of learning, judgment, bravery, social intelligence, kindness, hope, self-regulation, prudence, love, creativity, forgiveness, perspective, appreciation of beauty and excellence, zest, spirituality, gratitude, perseverance, humor, teamwork, fairness, leadership, and humility. My other lists of traits include the Scout Law: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. And from a worksheet I was given: Flexible, nurturing, thoughtful, confident, optimistic, respectful, determined, skilled, motivated, resilient, self-directed, reliable, relaxed, listener, decisive, enthusiastic, forgiving, humble, responsible, cooperative, frugal, tolerant, innovative, balanced. And my own list: strong, fit, healthy, well, sane, happy. Savoring and gratitude are habits that should be cultivated to be happier, feel better. Gratification, pleasure, delight, euphoria, elation, ecstasy, ebullience, exhilaration, exultation, exuberance, glee, felicity, joy, cheer, not-blue, not-depressed, can be cultivated and grown in any individual. Joy happiness and bliss are possible, here and now. Big? Flow-state doing something difficult and worthwhile (immersed, on, in the zone, lost track of time, serene, focused, in the moment, arousal, control, concentration, skill, challenge, reward, efficacy, self-confidence). Also, service, making a difference. Dedication, hard work, with a growth mindset (welcoming learning from mistakes, curiosity about subjects over motivation for mere grades say, less validation of own intelligence and more seeking of improvement). Perhaps most important is Other People. Friends, family, lovers, conversations (with anyone, actually), less solitude, more interaction, community. Life is better in presence of others. Making yourself a slave is never wise. Free time, prioritizing time over money, is indicated. Living in the here and now, with a focus on present. Productivity is satisfying. So is cocaine! What about the Quantity side of the equation? Turritopsis Nutricula is an immortal jellyfish. Maybe science can learn from it, and apply the lessons to human creatures such as ourselves, homo sapiens sapiens, for an extended lifespan. The longest human life, so far, (known and verified, anyway) is Jean Calment, a woman in France, who lived 122 years (and 164 days), dying in 1997.
What is the Good Life, in summary? contentment and satisfaction, joy and bliss, pleasure and love, and humor, play, diversion, entertainment, distraction, and freedom (e.g. free time). Enough money for your needs and wants (and only wanting within your means). Meaning and purpose. Service and kindness and charity and goodwill and positivity. Sex, intimacy, affection, massage, touch. Met need (basic needs and otherwise). And being strong, fit, healthy, well, sane, with good habits, good diet, good exercise, and good sleep (not too much or too little). Mind-maintenance (meditation, reading, writing, good conversation). Creativity and productivity and engagement. Fulfillment. Resilience. Growth. Simplicity. Balance. Passion and connection. Being present. Gratitude and using your strengths. Making meditation a regular habit / practice. Effort and dedication. Practice random acts of kindness, begin a meditation practice (sit, write, ponder), and exercise daily. Specificity! An hour a day! pushups, stretches / yoga, jumprope, dumbbell, low-impact dog walking, and exercises off the ACE online exercise-library. That’s my litany, to get you started. Basic need isn’t just food, shelter, and clothing, by the way. It also includes drink, bedding/blankets, and things like libraries, healthcare, education, nature, peace/security, and relationship, community, love, meaning. Here’s another list I made, stating it slightly differently: Freedom, Chemicals and Food (Diet and Nutrition), Exercise and Fitness, Love Relationships Intimacy and Sex, Compatibility Pleasure and Attraction, Money and Nice Things, Hypnosis and Contentment and Equanimity and Lack of Resentment and Forgiveness, History and Conditioning, Safety and Peace, Preparedness, Humor and Light-Heartedness, Trust, Kindness and Virtue, Self-Care, God, People around you, Words, Dreams, Conditions, Entertainment and Distraction, Goals, Livelihood, Nature, Stillness and Calm, Meditation, Sleep, Environs, Philosophy Religion and Culture, Variety and Change, Health, good DNA, Compassion and Empathy and Understanding, People Places and Things (family friends co-workers roommates) (travel and culture-shock) (objects and ideas), Creativity, Mind. Attainment, realization, achievement. Finally, you need an Absence of Torture Torment Pain Suffering and Resentment/Spiite/Malice, Psychic Vampires, Predators Crime and Sadists. Right? Things that make us UNhappy include social media, and being scattered/ all over the place/ with a wandering mind. False expectations and habituation make us revert to our blah after winning the lottery, etc. (just married! becomes just….married). Also, of course, there are trials and tribulations, like breakups, car accidents, HIV diagnosis, victimization, etc. So happiness requires an attitude, wisdom, practice, and a bit of luck. Writing makes Me happy. Music, meditation, good food, and my girlfriend make me happy. Exercise and being well rested recharge my batteries, and help me look good, feel good.
What is my idea of a REAL heavenly afterlife? (Besides having offspring that are happy, living on long after you’re dead)… Well, first of all, Paradise is a real place, in California, near Chico. There’s a church there. And maybe it would be cathartic to have a pleasant trip to Hell, which is a real village in Norway. There’s Heavenly ski resort, and of course The Holy Land.
Anyway, a real afterlife, for me, seems like something that doesn’t exist yet, but COULD, potentially, if technology can allow the transfer of consciousness from a brain to a computer or something? I don’t know if that is possible, or even desirable. Assuming it is, this is how I imagine it: Like a video game, with Superpowers. You can draw on the entire corpus of comics and movies, as well as your imagination. Heaven is a kind of library., said Borges. Books, movies, videogame, you name it. Everyone has their own personal Heaven. You can admit or expel anyone you want into your customized world. First of all, you can turn off pain or aging. You can die and be reborn at any starting point you like. You can choose your appearance, and morph into any shape or animal or being you like. You have control over your mind, and can be in any mental mode you choose, say meditative or manic or omniscient or what-have-you. IQ x. So superpowers I’ve experienced or imagined, include: Telepathy - I’m in your head, and you are in mine. I hear your prayers, and we speak in voices. Possession - I’m in your heart and rest of you, too. Your body, your soul, your mind, your head, your heart, you-name-it. Your pancreas, your spleen. Eidetic imagination, I can send or receive dreams, daydreams, thoughts and ideas, pictures and movies, inspiration and images, indeed, any possible world. You can listen to sublime music that perfectly suits your mood, all the time, and write or create songs, too. Every book ever written is available. You have access to God, to omniscience, to computers, the internet, everything in transalation, in any language. You can be a genius, have genius friends, go to all the classes. You can learn and know all the answers, have a photographic memory, read everything, grok. You can have power, control history, try different things, do things over, time travel, experiment. You can decide which sides win wars, who electorates elect. You can submit to a Higher Power or be the HP. You can do anything, in the fullness of time. You can even be outside of time, if that means anything. Cause the Big Bang and be the Creator. Have a family or families. You could conceivably have sex with everyone. Invisibility. Flight. Healing (of self or others). You can survive in outer space, under water, or deep in the earth. You can fight, cook, shape-shift, teleport, time-travel, freeze time, speak any language, have super-strength and speed, win in any sport, excel in any profession, create social progress, revolution, or decay; You can create, destroy, preserve; You can bend people to your will, by force or persuasion; speed-read. You can (truthfully) say to yourself, I am immortal, invulnerable, non-aging, and can regenerate lost limbs, heal myself, survive a nuclear blast even, and vanquish any foe, individual or collective. I can see all alternative futures, can play any role. I am the best at sex. I can have as much money as I desire. I am perfect. Sound good? Lol.
Reality may defy the deify, though. Good luck. The way things are aren’t as we imagine they should be. Unless we’re content and adapted and lucky and maybe blessed. Happiness is not an absolute. We are often unhappy relative to those around us. Unless you're enlightened and have reached Nirvana or something.
The Universe has 1 Billion+ galaxies. The average galaxy has between 100B and 300B stars. Ours, the Milky Way galaxy, has at least 100B stars, according to many astronomers. Intergalactic warfare is basically impossible, imo. The distances are too VAST. The average distance between stars is 29 trillion miles, or 5 light years. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second. For five years? Between 200+? billion billion stars? The average location in space is completely black. This is just the KNOWN universe.
What is MY religion? Kindness is my religion. Not spite, malice, revenge. Resentment and cruelty. Anger hatred rage wrath fury. Ire, grumpiness, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, sadness, depression, suicide. Suffering exists. Life is suffering. Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering is from desire and craving, attachment and aversion. To/For things, ideas, habits. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, and the impermanence of pleasure. Things like humiliation, broken dreams, sadness, and loss. You can be happy to just be alive. You can be happy for no reason. You can be happy from heroin, exercise, love, vacation, money, entertainment / escape. You can be happy from justice. Winning. Food. Most anything. Hypnosis, self-hypnosis, medications, therapy, dreams. Meditation. Nature. Self-realization. Making others happy. Reducing suffering. Trying, effort, discipline, fulfillment. You can just be. Endure. MY idea of heaven is rapture, dreams, bliss - on earth. Nice things. Hopefully, a long life, and contentment, and hope for the future of the human species.
Counting My Blessings (CMB):
1. Alive, 2. Alive!, 3. Food, 4. Clothing, 5. Shelter, 6. Security, Income, 7. Health, 8. Family, 9. Friends, 10. Kelli, 11. Libraries, 12. My Stuff, 13. Internet, 14. Blogger, 15. Wifi, 16. Peace, 17. Freedom, 18. Laws and Police and Justice, 19. Ambulances and EMTs and Hospitals and doctors and nurses, 20. Trains and BART and public transportation, 21. Restaurants, 22. Gym, 23. Opportunity, 24. Movies, TV, YouTube, 25. My iPhone and plan, 26. My genes and upbringing, 27. My education, 28. Scouting, 29. Variety and diversity and religions and cultures and races and travel, 30. Sex, 31. Junk food, 32. Hope, 33. Drugs and meds, 34. Help, resources, good will, charity, kindness, compassion, 35. Motivation, inspiration, example, 36. Contentment, 37. Wealth, 38. Joy (in all its forms: happiness, bliss, satisfaction, ecstasy, fun..), 39. Renewal, 40. Grace (god's free and undeserved favor), 41. God, Love, the Universe, and Everything (GLUE!), ("the force" binds everything together, said obi juan ken noby), 42. You, the reader (follower?), 43. CMB: chatrooms and message boards (free education!, like Computers And Librarians at CAL).
Other statements of values, from my youth, include:
On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to god and my country to obey the scout law to keep myself physically strong mentally awake and morally straight. Be prepared. Do a good turn daily. Be a man for others. Love thy neighbor. Love all serve all.
Take it or leave it.
What is human nature, and why do religions and gods exist? People are people. Sometimes we’re gods. Sometimes we’re demons, or devils, or subhumans, or animals, or things. I like to be all of the above. Fully human, as I see it. Not evil - just fully alive and engaged. When I watch movies, I enter into them, as any role. Sometimes I take these roles home with me. But I know who I am, and like myself, my identity, my mind, my body, my heart and soul, as it were. I am kind. The bible says, Only God is good. Seems to mean, All people are bad. Everyone wants to go to heaven, and heaven is generally conceived as God’s reward for virtue. What if people are people, and everybody is the same? Anybody can be anything. God is a man of war. So God is a person. War is bad? Love the sinner, hate the sin. People are bodies. Bodies are not evil. Actions are, and the decisions to make those actions. But sin doesn't exist. Only crime does. Different people have different "god's laws." One man's trash is another's treasure. One's virtue, another's vice. And some people have really TWISTED "virtues." So the God thing, the God project, the purpose of religion, is to mold and change flawed human beings into an ideal type (“God”). I say, be yourself, but be happy, be good, and be your own god, with a little help from your friends (gods, as well?). Amen.
Depravity is sin at the extreme evil end of the spectrum. Things like abduction, and false imprisonment, and savage beatings, and enslavement, and violent rape, and torture, and thrill-killing murders, and cannibalism. Cruelty of any kind is deeply immoral, in my book. I’m a hypocrite, but I believe meat is murder. The enjoyment I get from eating meat outweighs any moral qualms I might have about animal suffering. But I’m not about to start eating babies. Starting wars is depraved and mass murder or serial-killing is not acceptable, by any means. We’ve all wanted to. At least, I’ve been there. But live and let live. We all have to live with each other.
Reality bites. Reality is all the God there ever is. Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes. Keep it real.
