I'm not interested in starting a religion or anything, but I have pondered quite a lot in my life on a wide array of issues, and I have garnered a good share of my own life experience and wisdom. In the ongoing quest to crystalize my personal beliefs and reduce them into writing, I share with you this collection of conclusions in the hope that some of my beliefs and standpoints may ring true with you and may, in some small way, help you in making sense of this life. From my belief set, please feel free to take what appeals to you and leave what does not, but try also to be open to thinking about and more deeply considering any of my viewpoints that may at first seem objectionable or may not initially resonate with your current feelings.
Faith is the basest of human qualities. It's not that I think it should be outlawed. It's just not something that you'd exactly want to aspire to. We all start out with just faith: faith in the judgement of those who hold power over us. As we mature (hopefully), we gradually empower ourselves with reason.
When you operate on faith, you must be content to be blown in the wind. Faith will sometimes bring good things (validating one's faith), and will sometimes bring bad things (leaving one conflicted). By relinquishing one's will, one at least does not have the hard work of critically analyzing the world around one. The big error in judgement, of course, by those who choose to operate their lives on faith, is believing that faith ensures a greater likelihood of wellbeing. Inevitably, such people eventually find themselves under assault by natural disasters ("acts of God", according to their lexicon), or persecuted for their faith (oh, the irony). Then, such people look to the heavens and cry "Why God!!?? Oh why are we being persecuted in this way? We have lived righteously according to your ways. Why do you bring such hardship down upon us?".
Without bothering to deeply analyze and understand the mechanics of the world around them, the answers to such soul-searching tend to be convoluted and obtuse. The outcome of complex interactions becomes simplified as "punishment" for which "sin" is the cause. Of course, this absurd and simplistic model of "cause" and "effect" flies in the face of the great wealth of scientific knowledge that has been built up over the eons.
In the sin and punishment model of simplifying complex cause and effect relationships, homosexuals are being "punished" for their "sins" of sodomy by contracting AIDS, when in actual fact it is simply a matter of human physiology - the increased risks inherent in anal intercourse and promiscuity put homosexuals at greater risk of contracting various STDs.
Before these mechanisms were understood, society could only point to sodomy as a sin punishable by God in order to suppress a sexual behavior that posed a health risk to the population - an understandable response way back then, but not in this age. We should not be critical of homosexuality, but only the unhealthful expressions of it - risky sexual behavior, which we know full well can be engaged in by heterosexuals as well.
I generally respect all non-conformists, even if their particular flavor of non-conformism may be annoying or offensive to me. Non-conformists are the people operating at the edge, experimenting with questionable ways of being and sometimes hitting on something that will set a new cultural trend. Non-conformists are brave to deviate from the cultural norms, since the pressure to conform is always so great. Given the majority's inclination to conformity, non-conformists are typically under-appreciated by the very people who are conforming to ways established by non-conformists of a previous age.
Religious fundamentalism stands in opposition to a force far greater than it can possibly comprehend: social evolution and human enlightenment. Social evolution is a steamroller that will flatten any fundamentalist ideas that stand in its path. It is unswerving and unstoppable. It will not go around. Those ideas that try to obstruct it will become victims of change - no more than cultural remains skulking within the dark shadows of human history. Despite small bumps along the way, social evolution will forge steadily onwards. So, my attitude? Either embrace this process and be a part of it, or be a victim of it.
Invasive and aggressive religious ideas can force themselves upon an individual like an infectious virus, representing an attack on a person's very being. Like a virus, an aggressive religion is highly communicable, being spread from parents to offspring - much like the HIV virus can be transmitted from mother to child - and being spread from person to person through other means, such as evangelism and proselytizing.
Human civilization has been in the process of trying to shrugg off the infection of paralyzing religious dogma much like an individual's immune system trying to shrugg off an infection of the influenza virus.
Viruses are parasytic and opportunistic in nature. They do not act in symbiosis with the organism they infect but represent a drain on the organism's resources and health, working towards its detriment. While some viruses may be borne for some time without destroying their host, others work quickly against their very own interests by damaging their host beyond repair. Their are viruses that are quite lethal, and there are others that are more benign. Religious fundamentalism is like the more lethal kind of virus. Groups of religious fundamentalists will not prosper and will gradually fall away in favor of cultural groups that are healthier and more prosperous as a result of not being hamstrung by dogmas.
Some countries, such as the USA, live in a state of denial: trying to pretend that an activity doesn't exist or that a compelling human vice can be suppressed simply because it is made illegal. Did the United States not learn anything at all from its experiment with the prohibition of alcohol? By naively trying to pretend that a particular activity will simply go away if it is made illegal, the entire nation is put in serious danger. By not accepting and regulating the sex work industry, the state cannot adequately protect the health of its citizens.
Separation of church and state? Or the imposition of conservative religious mores on secular society? Do the conservative religious right believe that by removing the legal prohibitions on sex work that they will therefore be required, by law, to engage in "acts of a licentious nature"? I mean, come on! Do observing Orthodox Jews have any ambition of prohibiting all businesses in the nation from operating on the Sabbath? Methinks not. So, why is it that the conservative religious right wish to have prohibition of prostitution enshrined in the nation's legislation?
I guess the answer is really quite simple: if the religious right could have their way they would love nothing more than to have a nation that is governed by their own religious laws. Their own theocratic bliss - not all that unlike those nations governed by Islamic Sharia law, really, when you come to think about it. Is America's future to be like that of Afghanistan under the Taliban? Legalizing prostitution does not prohibit observing Christians, Jews, Moslems - and members of any other religious groups that consider prostitution to be immoral - from abstaining from and not participating in this activity.
Shouldn't the state aim to intervene as little as possible in people's moral sensibilities and choices? Shouldn't the state provide as much freedom as possible for citizens to make their own moral judgements? Shouldn't the state limit what is considered acceptable only as much as is absolutely necessary and leave it up to the citizens to add their own additional restrictions upon themselves, as dictated by their religious or personal beliefs? The state should be at the base of a hierarchy providing the absolute minimum level of specificity, with religious groups and subgroups under that hierarchy adding their own further levels of specificity and limitations on behavior.
Death is a somewhat irritating aspect of being alive. As somebody who relishes life and the vast possibilities that it offers, I find this major limitation of mortality to be quite unfair and annoying. It is possible that someday I shall feel differently on the subject and may even feel "ready" to leave this world, but my fear is that the way most people start to feel more ready for an end to their life is as a result of a decline in the quality of life. After all, if life is good, why would one wish to end it?
Since it is not possible to prove the claims that are made by various religions about the state that may follow life, the likelihood of the masses believing such claims is entirely dependent upon the level of authority and confidence with which such claims are made. This leaves this aspect of religious teaching wide open for the finely tuned skills of those charlatains who are quite adept at lying with great confidence and authority.
As far as I'm concerned, nobody with any amount of decency would dare to make authoritative claims on any matter where it is clearly known that there is no possible way that such claims could be corroborated. Therefore, this leads me to believe that those making authoritative claims regarding the specific nature of the afterlife have not a shred of decency. I am, therefore, not willing to entertain their claims with any amount of serious consideration. By making such authoritative claims, they have essentially discredited themselves.
I believe that every individual should have the basic right to end their own lives. I do not believe that suicide should be considered a crime, and yet it is criminalized in many nations of the world.
How is it that we force humans to endure suffering and misery in their final days when we know they are suffering from terminal illness? Why do we deny humans the right to peaceful, painless death with dignity - especially since we now have the medical technology? How is it that we consider our pets and the most heinous mass-murdering criminals more entitled to a painless death than honest decent citizens? You say religious morality, but I say the insidious exploitation of religious morality by a medical industry that makes mountains of money from protracting the last stage of human decline.
Suicide as a modern taboo, I believe, has evolved out of a primal taboo established to ensure that individuals serve the larger needs of the species as a whole. In other words, the privelege to be alive is received in exchange for the obligation to be alive, fight to survive, and serve the species by doing everything in one's individual power to help propagate the species.
Lawns. Tried that. What a pain in the ass! Never again! Constantly fighting with nature - a total losing prospect. Look people, lawns are simply EVIL! Don't you get it? It's like that suit and tie crap all over again. .... California (and the world in general these days it seems) has enough trouble with fresh water shortages as it is, without me pouring away gallons of it on a plane of decorative vegetation.
So I killed my lawn - with utter glee (and a lot of hard back-breaking work). What I ended up with is something that I like to call zeroscaping. Zeroscaping is the pursuit of the underlying goal of xeriscaping, but through the practice of doing little to none of said "scaping". Whereas, with xeriscaping some water and maintenance is involved, with zeroscaping absolutely no water or maintenance is involved.
Lawns truly do piss me off. I just find them utterly offensive, now that I understand what they mean and what their impact on the environment is. Bring on the stones! Amen!!! I now belong to the Sacred Order of No Lawn, a spiritual society pursuing mysticism in the time that is freed up from not having to maintain a lawn.
Abortion is a morally troubling subject to me. I find abortion itself quite objectionable, but I imagine that the majority of abortion rights supporters also find the actual process of abortion quite objectionable. After all, nobody would want a woman to get into the predicament in the first place where a termination of pregnancy is necessary. Besides the inherent health risks to the mother, there is an undeniable emotional guilt and distress that a woman must suffer and cope with when chosing to terminate a pregnancy.
From a policy standpoint, however, I stand by a woman's right to choose. At the same time, I believe that everything possible should be down through social policy to substantially reduce the need for abortion. Thus, I believe - strongly - that teenagers should be fully empowered with the knowledge on sexuality that will allow them to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Contraception should be made available without reservation and without fear of recrimination. Other expressions of sexual feelings (such as masturbation) that do not risk conception or the transmission of disease should be encouraged as alternatives to intercourse, until individuals are ready / old enough to enter into a monogamous relationship.
For many people, the term "health conscious" refers only to eating well and getting regular exercise. To me, "health consciousness" means a holistic consciousness for all aspects of health, including social health, environmental health, and personal health. Indeed, social and environmental health are instrumental in facilitating personal health.
There are a number of companies producing healthy food while also demonstrating a commitment to holistic health consciousness, ensuring that the food they produce is not only healthy to the individual, but also that the production of that food does not impinge upon the health of the environment and the health of the local communities where the food is produced.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, a company such as McDonalds has demonstrated time and time again that it really has no concern - whatsoever - for the health of the individual, nor any concern for the social health of the various communities where their food is produced and then sold, nor any concern for the severe negative impacts of their operations on the health of the world's environment (beyond, of course, getting past the annoying and frustrating environmental regulations by barely complying with minimum requirements, wherever so forced).