Religion and Humans

For some strange reason, religion is a subject that I have come across quite frequently lately... First, with my Mother and Father in Carlos Miguels, now this story on Yahoo! About a person, a religious nutcase to put it lightly, who was threatening to kill pregnant women who were going to get an abortion. These events have spurned a few thoughts...

First, is the subject of religion in general. Religion is... Useful, helpful, inherently good. However, there is an unavoidable, corrosive, destructive element that is part of religion. This is the human element. We, as individual humans, have desires and wants, ideals and unique thoughts and though processes. These things that make us who we are, skew, in some way, everything we experience with out 5 senses. Although these differences aren't always negative, in the case of religions, no matter which religion, it is negative. Take the largest religion in the world, Christianity. It teaches to live a selfless live, to work for others and give what you can back to those less fortunate then you. In return, you will be granted salvation. These Christians do good deeds to be accepted into heaven. This turns a selfless idea into a very selfish, very human set of ideas.

Now onto the individuals part. My Gramama, who I love very much, is a very devout Catholic. I believe she has truly tried to be a good person, and has succeeded on many levels. However, the source of her faults is unavoidable. She's human. This alone makes her fallible. Though her intentions are good, and true, she has failed through no fault of her own. As anyone with any level of intelligence would say, “But wait, can't you just confess your sins and you will be forgiven by this God that forgives and accepts all?” Why yes, you can. However, using this logic, I could twist it to say that I could do anything I wanted and still earn salvation as long as I go to church on Sunday and stay close to Jesus and God. I'm sure somebody, somewhere has used this very human logic and felt no remorse when he/she sinned. Now, this is in no way an attempt to strike out at those who are religious, and those who do honestly try to live by the good message in the Bible, or the Qur'an, or the Torah. My point is that religion is something created by humans, seemingly with good intent, but it is made by humans. It's fallible.

This is where faith comes in. As my Father so gracefully described it, “In order to be religious, you must get to the end of a gap. Logic and evidence can take you so far, but it requires faith to make that last leap.” Faith is the ability to follow something with the true belief you will get somewhere, hopefully good, after the life we have right now. Faith is an ability that must be instilled in most people as a young child. There are those few that can just pick it up. I honestly envy those people who can be truly faithful to their religion. This is a skill I have never had... Faith can walk people through the proverbial hell and back, or hey, maybe even the real hell.

I guess this leaves me at the end. What I'm trying to say, is religion can't be taken to an extreme. It is what it is. If you wish to enjoy the positive aspect of religion, then you must also accept the bad knowingly. You must accept the fact that you are human. May seem easy enough, but who likes to admit that they are inherently flawed in many ways? Who likes to admit that they aren't perfect? Just another thing to consider.

Final message. Anything designed, followed, or used by humans will be flawed in some way. It's part of being human, but this is a good thing. No one wants to live a perfect, and easy life. It'd get boring pretty quickly...

My best stuff is written late at night. But thanks for reading this, hope you agree, or at least see some shred of truth in this random bit of ranting.

American Education

American education... Education, I do believe, isn't the correct term. I believe that our schools are failing the students, thus failing themselves and this country. The teachers, are doing their best, and they are working with what is given to them. Albeit, there are those teachers who just can't teach and are failing ever so hard. This is what I had experienced while in the public education system. A lack of discipline, which I fell prey to, a lack of motivation, and a lack of actual information worthy of peoples time.

As for the lack of information, I believe this to be the source of the problem. It isn't so much the lack of information, but the horribly slow rate at which the the information progresses. What was once standard, is now considered advance. This is a HUGE problem. This shows that we as a nation are not keeping up with other progressive nations of the world, so we will lose our super power status in a few ways if this does not change.

As for the teachers, they are truly trying to better the nations future leaders and workers, however, they can't do this simply because of the limits provided to them by these school boards and government agencies. We have forgone a simple rule of nature, survival of the fittest. This used to be portrayed in a more modern way through schools. We used to have those who could keep up with the progression of the world be doing alright, those who were unable were falling behind. This kept us ahead of everyone else. Now everyone is all touchy-feelie, which is fine to some extent. However, we can't do only this coddling stuff, because then we teach those who really couldn't keep up with the world that they are as good as those who are truly advanced. This is not okay, as much as people don't agree with this. We should help those who aren't as intelligent as others succeed in someway, but we can't change the whole system just to make them feel good. That is a serious problem.

As for the lack of motivation, this stems from the problem of the progression of information as well. This was the main problem for me. I consider myself to be somewhat of an intelligent individual, and I was sitting in these classes thinking to myself, “Why the hell am I learning this stuff? I should be further then this by now. This is just way to easy...” This caused me to be a major slacker and not do any homework, the source of my bad grades. However, on the tests, I half, HALF, applied myself and

I passed those tests with flying colors.

My point is that the education system is failing, and failing hard. We need to change it drastically and soon if we are to keep up as a nation. This will be leading into my next post, so I'll stop here. I do understand this isn't the best written, but the way these work for me is as follows: I get inspired, I open up word, I type my thoughts as they come to me. I feel this allows me to get out what I'm thinking along with the emotion that comes with it. Next one shall be related to the government.

The War

This war. Afghanistan, Iraq. Why are we there? We are there because we must be. We didn't have to be originally, but we are there now. A shame, this is. We are sending the best of us over to fight for the rights we have. The very right to read this, to write this. The war is good. The war is bad. The war is a machine, and is also a creature.

We are there because we must be. We went there on a hunch (stupid Bush). We ended up doing much more then searching for “weapons of mass destruction.” We overthrew a government. We are attempting to do much more then what we set out for. This war has become a kill-fest. I fail to be able to see it any other way. Men are killing each other. One group over extreme beliefs that are so far from logical, it's astounding. The other, what has become, in some weird twist, self-defense. This, is why the war is a creature.

The war is a bull. An aggressive, growing war. Eating and feasting upon every small problem. We have taken on the impossible challenge of eradicating the terrorist threats of Al-Qaeda and the PLF, or Palestine Liberation Front to name a few. The problem with this is these are extremists. They are in every sense of the word extreme. We are also trying to establish a new government, unsuccessfully. We are unable to put a man in power. The sole component of a government. We are mostly unsuccessful in training a police force and military. While this war is also a giant burden on the the perfectionists mind, it is also a burden on the tax payers wallets.

We are paying with our hard earned money to fight a supply our heroes, to keep them fed and as content as possible. For their care when they get injured in the line of duty. This is all fine, and highly recommended to donate, but after so long, we can't give any more. This war is beating a dead horse in the financial aspect. Taxes, upon taxes, upon taxes won't do any good if people can't pay those taxes. So we borrow money. This puts us in debt to other countries. This would be fine if we actually had money to pay those loans back. We have dug ourselves a hole that will take years, at least 2 presidents, and multiple terms to fix.

This makes it a machine. It won't stop. It can't stop. The cash, we can earn back. The soldiers, if looked at as just numbers, we can get back. We can never replace the people, the lost souls. This won't matter in the end. Al-Qaeda will be around as long as there are extremists. This war seems like one that will never end.

This war is good simply because a few of these things were a humanitarian effort. Freeing those being oppressed by a cruel dictatorship. We have helped people get on their feet. We have helped them understand that they can live a more free lifestyle, where they can say what they think, and they can think, what they wish. However, for every positive, there is a negative.

As well as building up, we have torn down. We have bombed cities, we have destroyed homes, we have killed innocents. This is just another casualty of war, you may say. I say otherwise. These casualties should not have happened. We shouldn't have had to rebuild homes. These replacements for the destroyed homes aren't that. They are not homes. They are buildings. These homes held people, they held families. Just like ours, and they were destroyed. Memories, emotional attachments, dreams, gone. Just destroyed with everything else.

This war, it must end, but it can't stop. It's a paradox. We have induced an infinite loop. We have done what we will as human beings. In that aspect, this war was unavoidable. It would have happened with some group, somewhere. We are bound to kill ourselves off. Why we must do it in such a fashion appalls and confounds me... This is the human curse.