This post was going to happen, whether I typed it up or not.

Fate/destiny is a stupid ideology. Not just because it doesn't make sense to believe that everything is predetermined and “supposed” to happen, but because no one seems to understand that same sentence. 

Here's what I mean, ever heard someone say you have to “Control your fate”? 

Maybe someone has said it to you in some inspirational talk, or you heard it in a movie when they try to encourage the protagonist, but look at how fate(or destiny) is defined. "An inevitable course of events." 

Inevitable, unavoidable, unchangeable. Whatever happens was supposed to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Does that imply there is no free will? If whatever you do is already set in stone, then what ever you choose is already chosen. Confusing? You bet.

There's definitely more to talk about here. I'll expand on it later.

“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” - Stephen hawking

Update

For the past few days I had been trying to put up a new post. However, I can't seem to get a singular idea into one post. I keep taking tangents whenever I start to gain momentum on a topic. 

I like my ideas, I just don't like how they turn out on paper. I will be experimenting with making shorter, more meaningful posts rather than long drawn out posts. Hopefully it will make my posts more interesting.

On another note: How do you start your blog posts? Do you organize and proofread your topics before posting, or just open up the blogger dashboard and start typing?

Driving Sucks

Driving is annoying. Whether or not you obey the law or not it's a lose-lose game.

Driving is like trying to debate people. There are some who stick to the rules no matter what, some who are more relaxed about it and the ones who are just fucking crazy. It is a game of ignorance. You have to assume everyone around you knows what the fuck they are doing. Which no one does.

Quick poll(For those in the US):

How many of you know whether your state has a tolerance for speed(Ex. 5 miles above and below is acceptable) or whether it is completely intolerant?

Did you have to search it up? If so don't worry, I wasn't entirely sure either until I had to convince my family otherwise. For the past 14 years of living where they do. They had convinced themselves that our state had that 5mile tolerance and could never believe it when they got a ticket for going 2 miles above the speed limit. I did the research, and “behold!” our state is intolerant. You could legally be arrested if you go so much as 1 mile over. My point is not to say that some driving laws are stupid (Several are), but the fact that no one really knows what they are.

They take what they learn in drivers education, which is only covers the basics of driving and general rules that apply to all states but completely disregard situational laws or ones that change dramatically per state.

I hate driving.

That is all.

Social Networking/Internet Fame (and religion)

So, I know I post a lot about religion. It tends to get annoying because it promotes the stereotype that Atheists are never fine just believing in something and feel the need to prove everyone else wrong. So this will be about why I do what I do, why I choose to vent here and etc.

Religion is a huge issue, and rightfully so. What is going to happen to your eternal soul after you die tends to be a touchy subject for people, and with all beliefs or opinions there's only one way we can be satisfied with our beliefs. That is by being reassured. "If others believe what we do, then it must be right!" is the type of nature a lot of Christians take. That of course is a ridiculous claim because it is only valid in the context of your personal religion. I've been told many times by Christians boasting of the amount of Christians here in America makes it a much more valid belief. Of course it would seem that way when you live in the blanket of ignorance and choose not to look at the outside world. You are mainly christian because you were born here, for that same effect you would've been Muslim if you were born in the middle east, or Buddhist, or Shi'ite, Shinto, Jewish and so forth.

Anyways back to reassurance. The same way religions gain background and following by reassurance, so do we as individuals by using social networks. Lets face it, we all get a little bit excited when we get our first 100+ followers on twitter or blogspot. Or when we get several retweets, or likes on facebook and youtube. All examples of how others reassure us by agreeing, showing interest, or replying positive to the content we have posted. I know I went through a phase when youtube was booming that I wanted to make vlogs, or a show of some sort and become "famous" (we can see how that ended). Its not that I'm only making a blog to get reassurance of my beliefs or rants. It's nice, I'll grant you that, but having my thoughts semi-organized on the web where I can rethink them and see how I "evolved" is nice. I could, of course do this privately, through word or some program, but for some reason, when I have followers or people watching my blog(whether they choose to actually read it or not.) I feel like I have some obligation to at least update once in a while. You never know, there might be that one person who is actually interested in what I have to say.


I'll try to venture off from religion next time. Thanks for reading.

More on Religion

So lets dive into more deep thought.

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend of mine who is religious. He is very open about his beliefs and is constantly trying to understand religion and beliefs collectively (Truly, a search for knowledge). Anyways, he asked me about how I came to my beliefs, how I switched from religions and etc.

Abridged version: I was raised catholic, my parents didn't seem overtly religious, we only went to church so often, I went to bible school, as well as a Private High school. So I spent a lot of time around Christians, specifically.

I was one of those, you know, "thinkers" and never satisfied with a general answer about the universe. My teachers didn't like that. After about a year or so of studying the bible, I decided not to identify myself as christian. Went to atheism, but I still try to look at other religions and beliefs to know more about them.

This conversation with him went on about how beliefs gain popularity, and why more often than not, people are hostile to those who don't share at least "similar" beliefs.

Here's an example: We conducted a test group of 50 people whom we knew as fairly to extremely religious. We asked them a couple of simple questions.

1. How bothered are you by meeting, or being friends with someone who you find out is Atheist?

1a. Does that affect at all what you believe or how you treat them?

For question 1, 60% of them said that they were at least somewhat bothered by having an Atheist friend.
100% of them said that they would treat them differently by "bringing their heart to god" as most of them described. In other words you are more likely to be preached to, and more persistently just for being Atheist.

The next 2 questions were the same, except the word atheist was replaced with Non-religious on 25 applications and Agnostic on the other 25.
Here were the results:

On the 25 with the word non religious, the answers were almost exactly the same as Atheist with 21 of them saying they would not be comfortable knowing they were not religious.

On the ones with the word Agnostic, 17 of the responses said that they were not as bothered knowing someone was agnostic because they at least allow some possibility of a god. the other 8 said they did not know what Agnostic meant or understood very little about what it meant.

This lead to another conversation about the stigma that Christians apply to an Atheist. For most people in America, they see Atheist as meaning "Not Christian" when really it means the rejection of belief in ALL Deities, not just the one from the Christian bible.

I feel that the reason Christian are bothered by being friends with an Atheist, is because unlike an agnostic which may leave room for the belief in a God ( It actually states that it is impossible to know whether a god exists), Atheism says there is NO god. Which leaves no room for tolerance in religion. If god is the foundation of religion, and you reject god, how can you be religious. So just by knowing an Atheist, you are constantly reminded of the doubt. Religion is almost 99% faith, so to them it seems logical to avoid those who represent the possibility of that faith being wrong.

Phew, that was a long post. If you made it through that then, Bravo!

This post leads into Social networking but I think this post is a little long I'll spread it out into 2 parts and try to finish it up tomorrow.

Note: I know I tend to be a little bit of a hypocrite by saying that Christians believe Atheism means "Non christian", yet here I am perpetuating that same idea.

New computer

Hoo-rah. Not really a large rant or opinion based post today. I have just relieved my new computer today, and could not be happier.


Specs:
Dell studio XPS 9100
9gb Tri-channel memory
Intel i7-920 (2.66Ghz)
ATI Radeon 5870 1gb Video Card

750GB Hard Drive

Also bought a nice 24" Screen to go with it. Overall it set me back $1700, but it was well worth it. I was originally planning to build a computer, but couldn't resist the $500 discount I received for some other problems I had with my dell laptop which I had been using prior.

Runs games, animation programs (Maya/3ds max) very smoothly.

That is all.

Satanism

Someone asked me an interesting question today.


"Since you are atheist, do you think satanism is acceptable?"

Read it very condescendingly.


My initial response was "No." since I think that in 2010 we should all be rational humans and should be able to identify magic and religion as illogical. However, since we still have thousands of believers in this country, my answer would have to depend on what satanism is doing.

If the satanic followers are not infringing on others rights, not harming, or affecting anyone negatively, than it should be fine to practice what you believe. Most would have you believe that satanists are a real  threat, but I haven't heard a word of someone identified as a satanist killing, murdering, or causing several problems for others. Not nearly as much as I have heard about religion. Religion overall (Not just christianity) has tried to tell people what to do, and punish those who don't. They praise and promote a book that lays it all out.

Regardless, that answer was not enough. They continued with "What about curses and demons? Satanism teaches people how to kill people using black magic."

Has there ever really been a curse that was effective? Is there any verifiable proof that shows someone died because another person drew pentagrams and said the magic words? No.

If someone wants to curse me, using their magic, go right ahead. So long as it applies to my rules mentioned earlier. If they don't need to do anything else but hold a picture with drawings on it and pray to a book to kill me, than there would have been a large following of magic users killing people.

So until a satanist revolution comes around, and begins to mercilessly kill people and infringe on my rights, feel free to worship.