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pasitheaPerhaps I'm getting older, or perhaps reading on a chapter every day or so keeps the rage from building up. Whatever the case, though I've been quite tempted at several points, I haven't YET thrown Stranger in a strange land against the wall yet although it has quite grated on me at several points.
I think the only part I've found interesting thus far was Jubal Hershaw's views on religion. Man, I'm slow to catch on. His view is word-for-word almost absolutely identical to mine. The whole spiel about all religions being equally likely or unlikely and that it'd be a pretty lousy sort of God who'd prefer one over the other and the universe being so big that God probably doesn't care if you do X, Y, or Z. Even the bit about how he'd rather spend eternity in Hell than kiss up to an abusive God. It's almost verbatim from my head. Uncanny.
Curious. I thought this was a popular book and yet I've never really seen that POV expressed anywhere outside of me or this book. Surely other people have thought of this. I'm surprised it isn't widely accepted as the only sensible answer to anyone who's ever thought at length on the subject of religion. The question isn't whether or not God/Gods/magic exist but the value/credibility of religion.
The really positive thing about reading this is that, I came to it independently. Sure, lots of people have contributed to me fitting it all together and offered little pieces, but the result I reached was something I found for myself. Not something dictated by my parents, church, country, or social network.
No two groups (to my knowledge) have ever independently developed the same religion. Particularly not in abstract terms. Stories about the moon and the sun as gods may be somewhat common in many of them but you'd find a lot of devils in the details and their requirements and customs would have some radical differences. Even groups like jews, muslims, and christians all share the same root religion but have sharp divisions between them, and subdivisions of those religions are nearly as bitterly divided.
Oddly enough though, I also share the view of Mike, the Man from Mars. I am God. You are God, the trees and the wind are God. Not in the sense that I can raise a mountain with the wave of a finger, but more that we're all a part of everything. Even inanimate objects exist and that's something incredibly awesome and magical when you consider the vast emptiness of space. We're something unfathomably complex and amazing. sub-atomic particles structured just so to form atoms. Atoms linked together in just the right way to form different compounds, those compounds interacting and exchanging with other compounds. Those chemical exchanges and compounds sometimes forming what we call life in the form of cells and their myriad sub components. In us, those cells form organs which all work together to make an animal and somehow just the right firing of chemistry, electrons, and environment has produced us. Creatures that can move beyond their base needs and create. We're making the next level of complexity right now. We have been since the dawn of man. Fashioning crude tools and refining them more and more. Eventually creating machines which will one day become to us, what we are to cells, and in those machines, entire new universes are and will be born. We ARE the wheels within wheels within wheels. We are God.
Want to know the secret of the universe? Why everything exists and where it all came from? Want to know the mind of God? It's simple... BECAUSE. That's it. It exists because it does. What else would the universe do if it didn't exist? All the rules and everything else, gravity and all that are necessary to making this because function. There could be and most likely are an infinite other number of universes (either parallel or serial) with completely different sets of rules. There's at least 7 billion on this planet alone. All your dreams, ideas, and emotions, creating their own infinite expanses with their own sets of rules. Every story that is written, every song, every painting is a world of its own.
Think about it. What's the end goal of science? Isn't it always at the very end to build better universes? Some people think they can do that through war, others through inspiration and exploration but we're all still going. All dreaming of a better world. Some of us may only dream of a comfy chair and a decent nap while others have grander dreams but we're all basically searching for the same thing, be we astrophysicists, computer programmers, evangelists, artists, writers, parents, alcoholics, heroine addicts, dogs, cats, insects, even plants. Everything is God. Everything is an isolate universe infinite unto itself. As thinking creatures, we can chose to be either, both, neither, or some complex and varied combination of all of them.
Recently, someone called me a bodhisattvas. (After looking it up) I think I could nearly accept that label though I think I would say that from my current vantage: On the road to enlightenment, the only destination is the journey and the only truth is none. (In other words, I'm no smarter than anyone else and no closer to 'the truth')
I think the only part I've found interesting thus far was Jubal Hershaw's views on religion. Man, I'm slow to catch on. His view is word-for-word almost absolutely identical to mine. The whole spiel about all religions being equally likely or unlikely and that it'd be a pretty lousy sort of God who'd prefer one over the other and the universe being so big that God probably doesn't care if you do X, Y, or Z. Even the bit about how he'd rather spend eternity in Hell than kiss up to an abusive God. It's almost verbatim from my head. Uncanny.
Curious. I thought this was a popular book and yet I've never really seen that POV expressed anywhere outside of me or this book. Surely other people have thought of this. I'm surprised it isn't widely accepted as the only sensible answer to anyone who's ever thought at length on the subject of religion. The question isn't whether or not God/Gods/magic exist but the value/credibility of religion.
The really positive thing about reading this is that, I came to it independently. Sure, lots of people have contributed to me fitting it all together and offered little pieces, but the result I reached was something I found for myself. Not something dictated by my parents, church, country, or social network.
No two groups (to my knowledge) have ever independently developed the same religion. Particularly not in abstract terms. Stories about the moon and the sun as gods may be somewhat common in many of them but you'd find a lot of devils in the details and their requirements and customs would have some radical differences. Even groups like jews, muslims, and christians all share the same root religion but have sharp divisions between them, and subdivisions of those religions are nearly as bitterly divided.
Oddly enough though, I also share the view of Mike, the Man from Mars. I am God. You are God, the trees and the wind are God. Not in the sense that I can raise a mountain with the wave of a finger, but more that we're all a part of everything. Even inanimate objects exist and that's something incredibly awesome and magical when you consider the vast emptiness of space. We're something unfathomably complex and amazing. sub-atomic particles structured just so to form atoms. Atoms linked together in just the right way to form different compounds, those compounds interacting and exchanging with other compounds. Those chemical exchanges and compounds sometimes forming what we call life in the form of cells and their myriad sub components. In us, those cells form organs which all work together to make an animal and somehow just the right firing of chemistry, electrons, and environment has produced us. Creatures that can move beyond their base needs and create. We're making the next level of complexity right now. We have been since the dawn of man. Fashioning crude tools and refining them more and more. Eventually creating machines which will one day become to us, what we are to cells, and in those machines, entire new universes are and will be born. We ARE the wheels within wheels within wheels. We are God.
Want to know the secret of the universe? Why everything exists and where it all came from? Want to know the mind of God? It's simple... BECAUSE. That's it. It exists because it does. What else would the universe do if it didn't exist? All the rules and everything else, gravity and all that are necessary to making this because function. There could be and most likely are an infinite other number of universes (either parallel or serial) with completely different sets of rules. There's at least 7 billion on this planet alone. All your dreams, ideas, and emotions, creating their own infinite expanses with their own sets of rules. Every story that is written, every song, every painting is a world of its own.
Think about it. What's the end goal of science? Isn't it always at the very end to build better universes? Some people think they can do that through war, others through inspiration and exploration but we're all still going. All dreaming of a better world. Some of us may only dream of a comfy chair and a decent nap while others have grander dreams but we're all basically searching for the same thing, be we astrophysicists, computer programmers, evangelists, artists, writers, parents, alcoholics, heroine addicts, dogs, cats, insects, even plants. Everything is God. Everything is an isolate universe infinite unto itself. As thinking creatures, we can chose to be either, both, neither, or some complex and varied combination of all of them.
Recently, someone called me a bodhisattvas. (After looking it up) I think I could nearly accept that label though I think I would say that from my current vantage: On the road to enlightenment, the only destination is the journey and the only truth is none. (In other words, I'm no smarter than anyone else and no closer to 'the truth')
