I would say we are on the same side more often than not, but with religion, abortion (except for it taking a life), file sharing, and the colonial we have had some good "talks". I actually can see you becoming a christian one day (and not just on your death bed). I am not being preachy, because that has never been my style. I am partial to stories about Paul and believe your conversion would have a big and positive effect. I do not see you as close minded as others who might have similar beliefs that you do now. I am sure you will get a a good laugh out of this, but I just thought about it tonight when I was going to pick up some dinner and the comparison to Paul/Saul got in my head.
this is gonna be long. i encourage those without incredible amounts of free time to ignore it. there are people who swear they were abducted by aliens too, but i don't think they are telling the truth. and not only will people make up stuff, false stories will evolve from true ones. why do i know people were not abducted by aliens? after all, i cannot prove they were not. but i know anyways, because people love to say things are true when they are not. people are obsessed with believeing the palpably false. they go to psychics and plam readers, and believe astrology, or any crazy thing you can think of. these people are not liars, or even stupid, they just believe things because they so badly want to. the reason i dont believe ancient stories is partially because i have done so much reading and researching of urban legends and folklore. people will believe anything. i know from firsthand experience that people will swear things are true from basically no evidence, and even go so far as to add first-person observations they remember about events that never happened. for a long time i was obsessed with folklore, and read every book about it i could get my hands on. i learned how basically everything you hear isnt exactly true. i even can think of examples of times when i was told stories, and when i relayed them to the next guy, i made incorrect assumptions and filled in the parts i couldnt exactly recall, and unintentionally made the story wrong. i think it is impossible to believe a story passed down through more than a few people. anyways, for any biblical story that explains the universe, i can find another different ancient text, believed by millions, with a different perspective, and both are believed to be true by their followers, and one of them has to be wrong, since they are opposed. so there are millions of people basing their life on a lie, even if the bible is 100% correct. but the guys who are wrong, they are just as sure they are right as you are. urban legends are sometimes called FOAFS by folklorists, that stands for friend of a friend stories. this is because when people tell the story they heard, they will often shorten the source for convenience. i tested this theory on some coworkers once with some famous urban legends. one old urban legend is that people will hide under your car at the mall and slash your achilles. so i asksd some women i used to work with about it. they said things like "oh, yeah i remember when that happened in lafayette, it was a girl i went to high school with", and then the other responds with "no that was in morgan city, it happened to a friend of my former roomate". and both of them lend credibility to the story with details, location, people, newspapers it was in. but the story is not true. and neither of the women are lying, they believe the story is true, they believe they heard it somewhere, and assumed where it happened, or the last person who passed along the story made a mistake on the location or whatever. and the story is so entertaining is spreads like a virus, and everyone forwards it to the next guy as true. there are so many opportunities for the story to go wrong. and the point is that they have a completely false story, and they are not lying. so the people who wrote the bible, which had been passed down for a long time, then reviewed many years after the fact by people who were not even alive when it happened, and then published from oral history, i just cant believe it, especially with all the magic and contradictions in it. if it was proven, i would believe in it, but if it isnt, i can do without. to me it seems obvious people make up the parts they do not know. i know some historians claim they think there was a guy named jesus and he had some followers. i can believe that. but from there it is a huge logical jump to think he was the son of god. maybe mohammed and not jesus is the only true prophet, who am i to say? you are the one making assumptions and basing your life on them. for any given fact, you cannot just declare it true, in the absense of opposition views. i mean, for any statement with undetermined truth value, you cannot declare it true until we prove it isnt. so there is no reason to believe in it. if you told me a story about a uri gellar, and how he bends spoons with his mind, and how it was definitely true, i would not believe you. but many people would, and would tell their friends about it. but i dont believe stories about magic, even if the person telling me believes them. i am aware of what is possible and what is not. i know you cannot fix a missing ear by waving your hand at it. it takes more than a 2 thousand year old story about a guy who did it to convince me. your attitude is more like "sure, that sounds plausible, i can buy that". to me its crazy. i am willing to admit to ignorance, and i think that is the problem of all religions, they cannot admit to themselves that there are things they do not know. why cant i believe there was a guy named jesus, and his legend is greatly exaggerated? why cant i believe a man existed who was very influential, and tricked people into believing he was magic. hell, it happens all the time. charles manson made many people believe he was the messiah, and they believed it so much they murdered for him. they would surely tell me he they are sure he is the messiah, and not be lying, because they believed it. cults happen all the time, david koresh, those space-cult people in california who killed themselves about 10 years ago, the jim jones people. all of them would tell you they were right, and believed what they said to the extent that they would kill for it. and these guys were idiots and lunatics. if a guy with a brain wanted to really make a cult, he could do some serious damage. lucky for us, the christianity cult has the result of making people relatively friendly for the most part. although that isnt true of all religions, and christianity has surely caused its share of bloodshed. i think if we were to step back from our indoctrinations, and really consider what is true, we would realize we just dont know what is true, and then would be eager to make up something to fill in the blanks. i can leave the blanks blank, without being afraid of hell.
of course, i enjoy discussing it. this is not all that relevant, but for those who like to read, i think the greatest piece of literature ever written, with the most intelligent view of the world and the nature of mankind is a short story by mark twain called "the mysterious stranger". every human alive should read it. after i read it i was stunned by how good it was, how incredibly perceptive it was.
