This summer I read and watched a lot of media regarding nihilism and existentialism. I got into all the mathematicians who went insane and starved themselves who (prior that that) brought forth evidence of the shaky bedrock of nigh emptiness upon which mathematics and logic resides.

After years of being (#1) a Roman Catholic apologists, (#2) a dues-paying member of AmnestyInternationalUSA™, and (#3) an advocate of lesser organized utopian principles, it has become clear to me that it is totally pointless to argue with someone with whom you don’t agree. They have their magical axioms with which they deeply identify. You attack it and they respond with fight-or-flight. But without smashing a brick in their face, ruining them economically, and/or threatening the death of their entire family, they are not going to concede defeat.

I have become so nihilistic that I could care less to what religion someone supposedly ascribes. There are the things people say they believe (or we assume they believe based on their affiliation with certain communities of Faith™ and/or sects) and how they actually operate in real life. When a doctor on the playground tells me he’s Mormon, I know every argument against Mormonism and I employ none of them nor have any desire to challenge their belief. Because it’s all pointless, so who the fuck cares?

Nonetheless, I do have axioms that dictate my behavior. Anchor me. For example, I have two young children. I want them to be happy and develop as healthily as possible. Become smart and capable. Thus, I interact with them in a certain way. We sacrifice expendable income to pay for private schooling that is very lenient on a child’s personal autonomy, whilst teaching the children social skills so they’re not a lousy snotty ultra-violent fuck that nobody likes.

And there other axioms of course, that cause this thus and thus and thus and thus. Like my desire to be a good writer that people read. Thus, my writing this stupid bullshit that only GoogleBots will actually read.

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StandToReason™ continued post...

So I read what Greg Kookl has to say about Moral Relativism in his article "Moral Relativism Self-Destructs." (http://www.str.org/articles/relativism-self-destructs#.VYsPwabRxzo) This is what he boils it down to near the end of the article:

If morals are entirely relative, there are no grounds for determining if any moral standard is deficient or unreasonable or unsound or if it's better or if it's barbaric or unacceptable. Those things are gone. In a relativistic world view, others' views--no matter how offensive to our intuitive sense of right or wrong-- can't be critiqued, they can't be challenged, they can't be praised, and they can't be faulted. And this is true of the opposing view that moral truth is absolute. If relativism is true then moral education becomes impossible and moral discussions become incoherent. 

In response, I googled Moral Relativism and found a lengthy "encyclopedic" article regarding the subject written by someone who promotes/explains moral relativism as a philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/). What follows is an adept rejoinder to Kookl's issue with moral relativism.

The fact that one moral outlook cannot be conclusively proved superior to another does not mean, however, that it cannot be judged superior; nor does it imply that one cannot give reasons for preferring it.

I think it's important to point out that our actions do not occur in a vacuum. If my son has his feelings hurt, he may want to spit in someone's face or he may want to meekly inform them in a verbal manner how they've hurt his feelings. Either action might be equivalent in the rating of "objective morality" but that does not mean I do not prefer him to take the latter action. Nor that I won't use my parental might and intellect to attempt to coerce him to regularly respond in that fashion. It's not about "objective morality", it's that I've found or believe -- in my middle-class USA white-skinned upbringing under the behavioral modeling of my late father -- that being cordial to others and not creating enemies elicits an easier life. Or I suppose. But that's a hell of a lot different than declaring that's how everyone should behave in every situation.

While driving across the state of Ohio (and back) to deliver my niece to a basketball camp, I stumbled upon some talk radio put on by an organization called StandToReason™ (str.org). They’re essentially a Christian™ apologetic organization. The guy talking, whom I believe was Greg Koukl, seemed pretty intelligent and adept at talking logic. I listened to him for a couple hours.

I went to the StandToReason website. I read an article by Greg Kookl on the morality of homosexuality. Like many moral arguments, there are words and words, sentences and sentences, paragraphs and paragraphs. But with astute eyes, one can boil down arguments to a single or handful of bases from which the argument stems.

http://www.str.org/articles/why-is-homosexuality-bad-in-itself#.VYgVmqbRxzo

“The simple answer to why homosexuality itself is bad is because it is a perversion of God’s provision regarding a deep and profound aspect of the created order. God made things one way because He's in charge. He created the world to function a certain way. There's teleology, a purpose to it, and when the purpose is fulfilled it's a beautiful thing.”

Human reproduction happens sexually, of course, but the offspring that have come from that sexual reproduction — in every generation — have operated in a myriad of different sexual behaviors and activities. And some of those activities lead to sexual reproduction amongst a heterosexual monogamously married couple — but most of them don’t. If Greg agreed that this is the “certain way” God created the world to function, then I’d have no qualms about what he’s arguing. But he’s not. He’s saying that only some of these behaviors/activities are God-ordained (I’m not sure of the nitty-gritty specifics since he’s not a Roman Catholic) while the others are perversions. And he’s got his reasons for his distinctions of what to put in the box of “appropriate sexuality”, but I argue it’s a totally human, artificial construct.

At this point, my mind's imaginary model of Greg Kookl outs me as a Moral Relativist. He rushes to the ReductioAdAbsurdum™ that selfless sacrifice to help the destitute is objectively the moral equivalent to a group of men gang-raping animals to death. And sure, objectively, it might be the moral equivalent, but it does not follow that I want that to happen. Or that I don’t want laws to prohibit such behavior. And the imaginary Greg says: “but what right do you have to cease that behavior?” And my response is that we don’t need objective-moral justifications for legally barring behavior, we simply need a strong enough manifestation of the WillToPower to bar such behavior (or punish/correct it post-act). And likewise, we haven’t needed moral justifications to bar gay marriage or legalize gay marriage, simply a stronger manifestation of the WillToPower. And in the past, that has been the case for why gay marriage wasn't allowed: because proponents for HeterosexualMarriageOnly™ were politically stronger.  But not for much longer, it seems.

Once I wrote a song with a band about wanting to fuck Jesus.

In another era and geographic location, this would've gotten me burned at the stake.

Today in my era, it gets a shrug, perhaps a laugh. Mostly ignored.

If I said it about another religion's [model of ideal behavior], I could've had my head cut off.

Why write  a song like this? Well, your bandmates start playing music and I come up with lyrics. My lyrics aren't initially about wanting to sexually arouse the Jesus. I'd been listening to some of the good singles from Marilyn Manson, such as where he sings "I'm not a slave to a god that doesn't exist." And I also had enjoyed "Jesus Freak" by DC Talk, when I was a devout believer in the Christian faith back in high school. So I started singing, "we're the freak; we're the freaks, if you know what I mean," along with some lyrics like "love your enemies like Jesus toppled tables; [something something] about Cain killing Abel; and all your prophets and all their glory are hindered by the fact that they're hopelessly so boring."

None of those lyrics got in. Instead, my bandmate sang his verse about sexual lust for Jesus and only wanting to give it up to this [ideal]; this concept made more sense for our band, so the lyrics changed.

But why write this song? Well, you have to fill in the emptiness of the days somehow, and when your bandmates have a musical score, you fill in the lyrics somehow. It's funny -- haha homophonic polysemy: freak has that second sexual meaning. One is supposed to love Jesus, but obviously NOT IN THAT WAY, ha haha ha haha, the laugh ejaculates.

Due to the homophobic nature of the predominate modern Christian church, I think it was my way of sticking up a middle finger to all those individuals who under the Christian cloth would shame people for being queer (in whatever form that may be: sexual orientation or gender identity).

I found this card, circa 2014, on the bathroom sink at a gas station // firework store called "Nervous Charlie's" in Nashville TN.

church signs

When I drive into Springfield (OH), there is a church sign that currently reads "Jesus is comming soon" [sic] at Beatty Freewill Baptist Church. On both sides. Was the misspelling intentional to get me to pay extra attention to it? It's been there for weeks. For over a year this sign read, "Visitors Welcome; Members Expected."

When driving into Yellow Springs, Bethel Lutheran Church has had their sign reading: "God's plan is bigger than your plan," which I suppose is supposed to be consolation when your plans crash and burn. Another rendition could be "God is totally callous to your plan." Or one could challenge there even being a plan (or, of course, there even being a God).

The anthropomorphizing of God is fascinating to me. Humans make plans and carry them forward (in hopes of fruition), so God must do the same. I am equally fascinated by the ceiling and limitations of our imagination. For example, you cannot imagine a color you've never seen before. A sense you've never perceived. Those born blind, dream in only the senses they experience. The closest one can give to the blind kid to describe color is metaphor ("[this thing you've never experienced] is like [this thing you've experienced] in this certain aspect"). The difference being, of course, we are humans describing God to other human, like two blind kids trying to explain color to one another. Or humans trying to explain the experience of having some perceptual capability another animal possesses that we humans might not even know about.

So here we are.
What to do?
While we wait, the heart keeps pumping blood and the lungs keep breathing oxygen.
Whatever we do, the heart keeps pumping blood that the lungs load with oxygen.
 Until they don't.

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RomanCatholicChurch™ hate on the Buddhism

In high school, I was deeply into the RomanCatholicChurch™, primarily because I was born into it and secondly because I attended a "non-denominational Christian" middle school that, unbeknownst to me upon enrollment, was vehemently anti-Catholic (and thus caused a rebound effect).

Like many good Catholics, I was confirmed in ritualistic fashion and then very quickly stopped attending Sunday mass.

Like a cliché, I ventured into Eastern philosophy/religion. For a while, I was a very big proponent of Buddhism, giving all that talk about it being a "worldview" rather than a "religion". Which is totally rubbish if you read any history. Nonetheless, I often find it amusing to view a Catholic critique against Buddhism.

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Some have proposed the analogy of the world’s religions being as different roads winding up a tall mountain, with God in a cloud at the top awaiting our arrival. The paths are supposedly all man-made conventions reaching to heaven, so no one religion is really any better than the others. However, this misconception overlooks one enormous truth. One religion’s path was not paved by man [UNPROVABLE AXIOM] from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but was paved by God down the mountain to man. That road is Christianity, and it is arrogant [NAME-CALLING] to prefer a man’s path to the one blazed for our sake by God himself. 

Buddhism, by contrast, teaches that there is no God and that human destiny lies in reincarnating to suffer until we use the Eightfold Path to kill our individual identity.
[NEGATIVE CONNOTATION-CLUSTERBOMBS]
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Well, glad that's settled, aren't we?

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