EVERYTHING.

Today I want to talk about God.

Yep. G-d. Adonai. Allah. The big guy. You know.

The reason this came into my head was because I was helping out in my mom's class at my Sunday school, and one of them asked something, like, "How do we even know that the Torah is real?" and the my mom and the other adult helping her didn't really know how to explain it, and then I realized that most people in my tiny little Synagogue community don't actually believe in God so much, and then I started thinking about that, and it all sort of spiraled into this existential crisis of questions and religion and AUUUUGGHHHGHGHHG and EVERYTHING.

So I thought that I'd share it with you all.

First of all, let me be clear; I don't actually care whether or not you believe in God. I think it's absolutely fantastic that people are willing to question the status quot and make their own decisions about whether or not they believe in God and that it's completely accepted.

I do care when people who believe vehemently in their religion try to make other people believe vehemently in their religion. No one should tell anyone else what to think or how to think it, and I feel like that especially applies to religion.

But, as my dad said (because I talk to my parents, okay??), if your religion says that everyone must think something or else they'll be punished for all eternity, wouldn't you be doing other people a favor by trying to convert them to your religion?

So if you're a kindly old person who goes door-to-door to distribute pamphlets, that's probably okay. If you're the Westboro Baptist Church and you're picketing dead soldiers funerals, that's technically okay as well. With free speech and all that. (Hi, Ms. Cullen!)

So where does one draw the line? How much freedom can people when practicing their religions?

It's like all of Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, (Hi, Mr. Freeman!) in that you have the freedom to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe on other people's rights to do what they want. That seems pretty reasonable, I guess.

But should there be universal rights and wrongs? Like, being nice to someone should always be good, and kiling someone should always be bad. But then if you think about it, there could even be qualifiers for that. 

Also, believing in God or a particular religion or something gives you a set of beliefs to fall back upon. And that's really important, at least for me. I think that everyone has, or at least should have, something that they believe in that trumps everything else. This value system can keep them going when they feel particularly hopeless or cause hthem to stand up for something they believe in.

I think, too, that the reason why people disagree is not really because one person is right and one is wrong, but because they have different core values. It would be impossible for them to agree, so I think the sooner we understand this, accept this, and move past it, the sooner the world might be a better place.

Having decided that, and also having realized that there is no real answer to any of these questions, I had some tea and watched Doc Martin for the rest of the day.


These are just some thoughts. You don't really need to agree or disagree with me. I'm just talking.

End rant.

If you're somewhat interested, you can also watch this vlog brothers viseo. Because they're awesome, and it applies. So yeah.