i have come up with a brief summary of my system of belief. i am very proud of it, because if is concise but, to me, says a lot.
here it is.

I am a spiritual atheist.

I don't believe in a supernatural deity or

any for of God, but rather that

the Universe itself is so essentially unfathomable

as to become a mystical entity

of its own.

bored angels

in all honesty, heaven sounds like a drag. eternal life in a land of perfection, where nothing goes wrong and there is nothing to remind you why life is good. perfection, being the norm, would become mediocrity! there would be no surprises, no progress. and worst of all, nothing better to aspire to. it would be like being a millionaire with no possibility of running out of money. you can always have whatever you want, so you get no thrill in a purchase. you are immediately gratified in your desires, and you have everything you need, so there is no anticipation of pleasure. there is no benefit in having more money, as you have an unending supply, so there is nothing to work for. your life is directionless and insipid, though everyone who sees you thinks you must be the happiest person on earth. Without the possibility for improvement and anticipation of something better, their can be no joy in the moment. without knowing what it is to be sad, an angel could never recognize their own bliss.

homosexuality. it was a sin in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah because it was the embodiment of pure lust. in that city, there was no love, there was no reproduction, it was simply selfish pleasure however they could get it. however, these sins of the flesh were equally heinous between men and women. the sin lay, not in who the sex was with, but in its loveless and lascivious nature. however, from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (along with some other quotes, i know, but largely this) people have deduced that all homosexual relations are sinful. I would argue, however, that homosexuality is not a sin so much as meaningless sex is a sin. if sex is not just pleasure, but the embodiment of it's better term, making love, than whether between a man and a woman or two of the same gender, it is not sin. and about the argument that homosexual sex is pointless as it doesn't create a child, I would like to argue that most heterosexual sex it's for the purpose of making a baby, but rather to enhance the bond between you and your partner and the express the love you feel for them. this is true also for homosexual couples, and is just as important. also, while they cannot physically create a baby, many homosexual couples adopt children, so the bond which love making helps to nurture is just as important as with straight couples.

i know several people who say that having the feelings of homosexuality is not a sin, but acting on them is. I say that feeling love is never a sin, and sex is only sinful if it is done without love, and then it is sinful no matter who you do it with.

This is an angry post. I'm sorry if I offend anybody.

to put off happiness in this world in favor of a promise of happiness in the next. This idea terrifies me. To have so much faith in achieving the destination that you're willing to sacrifice the journey seems to me ridiculous. I'm not talking about general morality and "being a good person", I'm talking about painful, life altering sacrifices made for the sake of getting to heaven. Not following goals, pursuing dreams, or accepting love because "it is against the service of God". Who is to say whether or not God would approve? the bible writers? they aren't god, they don't know what He/She would think. Passion and love are virtues, and a life half lived is a life wasted. I cant think that any kind God would want its creations to live in fear, plotting and planning all their life, not on how to best improve their world by being the best they can be, but on how to get into heaven.

I loved Red, and I really wish I could have been there for the discussion. I liked its take on morality, and on who judges right and wrong. Particularly the scene in which Valentine was going to tell the neighbor wife that her husband was having a homosexual affair. At first she seems to be in the right, it is good to tell a wife her husband is having an affair, it is the moral decision. Then she gets to the house, and morals are turned upside down. Telling the truth would not be a charitable service to the family, but a selfish act to make herself feel better. Valentine enters believing the generally accepted morals that truth is good and deceit bad, but she leaves seeing that the world is a much more complicated place than that. The family survives on self deceit, as clearly the daughter knows about her father's affair. They choose to live life ignoring its imperfections, so to undermine that structure would be wrong.
I also like the ex judge who spends his retirement questioning whether he deserved the authority to judge. He was put in a position to determine right and wrong, but he realized that his decision is no less biased than that of anyone else, that no judgement is free of fault. The judge may condemn in hatred and the model , one of the most beautiful women in France, is lonely and in an abusive relationship. No situation is straight forward, no person is as they seem, and there can be no single truth.

the hands of God, or just a cloud?

Looking at the Pollock paintings in class made me think about the human drive to find meaningful images in non-representational or non meaningful objects. On the surface it is a silly thing to do, a figment of the imagination taking a panel of paint squiggles and turning them into a scene with human forms and a story. Our discussion in class, however, reminded me of an article I read in the Kohler bathroom about seeing images in clouds or faces in potato chips. The image above is a photograph of clouds that many people believe to be the hands of God reaching down to earth. The article stated that it was evolutionarily stable to recognize faces and objects everywhere, even in unlikely places. For example, if you think you see something that could be a face in the leaves of a dense forest, it is best to run. If you were wrong, you're none the worse. If you were right, you're not dead. Thus the gene for recognizing or imagining faces and images grows in the gene pool. Nowadays that has spread to not just recognizing potential dangers, but seeing things everywhere. The seed for abstract recognition was planted, and as we evolved it expanded.

modesty: sin or virtue?

Adam and eve were punished for developing a sense of shame and modesty. Covering their naked bodies was a sign of their disobedience to God, their "fall". Why is it then that nowadays the stereotypical "preachy Christian" is an image of a woman covered in clothing, from her large flowered hat to her stockinged, high heeled shoes, scolding america's youth for their immodesty. 'where is your shame!' she might say. Where indeed? And if shame is so abhorent to God as to make him kick out adam and eve, why is it so desireable today? I know that, nowadays, nudity wouldn't be the same as it was for adam and eve. we are aware of our nudity, they weren't. I just find it ironic that things went from nudity being the "ultimate good" to fully covered from head to toe being the "ultimate good".

just a thought.