The Downward Spiral

Theism

I am fundamentally theistic, but not in the normal sense. If you’d like a term that tries to encapsulate my beliefs in this area, then I’d say I am a deist, or one who admits that we can realize by pure reason alone the existence of a Supreme Being, but at the same time maintains that our conception of this being is purely transcendental, and that all we can say of it is that it possesses all reality, without being able to define it more closely.I hold there is a god who is the ultimate creator of everything. Everything in creation flows from that source, but that source has no will and cannot help but to create (and possibly uphold). It ultimately is responsible for everything you are.My justification for the existence of this being that I associate with the name “god” comes much from the argument from necessity of god based on contingency stated here by Richard Taylor.Now this only grants me that there is something that created the universe, but gives me no reason to believe in anything beyond that. I’ve found arguments that try and show that this god is good and he loves us (has a loving will) but I find them to be unconvincing. This also is commensurate with our experience of “evil” and suffering… there is no good god to worry about, only creation which is neither good or bad, it just is.

Personally I get along with Atheists great, but they would not recognize SOME of the truths that I hold. I sometimes call myself an “atheist” because what follows from a deist position is almost the same as what atheists believe. So it’s just the 1 second answer.

I also get along with Catholics really well because that is what I was raised as. I believe that the Catholic Church and myself agree on just about everything that one should do in their life, minus the worshiping God, which of course is a big part of the Catholic life and why I had to leave it behind. After I reinvented myself late in my college career from being a good, but not all that practicing (ie normal), Catholic young adult to realizing that my beliefs had unworkable differences, I stopped calling myself a Catholic and rather just said I was raised Catholic. There is a lot of value in the Catholic Church, but I can not accept that God is anything more than the ultimate creative force… or a “clockmaker god”… and therefore can not justifiably refer to myself as Catholic.

Protestant religions, all 50 million types of them, are judged by me in pretty much one way…. how different are they from Catholicism and why? I form my opinion of them around that. My rantings about Christians (which most Protestants say before their actual denomination) is mostly directed at some them, although there are plenty of Catholics who have irked me before too… but people are people and it’s the people that bug me… not the religions so much.

The Self

I believe much like Hume does that the self is nothing more then a collection of actions and thoughts that are associated to a body through some fashion. This is the bundle theory of the self. There is no transcendental I. There is no soul.

I do not buy that a person has free will. We are not “predestined” by any kind of being, but we do not have any choice but to be ourselves. Given the SAME situation and SAME circumstances in that situation, we will not act any differently. Some might object and say that we in fact can face a situation (such as death for instance) in one fashion and then face it again later and act differently, BUT that is a violation of “SAME”. I’m talking about if you lived your life and then time started over from ground zero with no knowledge of the “previous life”, there is no evidence to suggest that one would act any differently.

Society

• There is usually more to people than what you see in the first 30 seconds, of course a lot time there isn’t.
• A lot of people can make relationships work even if they are different, but sometimes even the littlest things destroy them.
• People really don’t have to treat others a certain way, but if you live and let live, you’ll have the least problems. However, there is a time for assertiveness, and it’s important to know when that is.
• Most people don’t change, feeling the same way they do about most things, their entire life.
• Real change requires courage and often intelligence. It’s hard to do alone, but not impossible.
• People look out for themselves and those that are the extension of themselves, first.
• Knowledge should be given away. Success should not.

Reality

Reality is fundamentally inter-subjective. That means that there are objective truths such as Light, Darkness, Life, Death, love and Hate. These same truths are also subjective to one’s own experience such as varying degrees of love, and what is evil to one may be neutral to another.