What It Is.

Next thursday will be the requested post on Jesus. Tomorrow will be my collaborative effort with Scott on Waterboarding, and other forms of institutional torture. I'm hereby discontinuing media sunday , although there will likely be many media posts dispersed throughout the week.

Tonight, I'm going to tell you about God.

I'm of the opinion that all religions are all basically the same thing, with geographic culture flavoring each one. Every religion is based on one principle: Don't take yourself too seriously. You're really not very important. Every religion coalescles into describing evil as the intentional harming of others, especially for selfish ends. For that reason, I say the following in a largely secular manner, and I feel this applies to all religious practice.

>God, in some ultimately nameless form, exists. "God" is simply the name Judaeo-Christian societies assign to it, but no name can truly describe it.
>God is the ultimate expression of existence, and represents the innate divinity of being.
>Heaven and Hell exist.
>Heaven is the joining of your soul back to the original, innate divinity.
>We live in Hell. There is no fire and brimstone, just a planet where we are separated from God, where our existence is marked mostly by pain, where we can do harm to one another, where evil is man's doing.
>Understanding the innate divinity of your existence, and the subsequent release of ego and self centeredness that comes with it, is called Nirvana.
>Nirvana frees you from the shackles of earthly reality, and you may live the rest of your life, in peace. When we die, our energy we recirculate back into the earth, as we fertilize grass and plants and thus feed animals, even in death, we are forever present in life. Nirvana rejoins our souls with that innate divinity of being, the lifeforce of all things, that which I have before referred to as God.
>Death is not a step in the spiritual process. Everyone rejoins the lifeforce upon death; those who find Nirvana in life simply join that divine existence earlier, and get to experience life through God's eyes.
>God is not around.
>God does not answer your prayers.
>God does not care about you.
>God did not make humans, with all their cunning and potential, for them to run back for crutches and candy and other such nonsense.
>God is not Omniscient, or Omnipotent, or, hell, even paying attention. He has no eyes or mouth, he does not run our world. God is just a ball of being, the expressed totality of existence.
>Each person experiences just a small slice of reality. God is the whole pie.
>We are here to be human, and nothing else.
>Religion is a personal evolutionary tool, and it should therefore expand for the individual when necessary, and be discarded when it is no longer useful for the individual.
>Religion is, ultimately, the clothing we put on reality. As each one of us differs in taste for style, naturally, religion is unique to each person.
>In the long run, it really doesn't matter what you believe; no religion saves from earthly death, even though the main religious comfort is to do just that.
>Relax. Despite how poor or rich your life has been, we are all equal in death. Enjoy what you can while you're here, and do your best to ease the undue suffering of others. There is no higher purpose.

Peace be with you all.