miercuri, august 31

Why I think religion is not good for you, and me

I am afraid or unlucky that I am around of more religious people than ever. Or am getting paranoid.

And I am not that against it as long as it is not disturbing me. But i guess I notice it because they do disturb me,

are more aggressive. In wanting to show that they are right and I am wrong and not only that that I am sinful only for the fact that

I do not believe in the true God. Well i do not believe in any God. Why? I cannot believe there is a God that comes with all this shit.

What I say is if there is God than he doesn't care about people, all the atrocities happened that happened for same reasons: money and the power, some started from "religious" matters.

Somebody will say that God should not be understood as a wise man and judged as I just did, well then the only way to conceive it is as the nature.

And I think also that religion itself is bad, bad for people, not true and not helpful ...anymore.

And others can say it better than me why:

"Most Americans are convinced that faith in God is the foundation of civil society. Society Without God reveals this to be nothing more than a well-subscribed, and strangely American, delusion.
Even atheists living in the United States will be astonished to discover how unencumbered by religion most Danes and Swedes currently are.
This glimpse of an alternate, secular reality is at once humbling and profoundly inspiring--and it comes not a moment too soon." - Phil Zuckerman 

“Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers,” says the Christian Bible. “They wish that you disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them,” says the Koran (Sura 4:91).
At best, teachings like these discourage or even forbid the kinds of friendship and intermarriage that help clans and tribes become part of a larger whole.
At worst, outsiders are seen as enemies of God and goodness, potential agents of Satan, lacking in morality and not to be trusted.
Believers might huddle together, anticipating martyrdom. When simmering tensions erupt, societies fracture along sectarian fault lines. I got this from somewhere on the internet.

Church forces parents to treat their kids with other sexual orientation than the norm as sick or sinful.

This is like a list with whatever points I think that will show how wrong applied religion is.

Free will: If God has a plan for me, I have no free will to choose, and if I have free will, then God is not an all-knowing and all-powerful deity making things happen in my life.
And the plan is not good at all, just recently, historically, human beans have a bit better and longer life. It is simple put yes but cmon is logic also.

Look back and you can see that many rulers were declared very religious, but that didn't stop them to start wars that killed thousands and they didn't try to stop poverty,
they did keep the poor poor and obedient, they were marched to wars since ever.

I know you can say that people are people but the true doctrine has nothing to do with the fact that people say one thing and do terrible things like the catholic church did over and over with children,
witches and so on.

I am really curious on how people comes to believe, I mean except weak and scared of life people :)
And except idiots that were trained and brainwashed from childhood.

Anyway back to the start of what i thought will be a small diatribe :) : if you do not Allah Akbar on me for just not believing and wearing whatever I wear and drink whatever I drink
is still ok but if you do organize some people to walk and check who is not behaving, not as the democratic rules of the country you are in but of the religion YOU adhere to I do not feel too good, I do not feel free.

Is not that I believe in democracy, giving rights to all idiots doesn't seem like a good idea anymore...

joi, ianuarie 21

how to (short) story?

How difficult is to have a short story that makes you feel something and with the same intensity as a very good novel or the best movie.
My memory is not good at all so I think I was looking for the best short story and because Umberto Eco is one of the masters of storytelling and one great theorist of it I read one that he recommended but right now cannot remember the name and the author although I read more amazing shorts buy the guy. I (hope) will come back with the name(s).

Anyway was about the way to start and end, to arrange and follow the elements, ideas and actions int he short story, the setup and characters...
And this short story is well written no doubt.
And it touches the readers into, onto, one primal emotion :)
Which it should, like a good story.

Part 2: in which there is this guy that goes on his bike, its snowing but he is thinking and not paying 2 much attention to the conditions...
Nevermind that but I was thinking next that even if you have a good written story with all the elements BUT is in the future on SF many people would not like it.
And I do not mean people that do not read good literature.
And I do see a reason behind it, check this example: if you set Romeo & Juliet in a place with dragons or 1000 years in the weird gadgets future people will like it , of course, but will not feel the same intensity on it. I think. Because they will not identify themselves so much to the same degree with the context and all.
Don't get me wrong I do like or even love SF and fantasy stuff.
But I think our subconsciousness is conditioned by our century context,  more or less, in which we are born and raised, in the similar way in which we perceive something as beautiful or ugly because in our lives most people pointed to same type of beauty or ugliness, being a person or a  monster.

(a quote: "According to Immanuel Kant, beauty is objective and universal (i.e. certain things are beautiful to everyone). But there is a second concept involved in a viewer's interpretation of beauty, that of taste, which is subjective and varies according to class, cultural background and education.

In fact, it can be argued that all aesthetic judgements are culturally conditioned to some extent, and can change over time (e.g. Victorians in Britain often saw African sculpture as ugly, but just a few decades later, Edwardian audiences saw the same sculptures as being beautiful).

Judgments of aesthetic value can also become linked to judgements of economic, political or moral value (e.g. we might judge an expensive car to be beautiful partly because it is desirable as a status symbol, or we might judge it to be repulsive partly because it signifies for us over-consumption and offends our political or moral values.)").

So, like that, a Romeo and Juliet in Game of Thrones setup might not trigger the same intense sentiments. But even if it is fiction and it is set in the past people would feel it can be real, and cry and all that. Does that mean that a story should take this into account? I think is somewhere in between, because for me, for example, it does not matter to much, and I say that because I saw it is true, (almost) it does not matter what is the movie about, if is well done and acted, and it does not matter the time and place, it can lead me to catharsis!
But from early age I read, a lot, SFs and fantasy novels, from Jules Verne to Russian SFs :) that I could find in communist times.
So I guess, from an hedonistic point of view, I am lucky.