Before I get on with this article, you may want to know why I have not posted in over a week. This is not because I have been on holiday but in fact due to, and you would know this if you follow me on twitter, writer's block.
I haven't been able to successfully write a single sentence that made logical sense for over a week and it drove me a bit insane. I've also been mega busy and have been wondering where I want to take this blog.
You see, last week I got a comment on one of my articles saying "I remember when this used to be a gaming blog", and while the comment itself and what it said didn't bother me, it did make me think that I should make my intentions clear.
This is not a dedicated gaming blog. The reason I started out covering only gaming was simply due to the fact it was easily available to me, I know a lot about gaming and am a big gamer myself and I love writing about it.
However as time went on and I became more confident with my writing, I decided to move onto other things that interest me too. I want to start up a YouTube channel(s) soon and while I will mainly be doing gaming videos, I will want to branch out into vlogging, movie making and other forms of entertainment too. It's important to understand that gaming is simply ONE thing that interests me. I will never stop covering games, but I will never stop covering or doing OTHER things too.
I am going to start posting stories and scripts on here too. So prepare for them. This is something I have wanted to do for a while and I will be starting shortly.
With that out the way, let's move on!
I wanted to talk about something that occurred to me the other day.
I was sitting on the toilet (yes, I was. I'm not even joking) and I started wondering.
"If heaven is supposed to be perfect, then surely that makes it not perfect?"
What does that ^ mean?
Well here's my issue with the heaven concept, and don't take this as an attack on religion please. I am agnostic and a skeptic so bare with me here.
There are two common theories on what 'heaven' is like. If it exists of course.
The first is that it is the same for everyone. It is perfect. No crime. No hate. Nothing 'bad', as it were. Nothing negative. It's a wondrous place for everyone and that's sort of it really.
The second is that heaven changes to accommodate different people. So if you like sunsets and beaches, you're house will be situated somewhere there. Where you 'are' in heaven, is dependant on what you like and what your 'idea' of perfection is. Now that, that sounds perfect. Doesn't it just sound perfect?
But let's focus on the prior suggestion. That heaven is the same for everyone as the idea of 'perfection' and 'goodness' can, arguably, be universal. Not personal.
So here is my issue.
If heaven is 'perfect' in one sense and way, for everyone, then surely it lacks what actually makes life fun? And that is actually adrenaline.
"What, Mike? Adrenaline? ADRENALINE? Are you nutso? Gtfo. Your argument is dead."
Wait wait wait. WAIT.
Listen.
For just a second.
Let's take common human nature.
We like danger. We, as people, luuuuurrrv danger. We LOVE it.
We have games and activities dedicated to it. Skydiving, for instance. Bungie jumping. And how about, of course, violence. We love violence. It gives us the best rush. We play games like paintball, where you shoot one another with guns for fun, the rush and excitement of it.
Can they see me behind this barrel? Can they hear me? Oh God, there is a group of them. Let me sneak up behind them and shoot them in the arse....
We. Love. Adrenaline.
We. Love. Violence.
It gives us the best rush we could ever want.
We love doing dangerous, risky things. It's what makes life thrilling and actually interesting. And, ultimately, worth living. And surely if you're going to live in an afterlife for ALL ETERNITY it's gonna get a bit boring without some adrenaline thrown in there?
"But Mike, who says you can't skydive and do fun, dangerous things in heaven?"
OK so you can skydive. Sure, I can accept that. You can skydive in heaven. Great. But what about violence? In a perfect world, violence wouldn't exist right? And heaven is 'perfect', so no violent rushes. No violent video games. No violent paint-balling or fighting or WWE. The things that give us the best rush in real life, and often the most fun, are actually things that a perfect world would prohibit. And if heaven is perfect we can assume they're prohibited there too. So if heaven really a perfect concept?
But there are other questions that bug me. I find the biggest flaws with religious theory actually come from the most basic questions. It's odd because these questions are the type of ones that people scoff at. It's like if you ask them, you're an idiot. Why? Because they're 'school' boy questions. Things 'kids' ask. But kids actually are right about most things. They see the world how it is. In basic form.
But these questions are SO valid it's unbelievable. It doesn't matter if you don't ask a question, the question will ALWAYS be there. Just because you don't point out a plot hole in a film doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means you haven't pointed it out. And just because you don't ask a question doesn't mean the question isn't valid. It's just that you haven't asked it yet.
One of these questions is, quite simply, 'who created God?'. And it's a question that bugs the fuck out of me.
There are several common religious comebacks to this, but I'm going to use my two favourites.
1) If you're going to try to disprove God by asking 'who made God?', then why don't we ask 'who made the universe?
This is a very regular response to the question. Often religious people tend to respond by saying 'well if you believe in the science and the universe, what created the universe? What was before the universe?'. Ultimately they try to make the question 'who made God?' invalid by reminding you that you can't answer who made the universe either. They don't need to answer the question 'who made God?' because it's not like YOU or I can answer who made the universe.
But this is bullshit. Why? Because we have proof the universe exists, and that proof is right here in front of you. Just because we can't prove what MADE the universe, doesn't mean the answer ISN'T out there. If you believe in a supernatural creator that is, ultimately, a being of some kind, that 'being' surely had to be made by SOMETHING?!
The universe, on the other hand, is natural. It is a part of the natural world. So why do you need to prove that it was created by something or anything? The universe could always have existed in some form or another. It could be how life exists in the first place. Or it could have come AFTER something else that existed over a billion years ago. Who knows. And, more importantly, who cares? You don't need to prove natural things exist and why they do in order to validate the question 'who made God?'. And this leads to the next common response...
2) God ALWAYS Existed.
This is more bullshit than the previous response. Why? Because, and this is something religious people can do A LOT, you're ultimately answering a supernatural question with a supernatural answer. And that doesn't fucking answer it.
You can't answer the question 'who made God?' with a supernatural answer.
"He always existed."
That doesn't help. It doesn't offer any proof and isn't a good argument.
God is almost always believed to be a BEING. This means he (or she. Who knows?) is alive. He has a mind. And this makes sense. After all, isn't he all powerful and all KNOWING? Thus he has a mind. He has awareness and he has conscience.
So who made him like that?
The question 'who made flowers?' isn't a good or even really valid one because nature doesn't need a creator. Things evolve. Things change and adapt. Flowers are just a natural product of the environment and evolution. Nature doesn't have a mind, it just goes with the flow and how it turns out is how it turns out. End. Of.
But BEINGS don't just form. A 'God', as we imagine a God, couldn't just evolve from nature and then become all powerful, because surely 'God' would have to have made nature in the first place?
God always existed. Before time. Before ever. He was the beginning. However how can something that ALWAYS existed have a beginning? It can't. Yet a 'beginning' is a natural requirement. Technically EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A BEGINNING so surely the answer 'God always existed' is clearly invalid. If something always existed it never began, yet everything MUST begin. It's a circle of contradiction.
Something that bugs me about atheism, though, is the way atheists seem to be 'looking' for proof of God's existence.
"We have worked out a supernatural force wasn't required for us to exist and evolve. God isn't necessary."
But here's my argument, and yes, it is in favour of God for once.
How the fuck are you going to find proof of God from working out how we exist and why? And just because he isn't 'necessary', doesn't mean he doesn't exist.
If God created everything, he created nature, the world - everything. He made it all work. He ensured life could evolve in one way or another. Just because us humans have worked out evolution and the big bang theory doesn't mean that God wasn't BEHIND these things. What did we hope to find? What, did we expect to look into evolution and see that something was missing and that ONLY a supernatural force could have played a part in it? Of course not. If God DOES exist and DID create us and everything we exist with, then he made us work. He made us work as a system. He didn't just put us together in a factory and plop us down on planet earth. Just because we can prove that we evolved naturally, doesn't mean God didn't make it so we did in fact evolve naturally in the first place.
One last example of my above statement is this:
If you put together a test tube full of bacteria, and that bacteria changes and grows fungus, and that fungus grows a brain and works out it was created through evolving from bacteria, that doesn't change the fact you made it happen in the first place. You didn't directly create the fungus, but you put in motion the steps FOR it to be created. And maybe, MAYBE, that's what God did.
Anyway, these were just some questions bugging me. They can't be answered by fact, though, so there will never be closure on them. Not until I die anyway, and discover whether there is an afterlife of some sort or not. Maybe there is, but maybe there isn't even a God. Maybe there's a giant rabbit who sits in a cage and you have to answer a trivial question about your life to get into 'heaven', but the question doesn't have an answer and is simply opinion based so there is no a right or wrong answer, yet your answer determines the outcome of your eternal live in the afterlife. And the rabbit will forever be stuck in the cage because that's what life is. A massive cage you can't escape from. And it'll be like that till you die. And even if there IS a heaven, as many imagine it, you will still be in that cage, because the boundaries of existence will always limit you and be there to hold you back.
Good luck.
