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Last 6 Posts Authored

• It’s too hot! posted (1 year, 5 months) ago
  I have big windows in my apartment that all face south. It’s starting to get hot again, an…

• I told him that I couldn’t talk to him for a month. posted (1 year, 5 months) ago
  I could have told him in a better way, I think. I got angry, and for what is probably the first tim…

• I challenge everyone to leave a secret somewhere in the real world. posted (1 year, 5 months) ago
  Tomorrow is postsecret day (www.postsecret.com). I look forward to it every week. This week, I…

• I had a date last night and it went terribly. posted (1 year, 5 months) ago
  His voice annoys me. He is from New York, and his accent gets on my nerves and his voice is whiny …

• So…I caved. posted (1 year, 6 months) ago
  I’ve been talking to him again. I shouldn’t have. But I had to make a big career deci…

• I want to reach out to my ex-boyfriend, but I know this is the worst thing I could do. posted (1 year, 6 months) ago
  He dumped me a couple of months ago, and we have been trying to be friends, but he keeps hurting me…

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Fionna's Top (3) Replies by other users' votes

• (1 vote) i feel like my whole school is based on a popularity
  

  Hey, Natlie379 :).
  
  I know I’m coming a bit late to your post, and I haven’t read your other posts. I just want to second something candp said — if you still have the same friends you had since you were six, you must be a really great person :). It’s hard to keep friends for a long time.
  
  I’d actually add that you are really lucky beside. If you had moved, or your friends had, you would not have had a chance to be friends with the same people for so long. That sounds like a great thing to me.
  
  And if you are not joining in the popularity contest, then I applaud you twice over. It’s very not worth it.
  
  - written 1 year, 5 months ago – voted for by Natlie379

• (1 vote) Is atheism a religion?
  

  I sincerely think that society needs religion, atheist. Let’s remove all the spiritual aspects from it for a moment, and talk about it as a cultural institution. What I’m about to say might offend some people, so let me just say that I very much separate spirituality from organised religion. I can be very clinical about the latter, but I fully respect and encourage anyone’s personal spiritual exploration, wherever that may lead (atheism, Christianity, whatever).
  
  That said…
  
  Suppose I have a Frooble, and you want my Frooble. You really want it. And you realise you can beat me up, and take it. What’s to stop you from doing this?
  
  If I have a decade or so (preferrably a childhood decade) to educate you, I can explain to you all about the social contract, and how society relies on at least the outward appearance of integrety and honesty to function. How if people were constantly afraid of losing their Froobles, then they would focus on defending themselves, instead of focusing on building more Froobles, and on inventing Ultra-Froobles. Eventually my Frooble would break, and no one would even remember how to fix it, ’cause they’re so busy fighting, and so focused on building guns and tanks.
  
  That’s easy to understand intellectually, but it’s not so easy to immediately accept as the reason you should not reach out and take my Frooble when it is dangling right in front of you.
  
  That’s why (IMHO) societies evolve religions that require you to be moral, and punish you if you are not. Societies that do this are successful. Those that do not do this are not successful (see Froobles above).
  
  So we open the god-channel, and start pouring a lot of wise stuff into it. Don’t steal. Don’t kill people. Keep your promises. These are all very wise things, and getting people to do them holds society together.
  
  This is all signal, and it’s good.
  
  Unfortunately, a lot of noise also gets put into the god-channel, at least IMHO. Gay people are bad. Witches should be killed. Muslims are the enemy. This stuff is the unfortunate side-effect of the god-channel.
  
  But here’s a catch-22. I think it’s complete and utter arrogance to suppose that we, as individuals, can easily determine what’s signal, and what’s noise. Not that we can’t, just that we can’t be cavalier about it.
  
  A lot of stuff that we might at first dismiss as noise isn’t. How about…don’t eat cloven-hooved animals? We now know that pigs are one of the primary means of spreading new (and deadly) strains of influenza from birds to human populations (avian flu, anyone?). We didn’t know that 100 years ago. If we had been following that little bit of advice, we’d probably have avoided the 1918 flu pandemic.
  
  That is why I think it’s silly to dismiss religions. There’s an awful lot of folk wisdom in there that we should be putting under the microscope of science, and examining very closely.
  
  I said before that I think education can replace the socialising role of religion in society. I do believe that. However, I definitely don’t think we’re there yet. How many inner city high school dropouts do we have? I grew up in that world, and I can tell you, there’s lots.
  
  Society still needs religion to keep people toeing the line. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need it. We haven’t created that Utopia yet. In the meantime, I’d be careful about disliking it so much — it probably makes your current life possible.
  
  - written 1 year, 5 months ago – voted for by Mee123

• (1 vote) What do you think about Jesus?
  

  I’ll give it to you, since you asked directly. I don’t like to shove my beliefs at others. I don’t claim that I’m right. In fact, I specifically claim that I don’t have enough evidence to say. This is my personal exploration of the topic, and I don’t mean to offend anyone with it.
  
  My mom told me, when I was young, that Jesus was a man with some great ideas, and that he had moved a lot of people with some very smart things that he had to say about peace, compassion and forgiveness. My mom is very wise, and that’s pretty much what I believe to this day, though I’ve gone through a few alterations.
  
  I’ve learned that a lot of Jesus’s philosophies were based on the teachings of Rabbi Hillel, who came up with radical stuff like: That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.. I still don’t understand the violent Christian condemnation of the Pharisees (Hillel was the head of that group), given that early Christians laid claim to so many of Hillel’s ideals. Hillel believed in peace above all things, and introduced the idea of forgiving people instead of doing stuff like stoning them to death. Sounding familiar? You can learn more about him here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbi_Hillel).
  
  For a long time, I doubted that Jesus had actually existed. I don’t trust the New Testament as evidence. It was completely in the hands of people whom it would be charitable to call Nominal Christians for too many years. People like the Emperor Constantine, who had his own agenda for pushing Christianity. These people proved, on many occasions, that they were willing to forge documents to promote Christianity (see the Donation of Constantine, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine).
  
  I fully acknowledge that not all Christians were as deceitful as the authors of the Donation, whomever they were. In this sense at least, I think you are definitely right — these Nominal Christians are very unfairly giving you a bad name, and have been for many centuries past. However, as any historian will tell you, you cannot accept text without context. The context of the New Testament makes it suspect as evidence, at least on its own.
  
  However, I’ve now read the Nag Hammadi Libraries (and some other apocrypha), which were not in the hands of Constantine and his ilk, so I’m willing to say that Jesus probably existed. I’d still be more comfortable if there was a more certain historical record. Like if one of the Roman Historians or maybe the Pharisees had even whispered a little bit about him in their own writings. That they didn’t (at least not until many years later) is suspicious to me.
  
  I also can’t help but notice that the stories that are told about Jesus are suspiciously similar to stories that are told about many pre-Christian gods. Of course, that doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t exist. The similarities could be for two reasons that I can think of. The first is that early Christians hadn’t quite let go of their pre-Christian beliefs. This wouldn’t be too surprising to me, given that they certainly did the same kind of thing later (like when the Irish goddess Bridhe became St. Bridget). The second possibility is the one given by Joseph Campbell in _The Power of Myth_. Campbell argues that the Jesus story (aka the hero cycle) is just so ingrained in our psyche that we retell it over and over again, and just change the characters.
  
  Anyway, this is probably spammy, so I’ll stop now. If this seems clinical or dismissive of Jesus, I apologise. I don’t mean it to be. It is the state of my personal spiritual exploration of these ideas, which is undertaken with respect, and in good faith, given the tools that I have available to me (logic, reason and analysis).
  
  - written 1 year, 5 months ago – voted for by Limon

Last 5 Replies – All 708 replies »

• This is a post about cliches.
  

  Fermenting rebellion. It seems odd to me. Why are you fermenting it???
  - written 1 year, 4 months ago

• my entire life i have been known to have beautiful blonde hair.
  

  It would grow out if you dyed it.
  
  Anyway, it seems your hair is really important in your life and affecting you a lot, so I’d suggest that you get rid of it. Honestly. Stop letting it control you and so some good in the world. Grow it out to the 10″ that is required. Then go to your local cancer society and donate it.
  
  They will use it to make a wig for a child who is undergoing chemotherapy, but whose parents cannot afford to buy them a wig. It might help you to realise that it doesn’t matter what colour your hair is, you are very lucky to have it.
  
  And also, while your hair is growing back, it will be shorter at first, and you won’t feel so bad about experimenting. Heck…dye it that beautiful dark blue, or bright red for a while. Have some fun.
  - written 1 year, 4 months ago

• Help me celebrate!
  

  Hell yeah! I’m so happy for you :). Having great co-workers is seriously the most important thing about a job, at least in my opinion. This is FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC news!
  - written 1 year, 4 months ago

• 4 Weeks And Im Still Cut Free!
  

  Hey, Crista. Happy Easter! Congratulations on the four weeks, though I know your challenge continues. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately, and hoping you’re okay. Be well, sweet thing!
  - written 1 year, 4 months ago

• Has anyone ever had a “Near Death Experience” or know some one that has and it had a profound effect on your or their lifetime?
  

  So, here it is. My mom has strong spiritual beliefs, and I would very much like to believe what she does. However, she also taught me to use my head, to think for myself, and not to accept anything without question. She has various answers when I ask her why she holds the beliefs she does, but none of them satisfy me.
  
  Up until the death of my mom’s best friend Sarah (who was nearly my second mom), I’d had a few odd experiences in my life, but they were all things I could easily write off as dreaming, or wishful thinking, or the like. I’ll note the big ones here before getting to Sarah.
  
  When I was very young, I would describe places I’d been to my mom, in rich detail. Only, these were places she was sure I could never have seen. Also, I had a family of what I called “pretend invisible friends” who were always with me. My mom was sure they had followed me into this world. I would tell her stuff about them that she felt was beyond my ability to make up at that age (1-3). But moms want to believe stuff like that about their kids, don’t they?
  
  When I was older (a teenager), I was lying in bed one day, and I lifted my arm to get up. It came up…out of my physical arm. It was like I somehow separated my awareness of my arm from my actual arm. It scared the crap out of me, and my awareness immediately snapped back into my body. Hallucination?
  
  Then another time, I had the experience of being able to see past what we consider to be reality, into a place full of entities. As soon as I became aware of them, they became aware of me, and they wanted to communicate. They weren’t angry, or violent, but they were very urgent, and it scared me, and snapped me back to ‘reality’. Dreaming?
  
  Another thing happened at a funeral for the daughter of one of my undergrad profs. I sat through the ceremony, and the entire time, I had the feeling that her spirit was sitting next to me, yelling at me to go tell her mom (my prof) that she was okay. She had died from cystic fibrosis, and she wanted me to tell her mom that she could breathe now. I figured it was in my head, and I never did.
  
  At various times my belief in these things would be higher or lower, but I was never certain, and I became convinced it was in my head as I got older. I am pretty sure I would have ended up being an atheist completely if this last thing had not happened.
  
  When my mom’s best friend Sarah passed away, I spent a lot of time in the hospital at her bedside. I was in grad school by then, working on my Master of Science — hardly likely to believe in fairy tales. I got some creepy feelings in the hospital, but it was easy to write off, ’cause I was thinking about death and surrounded by dying people.
  
  Then, Sarah had another stroke, and she was declared brain-dead. They took her off the respirators, and it was just a matter of time before her body died. My mom said she felt that Sarah had already left, so we left too, and went to the beach to honour Sarah in our own way.
  
  As we were driving, I was thinking about Sarah, and I got the impression that she was going to give a gift to all of the people she had loved. At that moment, I became completely sure that there was an existence for all of us after this life. I can’t explain how I knew it, but I was completely certain, and I knew that the certainty was Sarah’s gift to me. I knew it would pass, and I knew that I had to remember it.
  
  Then it was gone.
  
  It’s still easy for me to write that off as being something that came out of my mind because I was distressed at losing Sarah and really wanted something to believe in. But it effected me enough that it halted my progression toward atheism. I’m now a strong agnostic, more or less. That doesn’t mean that I’m wishy-washy (most of the time ;). It means I believe that the question of a higher awareness is inherently unknowable to us.
  
  So yeah, I’m definitely very thankful for Sarah’s gift to me — and it was definitely her gift, whether she gave it after her death, or in the 26 years that she was part of my family. And it definitely changed my view of the world.
  
  Though actually….as a bit of a post-script to this. My great-aunt passed away last week. She was in her 90s, and lived a good life, so I don’t feel that sad. However, apparently I still believe in something, enough that I’ve been trying to keep an open mind and to watch for signs that she might be hanging around in some form. I even asked out loud if she was there yesterday :).
  
  I know I have Sarah to thank for that openness and curiousity.
  - written 1 year, 4 months ago

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