Things I don't understand: planking [link]

I just heard about that from a Penny Arcade comic, and it came up today as well. So bizarre. Apparently some people have died doing it?

Religion. I don't think it means what it was originally supposed to mean. Rather than worship and an expression of gratitude and an umbrella of charity to the less fortunate, it's become another means of divisiveness and an excuse for treating people we don't like, or who don't agree with us, badly.

This is why I'm agnostic. There may be some truth in some faiths, but I'm pretty sure "religion" is a human construct and therefore flawed.

I have no drive to believe in a higher power, grand plan, whatever. I was raised in a very faith-loose Quaker religious community. By the time I got around to thinking seriously about faith (maybe 10 or so?) I was like "Nope, don't really need this." And it wasn't earthshattering or anything, I just didn't care. I cannot wrap my mind around what it must be like to have a belief like that.

I don't believe in gods, UFOs, ghosts, gremlins or "meant to be." I think coincidences are freaky, but nothing more than that. I believe in the scientific method, and that someone might come up with more nuanced theories than are currently understood (theories and even the laws aren't definitions, but descriptions. As is all science, an attempt to describe our world and predict outcomes.) There's more I don't know than I do know.

I believe that my ability to shape my world extends only as far as the choices I make to respond to what the millions of other choices and chaos of nature force upon me. I'm just a mote in a giant sandstorm.

I try to be kind and helpful, only because I want to live in a kind and helpful humanity, but I am not under the illusion that me being so makes any difference. I'll just try to make prettier the walls of my particular neighborhood.

I don't even know what I believe or what I want to believe.

There are times when I do really want to believe in something. When I was young I did believe and I had a fairly strong faith and did find some comfort in it -- until things got really bad and hard to handle. And I've never been able to replicate that.

Although there have been two times when I felt a strong belief in something as an adult I was manic. I didn't know it then but I realized it later.

Sometimes I just wished I believed in something but I don't.

I grew up in the UCC (my Dad refers to it as the Last Door on the Left). I've ended up in a UU church (It's a church! Where believing what you want is right there in the Principles!), which upsets some bits of my extended family, but is a good fit for me.

Too bad we don't read ancient Aramaic!

Even that wouldn't help considering the number of copies and mistakes in those copies which would result in more confusion!

OT was written in Hebrew. NT was written in Greek, not Aramaic.

Standard joke among liberal quakers and UU: basically the same people, but Quakers like to sit around in silence and UU never shut up.

I do appreciate having grown up in a faith community. Thankfully, that particular flavor wasn't particularly upset when I stood up in meeting (12? 13? I dunno) to share that I didn't believe in god, buddha (we had some buddhists,) Christ or anything, really. And had no issue with me still staying in the community. I wasn't the only one.

(This wouldn't work at a lot of Quaker meetings, but out west, they lean to so open you can fall out.)

I didn't actually quit going to meeting until I went to (a quaker) college. Part of that was, hello? College? I had my community. Part was even liberal granola quaker colleges in North Carolina were a little more god-Christ heavy than I felt at home in. So it wasn't my community anymore.

If Adman and Eve were the only humans and then they had children - who did their children marry?

Just cause the typo is funny!

Also: my floors are clean, I swam a bloody slow 2 miles (1m/lap?! What's up? Actually, I think it is the pool is too warm, I swim faster when it is cool.) and my bistro set is drying from its final lindseed oil slathering before going out on the desk for the season.

I think I'll go buy a pretty pot (since the last broke in a storm) and flowery thing to put on the table tomorrow.