Randomness

I've been contemplating many things of late. One being death. Not the actual act of it, or causing it. But rather, what it is. What happens. Who's right. It's one of those questions, like many others, that has no proven answer. Yes, many theories exist, many different schools of thought.

You have the religious views. Christians believe in heaven and hell, Catholics in purgatory. Most religions, if not all, have some version of heaven, or at least and "after life". Are they right?

What about reincarnation? Many lives, one after another, until the end of time. This could explain how a 5 year old can play classical piano perfectly. Some residual knowledge from a previous life?

It's a question that can never be answered. To find the answer you must die and once dead, well, it's never been proven that you can come back, not once you're truly dead.

This brings me to another question. Just how did we happen. By we, I don't mean in our current form. I do believe in evolution. I mean, how did it all start. The big bang, creationism, what started us. If we were "created" by an all powerful entity, where did that entity come from? It had to come from someplace.

Something can not come from nothing. If God created everything, who or what created God? Some form of thought had to exist initially. And if that is true, where did it come from? If we ponder the big bang, exactly where did the matter come from? If nothing existed prior to the bang, what created the bang?

And another question. Why are we here? Some purpose must exist for us to be. Everything that exists has some purpose. So what is ours? Is it simply to be? To live until we die? Or is there something we are all missing, some higher, more important point? And when do we get to know the answer? Is this one of the things that happens after we die? We get to answer some of these questions? Or life like a candle flickering in the wind, only to be blown out in the end?

Why is life such a struggle for some us and not for others? How is it that two men can walk in to the same casino and one walks out rich while the other walk out with empty pockets? They play the same game with the same chips at the same table, one wins, one doesn't. Why is that? Luck? Destiny? Perhaps in some games it is skill, but not all. There is no skill to playing roulette, or a slot machine. Is it "God"? If there is a god, I really don't think he cares.

If dinosaurs are simply fossils at this point, how did the decide what they had for skin? Do they just guess?

We spent millions of dollars and many years trying to get to the moon. Why haven't we gone back? Or have we??

Of course there are all the silly little questions. Why do we park in a driveway and drive on a parkway? Chicken or egg? If chicken, how? If egg, from where did it come? Creationism? If so, god is one funny fucker, or at least was. At some point he must have become quite vindictive, perverse and just plane mean.

Why is we have the technology to destroy the planet and every person on it, the ability to go into space, send rockets to other planets, go under water for extended periods of time, build huge buildings, make bombs that can hit the head of a pin, yet we can't cure cancer or feed the hungry?

Yep, these are the things that keep me awake at night.

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I have been fascinated by religion most of my life. Funny thing for an atheist to be fascinated by I've always thought. The different religions of the world, the staggering number of them and how thoroughly the catholic church tainted so many of them. Religion existed long before Christianity. Jesus is a fairly new concept in the grand scheme of things.

They all stemmed from the same need, the same desire of humans to explain that which can not be explained. Or at least, 3000 years ago couldn't be explained. And also a fear of death. A desire for something to be after death. There has always been some version of heaven and hell, long before God and Jesus.

I see all the evil and hate in the world today, every day, and it makes it difficult to understand the faith people seem to have in some all powerful being. 80 children murdered in one day.