Jesus May Have Walked on Water...
... but Neil Armstrong Walked on the Moon
“The abyss will shut you up.”
- Peter Watts, “Starfish”
Space shuts you up too.
I’ve always loved space. Ever since I was a kid I’ve geeked out on planets, super-novas, interstellar dust, and solar winds. I remember cartwheeling across the living room when Columbia took off the first time, and I felt the exact same way when the “New Horizon” project to Pluto finally got underway last month.
Space. The great big nothing. The infinite mystery that transcends anything that has anything whatsoever to do with your stupid ass.
There is nothing that makes you feel more insignificant than the realization that that you are but the tiniest fragment of a microscopic speck in a vast infinite Universe that could care less about you. What could be bigger? God? He sure as hell doesn’t shut anyone up – quite the opposite – and neither is he supposed to instill a feeling of pointlessness in you, his loyal subjects, like space does.
So what is so good about space then anyway? What is so great about being reduced to nothing before the abyss?
First, space puts things in perspective. It teaches humility. It tells you that no matter how big your fucking problems are, nobody but you cares about them. Nobody. Staring into the void helps you regain focus on your own puny little life and how frightfully easy it actually is to get things straightened out again. You just have to do it, instead of wishing for it to happen by itself. Space tells you to fight your own battles no matter what and how big they are. Space doesn’t care. It’s busy being vast and unfathomable. Stars colliding, galaxies being born or you being behind on the utility bills… it’s all the same to the Great Big Nothing.
“God” (i.e. organized religion), on the other hand, teaches people, through the Bible or other scriptures, to be ashamed of this and that – to regret actions and thoughts. Ultimately, God pretty much hands you the manual on how to be a decent human being – no questions asked. In the end, God will still be there as a wailing wall, a scapegoat, a warrior for justice or your own personal diary. Won’t make a man out of you, though. Won’t put hair on your balls. (Let me rephrase that for my female readers: Won’t put skin on your cute little nose.)
Only by standing small under the endless reaches of the Universe do you see that it’s all up to you. Space doesn’t care about God. Space doesn’t care about you. Only you and nothing else can make something out of you. By putting your life in your own hands, free from superstitious hocus pocus, can you set your own spirit free.
What’s a “spirit” anyway? If you believe in the soul, but not in God… does that make you a Scientologist? No, it just makes you a thinker. Your soul is just the identity of your mind, the idea of “you”. So how come we all think differently, thus assigning ourselves with spiritual powers, when we’re all made of the same flesh, blood and dust? Because by using our minds we will our own soul/identity into existence. There’s another advantage with an infinite Universe: anything is possible if there are no limits. I believe we make our own fates and create our own destinies.
I know I always rag on organized religion and question people’s personal beliefs – mostly because people are so fucking afraid to tip the Holy Cow of actually discussing their beliefs – so it’s not more than fair that I share with you my own beliefs, to give you a fighting chance.
I truly believe that whatever we believe in our hearts to be “true” really is true. To us. No matter how fucking crazy that is. That goes for the afterlife too. In an infinite Universe we will our own afterlife into existence as well. It is, after all, just an extension of our mind – our idea of Self, spending eternity in that last split second of life. In the very same way we dream and fantasize, drifting in and out of sleep or awareness, do we also create our own final resting place for our “soul”.
What do I believe will happen to my particular “soul” when I die? I believe there will always be an idea of “Self” for me somewhere in time and space, not necessarily the same “Self” as before, but a “Self” nonetheless. It’s not reincarnation – that suggests it is the same spirit resurfacing – it is stellar dust recycling, taking conscious form and willing a new “soul” into existence. A soul that will happen to be “Me”.
It’s funny. A friend once said to me, “We both founded our own personal belief systems on contemplating the Universe, but whereas I connect to it spiritually and draw physical strength from that massive energy, you connect and disconnect physically to a vast emptiness and then create your own spirit from its infinity.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Many philosophers and prophets have battled it out through the eons to see who can outwit or out-virtue who, trying to dismantle or assemble the idea of the Human Soul while in the chase of the Ultimate Truth.
Here is the truth:
There is no truth other than your own.
None.
The only thing that should be true to you is in your heart, epitomized by your own idea of “you” – call it spirit, soul or Self… it’s all the same. Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am” and that is probably the closest we as humans can ever get to agreeing about a basic spiritual belief system. For that statement in itself is a belief system – the only one you will need:
I think, therefore I am.
You gotta think to be.
Now there are, of course, different states of awareness – of being – and they all derive from your ability to use your mind. It’s when you stop thinking that you slowly cease to be all that you could be. Your “spirit” withers and dies at the hand of the very “guardian” you entrusted it with - your church. Sure, you will go to “Heaven” because you are being “good”, but according to whom? And whose heaven is it that you will be going to? Is that how you would have designed it, had the process of divine creation been up to you? Well, it is up to you. Be your own Creator. It is, after all, your life, right?
Who the hell died and made you the ultimate sucker? Jesus? Mohammed? Says who? I got the memo but I threw it the hell out.
So Jesus walked on water? Mohammed walked to the mountain? Well, Neil Armstrong walked on the fucking moon. How’s that for sticking it to The Man?
Instead of being mesmerized by what people around you can accomplish with their own faith in the world, see what you can do with yours. Maybe walking on water, or on the moon, is not for you, but fucking walk on something already.
Am I a cynic? Am I an atheist? Only others ever label you something like that while desperately trying to put you in a box with a nice description so they can file you away in the vaults of their own comfortable ignorance.
I say I am a realist. I look at the world the way it is. Not the way you, or anyone else, says it is. I take it in through my eyes, process it through my brain and then decide with my mind what to make of it. I will always investigate two sides of every story. I will never ever take anything for granted. I will always get to the bottom of anything that sounds even remotely unlikely to me. Occam’s Razor doesn’t even cut it with me. It still leaves too much uncertainty up for grabs. Only by finding out all the facts for yourself can you make educated decisions about your own life.
The Universe has thus spoken to me, by saying absolutely nothing at all.
Or you can just work life the opposite way, but by the same rules: Just fucking do it first and deal with the consequences later as they pop up. Like how my wife does things. That’s why we are the perfect couple. We’re both extreme realists, just adhering to the very opposite end theories of that realist scale, but at least one of us is always right down the line.
Balance in the Universe.
~ The Divine Tragedy ~
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Religion is the source of most things evil. Let me bone it out for you.
In Me I trust.
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