For a long time, from about age sixteen, until my mid-twenties, I considered myself a pretty committed atheist. Note that I said atheist<\/span>, not agnostic. Even before I recommitted to theism, I was hostile towards the idea basic ideas underlying fundamental agnostic thought. (Yes, they’re fundamentalists….<\/strong>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n You’ll never have enough evidence to know<\/strong>; it’s impossible to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, that’s fine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, you, as an individual, can make a decision based on the evidence you have. I can’t ever know whether gravity is an absolute certainty, either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But I have enough evidence to wholeheartedly support the theory<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to God, the afterlife, etc., there might not be enough evidence for you to make a pronouncement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You do have enough evidence to make a judgment on just about anything; Han shot first. You are allowed to change your mind when you get new evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I actually got into a conversation the other day after listening to an interview with Bryan “Hotep Jesus” Sharpe. He’s written a book about the origins of some of the American wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s things I thought about the First World War that have really been shaken over the past few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Triple Alliance’s story about what happened seems to be, well, less than true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had the same feeling as things were coming out about the Covington Catholic kids while I was at Shmoocon. Okay, so the kid is in a MAGA hat, and he’s smirking as this guy is beating a drum next to his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twitter, CNN, etc., are saying that the kid had a punch-able face, and that these affluenza kids were harassing a brave native American veteran. Reason did a good job covering all of this<\/a>. But if you stopped taking in new evidence about it after hearing your chosen outlet’s initial reporting, you’d never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you took in information from multiple sources, you might get the wrong story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chuck Todd would say that it’s dangerous<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are people close to me who refuse to investigate further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To me, however, very little is permanently-settled<\/p>\n\n\n\n TRUST THE SCIENCE!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know, the sort of science that said that COVID came from the thing in the wet market that Randy Marsh nailed<\/a>, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the other things that Bryan is hitting on is the idea of self-perfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I get it, but it makes me doubly-jealous. First, there’s lots of things I think I’d like to do that my body just won’t cooperate with. Second, my will power is weak more often than I’d like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following a religion’s self-control teachings, however, is something that does help with the self-perfection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You learn a lot about being a responsible adult from participating in something that taxes you both mentally and physically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For some, that’s religion. For others, it’s serious sports training. For others, still, it’s things like joining the military. Whatever. You structure your thinking towards a certain cause, and it helps you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some people like this guy<\/a> have embraced things like Orthodox Christianity. But, really, does it matter what it is? There’s a basic human need to do that sort of thing, whether it’s one of the Abrahamic religions<\/a>, one of the Eastern religions, Scientology, whatever. I’m pretty well convinced that this is something that humans need<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That doesn’t fit well with either Atheism. It also doesn’t really fit in with Evangelical Agnosticism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you ever wish for something you’re, in a way, participating in some sort of mystical experience. Ever hold your breath watching the completion of a competition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does that ever affect anything?<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why do you do it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d planned to start writing this the other day, and I forgot. It’s evidence, maybe, that my therapy is working. I have OCD, and the writing streaks might be an example of a compulsion. I’m supposed to avoid them. Oh well. Writing makes me focus my thoughts. Nice segue into the topic for today — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/control-h.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/wwi_hotep.png\")
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