Enemy of Knowledge

"As priestcraft was always the enemy of knowledge, because priestcraft supports itself by keeping people in delusion and ignorance, it was consistent with its policy to make acquisition of knowledge a real sin."

- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason, part 2, p 129

Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo

"Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."

- Epicurus: "I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care."

p.s.: There is no possibility of an afterlife, hence no reason to fear death!

The Riddle of Epicurus

"God either wants to eliminate bad things and can not, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can.
If he wants to and can not, than he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, than he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"

- Lactantius: De Ira Deorum

Simple logic

If there is 'after-life' then there has to be 'before-life'.
I do not remember any details of my before-life.
Therefore I do not think I will witness any after-life.

- MG

Fear of God

"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum."

- Lucretius: De rerum natura

Religion

"Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell, unless it is the sorely limited mind that has failed to describe heaven - except as a place of either worldly comfort, eternal tedium, or (as Tertullian thought) continual relish in the torture of others."

- Christopher Hitchens: God is not great

Fable?

"Are there dragons?" she asked. I said that there were not. "Have there ever been?" I said all the evidence was to the contrary. "But if there is a word dragon," she said, "then once there must have been dragons."

- Penelope Lively: Moon Tiger (as quoted by Christopher Hitchens in "God is not great")

Our sins

If the maker made us with all the faults and sins we possess and exhibit, why is he forbidding us from and punishing us for committing those same sins?

- MG

Bravo Papa!

I am not a religious person and do not belong nor subscribe to any religious organization or belief, but I have to say that his latest remarks about religion and capitalism are the best thing that has come out of Vatican since their predecessors invented ten commandments.

Colonization

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. Than they said: "Let us pray". We closed our eyes and we prayed. And when we opened our eyes we had the Bible and they had our land."

 - Bishop Desmond Tutu

Manipulations

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

-Thomas Paine ("The age of reason")

The Purpose

Can you imagine, if it takes only the smartest few of us to question and probe into the unknowns of life, and life was originated from the simplest chemical reaction imaginable (photosynthesis), how insignificant and simple we really are?

If this is true, than the dinosaurs had the equal right to believe they are the chosen ones too.

And if that is true, than, chances are, we are not.

My God...

If one believes his God is one and only, omnipotent creator of the universe and better than anyone else's, isn't one simply acknowledging the existence of more than one God? And if all those Gods created their universes, how many universes are there? And why are we then all stuck together on this tiny planet? Why don't we all just go and live in peace in our own universes where we won't be bothered by other people and their Gods?

How ungodly.

If one believes his God is the same God that everyone else believes in, but he thinks his way is the only proper way of worshiping and following God's word (and that's the case with more or less any organized religion) then we here on earth have a case of ass kissing of grandest proportions.

How ungodly.

And if one believes his God is the same God that everybody else believes in, and he thinks his way and everybody else's ways are just cultural and traditional variations of the same way, then there should be no problem in crossing (or abandoning) religious boundaries and believing that we all are as one believing in one God.

How Godly.

Are religions using us to procure the old "divide et impera" philosophy?

Organized religion, how ungodly.

God

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."
- Voltaire

Basics:

1. Who are we?

2. Where do we come from?

3. Why are we here?

Creation vs Evolution

A combination of the two is most likely the answer. Let me try to explain what I mean...

If an action calls for a reaction than reaction needs an action as well. In this case: if the Big Bang was the beginning than what caused it. It couldn't have happened by itself (is the chicken really older than an egg?). There had to have been an action that had created this reaction. The Big Bang had to have been preceded by something else (creation). And all the subsequent phases in the development of the universe, solar system, earth, living creatures were nothing but adaptations and reactions to the existing conditions (evolution). Therefore some form of initial force (creation) was needed in the beginning, and was rudimentary, giving only rough guidelines to the development (evolution) which is suppose to continue and arrive at the purpose point.

Consequently, we arrive at the question weather the action (creation) was an accident or was it done with some particular purpose. The answer might lie in the existence and interpretation of our genetic code. The shear presence of the code in all of the living creatures warrants the coexistence of both creation (someone had to have programmed it) and evolution (the main purpose of the code is to guide the evolutionary development). Just the existence itself (I think therefore I am) leads one to believe of the purpose behind creation, but once we are able to fully encode our genes we might be able to answer this question.

Now, given the fact that I believe what I just mentioned, I need to know who is playing with us and what kind of game are we all involved in? If anybody is playing any games.

I don't think life would be as interesting if we knew all the answers, but being that we are curious creatures, the quest continues.