Methodical Musings

I sit here at work, slightly bored but with tons to do – waiting for my boss to respond to a phone call so he can make some changes to some server-side crap so I can finish some client-side crap. Yay for my life.

I was just perusing Facebook. So many old friends who are moving on with their lives as if my tortuous leaving the faith did not matter. It bothers me that in their worldview I am going to hell and it does not seem to bother them. When I was a Christian it bothered me something awful that other people were potentially going to hell. But how many people today care about me?

I think I completely overrestimated the love of Christians – they are honestly no different than anyone else.

But the truth is that I don’t want them to care about that so much as I wish they cared about the truth. I wish they did… but they don’t. Their entire mind and worldview is consumed with the underlying assumption they already have it and nothing anyone – especially an apostate like me – can do will even remotely influence their thinking. They are consumed with the feelings and results of Christianity so much that they feel it is fruitless to inspect the foundation. The feelings and the results are the proof. They don’t need fact. They just want to be happy and comfortable – just like everyone else.

Then it bothers me that I love my life. I love my friends. I love my job. I love the world I live in. I love them. But they won’t genuinely accept any of this as truth because they must, they *must* believe that I am deeply unhappy inside… empty… void. When I’m not. There is no God-shaped hole that needs filling.

Will they believe me? No. They won’t. They’ll call me a liar and slander me in their hearts – like they have done and continue to do over and over. I hate that.

Honestly, the only big thing that really bothers me these days is knowing what they think about me. Or that they are not thinking about me at all. I want to just forget about all of them completely.  The other day I told a friend that I felt like an orphan sometimes… and honestly I felt happy about it. I would rather just move on so much that I feel like I don’t even have a family than deal with the emotions of knowing I have a family that deeply believes I am going to hell and is unwilling to seriously talk to me about it.  They feel they have the “good news”. Good news? Who are you kidding?

I can’t trust the supposed love of any individual who is unwilling to meet me half-way.

But beyond that, I’m happy. So happy. I feel free, so free.

So if any of my family is reading, please… pushing aside my obvious frustration with your beliefs… take some serious time to get to know me and what I think.

I’m willing to admit you might be right, are you willing to do unto others as Jesus commanded and admit that I might have been right? And then are you willing to figure a way to determine who is right? And then do you have the moral gumption to actually get off your ass and do something about it? Or are you as shallow and petty and comfortable in your moral towers as the Pharisees?

You might be surprised at how some of you have treated me and if you only took a moment you would realize that all my anger this last two years is justified.

I’m still waiting.

Are any of you brave enough to face what I know about your faith and loving enough to see past the obvious hurt, calloused, and bruised exterior to see that inside my heart still wants the best for you?

I’m completely alone before my own family and the only ones who listen are not from my hometown.

- Jesus

Le Chauffeur

Chicago is known for its storms and this last Tuesday was no exception. Dinesh and Loftus were scheduled for a debate that evening and beforehand Brandt and I were going to meet up with some other fellow skeptics and discuss the meaning of life, etc.

Due to some extenuating circumstances and the weather, I ended up calling David – the debate coordinator – to find out what the plan was given the weather and some contradictory information I had received from blogs. During the call, he mentioned that Dinesh’s flight was due to arrive in Chicago at noon and he was to catch a connecting flight to fly to Champaign. But there was this issue of the heavy snow, low visibility, and ice…

So I offered to drive Dinesh from Chicago to Champaign if needed.

Well, long story short Brandt and I drove to O’Hare and picked up Dinesh D’Souza in Terminal 3 and drove him to Champaign.

Impressions

As you can imagine, I was just as excited about the opportunity to drive Dinesh D’Souza as I would have been to drive someone like Christopher Hitchens. Realistically they are almost equally popular. Dinesh is known for his political views, having dated Ann Coulter, and countless books – including several New York Times bestsellers. Furthermore, he is known for his choice to be a Catholic and for being a formidable debater on the subject of athiesm / theism.

And all I wanted to do was see if I could pick his brain.

I had no intention of starting a debate in the car, but just a small hope that we would at least be able to discuss his views and mine. Thankfully this did occur.

Now, I don’t mean to be judgmental in what follows, but my first impression was that Dinesh was more socially capable than intellectually capable. Our conversation started light and it was obvious that Dinesh thought Brandt and I were sympathetic with his views from many comments he made. He would talk about the “new atheists” as if they were our mutual enemy and I would have felt bad just going “well, hey, we are both atheists” so I decided to take an extremely passive approach to our conversation in which, by asking questions, I slowly revealed my views. It took Dinesh a good hour or more to catch on, but I don’t blame him. He was under the impression the event coordinator (a Catholic) and us were good friends and that was why we were driving him. Given that, it makes sense that he would assume we were “on his side”.

I started my questions / statements out light. The first little opportunity I had was when Dinesh made a comment about how colleges and universities tend to be more secular than their surrounding neighborhoods / cities. I casually mentioned that it made sense, given the fact that all the students are generally being exposed to more information than they have ever had access to and so it is quite believable that many of them would choose views considered more liberal by those “back home”. I remember Dinesh didn’t really say anything and I got the impression he had not thought of it quite that way before.

This obviously lead to deeper conversations about the upcoming debate, etc. Somehow (I can’t remember exactly how) the conversation did get to questions about God, etc. and I began mentioning questions I had. It didn’t take long for Dinesh to catch on to the fact that my questions were coming from a very fundamentalist perspective and I remember him mentioning that he thought the fundamentalist and atheist view of the Bible were basically the same. Apparently he thought both were wrong and I can’t blame him given how little knowledge he had about the Bible. This is where the conversation got interesting.

My biggest question was why – if the truths of Christianity are timeless – do we keep having to update old apologetic questions with newer, shinier arguments. I mentioned the cosmological to kalam cosmological progression and asked the pointed question “how do we know that we are not just inventing arguments?”

Dinesh’s response was somewhat unique to me. He seems to have a view that discovery of truth about God is similar to discovery of truth about science. Over time, our understanding grows and he actually said that he thought we should view the Bible the same way we view the Constitution. I tried to prod him for more information, since I mentioned that the Constitution isn’t based on any historical truth claims like the Bible is and he recognized that his analogy broke down at that point. My memory is a little fuzzy as to where the conversation went at this point, but needless to say his comparison of the Bible to the consitution sheds a lot of light on the fact that he has no problem debating without using any Scripture.

Then things got weirder. In answering my question about the invention process of apologetics, he also mentioned that the reason we need apologetics is because the “Bible doesn’t contain any arguments”. I was floored by this statement, and so I flat out told him he was wrong. He asked me to tell him how he was wrong. So I did. I began by pointing out all the arguments in Scripture given – especially from passages by Paul. I mentioned 1 Corinthians 15. I had to explain to him all the arguments in the passage that Paul gave for the resurrection of Jesus. He tried to dismiss it by saying those were “internal arguments”. As if that makes any solid difference. I think he was trying to say apologetics is needed because the Bible is for internal use, and apologetics is for external use. I, obviously, tried to show him that this isn’t the case. The Bible contains arguments for external use as well, and at this point I realized the conversation wouldn’t go to far because he kept having to ask me what passages of Scripture said and I realized I had a strong upper hand at this point.

First lesson learned: if you want to debate Dinesh focus on the thing he always wants to ignore in his debates: Scripture. He doesn’t know squat about it. He even mentioned he wouldn’t debate Bart Ehrman because he knew Bart was a professional in that area – so he wouldn’t even bother debating him. He had no clue about the great number of canon’s in the first century, etc. and dismissed any points I made about them.

At this point our conversation kept getting off track. I kept trying to pinpoint a particular thing, point out how his endless analogies break down, etc. and Dinesh kept acting like he didn’t want to get into exact details about things. I pointed out how strongly different science is from discovering spiritual truth. That got us off into a tangent about the afterlife, NDEs, aliens, etc. I have to confess that I grew to respect Dinesh’s epistemology. At least he was consistent. At one point he said that neither atheists nor theists know where we go after we die. That was interesting. He also mentioned we don’t know whether aliens exist or not.

Endless Ridiculous Analogies

With all due respect, Dinesh is good at making horrible analogies that are hard to spot.

Somehow our conversation got into the subject of comparing belief in God to belief in aliens. Dinesh mentioned in the car the exact same analogy he used during the debate with Loftus. Imagine you enter a town and start meeting all these people who talk about meeting a guy named Tom. Yet you never meet Tom. After a while of never meeting Tom you conclude all these people are deluded because you can’t find Tom. Does this mean Tom doesn’t exist?

In the debate, Dinesh added the phrase “have a little more respect for human opinion!” (or something to that effect) Since so many people claim to have “met” God, we can trust they are probably reflecting a genuine human experience.

This analogy is downright awful. The way to counter is so simple I can’t believe Loftus didn’t pick up on it. Extend the analogy to more closely resemble the actual truth:

Imagine you enter a village of people who all claim to have met Tom. But you never see Tom. Then you begin to talk to everyone about this fellow Tom. Some people say Tom is super nice and loves everyone and wouldn’t harm a fly. Other people say Tom is super mean and beats up everyone who doesn’t agree with him perfectly. Some people say Tom has 3 heads, and other people say he has only one. Some people say Tom hates gay people and other people say Tom loves them. Some people say everything Tom says is super clear and if you don’t get what Tom is saying you are deluded. Other people say Tom sometimes speaks in riddles and its okay to not understand him. One group in the village says that Tom wants them to kill everyone who doesn’t agree with what they say Tom said. Another group says Tom wants everyone in the village to be at peace and to avoid bloodshed. Some people even tortured others because they said Tom told them to. Other people started a hospital to treat the torture victims because Tom told them to! But no matter how hard you try, you can’t meet Tom and get his direct opinion – all you ever get is second hand contradictory information.

As you can see, Dinesh’s analogy is downright awful. Just awful. The latter is closer to the truth.

Dinesh and My Story

At this point in the conversation I began to tell Dinesh about my story. I began to mention how my fear about not being saved nearly lead me to be suicidal. Honestly, he acted like he had never considered this type of position before. I explained to him how I felt like I shouldn’t keep living because if I could believe now and not believe later and go to hell, why should I bother at all? He honestly sympathized with my spiritual predicament. Then he tried to pass it off at first as being too “fundamentalist” but I didn’t let him get away with it.

I explained how at an early age I read the Bible regularly and began to seek hearing God’s voice. I mean, they heard it in the Bible – why couldn’t I? That lead to actually having voices in my head which I thought were spiritual. This lead to deep depression, confusion, and anxiety.

Then I explained to Dinesh how I discovered the voices were not real – by using science. I also explained how this made the voices go away. So I solved the riddle of the voices in my head – brought on by devotion to Christian teaching – by applying reason and science and then applied the lesson I learned to entirety of what Christianity hinges on:

“How do I know that the people who talk about God speaking to them in the Bible were not suffering from the same thing I suffered – but they just never discovered the voices were not real?”

At this point I noticed a distinct change in Dinesh’s dimeanor. It was obvious to me that I had hit a chord with him he perhaps had never dealt with before and I backed off quite a bit. If I had pressed him on these exact points in a real debate, I think I would have won with”half my brain tied behind my back”.

I backed off. A lot. I then gave Dinesh some tips on debating Loftus to distill some good will and mentioned that I would feel bad if we kept “discussing” these things because it might hurt Dinesh’s throat before the big debate and he probably wanted to prepare.

Rather interestingly, Dinesh mentioned he does a lot better in debates if he doesn’t prepare for them. He said it is much easier for him to go with the flow.

Obviously we discussed a lot more (like, for example, “impossible questions” – e.g. “when did time begin?”) but I think this is already getting pretty long.

Conclusion

Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the debate. Dinesh used all the same stuff he used in the car with me – for which I pointed out flaw after flaw, and I felt a lot like he was a parrot on stage. He was doing exactly what it took to win the debate. And he did.

But I agree with Brandt… I enjoyed our in-car conversation a lot more.

Hmmm, I’ve got Dinesh’s number… I wonder if I should challenge him to a debate :)

- Josh

Yes, yes I did. Two full hours in the car with him and Brandt (The Jesting Fool)… including some in car debate. I’ll plan on posting details later.

Nice guy… doesn’t know very much about the Bible (I had to explain to him what 1 Corinthians 15 says), but he is a formidable debater.

As a side note, one of the weirdest claims he made in the car was that the “Bible contains no arguments”. His idea was that the Bible just assumes certain things are true and that is that… so this is why we need apologetics, in order to tackle the logical arguments leading to the Bible’s assumptions. It was such a weird comment it almost made me wonder if he had read the Bible. So I started one by one to show him arguments that the Apostle Paul had made (for example, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 15) and was doing most of it from memory – since I was driving. He didn’t, for example, know about the passage in Scripture where Paul mentions being baptized for the dead. I got the impression his Christianity is a very surface one.

The best comment of the trip: [after telling him my story about voices in my head] “It is interesting that taking it so seriously…[voice trailed off into silence]“

:)

Stay tuned,

- Josh

I‘m planning on attending this debate.

Right now it looks like we are having a small group of us meet up beforehand in Champaign, IL. Details to be determined.

If you are going to attend and would like to meet up with us, let me know.

- Josh

A while ago, when I was reading up on the atheist / theist debate, I remember coming across multiple instances where an atheist would say:

“God is non-answer.”

As a Christian I remember going “what? That’s a clever ruse. Just say it isn’t an answer and dismiss it off-hand?” I honestly thought it was a stupid, clever trick to dismiss God.

But then I’ve been thinking about it. “God did everything” or “God allowed everything” or “God made everything” or “God is everywhere” or “God designed everything” or “God has every answer” or “God knows” are not very useful statements. They are just as useful as “Satan is the source of all lies” or “sin is the source of all suffering” or “government corruption is caused by greed”. For, if we were to honestly apply those answers in our daily lives, they would get us no where.

~

For each question below, consider the usefulness of the answers “God”, “Satan”, or “Sin”. Then consider the usefulness of the other answers. Then ask yourself: would ignoring the answers “God”, “Satan”, and “Sin” make any difference in my life?

Q1: Where do babies come from?

A1: God

A2: Sex

Q2: What causes earthquakes?

A1: Sin

A2: Satan

A3: Natural causes that can be studied to help us avoid earthquake prone areas.

Note: if you answer A1 or A2, what method are you going to use to determine which one is the correct answer?

Q3: Where does lightning come from?

A1: Satan

A2: God

A3: Built up electric charges between two large bodies, like a cloud and the earth.

Note: if you answer A1 or A2, what method are you going to use to determine which one is the correct answer? Also note that (A1) and (A2) are polar opposites, so saying “it could be either one” is quite a difference.

Q4: What causes illnesses?

A1: Satan (attack)

A2: God (testing)

A3: Sin (punishment)

A4: Bacteria and viruses that can be avoided by excessive contact with the sick, regular washing of the hands, and medicinal treatments.

Note: if you answer A1, A2, or A3, what method are you going to use to determine which one is the correct answer? Keep in mind that A1, A2, and A3 are radically different answers… it would be best to have a method to determine which one is accurate!

Q5: Why is my marriage falling apart?

A1: Satan is attacking us

A2: My spouse is sinning

A3: I am sinning

A4: I am having an affair

A5: I am lying about my affair and my spouse is catching on…

Out of all these answer, the most practical one is (A5), all the other answers are pretty meaningless, even if they could be said to be “true”. And keep in mind, that saying “having an affair is sinful” is a completely meaningless statement. It doesn’t matter whether having an affair is sinful or not, what matters is that having the affair and lying about it are the cause of the marriage falling apart. We are assuming here that a marriage falling apart is a bad thing. (A5) is the only meaningful and useful answer out of all of them – and it says nothing about whether Satan or sin is involved! (A5) just says “having an affair and lying about it is causing your marriage to fall apart”. End of story. There is no need to insert a spiritual commentary at all and the answer reveals itself without any reference to sin or Satan. The solution? Stop having the affair if you want your marriage to stop falling apart!

~

Answering “God”, “Sin”, or “Satan” to everyday questions may be convenient by categorizing an item as caused by something benevolent (God), caused by ourselves (Sin), or caused by something malevolent (Satan). However, beyond that the answers are completely meaningless. These answers simply give us a way to categorize and personify the source of an item in question. But that is all these answers do.

“God”, “Satan”, and “Sin” are useless non-answers that are completely subjective depending on the mood, the neuroticism, and the doctrinal standing of the individual throwing them around as answers. They are completely useless answers in our daily lives, which is why non-theists can get along just fine without them.

- Josh

Things to ponder about an afterlife / spiritual realm…

1: Reports from Lack of Experience

Every person who has ever described anything about an afterlife has never actually died themselves or their death is highly questionable (like Daniel Ekechukwu). This includes the apostle John, apostle Paul, Daniel, etc.

2: Greatest Possible Reports are Curiously Missing from History

Those who had the greatest chance to report on the afterlife never reported anything except supposedly through third-party individuals who had a reputation to gain or uphold by those alleged reports.

• Lazarus. Zero reports. No book? Not even a sentence describing the experience?
• All the other conveniently unnamed people Jesus rose from the dead. Zero reports on the afterlife. And what’s up with not naming an individual who supposedly rose from the dead? “And then Bob raised a dude from the dead.” Get real, with all the hoaxes out there, I want full names, locations, and ability to track down people who were there.
• All the conveniently unnamed people who supposedly rose from the grave in Matthew at Christ’s death. No reports. And this mass resurrection was reported in only one gospel in a few sentences! That’s it? A couple sentences in the entire historical record to recount a mass resurrection? Not a single soul wrote a book about one of those instances?
• Resurrection of widows’ sons via both Elisha and Elijah. The kids never wrote a book about the experience? Wasn’t anyone curious what the afterlife was like?
• Paul supposedly went to the third heaven, but then claims he could not talk about it. Convenient? Yet even in that case there is no verification that he actually died himself, so how did he know he was seeing the third heaven and not just having a temporal lobe seizure? We’re just supposed to take his word for it?
• The boy Paul rose from the dead after falling out the window. No reports from the boy. At all. Interesting, no?
• Everyone else…

3: Contradictory Reports

Two of the apostles directly contradict each other about the simplest item about heaven you can possibly imagine: whether a person who has been there can talk about it.

Paul: “Can’t talk about it.” (2 Corinthians 12:4)

John: “Let me write everything…” (Revelations)

Interesting.

4: Afterlife Explanations are Always Based on Physical Models

All reports of afterlife experiences are always explained in terms of items in this physical realm (golden streets, ability to speak, human-like bodies floating around, Christ seated on a throne, etc.) If there genuinely was a spiritual ‘soul’, there is no reason at all that it would be like our physical body except that the spiritual realm is a human invention modeled after our physical realm.

After all, what would we need a digestive track for in a world where we cannot grow, die, or reproduce? Why would we need legs if we supposedly can float through walls? What is the point of facial characteristics in heaven if we can recognize everyone? Why the need for the ability to speak in heaven if the spiritual realm right now can communicate through thoughts and over great distances?

If your explanation of the afterlife involves superimposed and / or fantastical physical characteristics, you have just revealed your spiritual realm is a mind trick. After all, what’s the point of a physical realm if the spiritual realm already contains those same properties?

If a person cannot describe a spiritual realm but in terms of the physical, then it is safe to say that we do not have spiritual properties. If we were intrinsically spiritual, we would not be limited to describing things only in terms of the physical.

5: Afterlife is aMental Illusion

For those who do believe in an afterlife, I have a mental exercise for you. See if you can pass:

1) Imagine absolutely nothing.

2) Now imagine the existence of a spiritual realm without any physical properties (like space, time, color, light, sound, etc.)

If you can not do this, you have proven you cannot possess a spiritual soul that can coexist independent of your physical body because you cannot comprehend anything without assuming the existence of the physical.

Conclusion

All the key explanations of a spiritual afterlife are always – curiously – a more pleasant or violent realm with physical characteristic.

Therefore, this reveals that our ideas of the afterlife are born of human desires for our present physical realm – not reality of a spiritual one.

- Josh

In a previous post, I expressed how I had shown all of the signs of religious addiction. Since that post, I’ve on occasion thought about this issue and realize that the very act of admitting the problem and recognizing that – without a doubt – that was my issue, things have begun to look quite brighter.

But, until recently I have also been watching my behavior and have recognized patterns in myself that, quite frankly, are almost like a crack addict going back to get small fixes. I’ll turn on my computer and before I know it, like a porn addict immediately beginning to look for “innocent” nudie pics, I will find myself searching through anti-religion blogs or watching YouTube videos on the subject.

Then yesterday something happened.

I was hanging out with my friend Sam before we went out partying and a little of his story began to come out. Apparently he recently had a complete nervous breakdown before I met him. This followed some trauma related to an ex-girlfriend who committed suicide. But the way he describe the experience and the pieces I picked up told me that a large part of his breakdown was due to theology.

In school he began studying theology in depth. I don’t think he was ever a Christian as we would have described it back in my fundamentalist days, but he was certainly driven toward the God-concept.

Then he described how during his complete nervous breakdown, he was looking at his whole life and seeing connections with everything and started imagining that a God was behind it all. On the one hand it was scary as shit thinking about what he went through, and on the other hand it was quite a relief. His experience was like my day-to-day experience in the faith… trying to retain sanity and yet the mind trying desperately to reconcile reality with a concept that every event is a significant clue to God’s working.

Anyway, it only convinced me more that I need to treat religion – even my recent foray into a deist perspective – with the healthy respect it deserves. Like drugs or anything else, it needs to be tempered by self-control and a healthy intellect.

One of the cool things is that now that I have identified a root to a lot of my emotional problems, they are starting to disappear. I’m finding myself with a new stability… a new self-control. I’m learning not to let my mind wander endlessly toward religious concepts, trying desperately to figure it out. Instead, I’m trying to keep a healthy reservation and perspective on it all.

It was great that last night the two theological conversations that did come up… I didn’t start :) It felt freeing. The second one I didn’t even participate in, because it was between a drunk and the cab driver, but still… not getting involved probably felt like an ex-alcoholic walking into a bar and having the ability to refuse a drink.

I don’t check Ray Comfort’s blog anymore. I can turn on my computer without immediately going to religion blogs. I can go for hours without thinking about religion.

I’m seeing the light, and it was here all the time. I don’t need an external source of emotional stability, I have it right here… me. And if I can’t live with myself, what do I have?

- Josh

A room filled with people – the noise pulsating back and forth – each person caught up in the moment. At the edge of the room, several individuals dance their heart out to the deep bass of the jass music coming from the band in front of me. I make eye contact several times with an extremely cute girl who slowly makes her way my direction and ends up standing next to me. I freeze. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to say anything.  So I don’t hit on her – even though I knew in my gut she wanted me to, her arm brushing mine.

It’s just too much. The whole thing is. Too many bodies, too many faces, too much noise, too much energy to figure it all out. Too many voices, inflections in voices, too many relationships and friends, too many styles of clothing… I feel like I’m in complete overload mode and I can’t handle it. I want to find a chair in a corner and just sit and watch people for an hour… because then I know I will feel comfortable about everything and then I could rock the party with cool confidence and approach anyone out of the blue.  I’ve been that way before, but not with new groups of people!

Every half an hour or so I have to walk to the other quiet room. Each person’s face in that pulsating, crowded room tells a story – a past – and reveals a whole set of emotions and intentions and, in many ways, I feel like I can see through it all. I’m rarely surprised when someone tells me something about themselves… in fact I can often predict things about people and their intentions and on many occasions it has made people mad, confused, or scared about me. But when there are that many faces, it is just too much… too much information to figure out. I don’t know how to handle it.

But tonight, I was trying desperately to enjoy the party like everyone else around me… and I did, but only by getting away from the group almost every 15-20 minutes… into the other quiet room to sit and think seemingly about next to nothing for five minutes. And then I could go back into the party.

And I’ve been trying to figure out why this is. Why do I feel this way? Why do parties and large groups of new people in particular drain all the energy and comfort from me, when it seems like others gain momentum and energy by large groups of people. Sure everyone feels nervous, but I’m not nervous. Honestly, I’m perfectly confident in myself, but I just lack all comfort and energy for some reason – like I’m almost autistic in a way.  Why do I always feel complete overload for the first hour or so in a large group of people and then relax – completely independent of my alcohol intake?

And then it clicked. I figured it out. I figured it out tonight, and it’s a great discovery for the new year.

I’ve always seen things or picked up things that other people never notice. My dad is often the same way.

So here is my theory. When I see large groups of new people, my mind is taking so much information in it just freezes up and doesn’t know what to do. I get uncomfortable and feel like I’m an actor on a stage – like I am not myself. I feel like I have to fake my responses to everything because I honestly don’t know how to relate to someone else when I feel like I am in that overload mode. I have to get away and let my mind process everything I have not yet consciously noticed. I can know something but until I get away and let my mind process it in silence I don’t have confidence in that knowledge.  Once it is processed, I am okay, but I can’t just jump into a situation like that. I can’t do it, without feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed and even somehow bored.

Anyway, then I came home and read this article.

And that describes me to a T. I could not have said it better.

- Josh

What better way to end the year than with my top crushes list!

Here they are:

1. Katie Melua

2. Lily Allen

That’s it. I can’t think of any others.

So here’s my top wish list for 2010:

1. Katie Melua

2. Lily Allen

3. Switch career to computer game design

4. Not think about religion

5. Become famous for being clever

God, I’m in a weird mood.

Haha

- Josh

P.S. If you don’t have a crush on Katie Melua, something is wrong with you.

I’m not really sure why I’m writing this post… maybe a small part of me hopes it helps someone else out. “Let me… help you… help yourself” – or so it goes.

I’ve probably had some pretty whacked ideas in the past, and I hope this post doesn’t fall into that category. Here goes.

Growing up I always either suppressed my real feelings or let them out at the wrong times. Things only grew more and more conflicted as I got deeper into Christianity, but to some extent that is beside the point of this article. The point is that I had an agent that was teaching me to feel certain things and not feel others. Ultimately, I felt all of my emotions were either hijacked by these spiritual voices telling me what I was supposed to feel or suppressed by spiritual voices telling me that I was not supposed to feel a certain way. When emotions are a crime, you can get really fucked up.

So this last year I’ve been learning how to feel again. To feel what comes naturally without those constant urges to not feel that way or to feel differently or to fear certain potential feelings.

One way I have been doing this by letting myself address the exact feelings that I feel, even if they are slight. I used to sometimes stay home all evening and just… do nothing… just let myself feel whatever came to me. Sometimes this lead to extreme anger at people in my past who I felt had hurt me and yelling or cursing them in the privacy of my apartment. Sometimes it lead to getting drunk, other times it lead to going out and drinking at random bars, and other times I would just spend all evening watching porn.

My point is that I let myself feel exactly what I needed to feel in a safe way. Eventually this lead to be open and honest with individuals… letting my emotions be known. And finally that came to a head recently when I really let my parents – in particular my dad – know what I genuinely thought. The emotions were thick and heavy, but I had to get it out.

Since then, I’ve been so much calmer. Something has definitely changed. I feel more alive, more ready to face the world. I find myself feeling more in control of my environment – and even my own emotions. I’m sleeping better and dreaming. I feel feelings I haven’t literally felt since I was probably a child… from emotionally connecting with the tiniest gusts of wind to the excitement of a phone call or just enjoying my little side hobbies in a way I haven’t in a long time.

So I guess what I’m saying is that being honest with yourself about exactly what you feel – even if it scares you – is important. Life is too short to live, but not feel. And if you want to feel, you have to be honest about what you feel and what you want to feel. But you’ll never feel what you want to feel until you acknowledge exactly what you do feel… right now.

If you can’t trust your feelings when you feel like absolute shit or hate the entire world, you won’t truly trust your feelings when you are feeling marvelous – you’ll be suspicious of them and never truly enjoy the beauties of life.

This is especially true for those of us who were Christians are are dealing with all the hijacking that religion did in our lives. You probably have a lot of feelings you don’t want to admit because admitting it will make you feel dirty, and you don’t want to feel dirty. But you need to feel dirty. You need to acknowledge it and recognize it for what it is: conditioning by a group of self-righteous ignorant pricks who wanted you to feel dirty for being normal. Who fucking cares what they thought? This is your only life. Feel it. Better to feel like shit, and feel something, than to ignore it and feel nothing at all. Find a safe place, scream at the top of your lungs. Write out all your awful feelings on a piece of paper. Make a dart board with your pastor’s face. I don’t care, but make sure you find a safe way to express what you truly feel.

Why?

So that you can move on and not feel that – or have to suppress it – anymore. You might be surprised, thinking expressing what you truly feel will unleash a massive beast that will consume you. The honest truth is that you only feed the beast and make it bigger and more dangerous when you don’t let it out regularly.

Oh, one final thing. Most people (that I have met) love emotional honesty, even if it is what they don’t want to hear. Why? Because often they are already suspicious that you feel that way anyway and being honest with them helps them move on too.

Oh, one more thing. If you’ve been suppressing your feelings for a long time, don’t be surprised if you don’t know what you feel about a lot of things. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.

Anyway, my probably worthless $0.02…

Cheers,

- Josh