AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I believe in Heaven and Hell, but what I don't get is why people say you need to be baptized to get into heaven.

It's splashing water on your head. You do that everyday in the shower. Does God really care if you're a good person, but you didn't have water poured on your head by a priest?

I believe in reincarnation as purification, in a way.

Honestly, I think that you decide what happens to you, but there is usually a punishment system of some sort (especially for those especially on the cruel/'evil' side).

If you want me to babble about what I think will happen to myself, I will.

I was kinda Christian, then an atheist, then a Christian again. Well, sorta Christian. I believe in God and Jesus and all that jazz, but I don't really subscribe to all parts of the religion. It's more faith than just religion.

And then Jesus was just a pretty cool guy, messiah or not.


I thought that was more the Old Testament? And in the New Testament he was nicer and Jesus came around and all that. But I actually haven't read much of the Bible, so eh.

Once again knowing very little about it, I was under the impression the Church of Satan had more to do with nature than with Satan himself, but I haven't looked it up in a few years.



also also i wish people could just be nice to each other about all this. since most of the time it goes "my side is right and yours is wrong you suck."

In a way, it's like a rite of passage.
When you are a child, you are excluded for anything you do and are sinless because you don't know any better. But once you do learn Right from Wrong and become old enough to know better, you get baptized to "Cleanse Your Soul" and to signify you accept Jesus as your savior and blah blah blah.

moar u know

But...but I already do ;-;

u hav 2 get baptised 4 it 2 b offical dude

duh

My views: don't be a dick.

+1

I apologize if I babble too much in the following paragraph, but I was struck with inspiration and simply wrote, in an almost trance-like state. I get these sometimes, where I the words just flow from my hands and I free my mind from my physical constraints. A writer's nirvana, if you will. It's difficult to describe, but I don't plan what I'm writing. I just write. Afterward, I probably couldn't even tell you what I wrote about. It's like Dostoyevsky's epilepsy, but without the actual epilepsy portion. I guess what I'm trying to say here is BE PREPARED FOR A WALL OF TEXT.

Personally, looking back, I'm amazed at how we've come in the advancement of gay rights. Or civil rights in general. We've still got a ways to go, but it seems that with each new generation, we take another step forward in equality for everybody. Perhaps it's for the best that humans have short life spans, because as the older generation becomes more set in its ways, the new generation comes along and replaces them. Their youthful naivety is adventitious, for they are a clean slate. They are new to the ways to the world, and are given no reason to hate other than interaction with the older generation or disillusionment. They do not remember the events that happened before their time, which is, once again, arguably for the best. For with the absence of memory comes the absence of perspective. And with the absence of perspective comes the absence of bitterness and hatred. They grow up in a world that is slightly better than the one that their predecessors grew up in. It may be only slightly better, but that does not mean that the improvement is not noticeable. Idealism is what creates progress. Realism is what drives it. Find the perfect balance of the two and 'obstacles' is nothing more than a mere word. There was one, distinct generation that managed to find that balance and grasp it tightly: the generation that accomplished what seemed to be an insurmountable task; the generation that rebuilt the world after we had scorched and scarred the earth beyond all recognition. The Greatest Generation. The war left many scars, visible or otherwise. But like all scars, they left the scarred stronger. Through the war, they achieved catharsis. They saw how quickly life could be taken away from you. How short our life spans really are. The war should have left them demoralized. Instead, it gave renewed resolve. It was through their rigid work ethic that they repaired a world that was once broken. It was with their calloused hands that they recreated the shattered framework of society into something better. When the war began, they were mere boys. The combat, the bloodshed, and the destruction shaped them into men. The older generation had sent them to war and resulted in their disenfranchisement of the old ways. As luck would have it, this was the best scenario that could possibly be achieved. The generation of old was unable to impede the progress of the war-weary youth, for the youth would not allow them to influence. They shut out the voice of adversity and built themselves a new world. And I truly do believe that it is through the Greatest Generation's rejection of the old values that we have been able to achieve such rapid social progress over the past fifty years. The rebuilding of civil society bestowed upon them the gift of hindsight; it allowed them to look back and reanalyze whether or not the society of old truly was 'civil'. Perspective is a wonderful thing; it cleanses the soul and it purges the sin of apathy from us. They were able to choose how they wanted the world to be, and they chose change. They changed the world for ever, and their children, carrying on their legacy, chose the same path. The second World War had many horrors. Genocide, the slaughter of innocent civilians, and the deaths of countless children who were sent off to war to fight for something that was started by their predecessors. But from it came something beautiful. Advancement. For the first time in human history, we had made an astounding leap in the way we treated each other: like human beings. The trend has since continued, and doubtless, it will continue to roll forth with each succeeding generation. I'm proud to be a part of this trend. It's a movement that's long overdue, but I'd rather have it arrive late than never. Equality is not only our duty, but a moral imperative, and the sooner we free ourselves from prejudices and biases, the sooner we can advance society as a whole.

Oh fffff I wished I could have written something so cool like that. I couldn't have stated it better.

Sheesh Def.

Every post.

Every post, no matter how long or TL;DR, it makes me just luv ya more, bro.

<3
Deep, thoughtful and completely full of understanding of the human nature and taking the good out of the bad. I keep editing this because I keep comic up with compliments to say. Definitely one of the most thoughtful things I've read from you. Shocks me that you're only my age!

Pretty much same here, except for the evolution bit.

And being baptized isn't anything by itself. It's just a symbol of your decision. Like a wedding ring. You can still go to heaven without being baptized.

While I agree mostly, to progress you have to study the past. You need to know what happened and what failed before you can even begin to try and change it.

You are definitely correct. It is unequivocally true that one must study the past in order to learn from it, all in in effort to glean knowledge and insight about the best course of action for you to take should you ever encounter a situation similar to one which has already come to pass. The underlying message was not properly dictated, and with that, the fault lies with me. My intention was to say that it is for best that they have no memory of past events in the sense that they do not remember the feelings and human attachments of the events. It is one thing to study an event, it is another to live it. Text is a mixed blessing. When you place memories on paper, it is converted from pictures and thoughts to text. It is through that conversion process that something is lost: emotion. It still rings true with novels. A novel will never move you as much as a movie, much like reading field reports will never be the same as being on the battlefield. This is because humans, by nature, are visual creatures. Whenever we are moved by a novel, whether it be to happiness or to sadness, it is we who are manipulating ourselves through our imaginations and through our empathy. The text merely serves as a vehicle for the fantasy in which we have placed ourselves. This is why the detached tone of text, and as an extension, history, is so pure, so invaluable. Because through the loss of emotion comes the loss of empathy. Human bias mars the impartiality of events, and purging our views from records that are intended to educate results in the teaching of the past, instead of telling. That is to say, detachment and impartiality helps us to understand the what, the where, the when, and the why of an event, not the how. It is the 'how' that is subjective. If we are told how something happens, then we are being told of it from the viewpoint of the speaker. Sometimes that element can be useful in books, but when it comes to trying to teach a fair and impartial view of history, the 'how' has no place in the discussion, and the most tactful action is to never put it in at all. To be concise, freedom from the taint of human supposition is freedom of the mind.

I'm a male, agnostic, and gay, and currently dating a F2M Transgendered Pagan.

Our views can clash every now and again, but it's not completely relationship shattering.

Religion is a topic I don't like to discuss myself personally. It causes fights.

For me, I'm Pro-Choice, unless it's a teenager. I don't think teens should:
A. Have Condomless Sex in the first place
B. Not be on the pill.

I'm also Anti-Divorce, which causes a lot of arguing amongst me and my friends. I don't think people should have the option to get divorced unless a judge rules it's dangerous for one party to stay with the other.

That's just me.