English, Filsafat, Racauan

That Vegetarian Plan

Some religious rituals, like the slaughter of livestock during Eid, is no longer endurable for me. I cannot fathom nor accept it, as it is a display of celebrated cruelty. Does that make me a hypocrite, since although I seldom eat meat and tried so much not to eat it at all, I still eat poultry and fish. Well, here is the thing: I am thinking of being a vegetarian, but not yet can do it because there is not enough vegetarian food around me. But that does not mean I cannot build the context of my life to be that.

Pain, suffering, can only occur with the development of the brain and nervous system. So every creature who has a brain will have to endure pain. I will stop endorsing it if I can. Slowly I will make these carcasses unavailable to me. I won’t take part of their bodies to my mouth. But if I care about others suffering, I also need to take care of my own suffering. I cannot suffer myself with hunger or malnutrition just because I don’t want other beings to suffer.

It turns out, fortunately, that I also have a disease that makes it hard to break down proteins. So I do need a hard hard diet. I think this intolerance is needed also because of my age and health condition which enables my behavior and hormones to become calmer. Being a vegetarian could ease my pain.

No meat is easy. No poultry or fish is harder. And the aim is to minimize my relationship with cruelty as little as possible. To be as humane as possible, because only humans can have this story.

English, Filsafat, Racauan

How to Prove God Exists to Atheists

So, you’re an Atheist?

Okay, you may not believe in God, but do you believe that your mind exists?

Sure you do, if not how do you suppose to read and understand the things I wrote? But how do you prove that your mind exist? Neuroscience could say that there are pulses or hormones, or synapsis or whatever that prove the existence of an ‘activity’ in your brain. But there hasn’t been any technology that can read your mind, imagination, or memory, vividly. We are living in a dystopia society and a black mirrored future, but mind reading machine still need to be develop for years ahead.

You might say, “Well, the mind exists and we can prove it subjectively and objectively with tools. And like black hole or far away space objects, we will get the accurate data eventually. It’s not Schrodinger’s cat: the mind does exist. But God, on the other hand…”

Let me put it this way then. Your mind, exist. The things you think about, exist in your mind: the imagination, the stories, the myths, the dreams. If you think about God, then She/He exists. If you think God does not exists, it won’t cause God to disappear from other people’s head.

In the end, we will mind our own mind. At least the ‘idea’ of God is in your Atheist head, then the existence or non-existence of God, does exists in your head too. Atheist don’t need to prove the existence of God. It doesn’t matter. But existence of the self, of identity, of politics and other abstract stuff, most atheists feel the need to prove them. Ergo, atheism is a belief system, just like religion. It’s institutionalized by all things secular.

God is problematic because He/She/It is dialectic historically. But the people who believe, are kind of ahistoric when it comes to this discussion. The history or dialectic of God will dissolve the foundation of God as an almighty and infinite being. If God is always changing, then there will be a possibility that it does not exist, and it bugs all the religious people. Atheists in a sense of dialectical, factual based argument, are supposed to be flexible.

But reality is hard, everybody knows that. Even for Atheists, reality is hard. We want to give meaning to our lives , and if we are unable to do so, if we feel that our lives are irrelevant, we need guidance. Religious people get it from their preachers. Atheist or moderately religious people get them from psychologists orang psychiatrist.

We are all human after all. We are all unique, but none of us are special. We need to worship something, and those who say they don’t, are hypocrites.