Sum up the meaning of life in one sentence.

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I said love oneself unconditionally. I think to get that point requires various steps, the first being to always do right by one's own conscience. Next there is courage to follow through, and on and on...Very few people really love themselves. This is not about an ego trip. Before you really know how to love, you have to break your ego.

The best laid plans of mice and men are often gone to waste.

-Robert Burns

This song is for Sand and ruveyn.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkcFwRCnEzs[/youtube]

Since it keeps coming up at this site it’s probably worthwhile to take a more analytical look at atheism, agnosticism and commitment to a religious belief. Although these three attitudes seem to be reasonable tightly defined, as it turns out in practice, they are not totally exclusive points of view but fall on a continuous spectrum.

Atheism is assumed to be a total denial of any supernatural intelligence acting on the way people behave and the way the universe performs. And atheists are really in a linguistic quandary when they hit their thumbs with a hammer. Invective is traditionally religious or deals with human waste products but there are no really powerful atheistic curses. It’s a problem.

Agnosticism is an admission that there may be no obvious acceptable evidence of a supernatural intellect but grants that such an intellect would have the capability to remain hidden and may be active in ways not discernible and therefore one must arrange one’s life on the possibility of the existence of such an entity.

Religious believers come in all flavors with a very entertaining circus of amusing, silly, threatening, frightful, kindly, intelligent, brutal, clumsy, etc. supernatural powers that have demands that range from restrictive sexual, ingestive, performance, etc rather rigid rules based on various ancient folklore texts of very dubious origins and validities. Aside from these texts which can have very doubtful historical roots there is little concrete evidence that the practices advised come from anything other than ancient ignorant tribal beliefs that may or may not be socially useful and the enforcement of these directives is totally through human actions which a neutral observer would be led to believe that the actual supernatural powers are either defunct or perhaps lost interest long ago considering the inferior material humankind has presented for their supervision.

One dividing point in these attitudes is the split between theory and action. There are doubtless atheists that deny gods but feel a bit insecure on Friday the 13 or avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks to preserve their mothers’ backs. Agnostics are a bit more solid here as they permit themselves flexibility in their precautions and can act as if they were atheists but preserve mental cautions about how a god might consider a bit of blasphemy now and then. And religious people of all sorts can live in eternal fear and trembling that a chance misbehavior might end them up in eternal torture or figure their god is a rather decent fellow and a fart or two in church or an elevator may evoke a momentary frown or two from a deity but no real damage is done. It seems that people continually involved in horrendous activity such as Mafia hit men and soldiers at war or financiers gouging helpless clients or heads of state sending off murderous militaries on missions that kill hundreds of thousands of totally innocent people can put their active practices out of mind when considering their religious standing.

Therefore these simpleminded classifications really have little relationship to the way people act and conduct their lives.