What goes around comes around.  Blah blah blah blah blah.

The idea of karma presents itself as a method of inviting "good" into ones life by expelling "good" into the cosmic void.  It takes cosmic forces to gather your "good" and "bad", but whatever plant you raise will present you with a yield or harvest of earned rewards.

Whatever.

If there truly was a way to gain a cosmic reward, for good or ill, it would present itself most assuredly in the immediate and horrible deaths of practically everybody on earth!  Nearly everyone has done something that would cause the flow of "bad karma", inviting sure disaster.

Yet, planet-wide, the human population has not ceased to grow. 

So much for ideas of karma and cosmic enlightenment!

It is difficult to believe that there are still adherents to the old agricultural belief in reincarnation.  Yet, they appear to be everywhere!

The belief in reincarnation assumes that a person's thought processes are governed by supernatural forces independent of the material body.

Understand this.  If there was such a thing as a soul, or "spirit", and there was no need for a material brain to govern thought and feeling, then why would we have one?  If we could leave our material bodies and somehow transmit our thoughts into another body, then why bother living a miserable life?  Why not just self-destruct and try for a better life?

The fact is, you are the some total of your material properties.  From your neural pathways to your physiological properties and biological propensities, you are a material being.  There is no immaterial portion that can carry your life experiences or "being" into an afterlife, nor into another life.

When I was young, I was absolutely horrified at the idea that someone would see me undressed.  For so many years, even the thought of using a public bathroom unnerved me.  I just knew that someone was going to walk in and see me, and I was terrified.

This was because I had, at the time, bought into the ideas of christian shame that dominate in our culture.  If it had not been for christianity, it would not have mattered to me at all.  I would not have even thought about it.

Likewise, when I was young and at my best, I was terrified of getting into a relationship.  I just knew that getting into a relationship would lead to having sex, which christianity taught me would send my soul to perish in hell. 

The Pauline christ never laughs.  His supposed life is detailed in the gospels, and there is not one account wherein he laughs.  They are all so serious, because he is a serious figure.  He speaks to "flesh" about the things of the "spirit", and condemns the "flesh" for not being "spirit".

There were many times, when I was younger, that I simply stared at the sky and begged that saviour to come and end my earthly suffering.  I was lonely, horny, and tired of existence.  No voices called down from the clouds to calm me.  No "second coming".

So during my youth, I upheld those values that I learned from christianity. 

          *Your body, being the physical prison of the soul, was essentially evil, and any physical pleasure you might feel would harm your spirit.
          *Any joy in this life would provoke the wrath of god against you.  Life was meant to be serious and miserable so that joy might be obtained after you die.
          *The physical body is an object of shame, and if you are not ashamed that you have a body, then your spiritual self will suffer.

It has taken me a long time to overcome the fear and sadness that every thought and feeling provoked in me because of christianity.  I am still working on many other points, as there are too many to name here. 

Why is it that there are always outbreaks of bacterial-borne diseases coming from fast-food restaurants?  I will tell you why.  It is because they are filthy.

The people who serve fast-food really don't care about their customers.  They are merely trying to get a paycheck.  So when the boss says "this is fast-food, you have to move fast!", any thought other than speed goes ouot the window.  Dishes get rinsed really quickly instead of being washed.  Time is not taken to wash hands.  Food gets undercooked.

What about state and federal health regulations?  Like they matter!  Health inspectors call before they come, do quick run throughs, and are not very thorough.  Besides, they work for the government.  Government is more concerned with governing then protecting you or your health.

There is no process that is 100% effective in eliminating microorganisms.  It takes a dual and sometimes three-pronged effort to eliminate them all.  Hot water has to be hot.  After a thorough washing with the proper soap, dishes must be sanitised.

The latest outbreak of food poisoning from bacteria isn't just an isolated incident.  The fast-food industry needs to be made aware of a few facts.  They need to understand that yes, we consumers like to get our food quick.  We would eat at more refined restaurants were that not the case.  But we would be more forgiving of food that takes a little extra time to get to us than if the food gets us or our kids sick!

Return business should be contigent upon such factors.  But sometimes, it is simply better to actually state such facts.  After all, people tend to be a little daft, and they really don't understand what we want unless we tell them directly.

The christian model of salvation has, for all of christian history, been about man's defiance of god's will and a hero-saviour that appeases that god's wrath over this defiance.  It is relatively simplistic, and straightforward.  The god was a parent who issued directives at man the child, the child defiantly disobeyed the father-god's directive, and god smacked the child for disobedience.  The father-god has been smacking the child-man ever since.  Then one day the parent-god sends a special child-man down and smacks him around for a bit.  This child-man gets smacked around in order to stop god from smacking around his brothers.  Therefore, all you have to do is to believe that this special child-man existed and put your faith in that special child-man and father-god will stop smacking you around.

Today's believers like to qualify that by saying it was planned that way from the very beginning.  The father-god started out with a plan to have defiant children that would disobey him so that he could smack them around and give them a saviour-hero that he would smack around so that the saviour-hero could give him an out from smacking all his child-men around.  Yet, he would continue to smack those child-men around unless the believed in and served the will of the saviour-hero who bore the brunt of god's need to smack his child-men around.

It is so bloody absurd. 

What is even more absurd is, people support the idea that this is a true and accurate picture of reality because they actually want to believe that it is so. They actually argue that it is beautiful to know that a parent-god allowed for someone else to get the spanking that the parent-god was going to give to them.  They say that they actually wouldn't want to believe that their wasn't a parent-god smacking his child-men around, or that there wasn't a special child-man who was a saviour-hero who took the beating for their benefit.

Why? 

I can only conclude that it is because people like violence and like to see kids getting beat.  Perhaps that is why so many god-fearing parents end up beating their own children to death.  They are just imitating what their own parent-god would do.